Книга - Triple Play

Triple Play
Leslie Kelly


Introducing Unrated!, the hottest—and naughtiest—new miniseries from Blaze! Sneak a playful peek with this sexy prequel novella from New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kelly…When she was eighteen, Emily Crowder was naughty for the first time in her life. She slipped naked into Rand McConnell’s bed, experienced her first (and best) orgasm…and lost her heart. Then Rand disappeared without a word.Seven years later, Rand strides back into her life, now a famous ballplayer, every woman’s lust-filled fantasy–and a guest at Emily’s hotel. He says he wants to explain…and he wants to finish what they started. Emily's Good Girl side reminds her of the pain she felt when Rand left the last time. But Emily has played the Good Girl for far too long. Perhaps it's time she let her Very, Very Naughty side take over again. Only this time, Rand is going to play by her rules…Don't miss out on even more steamy Unrated! books from Harlequin Blaze!







Introducing Unrated!, the hottest—and naughtiest—new miniseries from Blaze! Sneak a playful peek with this sexy prequel novella from New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kelly...

When she was eighteen, Emily Crowder was naughty for the first time in her life. She slipped naked into Rand McConnell’s bed, experienced her first (and best) orgasm...and lost her heart. Then Rand disappeared without a word.

Seven years later, Rand strides back into her life, now a famous ballplayer, every woman’s lust-filled fantasy—and a guest at Emily’s hotel. He says he wants to explain...and he wants to finish what they started. Emily’s Good Girl side reminds her of the pain she felt when Rand left the last time. But Emily has played the Good Girl for far too long. Perhaps it’s time she let her Very, Very Naughty side take over again. Only this time, Rand is going to play by her rules...

Don’t miss out on even more steamy Unrated! books from Mills & Boon Blaze!


Triple Play:

An Unrated! Prequel

New York Times Bestselling Author

Leslie Kelly




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


About the Author

LESLIE KELLY has written dozens of books and novellas for the Mills and Boon Blaze, Temptation and Mills and Boon lines. Known for her sparkling dialog, fun characters and steamy sensuality, she has been honored with numerous awards, including a National Reader’s Choice Award, a Colorado Award of Excellence, a Golden Quill and an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Series Romance. Leslie has also been nominated four times for the highest award in romance fiction, the RWA RITA® Award. Leslie lives in Maryland with her own romantic hero, Bruce, and their daughters.

Visit her online at www.lesliekelly.com (http://www.lesliekelly.com) or at her blog, www.plotmonkeys.com (http://www.plotmonkeys.com).


Contents

Chapter 1 (#uec7572f3-b843-5671-8483-675d26c5817c)

Chapter 2 (#uc5aa7e72-6903-5076-b80e-9775ece3ba78)

Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)


1

“RAND MCCONNELL IS coming. Here.”

Emily Crowder had no reason to doubt that her ears worked. Still, she couldn’t have heard what she thought her boss, Dawn, had just said. It was impossible that the world’s sexiest athlete—the guy who’d graced magazine covers, who’d sold out stadiums, who’d given Emily her first orgasm—was about to descend on the Chicago hotel where she worked. Im-freaking-possible.

“Did you hear me?” Dawn barked.

“God, I hope not.”

Her boss leaned in. “I said Rand McConnell is coming here. Today.”

Emily was still trying to get her brain to catch up to her ears. “Rand McConnell, the athlete?”

“Athlete? That’s like calling King Kong a monkey. Rand McConnell is the most famous baseball player in the world!”

“But...why here? Don’t all the major league teams have contracts with other Chicago hotels?”

She’d worked at the Black Star Hotel for two months, ever since leaving the resort that had hired her right out of college. It was upscale and would someday be a destination for the rich and shameless. But having opened recently, they hadn’t captured that clientele yet.

“I just got a call from his assistant. She said he was making a last-minute trip to attend tonight’s animal welfare fund-raiser, and wondered if we could find a room for him. The place where he usually stays is booked because it’s New Year’s.”

“Who’d want to leave California for Chicago in December?”

“Guess he’s an animal lover,” Dawn said. Smirking, she added, “And how did you know he lives in California? Sounds like you’re a fan.”

Not even close. “Hardly.”

“Whatever the reason, he is coming to Chicago and he’s staying here.” Dawn sounded as excited as a tween at a Bieber concert.

“Have you forgotten we’re booked solid, too?” Emily asked, her head spinning—though not for the reasons Dawn’s was. No, her feelings about this news couldn’t be called excitement. Nausea? Worry? Humiliation? Hurt? That’d sum it up.

“I put him in the owner’s suite.”

That made sense. The owner of the hotel was almost never here, so the penthouse was seldom used. It might be big enough to contain Rand McConnell, his entourage and his ego. Or at least him and his entourage. His ego was another matter entirely.

“Housekeeping is already there. I want you to supervise.”

“Why me?” she squeaked.

“You’re the daytime floor manager, and the best employee I’ve got. If Rand McConnell has fun at this hotel and spreads the word, maybe his team will decide to give us their business.”

Oh, yay. More sexy athletes to turn young women into fools.

“Make sure everything is perfect for Mr. McConnell.”

Emily gritted her teeth, thinking of the other guests whose money should gain them as much attention as a spoiled jock.

A spoiled jock who was your very first lover.

Well, almost.

That memory didn’t set her heart fluttering the way it would Dawn’s, or the way it would the heart of any woman here. Heck, if all the women here knew Emily had come within a hymen’s-width of losing her virginity to Rand, one of People magazine’s Sexiest Men of the Year, their hearts wouldn’t just flutter, they’d spasm into arrhythmia and then explode.

The thought didn’t give her any kind of cocky pleasure or ego boost, and she certainly didn’t want anyone to know about her history with Rand. Not just because someone would probably try to scratch her eyes out due to sheer penis-envy, but also because she didn’t want to remember the stupid mistakes she’d made because of that penis. And the man attached to it.

No, Emily’s heart wasn’t fluttering. She no longer had any romantic ideas about Rand or his—impressive, she had to admit—penis. As far he was concerned, her heart had closed up shop.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Dawn asked.

“Shouldn’t the head of housekeeping check the room?”

“Am I not making myself clear?” Her boss’s voice grew frosty. “Your entire job is to look after Rand McConnell. Everything else is on the back burner this weekend. Everything. Or else you might not have a job.”

Emily certainly was not the person to glad-hand Rand, but she couldn’t explain why. She just had to suck it up and pray she didn’t run into the jerk.

How hard could that be? The hotel had hundreds of rooms. Avoiding one man should be a piece of cake. Surely lady luck would be kind enough to let her get through the weekend with her heart and her pride intact.

Of course, Emily had never been lucky. But there was a first time for everything. She hoped.

* * *

RAND HAD WALKED into hotel rooms and found women waiting for him before. Not often, since he wasn’t the womanizer the press made him out to be. But when it happened, they were usually women he’d invited. Once, though, he’d had an unwanted female visitor who’d finagled her way into his room and waited for him in his bed. Naked. She’d been counting on his reputation—and her ample charms—to smooth over his anger at the invasion.

It hadn’t worked.

This wasn’t going to, either.

Though, he had to concede, the, uh, rear approach was an interesting one. Very interesting.

The sight of a woman’s curvy ass pointed up at him as its owner dug for something under the bed had been enough to stop him in his tracks right inside the penthouse bedroom. Judging by the way she was muttering, she hadn’t yet realized that she was no longer alone. Maybe she’d dropped whatever bit of tempting lingerie she’d intended to don as part of her seduction.

Honey, if I were that kinda guy, you wouldn’t need it. That skirt is doing a fine job on its own.

Especially given the blatantly sensual way it clung to her thighs, emphasizing the cleft between them.

He forced that thought away and focused on the situation. That a sports groupie had gotten into his room didn’t say much for this hotel. Of course, he wasn’t about to move to another one, not until he’d done what he came here to do.

Smothering a curse, he wondered if he should call security or try to deal with her himself. He’d been looking forward to a quiet room-service dinner before heading to the fund-raiser downstairs. He had his reasons for coming here, and being a soft touch when it came to animals in need was only one of them.

But this trip had also been about tying up loose ends from his past. Though, frankly, the idea of coming face-to-face with the person he hadn’t been able to get out of his head for seven years made him a lot more stressed than the fund-raiser appearance. Or the intruder.

The trip from the West Coast had been tiring, and the cold Chicago weather had hit him the moment he’d stepped out of the airport. He wanted a hot shower and a hot meal, not necessarily in that order. It appeared, however, that he was going to have to deal with Miss Perky Butt before he got either of those things.

She mumbled something again. Rand stepped a little closer, unable to resist dropping his gaze to that wriggling backside again as she wedged herself deeper under the bed. Now, standing almost directly above her, he was able to appreciate her...assets...further. He also noted her luscious legs, which were prominently displayed beneath the short navy skirt as she twisted and fidgeted.

Another shimmy. The skirt flipped a little—high enough that he could see the top hem of her thigh-high stockings.

He gulped. Not tights or pantyhose. Stockings. Hottest thing any woman could ever wear. Well, nothing was the hottest thing any woman could ever wear—but stockings were pretty close.

“What kind of kinky pervert leaves handcuffs attached to his bed?” she muttered.

Rand’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened. Handcuffs? Kinky?

The butt, the thighs, the warm, womanly voice, the handcuffs, the mental image of all things wild and kinky....

Hell. He had a hard-on.

He shifted from foot to foot, not wanting to hand the strange—if curvaceous—woman on the floor that kind of weapon. When she managed to pry herself out from under the bed and sit up, she’d be eye level with some major-league wood. And he wouldn’t be able to send her away by claiming he wasn’t interested. To be honest, his brain might not be, but his cock was trying to overrule the ump and call the play at the base.

“Pervy rich asshole,” she said. She tugged at something under the bed hard enough to make the whole thing jerk an inch away from the wall. “Ow!”

“Are you all right?” he couldn’t help asking. That thump had really sounded like it hurt.

“Oh, God,” the woman said. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.” Then she did the strangest thing. Instead of sliding out—and pushing that skirt high enough for him to check out what else she was wearing beneath it—she went further under the bed. He heard her oomphing and grunting as she crawled deeper and deeper, until her navy-pump-covered feet disappeared.

He waited. Watched.

Finally, he murmured, “Uh, I think you went the wrong way.”

“Come back later, please. Your room’s not ready,” she said. Her voice was coarse and deep now; she sounded nothing at all the way she had when she’d been muttering about handcuffs, kink and perverts. Handcuffs and kink and perversions, oh, my.

“I’m not going anywhere. The room is as ready as I want it to be, and I really don’t need you planting yourself in my bed to surprise me, okay?”

“What?” she squealed. Thump. “Did you just...” Bang. “Ow!”

He sighed heavily then dropped to a squat beside the bed. Reaching under, he grabbed her ankles and began pulling her toward him, out into the open.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m helping you out myself and then showing you to the door. Would you rather I call security and let them do it?”

“Security? What? No, you don’t understand!”

He ignored her and continued to pull, tugging until her small feet emerged from under the bedskirt. She kicked at him, so he yanked the spiky-heeled pumps off her feet and tossed them over his shoulders across the room. “Stop kicking me. You’re outta here, lady. Your seduction plan didn’t work, and I want you gone. So just stop fighting me and come out.”

He resumed pulling, watching as shapely calves reappeared, followed by the soft crevices at the backs of her knees. That was one of his favorite spots on a woman’s body, and he steeled himself against wondering just how soft and silky this woman’s skin would be against his lips.

“Plan? Wait, seduction?” She stopped kicking at him and began shimmying out on her own, something in his words finally getting through to her. Rand crawled out of her way and stood up, watching first her thighs emerge—oh, God in heaven, those thighs—and then a sliver of blue fabric that was so not covering anything it was supposed to be covering.

Oh. Wait. Wrong sliver of blue fabric. No wonder the navy skirt wasn’t covering anything, it had apparently gotten caught on the underside of the bed and was now completely pulled up around her waist. Minuscule powder-blue panties did their best to cover the soft, round cheeks of her glorious ass, but their best wasn’t worth a damn.

He gulped, feeling like he’d inhaled a mouthful of sawdust, as his mouth went dry with want. He had the wildest urge to nibble at the elastic pantyline, and slide his tongue along the tender, sensitive spot where shapely cheek met slender thigh. She had to kneel a little to get up, and practically rose onto all fours. His eyes rounded and some seriously erotic ideas burst into his brain, because those thin panties did very little to conceal the secret place between her legs. But he forced the images away. At another point in his life, he might have been interested in what this stranger was after. But this trip was all about somebody else.

She tried tugging the skirt down, but it remained stuck around her waist. She forced herself the rest of the way out and rolled over, sitting on the floor beside the bed. He stared down at her, managing to jerk his attention off the lower half of her body, covered by nothing but stockings and panties, to look at a cloud of messy, light brown hair surrounding a heart-shaped face dominated by expressive, golden-brown eyes.

Then the truth hit him. Those expressive, golden-brown eyes were expressing nothing but anger and contempt. And that heart-shaped face was one he knew. Oh, Christ, did he know that face.

The room seemed to spin beneath his feet, and he groped for the back of a nearby chair to steady himself.

Because it was Emily Crowder.

Sweetly sexy little Emily, all grown up but still able to suck the breath out of his lungs and the intelligence right out of his brain.

Em. The very woman he’d come to Chicago to find.


2

“EMILY.”

“Rand McConnell, you conceited jackass,” she snapped, seething with anger she hadn’t realized she was capable of feeling. It choked her, enveloped her. She wrapped the rage around herself, well aware that she’d need it to keep her defenses high.

Being angry wasn’t hard. The man’s ego was unbelievable. He really believed she was some groupie who’d been trying to seduce him by, what, wagging her butt up at him from the floor and begging him to climb on top of her and make her howl?

He could. You know he could.

That was beside the point.

She leapt to her feet, too mad to feel any mortification about him catching her with her pants down. Er, well, with her skirt up. “You assumed I was lying in wait to take advantage of you?”

“It’s you.”

“Of course it’s me.”

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Not lying in wait to take advantage of you, that’s for sure! What on earth kind of women do you meet if they wait for you on all fours in hotel rooms?”

A slow, wry grin spread across his face, that sexy grin of Randy’s that had graced magazines and cereal boxes. His amazing smile had made her dizzy with lust when she was a mere teenager and he not much more than that.

That grin still elicited a reaction. Something inside her twisted and lurched—her heart, her sex, her stomach? All of the above?

God, this was just how she’d felt the first time she’d seen him. Back when she’d been an innocent virgin, a good girl raised in a sheltered home who was looking to spread her wings and be a little bad.

Rand had been a few years older, already so handsome he had girls following him everywhere. But, as she’d learned, he’d also come from a pretty sheltered, small-town background. They’d also had another sad connection, both of them having essentially lost a parent as a teenager, though not in the same way. Rand had lost his father to cancer—a true tragedy. Em had lost both her parents to prison on embezzlement convictions, which was more infuriating than tragic, as far as she was concerned. But still a loss for a young girl yanked from the only life she’d ever known. As their friendship had developed, they’d talked a lot about the paths their lives had taken after those losses...and the paths they had not.

She shook her head hard, willing the sweeter memories of Rand away, forcing herself to focus on the bad ones.

“I never meet women as interesting as you, believe me,” he said. And she did believe it, because the rat had the ability to make any woman believe whatever words came out of that beautiful face.

Oh, God, why did he have to be so impossibly handsome? Why had his dark brown hair retained its luster, why hadn’t it started to go gray or, best of all, fallen out by the fistful? Why were his cheeks so sharply defined, and why was his jaw so rugged and his mouth so eminently sexy and kissable? Why was that body even more strong-looking, broad-shouldered and muscular than it had been when he’d been a college ballplayer just starting out? Why did those green eyes still take in so much more than she wanted to reveal?

Why are you here, Rand?

“You’re all grown up,” he said.

“Seven years will do that to a person,” she replied, her tone sugar-sweet, reminding him that it had been seven years since they’d spoken, seven years during which he’d never once tried to reach her, not even to see if she was okay after what had happened between them. “Despite appearances, I’m not the dumb girl I was.”

“You were never dumb.”

To be fair, he’d never treated her as if she was dumb, just as a sweet little innocent. Until that last night.

She’d met Rand when she was visiting her brother, Seth, who lived in L.A. Seth was a sports agent, just building a name for himself back then. Now, he counted some of the most famous, successful athletes in the country as his clients. Rand McConnell had been one of them.

He wasn’t anymore, though. Because of her.

“You were always pretty spectacular.”

Her spine went ramrod straight and she forced away the hint of pleasure his compliment created. The guy was a womanizing ballplayer who probably fed every woman that same line. “And you were always a jerk.”

He flinched, visibly affected at last.

She instantly regretted the comment. Because he hadn’t been a jerk. In fact, Rand had been anything but a jerk when they’d first met. He’d been cute and funny and charming, even if he hadn’t been later.

“Wow, that’s new. You’ve grown a sharp tongue to go along with that perfect face,” he said, sounding rueful.

“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “This was an awkward reunion at best. If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get going.”

She began to walk toward the door but he stepped in front of her. She had to drop her head back to stare up at him—he’d had a good six inches in height on her when he’d been twenty-one and he seemed even taller now.

She suddenly realized why. “Wait, where are my shoes?” she asked, still not believing he’d pulled her out from under the bed—and not believing she’d been about to walk out of here barefoot and with her skirt still twisted out of place. The man had fried her brains and made her forget everything else. As always. She untangled her skirt and yanked it into position.

“I hid them.”

“You didn’t have a chance to hide them.”

“Okay, so I threw them. They’re in the corner.”

She walked over to get them and shoved her feet in the pumps. Turning to leave, though, she found he’d stepped right in front of the doorway, blocking her exit.

“I’m curious, if you weren’t, uh, lying in wait, what were you doing under my bed?”

“I was trying to unhook the...”

The words died on her lips. She did not want to talk to Rand about the fur-lined handcuffs attached to his bed, apparently left there by the hotel owner. She’d heard rumors about the wealthy owner’s revolving-door love life. Evidently it wasn’t just his money that kept the women coming to the penthouse night after night when he was in residence.

Although the room itself was probably part of the attraction. The three-bedroom suite was the final word in opulence. It included every creature comfort a person could desire, from a private pool on the rooftop patio, to a ten-headed shower in the master bath, to a bar fridge stocked with Perrier-Jouët champagne and Beluga caviar.

And, as she’d discovered when doing one last sweep after the maids had departed, a bit of a kink factor. She’d found a pair of cuffs in a drawer in the bathroom, which had prompted her to double-check the bed. Good thing. There’d been another set attached to one of the decorative wooden slats that ran vertically down the center of the thick, massive headboard.

“Let me guess—you were trying to unhook the handcuffs?” he said, a teasing note to his voice.

Heat rose in her face. “How did you...”

“I heard you mumbling to yourself.”

Yet he had still assumed she was a stranger lying in wait to, uh, seduce him. Did women regularly handcuff him to the bed to have their kinky way with him? She did a mental eye-roll at the very idea, then quickly pulled her thoughts off all things handcuffy and sexual. And Randy. Oh, yes, randy was definitely on the no-no list right now.

“Yes, well, I was just doing a sweep to make sure everything was acceptable.”

“And you found handcuffs.”

“Would you shut up about the freaking handcuffs?”

“Are they still there?”

“Do I look like a locksmith to you?”

“Are they the fake plastic ones? Because, if so, they should have a release button that enables them to just be snapped open.”

Her jaw fell. “And you would know this...how?”

“Who doesn’t know that?”

“I didn’t know that.”

He tsked. “Never played cops and robbers as a kid, huh?”

Yeah, right. She’d just bet that was how he’d discovered release buttons.

He sure discovered your release button.

She ordered the sassy mental voice in her head to shut the hell up, even as her brain flooded with images of how he’d found the most vulnerable spots on her body and plucked them like a virtuoso fingering the keys of his instrument. She’d been so sheltered, with no adult female influence throughout her teenage years, that she hadn’t even been sure where her clit was until Rand showed her. Oh, God, had he shown her that one night when she’d been a wild child, rather than a good girl.

Being wild had been spectacular. But it had also caused a whole lot of misery. So she’d gone back to being a good girl, never tempted to push the limits with any other guy. And that seemed to be just fine with the men she’d dated, all of whom were okay with nice, quiet, reserved Emily who didn’t get on the floor and wag her fanny at them, or call them jerks or tell them to shut up.

God, why was Rand always able to get her riled up like this? More important, why did part of her love being riled up?

“I certainly never played games with real handcuffs,” she finally replied.

“So you think they’re real, not plastic?”

“Must we talk about the handcuffs?”

“Let’s just say you’ve aroused my...curiosity.”

“Well, you’re welcome to satisfy your...curiosity once I’m out of here. Despite the faux fur lining, they are not toy handcuffs and they’re still dangling from your headboard.”

“Fur-lined but still real? I doubt it. Show me where they are and I’ll try to open them.”

She rolled her eyes, wondering if he believed her a total sucker. Then again, her boss had made it pretty clear that she had to make Rand happy. If word got back to Dawn that a pair of handcuffs had been left for a valued customer to find and a staff member had refused to help remove them, the general manager would make good on her threat to fire Emily.

“Fine,” she snapped, heading toward the bed. He followed her, and she forced herself not to dwell on his being behind her. She didn’t want to remember the wild, angry, erotic thoughts she’d been having as she crawled out from under the bed, torn between humiliation, fury and the same crazy desire she’d felt for Rand from the day they’d met.

Dropping to her knees on the bed, close to the headboard, she bent over and reached her hand between the frame and the mattress. The metal cuffs dangled near the bottom of one slat, and she hooked her fingers into the free cuff and began to tug the set up. “I tried to open them from up here but it’s a pretty bad angle, which is why I was under the bed when you arrived.”

“I see.”

She looked over her shoulder and found him eyeing her backside. Yeah, he saw all right.

“Didn’t you get enough of an eyeful a little while ago?”

“No such thing as enough of an eyeful at something that great.”

Again torn between the anger and embarrassment and pleasure reactions, she turned and plopped her butt on the mattress. He sat beside her, watching as she drew the cuffs up the slat. Metal jangled as she lifted them as high as they would go. He reached over her lap and took the wrist cuff from her, which left both their hands hovering over her lap.

Heaven help me.

He examined the cuffs, testing the weight and the locking mechanism. “Pretty real, I’d say. There’s no matching one on the other side?”

Confused, she scrunched her brow.

“Well, one set wouldn’t do you much good. Unless you could somehow attach the chain part to the bed, leaving both wristcuffs free to be used.”

Now she got the picture. Oh, boy, did she ever get the picture. Being kept helpless on the bed, both hands restrained, able to do nothing but accept the pleasure a lover—Rand—wanted to give her...what woman wouldn’t immediately let her imagination drift?

But she couldn’t afford to drift and she certainly couldn’t afford to imagine. She wanted to get off the bed, remembering all too well that the last time she and Rand had been together, it had also been in a bed. A much smaller one, in a faraway state, but she’d certainly never forgotten the incident.

Unfortunately, his cuff-laden hand still blocked her path. If she lunged up, she’d be pushing her hips up against him in a way that would say anything except get off me.

“Wait a second,” he said. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a key chain that held a small utility knife. “Hold the cuff while I try to open the lock. If I can figure out how this side opens, I can climb under to get the attached side.”

That made sense, she supposed. No use breaking a wrist trying to open the attached side by shoving his big, powerful arm down behind the mattress. And no use crawling under the bed until he knew if it could be done. “Okay,” she said, watching as he bent to the task.

“You’re absolutely sure there’s only one set attached to the bed?”

“There’s only one.” The other one was in the bathroom drawer. “Even one is too many. Handcuffs definitely aren’t a hotel perk.”

“No, I suppose not. Glad you spotted them,” he said, an amused twinkle in those green eyes.

“I was double-checking the room to make sure it was ready for a guest; this one is usually not rented.” Realizing she hadn’t totally explained, she added, “I work here.”

“I know.”

Obviously he’d figured it out from their conversation and her attire. Yet, something in his expression made it seem like more than that, as if he’d been aware of that even earlier.

Ridiculous. He couldn’t have.

“Small world,” he said.

She grunted. “Too small.”

This had to be the most unlucky coincidence anyone had ever experienced. Okay, maybe getting engaged to a guy and then finding out you were twins separated at birth would be worse. But this was pretty damn bad.

“It’s been a long time, Em.”

“Not long enough.”

“Ouch.”

She was being bitchy, but she couldn’t help herself. Of course, considering that she hadn’t heard word one from him in years, even after the way they’d spent their last moments together, he deserved a little bitchiness.

In fairness, she’d been young and stupid and had instigated something she wasn’t ready for. She’d blamed herself a lot over the years for the way things had turned out. But Rand’s hands weren’t lily white. His falling-out with Seth hadn’t been entirely her fault.

“How’s your brother?” he asked, as if reading her mind.

“Fine. Married.”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody I’d know?”

“His old high school sweetheart. They’d lost touch, but met up again at their ten-year reunion a couple of summers ago.”

His brow furrowed. “Hmm...Laura? Lauren? He talked about her once.”

Her turn to look—and feel—surprised. Not only that Seth would have told Rand about Lauren Desantos, but that Rand would remember her name so many years later.

“We were tight once, me and your brother, even before I became his client,” he said by way of explanation.

He didn’t continue, didn’t say the next logical sentence: Until you came between us.

She had, which was her biggest regret of all. And, possibly, one reason she was being so nasty to Rand. Her own sense of guilt and responsibility still weighed on her.

Rand and Seth had been friends in college, Seth being only three years ahead of the star athlete. And when their business partnership broke up, their friendship had, too. All because Seth’s horny, pushy little sister hadn’t been able to keep her hands to herself. And because Rand hadn’t seemed to mind all that much.

“So you haven’t spoken to him since—”

“No. I see him once in a while, at banquets and events, but we don’t speak.”

Her heart clenched in her chest and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Regret choked her, and she acknowledged again just how selfish she’d been.

“I’m really sorry about that, Rand,” she murmured, aware that the words were long overdue. She’d said them in the letters and messages she’d sent him after their last encounter, but they deserved to be spoken out loud. “I never meant to come between you two. I wouldn’t have...”

“It’s okay. Besides, it wasn’t all your fault. It takes two to tango.”

“Yeah. And you danced that night, too.”

He didn’t smile, that sexy grin didn’t flash, he simply stared at her, his eyes intense, as if he, too, recalled their last night with utter clarity.

“My turn to say I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I shouldn’t have let things go so far.”

She stiffened. “Don’t try to claim you weren’t interested.”

“Oh, I was interested,” he insisted. “Way too interested than I was supposed to be in my friend’s baby sister.”

“I wasn’t a baby!”

Well, she’d been kind of a baby.

They had met a month before Emily’s eighteenth birthday. She’d just graduated from high school and was primed to have a fun visit in SoCal with her big brother. She’d been thrilled to get away from her overprotective grandfather, who hadn’t let her even talk to a guy on the phone, much less actually go out with one. Having been a good girl for so long, she’d dreamed about getting a little wild even before she’d met Rand McConnell.

Once she’d met him and gotten to know him as an amazingly smart, funny, nice guy who was also über-hot, she’d been a goner.

“I was too old for you,” he said.

“Three years...”

“Is nothing now. But then? There’s a big difference between just-turned-eighteen and twenty-one, and I should have known better.”

Rand had graduated early from UCLA—he was gorgeous, talented and smart, talk about a triple threat—and had been expected to land in the big leagues. Everyone predicted he’d be a big star. Seth had signed him, worked with him, helping plan his career, which was supposed to be brilliant.

Well, his career had been brilliant, but Seth hadn’t taken him there. Because her brother had caught Rand and Emily in bed together and not only sent Emily back to their grandfather for the rest of the summer, but had dumped Rand as a client.





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