LITMIR.BIZ

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this.

      She had been so alone for so very long. The chance to lean into someone else’s strength, even for a moment, seemed like a wonderful gift wrapped up in shiny paper with a diamond-studded ribbon around it.

      If she had her way, she would stand here in the dimly lit room the rest of the night indulging herself in the decadent kiss, like a child stuffing sweet after sweet in her mouth, even though she knew they would make her sick later.

      She might have, if the wind outside hadn’t suddenly picked up, moaning under the eaves like some kind of warning siren.

      She froze as that voice of caution suddenly managed to make itself heard again. What on earth was she doing? She was kissing Aidan Caine—really kissing him, tongue and all.

      Okay, that sealed the verdict. She had absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

      With one grand burst of self-control, she eased away from him, trying to catch her breath and reorganize the wild frenzy of her thoughts into some semblance of coherence.

      He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes a deep and vivid blue, and then raked a hand through his hair.

      “For the record,” he said, his expression a bemused sort of regret she didn’t want to see, “that’s not part of your job description, either.”

      She drew in a ragged breath, willing her racing pulse to slow so she could think straight. Why, oh, why hadn’t she listened to that warning voice? She should have slipped back into her room the moment she walked out into the kitchen and found him there.

      “That’s probably a good thing,” she managed to say in a deceptively casual voice, “unless you want to have job applicants lined up from here to Boise.”

      His laugh had an edge of surprise to it, as if he had expected some other sort of reaction from her.

      “I mean it. I don’t want you to think I expect anything from you. I won’t forget again that you work for me.”

      And that quite effectively put her in her place.

      “Neither will I,” she murmured. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I really do need to try to sleep.”

      “Good night.”

      She didn’t have far to go to her rooms, which was probably a good thing since she felt so shaky and off-balance. Wouldn’t it be a lovely end to this strange encounter if she tripped over a side table or something and went sprawling at his feet?

      Much to her relief, she managed to make it to her room without completely embarrassing herself—more than she already had, anyway.

      Once inside, she closed the door behind her and sank into the wingback chair. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath and she could hear each rapid beat of her pulse in her ears, each surge of blood through her veins.

      What in heaven’s name had just happened?

      That kiss.

      She could still taste him on her lips—minty, male, completely delicious.

      She buried her hot face in her hands. She was such an idiot. She remembered her own eager response, the clutch of her hands around his back and the way she had kissed him with that wild urgency and she wanted to die.

      She had just tangled tongues with Aidan Caine, for the love of all that was holy.

      What was the matter with her? She hadn’t even thought about another man in three years, too busy scrambling to care for Maddie’s needs, to keep the financial wolves at bay, to rebuild their lives. Romance had been the last thing on her mind.

      She had been too damn busy to think about how lonely she was, how she missed a man’s arms around her and someone else’s steady strength to lean upon.

      She dropped her hands and gazed into the darkened sitting room. When had she ever had someone else to depend on, except the early few years of her marriage? Since her mother’s death, she basically had been forced into emotional self-reliance. Her father had never been demonstrative and losing the wife he loved and depended upon hadn’t suddenly turned on some magical switch.

      Trent had been wonderful in the beginning. The perfect boyfriend. She wouldn’t have married him if she hadn’t been sure she could lean on him. She could honestly say the first two years of their marriage had been everything she wanted.

      But gradually things began to shift. The minute that plus sign showed up on the pregnancy test, it seemed as if everything had changed.

      Financial success became the only thing that mattered to him, to the point of obsession—and not just financial success, but instant financial success. He had pursued one get-rich-quick scheme after another. Day trading, direct sales, real estate flips.

      If someone else had made a dollar at something, Trent had been determined to make a thousand.

      After Maddie was born with a heart defect, achieving success had become almost a compulsion.

      She would have been thrilled with a steady paycheck, decent health insurance, but he wouldn’t listen.

       “This is it, babe. The big payoff. I swear it.”

      How many times had he said those words to her? At first, she had been stupidly proud of him for working so hard to support their family. Gradually, that had become the only thing that mattered to him. Not her, not Maddie. Just adding more zeros to their bank balance.

      His last grand idea had actually been a good one, surprisingly enough. He had come up with the concept for a revolutionary new productivity app and had begun working with a developer friend of his from college.

      He had been determined to sell the idea to one of the big Silicon Valley companies—and of course, Caine Tech had been his first choice for their forward-thinking products and phenomenal success rate.

      Somehow through a friend of a friend, he had finagled a meeting. Not with Aidan, she knew that. Trent had called her after leaving the company, ranting about how he had been fobbed off on a couple of lower management flunkies who didn’t have the imagination or brains to see the genius of his idea.

      After a few moments, the rant had turned despondent and she had spent a few moments trying to play the supportive wife while inside she had been completely exhausted and wondering how much longer she could do this.

      He had told her he was going to stop off for a drink. Just one, he’d said, because he deserved it after that complete waste of time.

      Two hours later, he was dead in a single-car accident—or at least she hoped it was an accident. She would never know if he had hit that barrier intentionally or just been too impaired after six drinks.

      For a man obsessed with providing for his family, Trent had been remarkably shortsighted. He had racked up thousands in debt—and had missed their life insurance payment three months before his death.

      She released a long breath now, trying not to think about that terrible chapter in her life. She had grieved for her husband and the life she had once imagined for them together and his death had reinforced that Eliza could only truly depend on herself.

      * * *

      LONG AFTER ELIZA returned to her room, Aidan sat in the dark kitchen trying to analyze what the hell had just happened.

      He wanted to blame a hundred different things. The warm, seductive intimacy of the quiet kitchen, the pain medicine he hated that seemed to make him act in strange ways.

      The hard truth of the matter was that he had ached to kiss her, quite fiercely. As he looked back on the past few days, he realized this attraction had been simmering inside him almost since the beginning.

      The attraction part he fully comprehended. Eliza was a beautiful woman, with that silky spill of honey-streaked hair, the green eyes flecked with gold, the little smattering of freckles across her nose. Hers was a soft, understated beauty, fragile and sweet and deeply appealing.

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