Unleashed

Chapter One

“Aloha, gorgeous. How would you like to run away to Hawaii with me?”

Kelsey Peterson had been taking a sip of her latte as she answered the phone ringing on her desk. The proposition—deep, breathy, undeniably male—sent the portion of the gulp she hadn’t choked on spewing across her monitor. What the hell?

Hacking like a lifetime smoker, she gasped for oxygen and reached across her desk for tissues, mind still reeling. The instant he broke into laughter over the line, the world righted itself…somewhat. Still, it took a moment before she could form words, and he—damn him—seemed to be having the time of his life.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “the receptionist told me Evan Ross was calling. Obviously, whoever you are, you’ve kidnapped him and taken over his body.”

“Sounds kinky.” The response was jovial, normal—the Evan she’d known since college. So what if she’d enjoyed the fantasy for one nanosecond? “How are things on the dark side?” he asked. “Haven’t made a decision to join us good guys yet?”

“You know we have to maintain our balance between good and evil.” She began to mop up the mess she’d made as he chuckled. As a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office, Evan agonized over her position as legal assistant to a defense attorney he often faced in court.

“How have you been, Kels?” Evan asked.

“Great!”

“Liar.”

“Yeah, so? How are you?” That question was far more loaded than it sounded. For both of them.

“I’m actually good. I’m really, really good.” Oh, God help her, his voice had taken on that sexy purr again. She strangled over the remaining latte caught in her windpipe and held the receiver away from her mouth while she tried to clear it. So much for playing it cool. She hadn’t spoken to Evan in weeks and, at this rate, it might be a few more before she was able.

She could hear him going on, oblivious to her struggles, and she brought the phone back to her ear. “It just so happens I’ve been struck by inspiration,” he was saying.

“Really,” she wheezed.

Concern suddenly tinged his voice. “Hey, are you all right? I didn’t mean to freak you out back there. Man, this is going over well.”

“Sorry, just—” She took another quick sip. “Okay. I’m a dweeb. So what is this you’re rattling on about?”

“The very thing that made you nearly hack up a lung. I’m taking you to Hawaii. For a week. All expenses paid. Notice it was a statement and not a question?”

“You’re…taking me…what?”

“It seems I’m stuck with a useless paid-for honeymoon. It was a gift from my parents.”

“Oh…I didn’t know about that.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I never bothered to cancel the reservations and, as it turns out, the plane tickets are nonrefundable. So, it’s either use them or let them go to waste. I actually feel like using them…just not alone.”

“Well, I’m happy you’re getting the chance to jet off. But I’m sure you have two dozen other buddies who would be thrilled to take this trip with you. Why me?”

“They probably snore and don’t smell nearly as good as you.”

“Jesus Christ, Evan Ross.”

He burst out laughing. “I think you say that at some point every time we talk.”

Kelsey tapped her pen against her keyboard, smiling absently. She loved hearing from Evan, always had. Since her divorce from his former best friend, Todd, there hadn’t been very many opportunities to talk to him. Everything had changed last winter. She couldn’t speak to Evan now without remembering one conversation in particular. It had been very brief, but it had involved her screaming at him like a banshee, crying and cursing into her cell phone, while he maintained dead silence on the other end. God, what a nightmare. She eased her head down on her desk, cringing as she always did whenever she thought about it.

“Come on, Kels. I know you want it. I know you need to get away. We both do.”

Oh, she wanted it all right. And she didn’t mean the trip. Well, maybe the trip. “Yes, but um…together? If my boss found out, he wouldn’t be pleased. Consorting with the enemy and all that.”

“Of course. It’s a covert op. No problem.”

“Evan… I can’t…I can’t afford to pay you for my share.”

“Kelsey, that’s not even an issue. It’s paid for.”

“Do your parents know, then?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to worry, they’re discreet old souls. We have their blessing. So bring on the next objection, and let me slap that one down, too.”

“I just can’t.” She doodled with absent ferocity. Hawaii. Hawaii! She’d never been. Evan had. If she was ever going to go, who better to go with? Why wouldn’t her damn mind just shut up and let her accept?

“That’s the easiest one of all. You can.”

Kelsey’s eyes widened as another thought occurred to her, and she glanced down at her desk calendar to be sure. “Wait a minute…wasn’t your wedding supposed to be in two weeks?”

“Yep.”

“And your honeymoon to start right after?”

He chuckled. “Yep. So you see, I need an answer. Like now, Kelsey. Now.”

“There’s no way, then. Work—”

“I’ll have a big case waiting for me against your esteemed employer just as soon as I get back, so don’t talk to me about work. Hit me again.”

“I’m going to ask you one more time. Why me? Is it…is it pity? Evan, I don’t need that—”

“God, no. Nothing like that.” He was quiet for a moment, and she lifted her head to watch the quote on her screensaver marquee scroll by. Without the bitter, the sweet ain’t as sweet. It was from Vanilla Sky. Evan went on, his voice somber now. “You and me, we’ve been through too much together for pity to play into it. We’ve been friends forever. What’s wrong with two friends getting away from it all?”

When the friends are male and female, she thought. When they’re apparently sharing a room…and a bed…in a honeymoon suite? When her occupation was all about causing his defeat. And when they had such a screwy history. Ten years certainly wasn’t forever, though it sometimes felt like it.

Evan being sin incarnate had something to do with the wrongness of it, as well. His voice alone, rich and melodic over the line, had her wanting to slide her skirt up her thighs and plunge her hand into her panties right there in her office. One more word in that deep, erotic tone he’d used before and she might not be able to resist the urge.

She could just imagine what he looked like right now—his black hair perpetually tousled, his sharp green eyes fringed with eyelashes that could make a cover girl weep with envy. Eyebrows two decisive black brushstrokes. Probably had his jacket off and his tie loosened and his white shirtsleeves rolled up over his olive-skinned forearms, as always when he was on the job but not at court or in a meeting. As if he couldn’t bear the restraint a minute longer than necessary. He might even be kicked back in his chair, his feet propped on his desk…

Her boss, Jack Ballinger, always said when he tried a case against Evan, the jury’s reaction to his opposing counsel concerned him more than their reaction to the defendant. More specifically, the women’s reaction. “One twinkle from that boy’s eye and they’re ready to throw their goddamned panties at him during closing arguments,” she’d overheard Jack say. Kelsey thought it was pretty damned misogynistic of him, but that was Jack.

She fidgeted in her seat, not wanting to prove her boss right just from a simple phone call from the man himself. Yes, she and Evan had been friends for years, but she’d had a raging crush on him long before she’d met and married his best friend. It had subsided…somewhat. From a roaring flame to gently smoldering embers. But now that she was single—and so was Evan—she hadn’t been able to stop it from flaring to life once again.

Did thirty-year-olds even have crushes?

Oh, this could not happen. There was no way. The idea seemed like pure bliss, but the reality, she knew, would be a nightmare. Another one, and she didn’t think their friendship could bear that kind of strain now. He didn’t know what he was doing.

“Evan, I think this is the sweetest thing anyone has ever offered me. But I can’t.”

He groaned playfully. “Please don’t leave me like this, Kelsey, with my vision of having you isolated and helpless in Waikiki so cruelly denied.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. It was all innuendo on his part, at least she knew that much. Impossible flirt.

A week with that kind of innuendo might prove to be her undoing.

Her phone emitted a muffled ring and, upon checking the display, it was her turn to groan, though there was nothing playful about it. Jack. “Evan, I really have to go—”

“Not until you at least give me a maybe.”

“Oh, you—”

“Give me an answer or I’m going to call Jack myself and request your time off.”

“No!”

“The reason I’m asking you is that no one else I know deserves this as much as you do. And we haven’t hung out in a while. I feel bad about that. Let me make it right. Come on.”

Maybe it was time for her to come undone.

“Evan?” She lowered her voice to a throaty phone-sex pitch.

“Yes, yes?”

“I’ll think about it.” Grinning like a fiend, she hit the button that disconnected him then put on her best professional voice to greet her boss on the other line.

Lisa Scott’s blue eyes were bright and ravenous as Kelsey finished filling her in on the strange conversation that had taken place that morning. “Evan Ross, whose pants you’ve wanted to get into since college, has invited you to Hawaii? Both of you now free and unattached—and your problem is…what, exactly?”

Kelsey sighed as she stirred sweetener into her iced tea, sweeping a glance around their favorite diner. It was hopping with the usual lunchtime crowd. Sometimes—rarely, though—she saw Evan in here. “I think you just summed it up.”

“Damn, girl. Please tell me you’re not still in the all-men-are-pigs stage. Because it’s just not true.”

“It’s not that. I know Evan’s a good guy. Can’t seem to sustain a relationship, though. And except with Courtney, he’s usually been the one to cut and run.”

“Uh-huh.” Lisa smoothed a hand over her very pregnant belly. They’d had to pull the table closer to Kelsey so Lisa could squeeze into the booth, the only available seating. It had been hilarious to witness. “I’m waiting.”

Kelsey shrugged, picking through her barely touched Caesar salad. “What? I caught his fiancée screwing my husband. You know this. I didn’t hesitate to call Evan and scream into his ear about it. I didn’t handle the situation well. It’s a miracle he still speaks to me at all.”