LITMIR.BIZ

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boardinghouse for area loggers. Now they’d converted the original fifteen rooms upstairs to just six, each with its own bath.

      Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night.

      She wobbled on her heels as she mounted the first step, causing him to drop her hand and grasp her hips instead. Birthday Girl would have a comfortable night if she could make it to her door.

      Jace, on the other hand, had a very uncomfortable few minutes as he was forced to watch the bunch of muscles in each fine ass cheek as she continued upward. He breathed easier when they made the narrow hallway. It smelled of old wood and roses.

      With his fingertips hovering a quarter inch off the small of her back, Jace followed her to a door bearing a brass 6. He took the key card from her hand and inserted it in the slot. The mechanism flashed green and he heard a small snick. He turned the knob and checked out the environs over her shoulder, the room illuminated by lamps at each end of a long table centered beneath a narrow window. Papered walls, dark wood floor covered with a thick area rug with a floral design. A night-light gave him the glimpse of a tiled bathroom through a half-open interior door.

      Birthday Girl stepped inside.

      Jace realized it was now or never.

      Hell, she was beautiful. Alluring. Tempting.

      But...

      He had a pile of regrets on his plate and using the circumstances—birthday, flames, liquor, lust—to get a quickie shag out of this pretty young thing would be just another black mark on his soul. In the morning, he didn’t want to be something she was sorry for.

      There’d been enough of that in his life. From his father, his ex and, most likely, his daughter.

      Her head tilted, and the room’s light caught the warm fire in her hair. “Well?”

      He couldn’t help but lean toward her. She took a half step, getting closer, and then her eyes closed as she offered up her mouth.

      Jace’s cock turned to steel at the anticipation of a kiss written all over her face.

      She was more than halfway drunk, he reminded himself.

      Too young for him.

      Too sweet.

      And yet...

      She was too appealing not to touch one more time. He pressed the pad of his thumb to her lips—God, so soft and lush—and whispered in her ear. “Many happy returns.”

      Then he strode away, cursing himself, the constricting denim of his jeans and his suddenly discovered streak of decency.

      Downstairs, the management was trying to make the refugees comfortable in the dining room. Jace opted for his SUV instead, reclining the seat and trying to get comfortable on the stiff leather. By leaving that lovely offer of a night with Birthday Girl on the table, at least his conscience couldn’t nag him, he decided.

      Except that it could, of course.

      There was still the small matter of his daughter to consider. She was mere miles away, at his house situated on the shores of Blue Arrow Lake. Though he hadn’t seen her in a decade, Jace wasn’t as frustrated as he should have been that their meeting was postponed for another day. Truth to tell, he was grateful for the reprieve.

      A lousy night’s sleep seemed a fitting punishment for that.

      At first light, when he smelled coffee emanating from the inn, he climbed from his car. His muscles were stiff and he limped inside, his left foot not long out of its soft cast and not yet completely normal. His head ached, too—though not like it had after the debilitating concussion he’d suffered that had made focusing on paper or screen or even spoken words sometimes impossible—and reminded him he’d downed plenty of beer and whiskey the night before.

      He wondered how Birthday Girl was faring.

      And then he saw her, the back of her anyway, sitting on the same stool she’d occupied yesterday evening. She was dressed in jeans this time, but her auburn hair was unmistakable. Jace paused, uncertain how to proceed. He looked for an open spot at one of the tables in the restaurant, but it wasn’t a big space and some of the patrons were still sleeping, stretched on two chairs.

      The only seat free was the one beside her. Why not take it? He’d done the noble thing, hadn’t he? It would have been much more awkward to wake up on the neighboring pillow, after all.

      As he approached, his gaze caught that of the bartender’s. He signaled the need for java by miming a mug to his mouth and then he slid into the empty place beside Birthday Girl.

      Though she didn’t glance his way, her body stiffened.

      Jace hesitated again, his gaze focused on the gleaming wood grain in front of him. Good manners dictated he should at least look at her, not to mention express a friendly “good morning.” But during the course of the night in the SUV, he’d begun to rethink the hours they’d spent sitting together and the unprecedented appeal she’d had for him.

      It was just some birthday cake and card games, he’d told himself and the moon, its beam shining through the windshield. Too much booze. In the light of day, she probably wouldn’t be as pretty as he’d thought.

      The intense attraction was likely overblown in his mind as well, Jace had decided then. And...

      And for some reason right now he didn’t want confirmation of that.

      Stop being ridiculous. Just get out a greeting and let reality assert itself. “Good morning,” he finally said, sliding a look at her.

      Her face turned toward him. Icy-blue eyes. A faint flush obscuring the tiny freckles on her nose and edging her fabulous cheekbones with a delicate pink. Her rosy lips pursed. “Really?” she said, her voice frosty.

      Okay.

      Okay, fine.

      The booze, the fire and the cake had not caused him to exaggerate anything. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.

      Just as sexy.

      She made him just as hard.

      But the disdainful expression on her face communicated clearly that she was no longer as sweetly dispositioned as she’d been before he’d rejected her generous offer and left her with only the touch of his thumb at the door. He winced. “Birthday Girl—”

      She slid from her stool and, with her coffee in hand, stalked off. He stared at the insulted line of her spine and the angry sway of her hips. Oh, yeah. She still made him hard. Very hard.

      Jace sighed, shifting on his stool to adjust the fit of his jeans. Damn.

      And he’d thought taking her to bed would result in regret. Instead, he’d learned that being a good guy left him feeling no more satisfied than being a bad one.

      * * *

      HALF HORRIFIED AND half humiliated, Shay escaped toward the stairs that would take her to her room. She glanced back at the bar and saw Jay still in place, his head turned to watch her go.

      Another wash of heat rose up her neck and burned her cheeks. In the morning light he wasn’t any less masculine. Still had that charisma in spades, too. She could feel the pull even from here, as if he’d lassoed her waist and was steadily drawing on a rope held between his big capable hands.

      The hands she’d wanted on her last night.

      But he’d refused her.

      Whipping her head around, she stomped up the steps. Until she was free to head back to Blue Arrow, she’d hide out between the four walls of her room at the inn. Inside, she flipped on the television and found the channel offering fire coverage. At the bar, she’d learned the road closures were still in place, but there could be better news at any moment...

      Ten hours later, nothing had changed.

      Not her confined circumstances, not her humiliation over last night’s rejected overture.

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