Unleashed

He dared to push the door open a bit and peek inside. She was lying on the floor, her cheek pressed against the tiles, her skin as white as they were. Oh, he’d been there before. Those tiles were very cool to the touch, especially against flushed skin.

Her eyes opened a bit, and she moaned when she saw him standing there. “Evan…I sure hate to tell you to go away in your own house.”

He laughed, walking in despite her words. “That’s right. You can’t.” He opened his medicine cabinet and got her a couple of Tylenol, which he handed to her after unscrewing the lid of the water bottle for her. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She pushed herself up on one arm and gulped it down like she was a lost desert traveler, delicate throat muscles contracting. Half the bottle of water drained before she stopped. She wiped her mouth, put the bottle on the floor and lay back down. “Just let me stay here, please.”

He leaned over, meaning to drag her up to her feet. “Not an option. You can’t be comfortable down there.”

“Evan, I’m so sorry.”

He froze, swallowing hard. She was looking up at him with a wretchedness in her eyes he could only interpret to be guilt or profound regret. She must remember……

“For what?”

“For passing out on you like that. I don’t normally act like this, I promise. I’ll get out of your hair in a few minutes—”

Relief bore down hard on him and he knelt down next to her. Guilt was tearing him up that he’d touched her at all in that state. He should have been able to walk away, and in the harsh light of day, he couldn’t believe how weak he was. “Stop that talk, you can stay all day if you want. And I know how you act. I’m sorry for letting you get to that point.”

“Today is supposed to be your wedding day, isn’t it?” she asked softly. Her voice was hoarse.

“Yeah. Some weather we’d have had, huh?”

“Really, I’ll go in just a minute, I don’t mean to—”

“Shh. Do you think I want to spend my rainy would-be wedding day by myself?” He grinned at her. “Hang out with me.”

She must’ve been convinced, because she smiled back. “Did I walk to bed or did you have to carry me?”

He tugged the collar of his T-shirt, though it wasn’t what was about to choke him. “I carried you.”

She covered her eyes with one hand. “You probably don’t want to go anywhere with me now.”

“Yes I do.” More than ever. “I can’t wait to go away with you.”

A trembling smile touched her lips, causing his chest to ache. Even wound tight in a fetal position on his bathroom floor, sick and ashen with finger-in-light-socket hair, she was beautiful to him. The need to take care of her roared through him, the desire to take away the pain. He cleared his throat. “What do you feel like? If you want to take a shower, I’ll see if I can scrounge up something you can wear after.”

“Okay,” she said after seeming to seriously debate it with herself.

“Come on.” He reached for her again, and she let him, curling her slender fingers around his biceps as he drew her to her feet. When he determined she was steady enough, he reached into his shower and turned on the water. “Towels are behind you there in that cabinet. Sorry if all my soap and stuff is too manly-smelling for you.” Some of Courtney’s leftover stuff probably still lurked in the depths of his cabinets, but he doubted Kelsey wanted to smell like the woman who’d ruined her marriage.

She chuckled. “It’s okay. I’ll probably just stand there and soak for about three hours.”

“However long you need.” The urge to stroke her face, touch her hair, was compelling, along with the need to do a number of other things to her. Knowing she was about to be nak*d in his shower was torture enough without the memory of last night, the way she’d smelled, the way she’d felt. “I’ll be right back.”

He left to rummage through his drawers, trying to dispel the images. Finally he located a pair of sweats she could pin at the waist and roll up if she had to. One of his UT Law T-shirts and she’d be fairly set, though it would hang to her knees. He took it all into the bathroom and left it folded on the counter.

She was sitting on the closed toilet lid now, her head between her knees as steam billowed from the shower stall.

“You okay?” he asked. “I can run you a bath, if you’d rather not stand.”

“I’ll be all right,” she said weakly, sitting up straight again. “Just nauseous.”

“I’ll leave you alone. When you’re done I have coffee in the kitchen, if you feel like it. Yell if you need anything. I mean it, Kelsey. You remember college. I’ve had to babysit the drunk many times before. You’re a picnic, if only because I can pick you up if I have to.” He grinned at her, and she managed to return it.

“Thank you, Evan. I will.” She looked him in the eye, and her sincerity and embarrassment tugged him in all the right places. He felt for her. He couldn’t stand being sick in other people’s presence, either.

Closing the door behind him, he thought about what he’d gotten himself into. If one night with her had him in such pitiful shape, one week might very well kill him.

Damn. She’d been something else last night. He didn’t think he could put himself through it again. If it had been the truth…shit, what he wouldn’t give to see Kelsey like that, crazed and begging him for it, out of her mind with lust for him without alcohol sharpening those base urges. Why the hell did they have to have so much history in the way? He was torn between the guilt of touching her at all and the insanity of wishing he’d spent all damn night in her silky heat. So that she wouldn’t have to go home today not knowing about that one sweet interlude.

He wanted her to tell him sober what she had admitted to so freely last night.

Chapter Four

Evan had always thought he’d never seen Kelsey look more beautiful than on her wedding day. He’d stood beside Todd and watched her slow approach, a dream in white, lacking only wings to complete the angelic image she’d made. If his jaw had been clenched in misery and his hands nearly shaking, no one noticed, because all eyes had been on her, and hers on Todd.

As best man Evan had stood in support of the union, toasted the bride and groom to a lifetime of happiness and laughed and danced with Kelsey and her bridesmaids…all the while suffering from an aching void where his heart once resided. A gnawing ache that perhaps he’d let a good thing slip right through his fingers. He’d witnessed the girl he should never have let get away vow to love his best friend, till death—or Courtney, as it turned out—parted them.

Today, it was all made right. She might have been a soft, ethereal vision on her wedding day binding herself to another man, but out here beneath the kiss of the Hawaiian sun, she was a bronzed goddess, and just for now, she was all his.

“This is amazing,” she groaned from her prone position on a beach towel in the sand. Her voice was almost carnal, causing stirrings it wouldn’t do for Evan to exhibit in public. He’d made it through rubbing lotion over her silken back, so he could make it through her well-contented purrs. She turned her face toward him. “Thank you so much for this.”

She was thanking him when she was wearing that bikini?

The wind blew in off the jewel-blue waves as he let his gaze roam freely over her: the tossed curls of her dark brown ponytail, the clean lines of her oiled body glistening in the sun, the swelling curve of her ass hidden under a triangular scrap of pink and white fabric. This was really the most he’d ever seen of her body, but he could tell she still hadn’t begun to replace the weight she’d lost since the divorce, weight she really couldn’t afford to lose in the first place. It didn’t matter to him how she looked—he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t thought she was ravishing. But it never failed to start the slow burn of anger to think she’d been so stressed and hurt that she hadn’t been taking care of herself like she should.

If her storm-gray eyes were open behind the dark sunglasses she wore, she could see he was looking at her. But his own blacked-out shades hid exactly where he was looking.

“I’m glad you’re having a good time,” he told her. “Like I said, you deserve it.”

Her lips curled as the wind cast one tendril from her ponytail across her face. She swiped it away, lifting her head and propping herself on her elbows. He couldn’t tear his gaze from the way her generous br**sts stretched her bikini top in that position. Just one hook of his finger and he could finally know the color of their luscious tips……

“What are we doing tonight?” she asked, a weighted question if ever there was one.

“You want to just take it easy? Hang out?” he asked. Their flight had landed Sunday afternoon and it was Tuesday. Yesterday they’d hiked to the Diamond Head crater and marveled at the breathtaking panorama around them. He’d seen it before, but Kelsey’s enthusiasm had been so infectious it was almost like seeing it for the first time. Today, they’d just wanted to laze out on the beach. Thank God she was a more laid-back vacationer. He hated to come home from a trip more exhausted than when he’d left—what was the point then? But there was a lot more he wanted to show her.

Against her tan, her teeth were dazzlingly white. “Sure. I could use a drink, though.”

Oh…hell. He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and shot her a look. She laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t pass out on you again. We’re on vacation, right? Just a couple of margaritas.”

“Sure, that we can manage. Sounds good to me, too. Then we can come back in and order room service.”

“Ahhh. Divine.”

He grinned at her and sent up probably the hundredth prayer of thanks that he was here with Kelsey and not his ex on some sham of a honeymoon. Courtney could probably make some guy a happy man one day… She was smart and beautiful, certainly no fluff piece of arm candy. She was his younger brother’s age but already ran her own business—a downtown boutique his mom frequented—and it was there he’d met her for the first time. His mother still couldn’t convince him there weren’t ulterior motives involved the day she called and asked him if he’d stop by the store and pay on her account. Courtney had been working that day. He’d asked her out on the spot. His mom knew him too well.

She’d managed to fit right in with his sometimes overwhelming, boisterous family. But like all the others, she just wasn’t the one for him. Though she’d perhaps come closest.

He often wondered if they’d have made it to the altar even if she hadn’t been unfaithful. She’d presented him with an easy out, and he’d pounced on it. He wondered what Kelsey would say when she heard Courtney and Todd had split up.

Ordinarily, Evan wouldn’t have given a damn what happened to Todd Jacobs. He wouldn’t have wasted a single thought on the bastard if there hadn’t been ramifications for Kelsey. If Courtney was to be believed, any day now Todd could come crawling back to Kelsey. The thought made his blood seethe. He wanted to talk to her about it, ask her how she felt…but she was having too much fun to dredge up that stuff, and he figured if he asked her she would give an answer that was automatic instead of genuine. But if, if Todd showed up at her door…would she listen to his excuses and take him back?