LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her hips arched again and again, wanting more, seeking more of what she’d needed for so long. Yes. Oh, yes.

      The hinges squeaked on the bathroom door. “Dayna, are you all right?”

      She jolted, every muscle in her body going rigid. Reality intruded, and the fantasy dissolved, swirling down the drain like so much shower water. She pulled in a steadying breath, her heart pounding in her ears. “Fine…I’m fine. Just finishing up.”

      Grabbing a bar of soap, she washed herself quickly. Shit, shit, shit. Had he heard her moaning? Heat suffused her face as embarrassment flooded her. Her muscles shook with the aftereffects of orgasm. And still it wasn’t enough to sate her. She turned her face into the shower spray. The water had gone lukewarm, she’d been in there so long. She sighed. Damn. Shutting off the spigot, she hopped out and hurried to dry off.

      “Okay…hurry up in there. I’m trying to book our flight for Christmas.” The door shut behind him with a quiet thunk.

      And that was a discussion she seriously wanted to avoid. Nathan had proposed just before Thanksgiving, and he thought now was a good time to meet her family. Just the prospect made her belly cramp. Nathan was from a socially prominent family. He was a lawyer being groomed to step into the family game of politics. While she appreciated his drive and ambition, his work meant he had to be decisive, and when he made a decision, it was difficult to change his mind. There were times when she thought he crossed the line into being judgmental, and she didn’t think her relatives had a hope in hell of making a good first impression. Not with a man whose own family was politely distant and who was raised by a nanny.

      He just…wouldn’t understand why her mother had enough divorces under her belt to put Elizabeth Taylor to shame, or why Aunt Rainbow thought she was psychic, or why her younger brother, Sam, had had so many wild nights he’d ended up a single father who ran the local bar. Dayna loved her family; she just seriously doubted her fiancé would be very forgiving of their flaws.

      Stepping out of the bathroom, she saw Nathan propped up in bed with his laptop across his thighs. Case files were spread across the bed. She scooped his papers over onto his side of the mattress and climbed under the covers.

      “The plane tickets and car rental are booked. We fly out on the twenty-first.” He put his hand on her arm, and her insides clenched, goose bumps rising on her still sensitized skin. Would he? But, no. As much as they had in common, she and Nathan didn’t share a lot of physical chemistry. She gave the mental shrug she’d been giving since they’d started dating almost a year ago.

      “Okay. Don’t forget to get chains for the tires. The roads can get icy that far north,” she said, wincing. A lot more than the roads got weird that far north. Her little hometown at the foot of Mount Shasta was a totally different world from Los Angeles. Panic fluttered inside her belly again.

      Reaching for calm, she grabbed the notepad on her night-stand and started a new list of things to do and pack before they left. She had dozens of lists. Lists for her work, lists for Nathan, lists for shopping—she even had a master list of the lists. Now she added the packing list to the master list.

      “I already took care of the tire chains.” Of course he had. She checked that item off her list. Like her, Nathan planned ahead and stuck to the plan. It was what she loved about him. She smiled quietly and read through her list for the week ahead, settling deeper under the covers as the heater kicked on.

      Nathan’s cell phone rattled across the nightstand as it rang. It was ten forty-five at night, but it wasn’t unusual for his work to interrupt their evenings. So why did a dart of anger shoot through her when he grabbed his phone and walked out into the living room? She stomped down on the wayward emotion. It was irrational to be irritated by things that wouldn’t change.

      And it wasn’t like her to be so irritable, so restless. Frankly, it scared her to death. Whenever her mother had been dissatisfied with her life, it had meant another man, another move, another place for Dayna and her brother to have to start over again. Please, God, don’t ever let me become that. Dayna was happy with her life. She’d worked damn hard to get everything just the way she’d always dreamed. Perfect man, perfect apartment, perfect car, perfect job. Flipping to a fresh page in her notebook, she started brainstorming a list of new ideas for upcoming books. She had a proposal to write for a novel for young adults before New Year’s, and she wanted it done before she left for northern California. There was nothing she found more satisfying than her work. Everyone should love their job this much.

      She had it all. But the nagging whisper in the back of her mind always said something was missing. She shook her head. It was pointless to go down that mental pathway. She was happy, damnit. She wasn’t throwing it all away for no good reason. Her sex life wasn’t that important.

      While Sam was as freewheeling as her mother and as crazy as their flower-child aunt, Dayna had always wanted to be normal. Not to be the girl whose nutty family was gossiped about in their little town. Not to live under a microscope because she was different. Now she had that. With Nathan.

      She just had to survive the holidays—a week, give or take, and she’d be home free to live the quiet, dependable, perfectly organized life she’d always wanted. No problem.

      A face flashed through her mind, and she almost whimpered in pain. Jake Taylor. Of course. Sam’s best friend would be there for the holidays. He always was, and he always got a perverse amount of enjoyment out of antagonizing the men Dayna brought home. It had been that way since she’d started dating in high school. He was worse than her brother. A lot worse. The two of them were very bad boys and always had been, living hard and wild with too many women and too much booze. They’d cleaned up a bit in the last few years, but Jake was still a tattoo artist, and he had the ink on his muscular body to prove it. He had the face of an archangel and the body of a classic sculpture, but underneath all that pretty was a man who’d been in a lot of trouble and had had a childhood she knew was anything but angelic. She just wished he didn’t have to be quite so in-your-face all the time. Or so in the face of every guy she’d ever dated.

      She closed her eyes and wished for death. There was no way she was going to survive this.

      Damn, she was beautiful.

      A rueful grin curled his lips. Hadn’t he always thought she was gorgeous? Jake’s smile widened as he watched Dayna unfold her long legs from the passenger side of a silver SUV. Shoving the sleeves of his undershirt up to his elbows, he propped himself against the pillar of her aunt’s porch, the evergreen boughs and red ribbons wrapped around it scratching his skin. He lifted his mug of coffee from the porch rail and enjoyed the show of Dayna walking across the snowy yard toward him. Everything about the woman said class and style, from the fashionable boots to the expensive scarf. Snowflakes clung to rich brown hair that swung in a bell against her jaw, and her pretty breasts bounced with each step. His body reacted to her, his cock hardening uncomfortably. Nothing new there. He’d been hot for her since he was old enough to notice girls. He shook his head and snorted, a cloud of steam erupting in the cold air.

      A grin he couldn’t stop kicked up one side of his mouth as he watched her pull the ever-present list out of her purse. The habit was as endearing as it was annoying, and he loved to harass her about it. She really did need to loosen up before she blew a gasket.

      It took him a moment to notice the lanky man following his wet dream up to the porch. So that was the new guy. The fiancé. Jake’s jaw clenched, a small dart of jealousy shooting through him. He ignored it, shoved it away. Something else that wasn’t new—he felt it whenever Dayna brought a guy around, even back in high school, but doing anything about his jones for his best friend’s sister was asking for trouble he didn’t want. And he’d been in enough trouble in his life to know.

      He could hear the other man’s voice clearly across the yard. “Dayna, you have to be kidding. We can’t stay here. It looks like something out of Deliverance. It’s probably as freezing in there as it is out here.”

      “Really, Nathan. I lived here for years—it’s fine. Give it a chance.” Dayna flicked a glance over her shoulder at the

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