“Uh, I don’t think any self-respecting cowboy would be seen like that,” Ethan said.
“Too bad,” she said, raising both eyebrows as she stepped back and let her eyes move slowly over his body. “You’d look damn good in just a hat and boots.”
He felt his chest swell and he couldn’t keep his pecs from flexing. “You think so?”
She nodded. “Maybe one day...”
“Maybe,” he said. He wasn’t sure he’d do that. He was a lawyer. He was the serious Caruthers brother. The arguer who was always thinking of the consequences. Which couldn’t be said of him tonight, as he stood there in his bedroom next to Crissanne with a raging hard-on.
She turned back to him, her hair swinging around her shoulders as she held her hand out to him. He took it, lacing their fingers together, and she stood on her tiptoes and put her hand in the center of his chest again, spreading her fingers out and rubbing her palm over his skin. A shiver went through him and he drew her closer. He lowered his head, but this time it was just so that their foreheads would meet.
He felt the brush of her exhalation against his neck and closed his eyes.
Crissanne Moss was in his bedroom.
All the feelings he’d been ignoring flooded him, and he realized he wanted this to be more than it could be. He wanted sex, of course; he couldn’t deny it. But he wanted her to somehow be his.
And that wasn’t what was happening.
This was a hookup. He knew it.
For her, this had to be rebound sex. Something to prove to herself she was still attractive.
He knew because he’d had a dozen hookups like this. Where he was sleeping with someone else to prove that he was over her. Over Crissanne.
And now she was here, and he knew that he was willing to be whatever she needed him to be tonight. He was done with pretending that he didn’t want her.
He cursed under his breath, and she shifted her head to the side, putting her finger over his lips.
“Don’t think,” she said.
“Is that the only way you can be here with me?” he asked.
She cursed, and he realized that he wasn’t going to do this.
* * *
She didn’t know how to answer Ethan’s question. Of course, the whole situation felt like trouble no matter how she sliced it up. She wanted him. She wanted to be with him. She had narrowed down the list of people she could stay with to him. And now she was in his bedroom trying to convince herself that she could get with him and then be cool the next day.
But even with her skill at ignoring her emotions, that sounded like an impossible situation.
“No. Not like you mean,” she said. “It’s just if we start to think, then we’re going to be back to pretending that we don’t want each other. And that’s a lie. I’m tired of pretending with you, Ethan.”
“You say that but you were with my best friend,” Ethan said.
“That’s over.”
“Is it? Or is this about making him jealous?” Ethan asked.
Was it? She hadn’t even thought about Mason when she’d gotten on the plane. She’d been thinking of the one person who’d always made her feel better.
“No. Honestly, there are men a lot closer to LA who would have fit the bill if that was my goal. I’m here with you...even though this is what I wanted to avoid. And once we start talking it’s going to get complicated.”
He sighed and then stepped back from her, walking over to the bar in the corner of his bedroom and then pouring himself something that looked like whiskey from where she stood.
“It was complicated before we started talking,” he said quietly. “We were both just letting our hormones direct us.”
“Was that so bad?” she asked.
“I don’t know. The thing is, Crissy, I don’t want either of us to wake up in the morning with regrets. And as good as tonight would feel I know that we would.”
“Why is nothing easy?” she asked out loud. But really she wanted the answer from herself. “I’ll leave in the morning. I saw an ad for a B and B in the ladies’ room at the restaurant tonight. I should have gone to a hotel or something.”
He just watched her, the whiskey glass in his hand. As he stared at her she felt the emotions coming off of him, but she was too turned on to think about how it was impacting him. She was embarrassed that they hadn’t just fallen into bed, and dealing with everything else was just beyond her tonight.
What was it that caused these men in her life to pull back? What was it she lacked? She couldn’t even get the man who’d looked at her with lust in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t paying attention to sleep with her.
She was broken in some way that the world picked up on. She hadn’t realized it until this moment, and if she were a different person, one who actually allowed herself to connect to her emotions, she knew she’d be crying.
But instead she just turned and walked out of his bedroom, past the fire pit and the discarded shot glasses and limes, and tried not to think about how the fun they’d had earlier had turned into this mess.
She entered her bedroom and walked over to the bed, sitting down on the edge, rubbing the back of her neck. She couldn’t stay here.
Not for another second.
She wondered at the pattern of her life that every time she ended up in a place she wanted to be, she ruined it and had to leave. This was a new record for her. Not even twenty-four hours.
Stop.
She forced herself to move.
No thinking.
The words that had changed everything in Ethan’s bedroom now motivated her to get up and get dressed. She pulled on a pair of jeans and the first T-shirt she touched. Then she got her suitcase from the closet and put it on the foot of her bed.
Her phone vibrated and lit up on the nightstand, but she ignored it. She wasn’t in the mood to read her news updates. She had enough on her plate right now.
She went back to the closet but her phone was blowing up with messages, vibrating like crazy. She walked over and glanced down at the screen, seeing they were from a number that wasn’t programmed into her phone. But based on the area code, she thought it might be the production company that Mason worked for.
Unlocking her phone, she opened the text messages and began reading them with a mounting sense of disbelief. Then she let the phone fall from her fingers as she sank to the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest.
Mason’s plane had crashed.
Oh my
