LITMIR.BIZ

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they were female. But from the moment he’d been introduced to his best friend’s girl, it had been a struggle to control his intense attraction to her.

      He had felt so disloyal to Mason yet at the same time had been powerless to control his attraction. He’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her and he’d hesitated...

      “Well, hello there. I wasn’t expecting you, was I? I mean, Cole’s Hill, Texas, isn’t your normal neighborhood,” he said, holding the door open for her to enter before going to get her suitcase. She’d been living in LA with his best friend, Mason, for the better part of the last three years.

      “No, you weren’t expecting me, and when you hear why I’m here I won’t blame you if you tell me to hit the road,” she said.

      Crissanne had a Northwestern twang to her speech that he’d always found endearing. He couldn’t imagine anything she could do that would make him send her away. “I’m a lawyer and have heard some pretty outrageous things over the years. I doubt you’ll shock me.”

      She gave him a sweet smile that didn’t reach her clear gray eyes and then reached over and hugged him. “You’ve always been the best, Ethan. Frankly, I didn’t know where else to go...”

      Intrigued, he put her suitcase against the wall near the front hall table and then closed the front door before turning to face her again. He wanted to ask where Mason was, but also thought he remembered something about his best friend heading to Peru to film his extreme adventure survival show.

      And right now, Ethan was pretty sure he was going to hell for lusting after Crissanne, but he’d never been able to look at her and not see the two of them tangled together in a big king-size bed.

      He liked to think that he’d hidden his reaction, though; he was always on guard whenever he was around Mason and Crissanne.

      “Come into the kitchen. My housekeeper made some sweet tea and chocolate chip cookies before she left for the day,” he said. “We can have a snack and you can tell me why you’re here.”

      He gestured for her to precede him down the hall. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, but as his gaze fell to her hips, which swayed gently with each step she took, he knew there wasn’t anything polite about his attention. He wanted her. He swallowed hard and knew he had to get himself under control.

      He’d broken up with the woman he’d been seeing off and on in Midland a while ago, so he’d been celibate for longer than he liked. “I need to grab my phone from my study. Help yourself to the cookies.”

      He turned into his study and then stood there for a second, forcing himself to remember everything he’d ever heard in Sunday school about not coveting things that weren’t his. He grabbed his smartphone from the desk and then went down the hall, sure he had himself under control, until he saw her standing at the French doors that led to his back porch, resting her head against the glass.

      She looked lost.

      She needed a friend.

      He remembered the hug and it was suddenly easier to shove his lustful thoughts to the back of his mind. She needed him.

      “Crissanne?”

      She turned and pulled her sunglasses from her head, putting them on the kitchen table. She put her hands in her back pockets, which thrust her breasts forward in the loose, peasant-style top she wore.

      Damn.

      “Mason and I broke up,” she said, her words pouring out in a rush. “We had a really bad fight and he said I could stay in his condo in LA while he’s in Peru but I couldn’t. I...I just needed to get away. And I don’t have any family. When I got to the airport I didn’t know where to go, and then I thought of you.”

      But he was stuck on Mason and I broke up.

      She was single.

      She was hurting and alone. He knew she had no family. She’d grown up in the foster system and had only a few close friends...most of whom she shared with Mason. They’d been a couple since freshman year in college. Clearly, she needed Ethan to be her friend at this moment. Something he’d always been for her. And he buried his desire for her as he always did.

      “Of course you are welcome to stay here as long as you need to,” Ethan said to put her mind at ease right off the bat.

      “Thank you. Honestly, I know this might put you in an awkward position, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

      He shook his head. Of course it was going to be uncomfortable to explain to Mason when his friend called. But turning her away didn’t sit well with him. It was easy to say that his dad had raised him to be a gentleman—and it was true. Crissanne was in a tight spot and clearly needed a friend. But the truth was he wanted her here and he’d endure anything to have her under his roof. “It won’t be awkward. Are you sure this is a permanent breakup? I know Mason gets moody before he goes away to film.”

      He wanted her to be happy, and until now he’d thought she and Mason were the ideal couple. As much as he wanted Crissanne for himself, her happiness had to come first. And Mason might be an ass when it came to women, but over the years he’d noticed that they seemed good for each other. Mason had been the one to encourage Crissanne to set up her travel vlog, which had turned into a financial boon for her and given her a career she was in control of.

      “I’m sure. He and I have grown apart lately. And I know he’s your friend so I’m not going to talk smack about him to you, but we want different things out of life.”

      That was news to him. Obviously. But he’d sort of avoided hanging out with them too much lately because it had become too hard to be around Crissanne and not want her. Business had brought him to the West Coast more frequently and as dinner plans with Mason had fallen through because of his shooting schedule, it had been just Ethan and Crissanne. And he had hated that weakness in himself.

      “Do you want to talk about it?”

      She shook her head, long strands of hair sliding over her shoulder to rest on the curve of her breast. “Not right now.”

      “Well, how about I show you to your room and you can clean up, and then I’ll treat you to dinner? I didn’t have my housekeeper prepare anything.”

      “That sounds great,” Crissanne said. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

      “Positive,” he said.

      “I’ll start looking for my own place right away,” she said. “LA was always Mason’s town and I’d been thinking of living in the center of the country instead of staying on the West Coast...so it’s here or Chicago, and since I know you...but I can definitely stay at a hotel. In fact, I should have gone there.”

      “Stop. You can stay here. There’s no hurry for you to find a place. This house is big enough for both of us,” he said. And Mason would be out of the country for a few weeks, so Ethan had time to figure out what to say to his best friend when he got back home.

      “You really are the best friend a girl could ask for,” she said.

      He tried to tell himself that he could settle for being friends, but it had been a lie for a while now, and he knew that having her in his home was going to make it even harder.

      * * *

      Crissanne had hoped for this reaction from Ethan. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t noticed that Ethan had always had a little crush on her. She had hoped he’d take her in. She wasn’t the kind of woman who made friends easily. Part of it was because she was competitive, but also she’d never really learned to trust. She remembered how the psychologist her last foster family had sent her to when she’d turned eighteen had stressed that this was going to be a barrier to her happiness.

      Maybe it was what had driven the wedge between Mason and her. But the truth was, she had nowhere else to go. She’d rung her friend Abby, who lived in San Francisco, but she’d just started a relationship with a new guy and thought it would be weird

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