LITMIR.BIZ

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wasn’t about pleasing Ryan. Tonight was her night. Hers and Nathan’s. Stephanie was the only one who even knew about their dinner date. Ry showing up at the Royal Diner the other night was just a little too coincidental. She wasn’t taking any chance of her brother or Ry sabotaging her evening with some misguided notion that she wasn’t capable of making her own choices.

      With a sweep of siren-red lipstick that matched her nails and assurances that she was simply being sophisticated, not obvious, she grabbed her coat and headed for the door. She had no intention of keeping Nathan waiting. He’d had a devil of a time carving out a few hours from his schedule at the hospital—that’s why they were meeting at Claire’s instead of him picking her up. That was fine by her. It would give her a chance to make an entrance.

      She wanted to knock the doctor’s socks off. If this outfit didn’t do it, she didn’t know what would. And when the little voice niggling away at the back of her mind tried to tell her she might be making a mistake, that she might be leaping a little too fast, that he might be pushing a little too hard, she made a conscious decision to ignore it.

      She was a big girl. She’d always been a good judge of character. Nathan Beldon’s character was just fine. So was his smile. He wasn’t Ry. But for once and for always, Ry wasn’t interested. And Nolan… She stopped herself, horrified, and cursed Ry under her breath. Nathan not Nolan. Nathan was interested. Very interested. And she and her little black dress were going to make sure he stayed that way.

      The wine, Carrie thought, was perfect. The candlelight was romantic and Nelson— She mentally slapped herself over her repeated mental block when it came to Nathan’s name and made a promise to slap Ryan, too, the next time she saw him, for planting the seed that refused to die.

      Okay. She could do this. Nathan. Nathan, Nathan bo-bathen, banana-panna mo-mathan, fe, fi, fo, Nathan. Na-than.

      Got it.

      Deep breath. Regroup.

      She smiled across the table. Reestablished the mood. One more time: the wine was perfect, the candlelight was romantic and Nathan was definitely interested.

      “Have I told you how incredibly gorgeous you look tonight?” he asked, his gaze flicking from her face to her very-there cleavage then back to her face again.

      Assuring herself that his hot looks made her feel desirable, not a little uneasy, she blinked demurely over her wineglass. “Twice. And frankly I can’t think of a single reason for you to stop now.”

      His chuckle was deep and sexy as he lifted his glass toward hers. “To the beginning of a beautiful…friendship,” he added after a meaningful pause.

      “Yes,” she said, ignoring a little flutter of nerves and clinking her glass to his. “To beginnings.”

      Ry felt like a louse. Hell. He was a louse.

      “You want to tell me what this is about now?”

      He smiled grimly across the front seat of his black Lexus at his friend, Stephanie Firth. The model-slim librarian and high school drama coach was a quietly stunning beauty who had not yet figured out exactly how pretty she was or how to use her shy intellect to intrigue the opposite sex.

      He and Steph had been buddies since grade school. These days she wore her light brown hair straight and long. Back then she’d worn it in pigtails and hidden her pretty brown eyes behind owlish glasses. He’d been the class clown, she the class brain who had taken a lot of grief over her intelligence and her tall, gangling frame, which she had since grown into quite nicely.

      She used to help him out with geography and he used to knock Josh Bowstead, the class bully, into the scrub brush out back of the middle school playground whenever Josh got a yen to call her egghead or Einsteinette or pencil or bean pole or be a general pain in her easily bruised and very fragile ego.

      They’d even tried the dating thing once during their freshman year, then laughed themselves silly over a first kiss that was pretty much all locked braces and sweaty palms. The experience had been enough to satisfy them both that the only chemistry between them involved the notes she’d slipped him so he could study for his chem final. But their bond of friendship had stood up over time and she still turned to him when she was in a pinch…just as he turned to her.

      Tonight, however, he was using her. If that didn’t make him a louse, his plans to spoil Carrie’s date did.

      “Why does tonight have to be about something?” he asked evasively as he parked the car. The Lexus wasn’t a four-wheel-drive like the trucks and SUVs he favored, but it was one smooth, sleek machine, and he hadn’t been able to resist it when he’d seen it on the lot a month ago. You could never have too many horses or too much horsepower, he’d always said. “Can’t an old friend take an old friend out to dinner without having to have a reason?”

      “Oh, I suppose they could,” she said, slicing him a suspicious look as he led her through the front door of Claire’s, “but, gee, isn’t it coincidental that you had to head straight home after your meeting at the bank, until I told you Carrie had a dinner date with Dr. Beldon, and then suddenly, why, you were just dying for one of Claire’s rare filet mignons?”

      “Yeah, well—” he cleared his throat of the lump of guilt that had lodged there and forced a smile “—a guy’s got to eat.”

      “Uh-huh,” Steph said, telling him with a look that she didn’t know what he was up to, but that steak, no matter how well prepared, was not a factor in his motive for bringing her here.

      Thankfully, before she could call him on it, the maître d’ was escorting them to a table set with sparkling white linen, slim burgundy tapers and fine Austrian crystal.

      The moment Ry spotted Carrie and Beldon seated at a secluded table in the corner of the room, the decor and genteel ambiance of Claire’s faded to a distant, background buzz.

      All he saw was Carrie.

      In a killer dress that damn near dropped him to his knees.

      The vibrant fire lighting her eyes and brightening her cheeks was rivaled only by the shimmering highlights the candlelight cast in her silky red hair…and by the flames licking through his belly and spreading by slow degrees to his groin.

      He’d always thought she was pretty. Had done his damnedest to avoid thinking about the fact that she was also sexy as hell. There was no avoiding it tonight. Not the way she looked.

      The creamy swell of her breasts rose and fell provocatively above her almost-there dress as she laughed and, with a flirty tip of her head, showed off the slim, elegant lines of her throat.

      My God, she looked incredible. Edible. And Beldon was ogling her as if he wanted to lap her up like ice cream.

      No way, Ry decided then and there, was he letting that slug put his clammy hands on her. Not on his woman. Whoa. Strike that. Not on his watch.

      She was not his woman. Never would be…but she was his responsibility. He’d promised Trav.

      He’d been a reluctant guardian angel up until this point. Had been telling himself Beldon was harmless. But there was nothing harmless in the man’s eyes tonight. He had predator written all over him…and Carrie was the most innocent of prey.

      Ry might be a louse, but his cause was righteous and had him cutting an arrow-straight path to their table.

      “Well, would you look who’s here?” he said, faking surprise.

      Stephanie shot him a look as he touched a hand to the small of her back and guided her along ahead of him. “What in the devil are you up to, Ryan Evans?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

      “Why…just being neighborly, Steph. Just being neighborly.”

      Carrie wasn’t sure what alerted her, but she was aware of Ry’s presence before she ever saw or heard him. Each individual hair on the back of her neck had sprung to attention just before

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