LITMIR.BIZ

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is there to work out? You don’t even like me very much anymore.” And that was her fault. She’d known better than to give in to the attraction she’d always felt for Jack, because she knew Jack. He was a great friend—fun, funny and loyal. But he was hell on any woman foolish enough to care about him.

      The alien anger vanished in a flash of surprise. “Of course I like you. You’re Annie.”

      “You keep saying that as if my name were some sort of explanation!”

      “Well, isn’t it? We’ve been friends for a long time.”

      “We should have stayed friends. Only friends.”

      “There’s no reason we can’t be friends and be married, too.”

      She shook her head. “You don’t understand.” Probably he couldn’t understand, and because of that she had hurt him. She had put that calcified anger into his eyes, and that made her ache. “Jack, I want more than friendship from marriage.”

      “It’s you who doesn’t understand.” Frustrated, he ran a hand over his hair. It was too short for his gesture to mess it up. “Look, if I’m willing to forgive you for running away, you ought to be willing to meet me halfway.”

      His gesture distracted her…or maybe she just wasn’t ready to get into a discussion that she knew was going to hurt.

      The last time she’d seen Jack, his hair had been long, shaggy, intriguingly streaked by the blistering sun of Paraguay. She’d touched those pretty streaks, tangling her fingers in his hair. But now it was too short to run her fingers through. Now the best she could do would be to pet it, stroke all that soft brown hair along the curve of his head….

      Her lips tightened. She couldn’t afford those kind of thoughts.

      “What’s wrong now?”

      She said the first thing that came to mind. “You let the barber scalp you again.”

      He gave her an irritated glance. “I’m trying to have a serious talk, here, Annie. Do you think we could save the comments on my appearance for later?”

      “It’s not just your hair. You’re looking thin, too, and you’re limping. You need to take better care of yourself, Jack.”

      He cocked his head to one side. “I know what you’re doing. The question is—do you?”

      “I’m not doing anything except offering you a little advice.”

      “You’re trying to go back to pretending you’re my sister. It won’t work, Annie. Not anymore. Not when I’ve held you in my arms and felt you turn to fire.”

      Her face went hot and tight. She turned away. “I’m not going to go to bed with you.”

      “Want to bet?”

      Something dark and ominous in his voice made her whirl—but as fast as she moved, he was faster. He seized her shoulders and jerked her up against him, and she almost cried—at the harshness of his face, at the impossibly dear feeling of his body against hers. Her heart pounded. “Let go of me.”

      His lip curled. “I don’t think so.”

      He was looking at her mouth, and the throb of her pulse alarmed her more than the taunting arousal of his body. She tasted that dark rhythm in her throat. And elsewhere. “I don’t want this.”

      “You know, I don’t think you ever lied to me before you married me.”

      She’d been wrong. She had seen a hardness like this in Jack’s eyes before—when he was competing. Jack was easygoing most of the time, but there was a buried edge to him that surfaced when he set himself to win, and she had become a challenge to him. Something to be won.

      “I’m going to kiss you, Annie.”

      No, she thought. But she didn’t move. No, she stood there, stiff and trapped by his hands and the hammer of her pulse. Maybe if I let him kiss me, he can stop trying to win. Maybe then he’d let her go.

      His head lowered—but he didn’t kiss her. Instead, the tip of his tongue painted one long, sweet sweep of temptation on her lower lip. She jerked her head back, but his hands on her shoulders tightened, holding her in place. Her breath hitched as he used his tongue to tickle along the line of her throat.

      She pushed at his chest. “Dammit, Jack, don’t do this. Don’t play with me.”

      “Who said I’m playing?” This time his mouth didn’t tease. It claimed. Hot, hard, ruthless, it asked nothing of her and demanded everything.

      Heaven help her, she wanted to give him all that he demanded, and more.

      There was heat, a rich current of heat urging her to let go of common sense and heed the clamor of her senses. There was taste, the heady taste of Jack, a shock of familiarity in spite of the time that had passed since she’d learned it on the night he married her. Just before he left her.

      She shuddered and managed to wrench her head back. “Jack—” She shoved at his chest. He didn’t move. His body was hard and urgent against hers, his scent filling her nostrils until she wanted to howl with the unfairness of it all. “This isn’t right.”

      “It’s right.” His eyes were hard, his voice soft. “Let me show you how right it can be with us, Annie.”

      “What the hell is going on here?” a deep, gravelly voice demanded from behind her.

      Annie closed her eyes. Great. The only thing worse than having her brother walk in on a clinch between her and Jack would be if Jack—

      “Not much, Ben,” Jack said, his eyes never leaving Annie’s face. “I’m just saying hello to my wife.”

      Yep. That was it. Now her day was complete.

      The storm had passed, leaving the air still and cold, the sky crowded with stars, and the porch swing wet. Annie ignored the dampness seeping through the seat of her jeans and pushed gently with her feet, listening to the creak of the chain and trying not to think. There were no good thoughts to keep her company tonight, none at all.

      But she did have company from the one member of her household who wasn’t upset with her. Twenty pounds of cat sprawled warmly across her lap. Samson’s version of offering comfort meant allowing her to minister to his pleasure by lifting his chin so she could scratch underneath. As she did, his inaudible purr vibrated beneath her fingertips.

      Ben always said the animal was too blasted lazy to purr out loud.

      She sighed. Her oldest brother was barely speaking to her. Charlie had actually yelled at her—an event almost as rare as for Samson to purr out loud—and Jack…well, if Jack didn’t exactly hate her, he sure didn’t like her very much right now. Everyone she cared about was angry and hurt, and she was to blame.

      Not that Jack didn’t share some of that blame. He’d dropped his bombshell as casually as if he were talking about the weather, knowing full well what the effect would be. He’d done it that way on purpose, to get back at her, and that hurt. In all the years she’d known him, Jack had never set out to hurt her.

      But everything was different now, wasn’t it?

      Was taking her to bed supposed to pay her back, too? It would be a tidy sort of revenge, she supposed, to claim the wedding night she’d denied him and then be off to Timbuktu—this time without inviting her along for the ride.

      Until that afternoon, Annie would have said Jack wasn’t capable of using sex as a weapon. Now she wasn’t sure.

      “So what else is new?” she muttered at Samson. It had been so long since she’d been sure of anything that she’d forgotten what it felt like. Not since she quit her job and married her best friend. Of course, she hadn’t originally intended to marry Jack. At first she’d tried to get away from him. Then she’d decided to go to bed with him.

      How had

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