Sometimes the last thing you want is
exactly what you need...
“I kept my word.”
He was mouth-watering. Six
feet, lean and sexy, sleekly muscled, like a panther. Heavy
lidded gray eyes and closely cropped wheat blond hair. He kept
it almost brutally short. But she thought it might curl if he
let it grow long enough.
When Luke lifted his head to
look at her, there was a faint smile on his mouth. His very,
very sexy mouth. Devon could picture herself kissing it. She
could picture herself moving to him and pressing against him,
rising up on her toes and covering that mouth with hers and
kissing that sardonic smile away.
He quirked a brow at her and
instead of reaching for him like she wanted to, Devon reached
into her purse and pulled out her wallet. She pulled out the
snapshot of Ellie and held it out to him. “I’ve been carrying
that around for a few weeks.”
His eyes dropped down and
Devon watched as his smile softened. “The little heartbreaker,”
he murmured. He stroked the edge of the picture with his
finger. “She looks wonderful.”
“She is wonderful.” Under the
guise of studying the picture, Devon stepped close enough to him
that she could feel the heat of his body and smell his scent.
Woodsy. Dark. Sexy. She looked down at the picture and tried
to focus on it. Ellie did look wonderful. “The last time she
was in the system, she stayed with this family. They loved
her. She loved them.”
“I can see that.” The picture
showed Ellie hugging Rob Parker with both arms, her eyes
sparkling. She was laughing. “She going to be able to stay
with them for a while?”
Devon tipped her head back and
smiled at him. “A good long while. They’re adopting her.
There’s no father listed on her birth certificate and nobody has
been able to find any suitable next-of-kin. The only family
member is an uncle who has a history of sexual abuse. No
question of whether or not he can take her.”
He started to give the picture
back to her and Devon shook her head. “It’s for you. We all
need reminders of the happy endings with these kinds of things.”
His gaze met hers and Devon
felt her heart start doing a weird little rumba inside her
chest. The heat inside her belly didn’t completely take her by
surprise.
She hadn’t closed herself off
from men. She’d dated; she had even thought she was in love
once with a guy she’d dated off and on throughout college. Of
course, the two times she’d attempted to develop any sort of
sexual relationship with him, it had been a disaster. She’d
been attracted to the guy—seriously attracted. But she couldn’t
move past her issues.
After the second failed
attempt, Devon had broken up with him and last she heard, he was
engaged.
She wasn’t a stranger to
heat–that didn’t completely shock her. What surprised her was
the intensity of it. Devon knew nothing could have prepared her
for this. It was like wildfire. It rippled through her and she
knew he felt it, too. She saw it in his eyes, in the odd
tension that suddenly took over his body. Their gazes held for a
long moment that seemed to stretch out into forever and then his
gaze dropped to her mouth. Devon started to sway closer. The
cell phone at her waist started ringing and the moment
shattered. Devon blinked, felt blood rush to her cheeks and she
stepped back. Whoa…
He said her name but Devon
forced herself to smile. With that bright, false smile on her
face, she looked down at her watch and said, “Wow. Look at the
time…” She spun on her heel and headed down the hall, as fast
as she possibly could.
Whoa…she fumbled for her cell
phone, but by the time her clumsy fingers managed to flip it
over, the call had already gone into voice mail. Just as well
because the only coherent thought in her brain was…Whoa…
* * * * *
Damn.
Luke leaned against the wall
and watched as Devon Manning disappeared. She moved fast for
such a skinny thing. She smelled good, too. Soft, sweet, clean.
Almost too soft for the life he knew she lived.
He hadn’t seen her since the
day she’d brought Ellie in and Luke figured that was almost two
months ago. That job of hers had to be hell. He didn’t know how
she did it. Yeah, he saw some shit cases around here but they
weren’t everything. Being a social worker, he had to wonder how
many happy endings she saw.
Certainly weren’t a lot of
happy moments when she showed up in the ER. As much as he liked
seeing her, Luke had learned fairly early on seeing a social
worker usually meant the ER would be treating some abused child,
a battered woman, a strung out teen. Either that, or the ER had
been forced to call social services and those weren’t exactly
fun either.
And none of it was very
conducive to romance.
Pretty much from the first
time he’d seen her five or six months ago, he’d wanted to ask
her out. There just didn’t ever seem to be a good time for it.
Before Ellie, the last time she’d come in it had been because
one of her cases, a mom addicted to meth, had beat the crap out
of her daughter. Hadn’t been a good time, then either.
Studying the picture, he
realized the perfect opportunity had been in front of him but
he’d been too slow to react and once more, she slid away again.
He could still see her, walking down the hallway, her head bent,
fiddling with that damn phone.
Shoving away from the wall,
Luke headed towards her.
There wasn’t going to be a
better time. He could at least try to get her phone number. But
he never made it. His own phone started to ring and he grabbed
it, swearing as he read the display.
So much for getting her
number. He slid the picture of Ellie into his pocket and tossed
back the rest of his coffee. Back into the trenches.
* * * * *
By the time his shift ended,
Luke had been cried on, yelled at, bled on, kicked at and
stepped on. At least the only body fluids were blood and
tears. Some shifts, he spent an hour in the shower and still
didn’t feel clean. Today wasn’t so bad. He’d been prepared for
the worst when he had first seen Devon Manning. But whatever
case she’d been in for couldn’t have been a bad one or all the
nurses would have been buzzing over it. He hadn’t heard
anything through the grapevine.
It had been a long week and he
had three precious days in a row off. Three whole days. He
didn’t have to be back at work until seven Sunday night and he
was going to enjoy it. Luke was dead tired, but considering
this was the first night he’d had off in nearly a week, thanks
to staffing shortages, going home was not what he had on his
list of things to do. At least not yet. He wanted a real meal
he didn’t have to cook and he wouldn’t mind a few drinks.
Company wouldn’t be a bad thing, either but when he tried to
think of somebody to call, the only face that came to mind
belonged to Devon Manning.
But he hadn’t been able to get
her number before he got called back to the ER and by the time
he had a few spare minutes, she was long gone.
Luke didn’t even know if she
lived in the city or not. More and more people were commuting
back and forth to Lexington for work. Some even made the hour
and change drive between Lexington and Louisville, although he
doubted a social worker would work that far out. Most of them
had to take turns working on call and somebody living an hour
away wasn’t going to be able to get on scene quick enough.
Luke could get the number.
Had been tempted a time or two. Wouldn’t really take much, even
if she was unlisted. He hadn’t been the computer genius of his
unit, but he knew his way around the web. An unlisted phone
number might be harder for the average civilian to get, but Luke
wasn’t an average civilian.
But somehow he suspected the
lady wouldn’t like him getting her home number that way.
“You should have just asked
her,” he mumbled to himself as he headed for the parking
garage. Should haves, would haves and what ifs—they all added
up to jack.
Next time, he told himself.
He’d get it next time. He’d seen that responding heat in her
eyes. She’d backed off quick, real quick, but he knew what he’d
seen. If her damn phone hadn’t gone off–if he had taken a
minute to concentrate on something beyond the fact that she’d
been standing close enough for him to smell the soft, faint
scent of lotion that clung to her skin.
He could have had been having
dinner with the pretty social worker, seeing if he couldn’t
bring coax a smile or two out of her.
Or maybe he was going to have
that chance after all, Luke realized an hour later. He stood at
the bar of a popular steakhouse and watched as Devon made her
way through the crowd. She kept a careful distance between her
and all the people around her. Pretty amazing. She managed to
work her way through the tightly packed bodies without bumping
into a soul.
Something about that extreme
caution touched off a warning signal in Luke’s head but he
brushed it off. He’d get her number–and he was going to sit down
with her and talk about something other than cigarette burns,
malnourished toddlers and spiral fractures.
Forcing his way through the
crunch of bodies surrounding the bar, Luke intercepted her right
before she slid onto a bar stool. “Miz Devon.”
She jerked away, blinked
owlishly liked she didn’t recognize him. Then a smile curved
her lips. “Dr. Rafferty.”
Luke glanced down at the plain
white button down he wore. “I’m not wearing scrubs, a lab coat
or a stethoscope. It’s Luke.” He glanced around and saw nobody
seemed to be waiting for her. “You here alone?”
“Yeah. Came to do some
shopping and I got hungry. I was just going to have a burger or
something at the bar.”
He nodded towards a couple
vacating a bar table. “Me, too. Wanna join me?”
Devon glanced at the table and
then back up at him. That caution he’d glimpsed earlier made a
brief appearance and he knew she was going to say no. Already
disappointed, Luke started groping for something to say to
change her mind. The little girl. Ellie. Yeah, they could
talk about Ellie, right? Or her job, maybe. Something.
But before he had even
formulated one coaxing, convincing argument, she gave him a
smile. “Sure.”
Relief had him grinning like a
fool and he reached up, closing his fingers around her elbow.
She went stiff for a second, but he didn’t even notice. He was
too busy reveling in the warm, soft feel of her skin. Soft as
satin. Warm. Over the smoke in the air, he could smell her.
That scent, sweet and female, went straight to his head and made
him think about things he really didn’t need to be thinking
about, not unless he wanted to scare her away before they even
managed to order an appetizer.
She always smelled so good,
something warm, summery–sort of like honeysuckle. What was it?
Some kind of lotion? Lotion–yeah, something she’d slick on when
she climbed out of the shower…slicked it on wet, bare
skin…shit. “You’re into self torment,” he muttered, glad for
the crush and noise of the crowd.
Gave him at least a minute to
get a grip and focus as they made their way to the now vacant
table. A couple of college boys came rushing up to grab the
table as Devon started to sit down and Luke shifted his body,
putting it between them and the table. “Hey,” one of the kids
said, shoving at Luke’s shoulder.
Luke gave him a look over his
shoulder. “Table’s taken, kid.”
The hand on his shoulder
tightened. Luke dropped a look to the hand, and then back up.
Twenty-two, tops, Luke figured. Had the clean cut, all-American
college kid look going, and he was about as dumb as a box of
rocks.
He saw Devon’s face from the
corner of his eye and swore silently, about ready to just let
the moron and his friends have the table. But one of the guy’s
buddies had a little more sense and grabbed his friend, pushing
him towards a couple of open seats at the bar.
Sliding into the booth across
from her, they were both quiet as a busser appeared out of the
crowd and cleaned up the table. “I’ve seen fights break out
over less than a table in this place,” Devon said. “This close
to the campus, half the people in here are probably college
kids.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten into a
fight over a table,” he said.
Devon smirked. “No. But you
would have gotten into a fight when you punched him because you
didn’t like him shoving you.” Then she grinned, her nose
wrinkling a little. “Fortunately, the kid with him looked like
he had half a brain.”
She gave him an easy smile and
leaned forward so she didn’t have to shout. Luke did the same
and it brought him close enough that he could see the highlights
in her hair–Devon had the prettiest hair he’d ever seen. A
russet sort of red, but there were also strands of gold, strands
of brown. If she had somebody doing that on her hair, they were
worth every penny. He wished she wouldn’t wear it up all the
time. Instead of the complicated twist she normally wore, she
had it piled up on her head with a clip, curly little corkscrews
springing out all over the place. Luke wanted to lean forward,
take the clip out and watch it fall around her shoulders. Then
he could bury his face in it, see if it was as soft as it
looked.
Instead, he just forced
himself to smile.
She glanced around. “I keep
forgetting how busy this place is. You’d think on Thursday
night, it wouldn’t be so bad.”
Luke shrugged and glanced at
the TV. “Football. And being so close to the campus.”
Devon grimaced. “Man, don’t
say the ‘F’ word. Fall’s coming and that means half this town
will have lost its mind within the next few weeks.”
“Not into sports, huh?”
She grinned. “Not the kind
you have to watch on TV. I don’t mind going and watching a live
game, but on TV? Just doesn’t appeal to me as much.”
“So if you’re not into sports,
what are you into?”
They were interrupted before
she could answer as a waitress appeared at the table. She had
matte black hair, a nose ring and what looked like a dog collar
around her neck. The pseudo-Goth might have worked okay, except
her voice was too cheerful and her face too animated as she
recited off the drink specials.
“I’ll just have a diet,” Devon
said.
Luke asked for a Bud light and
then looked back at Devon as the waitress disappeared. He
smiled. “My first night off in almost a week. You don’t mind,
do you?”
She shook her head. “Why
should I?”
He shrugged. Normally, he
wouldn’t have bothered asking, but he had been watching Devon
for a while and now he actually had her outside the hospital, he
didn’t want to blow it. If that meant bypassing a beer or two,
he could handle that. “So if you’re not here for to watch
football, why are you here?”
Devon scanned the crowd and
then shot him a grin. “You, being a guy and all, might not have
noticed that outside this steakhouse with the loud TVs,
wonderful wings and cold beer, there’s this nifty thing called a
mall. There are lots of stores–bookstores, music stores, shoe
stores, stores where you can buy all sorts of girly stuff like
lotion and clothes.”
Luke grinned at her. “So
you’re shopping?”
“The coming of fall also means
end of the season clearance.” She rolled her eyes. “I just
spent half of next week’s paycheck and I haven’t even gotten it
yet. I’m kind of bad about that.” She shot him a small grin
and shrugged. “I have an addictive personality.”
Crooking a brow at her, Luke
repeated, “An addictive personality. Addicted to what?”
Devon smiled. “Oh, all sorts
of things. Books. That girly stuff, lotion and stuff.
Shoes–oh, man, shoes. I love shoes.”
He craned his head around a
little and glanced under the table. She had on a pair of
glittery, strappy heels. Pretty feet, too. Her toenails were
red. He hadn’t ever thought that he was the foot fetish type,
but Luke had an overpowering desire to see her wearing those
shoes–just the shoes. That simple thought was enough to heat
his blood to boiling point and Luke’s jeans were suddenly a
little too tight. Straightening up, he forced a smile. “I like
those.”
When she stuck her foot out
from under the table to look at one of her feet, Luke almost
groaned. The sparkly straps caught the faint light as she
rotated her foot one way and then the other. The bones of her
ankle and foot looked incredibly delicate. Luke had the urge to
climb out of the booth and catch her pretty foot in his hand.
Nibble on her instep. Kiss his way up over her ankle, over her
calf, her thigh….she had on a long denim skirt that stopped just
above her ankles and he could see himself pushing it up as he
went.
Damn it, Luke, you keep this
up and you’re going to end up trying to have her on the damn
table. No. Not the table. Damn table would be too damned
cramped to lay her down on. Maybe one of the bar stools,
yeah…that would work. Sitting on one of them, pulling her onto
his lap and pushing that skirt up, pushing her underwear out of
the way…
He groaned and sat back.
Under the confines of his jeans, his erection was forced into a
damn uncomfortable position. Slumping his chair, he met Devon’s
gaze as she looked up from her shoes. “Spoils of war,” she
said, winking at him. “Found them on the clearance table a few
stores down from here and I had to try them on. Once I did, I
couldn’t take them off.”
“So how long have you been an
addict?”
Totally innocent question.
But she didn’t react in an innocent way and Luke felt his
stomach sink as her lids flickered and she glanced away,
evasively. Luke wasn’t no psych major and he’d only taken the
courses required to get his medical degree, but he had a bad
feeling he recognized the look on her face.
Guilt. Shame.
Over a shoe addiction?
Not.
Well, hell.
* * * * *
Forty-five minutes later,
Devon gave Luke a strained smile as he walked her out to the
car. Dinner had taken forever to get served and she’d eaten a
burger that tasted like sawdust. Something she’d said had made
him pull back.
She wasn’t under any illusions
about what it had been either.
The addict comment. She’d
looked guilty. Hell, she was guilty, but not over a serious
love of shoes. Those few years during her teens had left a mark
on her, and although she dealt with her problem better than most
people could expect, she knew the flaw was still there. She
still had to fight the urges, and she still had to live with the
guilt.
It was enough she hadn’t been
quick enough to come back with the appropriate teasing response
to his teasing question and he’d seen her guilt.
Luke was a smart guy–seemed
like the expected thing, him being a doctor, but it wasn’t just
the book smarts. She’d met plenty of doctors who were dumber
than a doornail when it came to people. Not Luke. He saw
beneath the surface and he read people as easily as some of
those doctors could read a chart.
He’d seen below her surface,
had read her, and now he’d gone and formed an opinion on
something he didn’t know jack about. The friendly flirtation
hadn’t stopped, but she’d recognized the difference. She’d
tried to ignore it but the more she thought about it, the more
it pissed her off.
Abruptly, she stopped and
turned to look at him.
“You don’t need to walk me to
my car,” she said in a flat voice, not bothering to keep up the
friendly, casual attitude he’d used throughout their meal.
His gray eyes slid sideways,
met hers. “It’s not a problem.”
Folding her arms over her
chest, she said, “It is for me.”
Luke turned to face her.
“Okay. What exactly is the problem?”
“Oh, please.” She rolled her
eyes and just barely managed to keep from sneering at him. “You
don’t know me, you know.”
He cocked a brow and gave her
a puzzled look. “Considering this is the first time we’ve spent
more than twenty minutes together, I’d think that’s kind of to
be expected.”
Her smile felt damned bitter,
so she couldn’t imagine how it looked. “Yes. So it’s kind of
weird you think you can go and make assumptions about me based
off of a couple of casual comments.”
Tilting his head to the side,
he shrugged. “Not sure where you’re going with this, Devon.”
This time she didn’t bother
wiping the sneer off her face. Grabbing the sleeve of her
jacket, she rolled up the cuff, baring the faint scars on the
inside of her arm. The faint scars were more than a decade old
and they’d faded considerably, but at this point, she knew they
wouldn’t ever fade away completely. The needle tracts had been
infected and that infection, combined with her serious
malnutrition and the drug addiction had landed her in the
hospital for a week after Eden had found her.
In truth, she was glad she
still had them. They served as a reminder for her, a reminder
of where she’d come from–that she’d lived on her own, for six
long months, and done whatever she could to survive and feed her
habit. They reminded her she wasn’t alone any more, that she’d
overcome that addiction.
More, they served as a
reminder she wouldn’t ever let herself go back to that hell
again.
“I haven’t touched any kind of
drug in thirteen years. I don’t even take Tylenol. When I was
in a car wreck a few years ago, I wouldn’t let them give me
anything for the pain and I just suffered through it.” Turning
her arm up, she exposed the scars marking the inside of her
right arm. “I got hooked on drugs when I was eleven. When I was
thirteen, a social worker picked me up. I ended up in the system
and a couple of people who gave a damn helped me get straight.
I’ve been clean for close to thirteen damn years and I don’t
need your judgmental attitude over it.” With harsh, jerky
motions, she shoved her sleeve back down and turned on her
heel. She could hear him behind her and the tension in the air
was palpable.
“Devon...…”
Digging her keys out of her
purse, she sent him a scathing glance. The street light
overhead fell across his face, highlighting the angles and
hollows, revealing his turbulent eyes. She recognized guilt
pretty well herself. “Save it, slick. You want to spend your
time with some lily-white, perfect example of humanity, more
power to you.”
She thumbed a button on her
key fob. The lock made a quiet snick as it unlocked and she
reached for the door, but a hand came over her shoulder, keeping
the door closed. Panic flared its ugly head and she turned
around, edging away from him so he didn’t have her pinned
between the car and his body. “Can you hold on a minute?” he
asked quietly.
Cocking a brow at him, Devon
said, “I don’t really see any point in that. I’ve got some
unpleasant history in my life, I’m aware of that. Some bad shit
happened and I didn’t know how to handle it. Ended up making
some majorly bad choices and some majorly bad mistakes. I know
that and I can deal. I’m also aware there are people who will
jump to conclusions about me. I can deal with that, too.” A
little sad, a little wistful, she murmured, “But I didn’t really
expect it from you. My mistake.”
“No. It’s mine.” He blew out
a breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Look, can we
just wind the clock back a little? Let me try this again?
Honestly, I’m usually not the judgmental type. It just…hell,
Devon, this threw me for a loop. You just seem so…I dunno,
steady.”
“I am steady. But when I was
a kid, not so much. Crap, Luke, how many kids do you know who
are rock steady? I was just a little more screwed up than the
average teenager.” Okay, a lot more screwed up. But that’s
beside the point, she thought sullenly.
“I’m sorry.” He said it
softly with enough sincerity to punch through her anger. He
reached up. Instinctively, she tensed and then she cursed
silently as something else appeared in his gaze.
Speculation–instinctively,
Devon felt herself shying away from him. Her emotional scars
weren’t buried all that deep and she didn’t want him seeing
those particular wounds.
Most guys weren’t going to
notice it when a woman tensed up just a little. But most guys
wouldn’t have picked up on the tiny little slip earlier and put
together two and two. Actually, it was more like he had put
together two plus some unknown integer and come up with the
right answer with no other help from her. Because she sure as
hell hadn’t given him much more than that.
Interpersonal algebra,
wonderful. As hot as this guy was, and as much as she found
herself thinking about him, it suddenly dawned on her he was a
complication she didn’t want or need. Devon decided it had been
easier, even if it had hurt, when he had jumped to the mostly
wrong conclusion about her.
This was worse, seeing that
measuring look in his eyes and knowing he had probably had
guessed a little more about her than she really wanted him
knowing. Considering how damn insightful he’d just proven
himself to be, Devon made up her mind right then and there–Dr.
Luke Rafferty was just too damn complicated.
Keeping her voice brusque, she
said, “Fine. Now can you please move? I’m tired.” And she
was, dog tired and ready to go home and collapse. Except she had
work waiting for her, reports she hadn’t finished and cases she
needed to review. But Devon suspected she wasn’t going to be
able to focus on any of it. Not now. She was going to be too
busy sulking over the sexy doctor, his too quick mind and his
damned assumptions.
“Devon, look at me.”
She didn’t want to. But there
was something so gentle, so compelling about his voice.
Reluctantly, she turned her head and met his eyes. The harsh
white light of the street lamp made his eyes almost colorless,
but there was no denying the intensity of his gaze. “Don’t
write me off,” he murmured.
Too late, she thought sourly.
Too fricking insightful, she thought again. Just more proof on
why she didn’t need that man in her life.
Those eyes of hers showed too
much and not enough, all at the same time, Luke decided. He
could tell, just by looking at her, that all she wanted to do
was kiss his sorry ass goodbye. But there were also unspoken
secrets, a guardedness that made him want to smash down the
walls she’d erected.
“Don’t write me off,” he
murmured again and he had to close his hands into fists to keep
from reaching for her. Luke couldn’t remember ever wanting to
touch a woman as much as he wanted to touch Devon in that
moment, but she held herself so stiffly, so rigidly. She was
still pissed and he couldn’t blame her. Plus, he couldn’t
forget those brief moments when he’d glimpsed some deep fear
inside her eyes.
“I screwed up. I’m sorry.
It’s just…hell, Devon.” Luke wanted to kick himself. Badly.
There had to be something he could say, something he could do
that would undo this mess–there just had to be. He hadn’t
mistaken the heat that had flared between them earlier and in
those few brief moments before he’d made an ass of himself, he’d
felt deeper than heat.
Luke didn’t put much stock in
it when people claimed some instant connection, something beyond
physical attraction, but he’d felt something earlier and he’d
thought she had, too.
Then he went and made what
he’d thought was a logical assumption. Although he hadn’t said
anything, he’d mentally started distancing himself. Luke
thought he’d been pretty subtle about it, but obviously not,
because Devon had been damned aware of what he was doing–and
why.
The marks on her arm were old,
years old. Other than those few faint scars that probably
happened when the needle tracts got infected, the skin of her
forearms was smooth and unmarked. When she’d said she was
clean, he never once doubted her. That righteous indignation
could be faked, he guessed, but she wasn’t faking it.
Which meant he’d been
backtracking away from a woman he was nuts about all because of
some mistakes she’d made when she was a kid. But he’d be damned
if he let that be the end. Not when they hadn’t really even had
a beginning.
“Devon…”
She averted her eyes. “Luke,
don’t. Just…don't, okay? Just let it go.”
Cautious, keeping his
movements slow, he moved a little closer. “I dunno. I’m going
to have a hard time doing that, you see, because I think about
you pretty much all the time. I go to work hoping I’ll see you
and then I feel bad because usually, I only see you when
something bad has happened to one of your kids. I’ve been
wanting to ask you out pretty much since I first saw you and now
I finally got you outside of work, I go and screw it up.”
The smile on her mouth looked
forced, even to him. “I’d just take it as a sign, then. You
and me wouldn’t last through one date.”
“Yes. We would.”
He couldn’t not touch her at
that point. Closing the distance between them, he murmured,
“I’m going to kiss you. And I haven’t been this nervous about
kissing a girl since I played seven minutes in heaven when I was
in sixth grade.”
Her hand came up, pressed
against his chest. “Not a good idea.”
“Not doing it would be an even
worse idea,” he argued. Reaching up, he covered her hand with
his, stroked his thumb up and down the inside of her wrist.
“Come on, Devon… can you tell me you haven’t ever thought about
this, not even once?”
Averting her head, she said,
“That’s not the point.”
Luke was quiet for a second
and then he murmured, “So one dumb ass mistake on my part and
you’re going to totally write all of this off?”
“There’s nothing to write off,
Luke. We haven’t even had a single date.”
A grin crooked his lips upward
and he said, “My point, exactly.” Screw being nervous, he
decided. Dipping his head, he covered her lips and it took less
than a second to realize Devon Manning was every bit as sweet as
he’d suspected.
Look for BROKEN, the
follow-up to FRAGILE, coming in 2010.
