later he returned to the bed and pulled her against him.
With her head on his shoulder she said sleepily, “Y’all are pretty...awesome.”
“Back at you, El.” The words dripped with weariness and it felt as if he wasn’t giving her a nickname as much as too tired to say her whole name.
She knew how he felt. She was too tired to keep her eyes open, so she didn’t. Before falling asleep, her last thought was that she really should go to her own place.
* * *
Alex opened one eye when he heard a gasp beside him in the bed. It only took him a second to figure out that Ellie knew where she was, who she was with, what they’d done and that she was still naked. Dawn was just starting to peek through the window above the bed and her expression was easy to read.
He raised onto his elbow and looked down at her. “Hi.”
“Good morning.” She pulled the sheet up to her neck.
Her hair was spread out like brown silk on the pillow and looked sexier than hell. He badly wanted to run his fingers through it again. This probably wasn’t the time to tell her that the whole sheet-to-her-neck thing was as much of a turn-on as seeing her stark naked. Her body was outlined and he could make out every one of the slender curves he’d very much enjoyed exploring the night before.
“What’s wrong?” He knew something was bothering her by the way she chewed nervously on her bottom lip. He’d had a taste of it himself last night and wouldn’t have minded another of that, either.
“I suppose we have to talk about this.” Her expression said she’d rather walk barefoot on hot coals. “Like a bad cliché, I actually hate myself in the morning.”
“We could pretend it never happened.”
“Much as I’d like to slip quietly off y’all’s boat, Hastings Hart taught me to face situations head-on and play fair.”
A woman playing fair would be a refreshing change for him—if she’d actually learned the lesson from Hastings Hart.
“Your father?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t bring you here with the intention of seducing you. It just—”
“—happened,” she finished, studying him. “I believe you. And I didn’t come with you to be seduced.”
“So we’re even.”
“It was a mistake, Alex, and I take full responsibility.”
He’d made his own mistake, but that wasn’t what she meant. “What about we go fifty-fifty on the blame?”
“That’s fair.” She turned on her side, hand pressing against her chest to keep the sheet in place. “But here’s the thing...”
This had to be the weirdest post-sex-talk-in-bed ever. “I’m all ears.”
“If only that were true,” she muttered. “We’re working together. I make it a rule never to sleep with a coworker.”
“I hate to break this to you but that ship has sailed.” He looked around the cabin and added, “No pun intended.”
“Thanks for pointing out the obvious,” she said dryly. “I was here. But this really can’t happen again.”
“You sound pretty adamant about it.” Although he agreed in theory, part of him wanted to take the words as a challenge.
“There’s a good reason for that.” She lowered her gaze and long thick lashes stood out against the smooth skin above her cheek. “In college I was at the top of my class and interned with one of the best architectural firms in Dallas. They hired me after graduation and I was on my way. Finally, I was going to prove to my father and brothers that I could take care of myself.”
“What happened?” Something must have, or she wouldn’t have been defensive the first day she’d arrived. And she seemed to have a rule against sleeping with coworkers. Some day he might regret participating in the rule breaking, but not right this minute.
“I got involved with one of the partners, but he neglected to tell me he was married.”
“Sounds like a big company. No one else clued you in?”
“It should have been a red flag that he wanted to keep the relationship just between us. No one in the office knew. My bad that I believed his explanation about protecting me from employees who would resent my upward mobility and chalk it up to our relationship.”
“How did you find out?”
“His wife caught him. Email. Cell phone.” She gripped a handful of the sheet covering her breasts. “It doesn’t matter. But she chose to out him in a very public way. She came to the office and confronted me.”
“There was an ugly scene.” It wasn’t a question.
She nodded miserably. “No one believed I was that naive and didn’t know he was married. They’re a conservative firm, and questionable behavior in the workplace was against company policy but they did me a favor and let me resign instead of firing me.”
Big of them, he thought angrily. So being fired wasn’t on her résumé, but she also couldn’t use her only work experience for a reference. “What did you do?”
“I left quietly and went to work for Hart Industries with my brother Lincoln. He runs the development branch of the company for my father.”
“Not a bad gig.”
“It was for me.” She smiled sadly. “Harts have long memories and I’ll never live it down, how I’m not so good at taking care of myself. I just want them to be proud, but now I’ve got to dig out of a really big hole.”
“This is where I point out the obvious—the guy is a bastard.” His tone was surprisingly even considering how angry he was.
“Y’all are preachin’ to the choir. But that didn’t change the fact that I had to lay low and let the dust settle. That was two years ago, and Mercy Medical Clinic here in Blackwater Lake is my second chance. There’s no way I’m going to mess it up. It’s time to reinvent myself, and mistakes aren’t an option.”
“I agree with you.”
“You do?” She sounded surprised, as if expecting some pushback.
“I’m a businessman, and most of my business is here in town. It’s small and getting involved with anyone is a very bad idea. When a relationship ends, and it always does, there can be hard feelings, word spreads, people take sides.” He shrugged. “None of the above is good for McKnight Construction.”
“So you really do have a personal life,” she said, her voice full of I knew it.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I just take it somewhere else for a long weekend.”
“I see.” She met
