LITMIR.BIZ

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try. Really,” she insisted. “Please do this for me.”

      Ethan knew he’d experienced a moment of temporary insanity when he’d agreed, but the truth was he wanted to see for himself if Samantha was okay after the way she’d practically crashed at his feet the night before. He wondered if she remembered what he’d said or, more importantly, what she’d said in response, that she was glad he liked her. That spontaneous exchange could be the spark that set off unwanted fireworks down the road, if they weren’t very, very careful. Delivering coffee and muffins was not being careful.

      Remembering the last time he’d arrived without notice, he knocked on the kitchen door at Cora Jane’s. When no one answered, he knocked a little harder, but still got no response.

      “Blast it,” he muttered, wondering if this was part of the plot. Was he supposed to panic, go running upstairs, find her asleep in her bed, then jump in with her? He wouldn’t put it past Emily to devise just such a scheme.

      He opened the back door, then shouted, “Samantha! You awake?”

      Only then did he hear the sound of the shower cutting off. It immediately sent his imagination into overdrive. All that slick bare skin, those long legs, the mane of thick hair clinging damply to her shoulders. He swallowed hard against the tide of pure lust that swept over him.

      “Not doing this,” he muttered, dismissing the desire to take the stairs two at a time. “No way.”

      He plunked himself down in a kitchen chair, opened one of the containers of coffee and took a drink, scorching his throat in the process. At least that got his mind off the naked woman upstairs. Or it should have.

      “Ethan? You down there?”

      “I’m here,” he hollered back, his voice choked. “There’s coffee.”

      “Oh, you wonderful man!” she called back with heartfelt emotion. “Could you bring it up?”

      “Upstairs? You want me to bring the coffee to you?” he asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. Had she joined the plot?

      She laughed as if she’d read his mind. “I promise you that you’ll be safe. I wouldn’t ask if I weren’t in desperate need of caffeine.”

      He picked up the coffee and headed for the stairs. “Are you decent?”

      “I can see why you’d ask,” she teased. “And I suppose it’s a matter of opinion, but I am clothed if that’s what you really want to know.”

      Was that the real question? he wondered. He’d kind of liked imagining her without a stitch on. Still, this was better, he assured himself as he hit the top step.

      She was waiting for him halfway down the hall, wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Her feet were bare, her wet hair just starting to curl waywardly. She looked more intoxicating than the champagne she’d been drinking the night before.

      “See, perfectly decent,” she said, grinning.

      “Too bad,” he murmured before he could stop himself.

      She blinked. “What?”

      “Nothing,” he said hurriedly. “Here’s your coffee. There’s a blueberry muffin in the bag.” He held them out, keeping a safe distance between them. “I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

      “It’s okay if you want to stay. I just need to dry my hair. I’m used to having men coming in and out while I get ready.”

      Instantly he experienced a surge of jealousy like nothing he’d ever felt before. “Is that so? Just how casually do you take relationships?”

      “We’re not talking relationships,” she said, her amusement plain. “Dressing rooms can be crowded on soaps, especially for day players who only come in to work occasionally. And backstage in the theater, people are changing everywhere you look. Modesty pretty much disappears in a hurry.”

      The thought of men catching a glimpse of her half-dressed, no matter the circumstances, set his teeth on edge.

      “I think I’ll wait downstairs just the same,” he said.

      “Sure. Whatever makes you comfortable,” she said agreeably.

      Nothing about this situation was comfortable, he thought irritably as he went back to the kitchen and finished his coffee. Heck, he saw half-naked women all the time in his line of work. That was different, too. They were patients, and he’d trained himself to be clinical and objective when treating them.

      Samantha was different. She wasn’t a patient. She wasn’t even a friend, despite their determination to pretend they could pull that off. She was a potential lover. He knew it. So did she. And that turned casual glimpses of bare skin and intimate little moments into something dangerous. It hadn’t sounded to him as if she recognized that.

      Was that because she didn’t feel the sizzling chemistry the way he did? Or was she only trying to ignore it, to pretend it didn’t exist?

      He’d known what to do with all the meddling. It had been annoying, but too blatant to take seriously.

      He’d even been able to dismiss the hints that Samantha had held a long-ago crush on him. Time faded that sort of thing, especially when they had never exchanged more than a word or two back then.

      But this new twist, this need that was growing inside him? That had the potential to rip him apart.

      In Afghanistan, it hadn’t been possible to hide from the dangers. They were all around and part of the job. This danger was something else, something he could avoid.

      And somehow he had to find a way to ignore his suddenly raging hormones and do just that.

      6

      “I went downstairs and he was gone. He just took off without a word, not ten minutes after handing me a container of coffee and a muffin,” Samantha told Emily later that morning when she’d finally managed to get a lift over to Castle’s from a neighbor who was heading that way. “Now will you please end the plotting and scheming? It’s evident that Ethan and I are not meant to be. Being pushed together constantly is just making both of us uncomfortable. If you keep trying to make something happen, one of us is likely to bail on your wedding.”

      To her dismay, Emily burst into tears at the warning. “Sure, you’d like nothing better than to ruin my wedding, wouldn’t you? Go on and bail, if that’s what you want to do. Gabi can always fill in. Maybe I should have picked her to be maid of honor in the first place.”

      Samantha barely resisted the desire to snap right back. Instead, she latched onto Emily’s arm and drew her outside. “Okay, let’s have this out right now. Do you even want me in your wedding?” She tried to temper her anger and added more gently, “Em, it’s okay if you don’t. Frankly, I never expected you to ask me. If you’d rather have Gabi, it would be okay.”

      Emily’s tears flowed harder. “No, I want you in the wedding. And I wanted Ethan to fall for you. I thought it would make up for things.”

      “What things?”

      “You know perfectly well what I mean. We’ve never been close.”

      “We’ve had our problems, sure, but we’ve been close,” Samantha said. “We’re sisters. We’ll always have each other’s backs. Nobody knows us better than we know each other.”

      “You and I don’t get along the way you and Gabi do,” Emily insisted, then added with a sniff, “Or the way you and Mom did.”

      Samantha stared at her incredulously. “And Gabi and I don’t relate the same way the two of you do. That’s nothing to be jealous about. It’s just the nature of relationships. As for Mom, she absolutely adored you. You were her beautiful baby.”

      “No,” Emily insisted, rejecting the idea. “I was the afterthought that kept her from

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