her mouth to protest, she closed it just as quickly beneath the pointed, unyielding stare leveled on her. A reminder of the authoritative edge that had periodically revealed itself through the course of the night. Two hours ago she’d found it dangerously exciting. Attractive. But now—well, fine, she still found it attractive, just not so convenient.
Not when she only had—a quick glance at the clock beside his bed showed the time at eleven fifty-nine. Her heart sank as the numbers flashed to twelve.
Now she’d done it.
Another broken rule.
That would be the last though—and getting in a car with a stranger didn’t count, considering she’d already been in his bed. So no more broken rules. No more missteps. Just straight home and a polite goodbye.
Taking a deep breath, she nodded graciously. “Thank you.”
It was ten more minutes. Really, what could happen?
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU did it in a car!”
A week already and still with this.
Elise pushed a windblown curl from her brow and stared, disbelieving, across the hood of the Volvo Wagon at her sister. “That is not an explanation for setting me up on a blind date. Which, incidentally, I can’t believe you’re dropping on me the same hour you stick me with babysitting Bruno, the puppy beast. There’s got to be a rule about that or something.”
It should have been a perfect day. Following a pre-dawn rain, the sun shone bright against a vivid blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clusters of pure white. It was the first she’d had off in two weeks, and she’d intended to spend at least a piece of it jogging the lakefront paths. She hadn’t even made it past Burnham Harbor when her phone rang, and her sister’s latest emergency sidelined her at the entrance to Soldiers Field—where she stood now, withering on the receiving end of her sister’s caustic glare.
Ally Porter-Davis shook her head, disappointment coloring her words. “A car, Elise.”
Yes, well, more accurately, she’d done it in a bed. And then a car. And then against the door just inside her apartment. But somehow she didn’t think the clarification would win her any points.
“The car part was an accident.”
Ally’s brow arched impossibly high. “An accident? Like he, what, just fell in?”
Cheeks flaming, Elise shook her head. “No! Like I wasn’t planning for it to happen again … we were at a stoplight and he asked how long I’d lived in the neighborhood and when I looked back at him to answer …” She closed her eyes, awash in the heat of that moment, the look in his eyes when they’d skimmed down her body; the feel of those big hands pulling her over him left her shuddering—
“That! Right there.” Ally rounded the back end, tapping her fingers against the backseat window as she passed. “That look and—and full body meltdown—that’s the reason I’m setting you up. You need a man. A relationship with someone nice and reliable. Someone you can lean on. Not some thanks-for-the-free-ride-in-my-car guy you’re too ashamed to give me the name of either.”
“I don’t need anyone. And, nice try, but I’m not giving you his name because you’d have him Googled and the whole sordid scenario up on Facebook with six of your mommy-and-me compadres posting comments in less than an hour’s time.”
“Excuses.” Ally popped the trunk and took a step back as her six-month-old Great Dane bounded free of his confine, spun around with a frighteningly exuberant bark, and then lunged, pinning Elise to the passenger side door. “And about Bruno. Thanks for bailing me out with him. You were the only one I could ask.”
The wind knocked effectively from her lungs, Elise stared down at the two saucer-sized puppy paws, planted dead center over her breasts. Shooting an accusing look at her sister, she wheezed, “You are so on my list.”
Ally waved her off, closing the trunk with her hip. “Your ‘So hip-deep in trouble’ list?”
For crying out loud. Well, if she broke it down to the acronym, then yeah. This was what happened when people had babies and they struggled with creative ways to stop swearing. “That’s the one.”
“He’s a puppy. You can’t put him on your list.”
As if. Bruno might be the one feeling her up, but it was Ally who’d dropped not one bomb, but two on her today. “I’m not talking about Bruno. I’m talking about you!”
“Me?” Ally spun on her, one hand fisted on her hip, the other swatting at the air in indignant protest. “I’ll grant I owe you for dog-sitting like this. But on the date … I’m doing you a favor. That little incident last week was a cry for help if ever I heard one.”
This was what she got for confiding.
“It wasn’t a cry for anything—” Bruno stomped his big paw with renewed puppy vigor “—aghg, Bruno, no!—least of all matchmaking services.”
“Right. You haven’t been out on a date since Eric. And that was over a year ago. I’ve been telling you for months it was time to move on and find someone new, but you keep brushing me off with all the business about not being ready and no time or energy, needing to ‘do something’ with your life. Blah, blah, blah … And then you go and pick up some random guy—who does not count as a date, by the way—and do it in a car. I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t smack of desperation, I don’t know what does.”
Elise coughed out her protest. “I am not desperate!”
“Denial, is it? Well, consider this my intervention, sister. Some day you’ll thank me.”
Some day she’d strangle her.
“I’m not going out with him,” Elise said flatly, considering only too late where that kind of statement would take her.
Ally’s arms crossed as her upper lip curved into that bossy big-sister sneer. “And I’m not canceling for you.”
A battle of wills. The kind that never seemed to end the way she wanted it to.
“Which means, Elise, if you don’t show up, then Hank—a nice, emotionally in-touch, stand-up man—will be sitting there Friday night … waiting …” Ally’s face screwed up into a facsimile of the would-be angst this Hank would suffer “… wondering why … Was it something about him …? Maybe he should just stop trying … putting himself out there and give up …”
Ugh.
This was why she never won … her sister knew just how to hit her.
Elise let out a long-suffering sigh that Ally batted off like a gnat as she pulled open the rear door of the wagon to check the infant restraints and coo at her groggy son. Straining beneath Bruno’s weight, Elise pushed to her toes and craned her neck to catch a peek of that beautiful downy head.
“So sweet,” she whispered to her sister, who beamed back appreciatively
