LITMIR.BIZ

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to ignore his unwanted arousal, Ethan focused on her soothing voice and eventually on the familiar features of her face. Rosie smiled at him and rested her palm over his heart.

      “You know, you owe it to yourself for the person you are, and to the community for the person they see you as, to stop being a self-pitying jerk.”

      He lurched at the shock of her words, such a contrast to the mood she’d created. Rosie poked him in the chest. Her voice was no longer quite so soothing. “I understand how you feel, Ethan—”

      “You can’t have a clue.”

      That seemed to make her angrier. “You’re obviously, rightfully, embarrassed that Michelle jilted you.”

      “In front of two hundred people.” He hadn’t meant to shout, not that it fazed Rosie at all. No, if anything, she stepped closer until he felt her legs against his.

      She tilted her head way back so she could stare him in the eyes. “When you carry on the way you do, it looks like you’re still pining over her.”

      Ethan snorted. Personally, he thought just the opposite to be true. People saw him with different women, saw him enjoying his bachelor life, and it proved that he was over Michelle, that he didn’t care.

      That she hadn’t ripped his heart out.

      Leaning closer still, until her nose nearly touched his chin, Rosie said, “But I know you’re not lovesick, Ethan. I know, because you didn’t love her.”

      Ethan grabbed her shoulders to keep her from getting any closer. He would have moved away from her, but she had him boxed in. That thought almost made him smile. He weighed a smidgen off two hundred pounds, and Rosie couldn’t possibly go over one-thirty, yet she did her best to intimidate him with her body.

      Her best was pretty damn tantalizing, he admitted, when he felt her soft belly against his crotch.

      All humor vanished.

      She stared up at him, her eyes the color of an approaching storm. “You want people to know you’re over Michelle, that she didn’t really affect you? Well, I have a better suggestion than what you’ve been doing.”

      Ethan could barely breathe. Her mouth was right there, so close he could smell the toothpaste she’d just used and damn, it looked good. He wanted her, whether he denied it or not, whether he wanted to or not. Unable to move, he growled, “What suggestion?”

      “Get involved with a nice girl.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth and her voice lowered, went husky in a way he’d never heard from Rosie before. “Quit playing the sexist Neanderthal and get serious again. Stop running scared.”

      “I’m not—”

      She touched his bottom lip, stealing his thoughts, making him tense. She whispered, “Let me love you.”

      * * *

      ETHAN KEPT TO THE SHADOWS of the large elms that lined the street, skirting buildings while trying not to look too furtive. He wanted to see her without being seen himself.

      He couldn’t believe he was doing this.

      Actually, everything he’d done in the past twenty-four hours fell into the realm of the “not to be believed,” starting with getting rip-roaring drunk, and ending with Rosie in his bed. So what did one more idiotic thing matter?

      It didn’t. Besides, his curiosity was too keen to keep him away. Luckily, Riley’s studio had an enormous front window, so he’d be able to see what kind of lessons Rosie was taking without her knowing he spied.

      He could only imagine what she’d think if she knew. The silly goose already thought herself in love with him. If she thought, even for a second, that he returned that overly valued emotion...

      Ethan grunted, but deep inside himself something warm had started stirring the moment she’d said those four little taunting words. Let me love you.

      He knew it was only lust. And no wonder with the way she’d been coming on to him. An ordinary woman he could have withstood, but Rosie...he hadn’t wanted to chance it.

      Nearly panicked, he’d sent her on her way with the explanation that he loved her, too—as a friend, and only a friend.

      He’d looked her right in her beautiful blue eyes and lied through his teeth, telling her he didn’t want her sexually, that he saw her as asexual, like a pal. Totally sexless. No sex thoughts involved at all. Sex, no. Friends, yes.

      Rosie was not stupid.

      She’d sighed, patted his chest in a curiously tender way and told him she’d give him a little time to get used to the idea.

      He had a week.

      Then she’d dressed and left and he still didn’t know what the hell had happened last night in his bed. He’d be deranged with curiosity in a week. He had to find out something soon.

      The sun was bright, baking down on his head and back. July had started on a heat wave that showed no signs of relenting. Shimmering hot waves rose from the blacktop parking lot. Ethan wore his aviator-style mirrored sunglasses, but still he had to hold a hand up to shield his eyes when he reached Riley’s.

      There were few people out on this sweltering afternoon, so he stood alone on the sidewalk with only the occasional passerby. Still, he maintained a casual air of indifference so he wouldn’t look suspicious. The second he peeked inside, he spotted Riley rolling around in the middle of the mat with someone. It took Ethan less than three seconds to realize the person in the baggy T-shirt, snug shorts, sneakers and headgear was Rosie.

      Calm control took a flying leap.

      In three long strides Ethan had the door open and had advanced halfway across the gym. He ripped off his sunglasses to better see their shameful behavior. “What in the hell are you doing?” The rafters trembled with his bellow.

      Riley, his head stuck between Rosie’s thighs, looked up in surprise. His voice was a bit strangled, due to the way she had her legs clenched tight around his neck, when he said, “It’s called the North South Position.”

      He grunted, did a quick flip and ended up on top with Rosie peering at Ethan, her face red with exertion, her head now between Riley’s thighs.

      Ethan gawked and fought the urge to bodily separate them. “That’s...that’s obscene.”

      Rosie tried to buck Riley off—and that only made matters worse from Ethan’s perspective. His vision started to blur.

      “I’m learning...leg...chokes,” Rosie managed to gasp around her panting breaths. To Ethan, it appeared her eyes were starting to water.

      He was more than ready to intervene when they rolled again and Ethan had to jump to keep from getting caught in the fast-churning tangle of arms and legs. When they stopped, Rosie was on top and she had Riley’s arm caught in an awkward position, using her whole body to keep a steady pressure on it. Riley, around his strained laughter, cried uncle.

      Rosie jumped up, punched a fist in the air like a world conqueror, and gave a ferocious battle cry. “Ha! Gotcha with a chicken wing.”

      Riley stood, too, grinning from ear to ear, but he shook his head at her. “You hadn’t sunk it good enough. I could have gotten loose if Ethan hadn’t been standing here breathing fire.”

      Rosie gasped in high indignation. “That’s just like a man to claim he lost to a woman only because of another man.”

      Riley slipped his arm around her. “We’ll keep working on it.” He winked at Ethan.

      At that particular moment Rosie wasn’t the least attractive. Her hair stuck out in crazy clumps around the headgear, some long tangled tendrils loose, some looped in and around the straps. Her face was flushed and there was sweat on her forehead and upper lip. The wrinkled, sweat-dampened clothes she wore couldn’t have been less appealing.

      And Ethan

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