“Then why are you here?”
“Because you sounded like you needed a friend.”
She unfolded her arms and splayed her palms on his chest. “You flew four hundred miles because I sounded like a needed a friend?”
“And because it would have taken too long to drive,” he said logically.
She shook her head, but she was smiling again. “You constantly surprise me.”
“Good, then I shouldn’t have to worry about you getting bored with me,” he said, and lowered his head to touch his lips to hers.
It was a fleeting kiss—friendly, casual—that might have led to something more if another knock hadn’t sounded at the door.
“Room service.”
She pulled away from him, drew in a breath. “That’s my dinner.”
He went to the door and slipped some bills from his pocket in exchange for the tray. He set it on the table and lifted the lid to uncover two slices of bread with thinly-sliced roast beef in between and a scoop of potato salad on the side. “This is your dinner?”
“I didn’t know what I wanted,” she admitted. “Then I remembered the day you showed up in the doctors’ lounge with the roast beef sandwich, demanding that I take care of myself.”
“A sandwich is fine for lunch when you’re rushing from the hospital to the clinic, but you need something more substantial for dinner,” he said, putting the lid back on the plate. “Let’s go out and get some real food.”
She glanced pointedly at her plaid pajama pants and rib-knit Henley. “I can’t go out like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because these are my pajamas.”
“Then put some clothes on,” he suggested.
“And I’ve cried off all of my makeup.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “I hate to think of you here, by yourself, crying,” he admitted.
“I think it’s the pregnancy hormones,” she said. “I feel like I don’t have any control over my emotions anymore.”
He thought it was probably as much the fault of her mother, but he wasn’t going to go there now. “How about pregnancy cravings?” he asked instead. “What are you in the mood to eat?”
“A whole cow.”
“Okay, I’ll call the concierge and ask for a nearby cattle ranch recommendation while you get dressed.”
She gathered up her clothes and moved toward the bathroom, pausing in the doorway. “Justin—”
He turned back.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
He smiled. “My pleasure.”
* * *
He took her to a restaurant called the Chophouse. The decor was simple: sturdy tables covered with neatly pressed linen cloths, leather booth seating and muted lighting. But it was the mouthwatering scent of grilled meat that really appealed to Avery and made her stomach growl so loudly that Justin turned to look at her.
She started with a field greens salad with a tomato-parmesan vinaigrette, followed by a ten-ounce filet mignon with roasted fingerling potatoes and grilled asparagus. He had the same type of salad, then the New York Strip with sautéed sweet corn and mashed red-skinned potatoes.
“I can’t believe I ate all of that,” she said, after she’d cleared her plate.
“It was too good not to,” Justin said, having polished off his own meal. “And you look better now that you’ve got some food in you.”
She managed a wry smile. “I probably couldn’t look much worse than I did when you showed up at the door of my hotel room.”
“You’re always beautiful,” he told her. “But you looked a little tired and a lot sad.”
“I was feeling a little tired and a lot sad,” she admitted.
“And now?”
“I feel better.” And maybe a little foolish that she’d let her mother’s insensitive remarks get to her. Maybe she should have been stronger. Maybe she shouldn’t have called Justin. But she couldn’t deny that she was glad he was there with her now.
“Dessert?” he asked.
She managed a laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
He nudged the dessert menu that the waiter had left on the edge of the table toward her. “They have homemade ice cream.”
“You are the devil.”
He just grinned. “I’m going to try the raspberry mango cheesecake.”
“Some women lose weight in the first trimester, but I’ve gained three pounds already,” she told him.
“Gaining weight is necessary when you’re growing a baby,” he said matter-of-factly.
She looked at him across the table, his gaze steady even in the flickering light of the candle. He was so incredibly handsome—and so much more than his playboy personality had led her to believe.
“You know, a few weeks ago I was thinking that I’d completely screwed up, getting pregnant with your baby,” she confided. “I’ve only recently started to realize that if I had to get pregnant, I’m so glad it was with your baby.”
He reached across the table to take her hand. “Me, too.”
“Does that mean you’ll come with me to see my dad tomorrow?”
“I was just waiting for you to ask,” he told her.
“And if I didn’t ask?”
“I was going, anyway.”
His answer didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was that she was grateful for his determination to stand by her side. Over the past few weeks, he’d proven that he was a man she could count on and trust—maybe even a man she could fall in love with—which was why she was trying very hard to keep her balance.
When the waiter came back to the table, Justin ordered the cheesecake and Avery opted for the ice cream.
By the time they left the restaurant, it was after ten o’clock. He took her hand again as they walked to the hotel. It was a cool night, but she didn’t feel the chill in the air with Justin beside her.
“I need to stop at the desk,” he said, when they entered the lobby and she started automatically toward the bank of elevators.
“Why?”
“I was in such a hurry to get here, I didn’t book a room,” he admitted.
Until that moment, she hadn’t given a single thought to where he might be sleeping. Of course, he needed his own room—offering to share hers would be tempting fate. Despite his claim that he’d come to Atlanta because she’d sounded as if she needed a friend, there was more between them than friendship. And the more she grew to like Justin, the harder it was to ignore the attraction.
So she nodded and followed him to the desk. Unfortunately, the clerk informed him, there was a medical conference in the hotel and no rooms were available. He offered to contact the Sheraton across the street, but Avery shook her head.
“I have a room here,” she reminded him, trying to sound casual. “It has two beds—and I’ll only be sleeping in one of them.”
Justin appreciated the offer, especially because he knew it couldn’t have been an easy one for her to make. “Are you sure that won’t be...awkward?” he asked cautiously.
She shrugged. “You said you plan to be there when I have the baby. In comparison, I don’t think sharing a hotel room for one night even registers on the scale of awkward.”
“In that case, I’ll say thank-you.”
When they got back to her room, Avery went directly to the bathroom with her pajamas. She came out again a few minutes later, wearing the same plaid pants and rib-knit Henley she’d had on when he arrived. And she didn’t have anything on beneath the top, because he could see the outline of her nipples clearly—two hard points pushing against the fabric, making all the blood in his body head south.
Which reminded him of another problem: he hadn’t worried about bringing something to sleep in because he hadn’t considered the possibility that they might end up sharing a room. So he waited until she was under the covers, then he turned out the light and stripped down to his boxer briefs before slipping between the sheets of the other bed.
He’d gotten up early that
morning to help his cousin Daniel put together the backyard climbing apparatus he’d bought for his almost two-year-old son, so he should have been exhausted. And he was. He was also conscious of Avery’s every movement, every breath. About an hour after the lights had been turned off, she shoved the covers away and padded into the bathroom.
He sat up in bed, waiting for her to return. “Can’t sleep?”
She started at his question, obviously not having realized that he was awake. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You didn’t,” he told her. “I wasn’t sleeping, either.”
She hesitated for a second, then she came over and perched on the edge of his bed. She was facing him, with one knee bent on the mattress and the other leg hanging over the edge. She was close enough that he only had to lift a hand to touch her, but he didn’t.
“I still can’t believe you dropped everything to come to Atlanta,” she said softly. “No one has ever done anything like that for me before.”
“I didn’t just drop everything,” he said, hoping to score even more points. “I had to call Greg Roberts to cover my shift in the ER.”
“Did he grumble?”
“A little, but he owed me for New Year’s Eve.”
“You weren’t supposed to work that night?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
“And if you hadn’t taken that shift for him...”
“We wouldn’t be where we are right now,” he completed the thought. “I guess maybe I owe him.”
She smiled at that. “I wanted you here,” she admitted to him now. “I would never have asked you to come, but I really wanted you here.”
“I want you to ask—if you ever need anything,” he said.
“It’s not easy for me.”
“I know—you always want to do everything on your own. But you’re not on your own anymore.”
“Amy was right.”
His brows lifted. “What was she right about?”
“There’s a lot more to you than most people realize.”
“She said that?”
“She did,” Avery confirmed. “She also told me that she didn’t believe you’d slept with Heather—despite the rumors.”
“I always did like Amy,” he said. “She’s a smart woman.”
“Did you and she ever...?” She trailed off, as if unable to put the question into words.
“No,” he answered immediately. “I might have thought about making a move, but she’s been in love with Ben for as long as I’ve known her—even when he was on the other side of the world.”
She nodded. “She told me that he was gone for twelve years, and she never stopped loving him.”
“Distance and time don’t matter when you love someone.”
“Do you really believe that?” she asked skeptically.
“I do,” he confirmed.
“I guess that tells me everything I needed to know about why my fiancé fell in love with someone else only a few months after he went to Haiti.”
“Are you still in love with him?” Even as the question spilled out of his mouth, Justin wanted to pull it back. Because if the answer was yes, he didn’t want to hear it.
But she shook her head. “No. Definitely not.”
“Then I’m inclined to think that neither of you was one hundred percent all the way in love,” he suggested.
“Maybe not,” she acknowledged. “But how do you know? It’s not like your heart has one of those meter things with an arrow that shifts from ‘casual affection’ to ‘all the way in love.’”
He smiled at the mental image. “You’re right—it’s not something you can see. It’s something you feel.” He slid his arms around her, drawing her into his embrace. “It’s wanting to spend every possible minute with the other person and missing them every second that you’re apart. It’s knowing that your life is better, richer and fuller with that other person in it.”
“It almost sounds like you know what you’re talking about,” she said lightly.
“I’m starting to.” He brushed his lips against hers, a whisper-soft kiss. “I’m crazy about you, Avery.”
“You make me crazy,” she said. “Whenever I’m with you, I get all tangled up inside so that I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling.”
“What are we going to do about that?”
She lifted her gaze to his. “You could take me to bed.”
“You’re already in my bed,” he pointed out to her.
“So I am.” She let her lips graze his jaw, his unshaven skin rasping beneath her soft mouth. “Can I stay?”
Forever, he wanted to say, but he suspected that kind of response would send her running. Instead, he said lightly, “I’d never kick a beautiful woman out of my bed.”
“That’s the rumor,” she agreed. “But I’d rather not talk about all the other women now.”
He tipped her chin up. “There’s no one but you now. I don’t want anyone but you.”
“You do want me?”
It killed him that she even had to ask, that she had any doubts about his feelings for her. But he knew the question was rooted in deeper history. “More than you can imagine.”
“I can imagine a lot,” she said, lifting her arms to link them behind his head and draw his mouth close to hers again.
His arms tightened around her. “Then let me show you.”
And finally he kissed her.
No—it was completely inadequate to describe the feel of his lips on hers as a kiss. It was a seduction of her mouth: patient, thorough, devastating. And Avery’s mind was spinning around one single thought: yes. Her body was aching and straining toward one single goal: more.
And he gave her more. His tongue swept into her mouth, tasting and teasing. His hands slipped under her pajama top, touching and tempting. Her palms slid over his bare shoulders—those strong, solid shoulders, down his chest to his stomach—learning and loving all those hard, rippling muscles.
He lifted his mouth from hers only long enough to dispose of her pajama top, then he eased her down onto the mattress and stripped away the bottoms, too. He straddled her naked body, his knees bracketing her hips, holding her in position while he worshipped her body with his hands and his mouth. He seemed to instinctively know where to touch, where to linger.
No, it wasn’t instinct—it was experience. The man had a wealth of experience in the bedroom, but she wasn’t going to let that bother her now. She wasn’t even going to think about that now. In fact, with his hands and his lips moving over her body, she could hardly think at all.
She reached down to stroke his hard length, and he jerked in her hand. “I don’t know what it is about you that makes me respond like a horny seventeen-year-old.”
“I wouldn’t know—I didn’t have sex until I was almost twenty.”
“But I bet you drove all of the guys at your high school crazy, anyway.”
“I doubt it. I was something of a nerd.”
He nibbled on her lips. “I always thought smart girls were sexy.”
“Prove it,” she said, pushing his briefs over his hips.
“I will,” he promised. Then, “I have condoms.”
“What?”
“In my toiletry kit,” he explained. “I haven’t been with anyone else since you, and you’ve seen the test results so you know there’s nothing to worry about, but if you don’t believe me, I can go—”
“I believe you,” she said, because it was true. Because—his reputation aside—he had never given her any reason not to trust him, and she no longer questioned that she did.
He kissed her again, long and slow and deep, while his hands continued to touch and tease. It amazed her, how quickly and effortlessly he could make her body respond, make her yearn.
“You make me feel...so much.”
“There’s more,” he promised, sliding farther down her body.
“Don’t you want—”
He touched his fingertips to h
er lips, silencing her words. “I definitely want,” he said. “And I will. But first, I want to show you some of the things we missed out on in the closet.”
“I have no complaints about what happened in SC.”
He smiled at her use of his code and slid his hands between her legs, urging them apart as he lowered himself between them. “Then you won’t have any complaints tonight, either.”
She felt his breath on her first—a whisper of warmth that made everything inside her tense and tighten. Then his fingers, parting the soft folds of flesh at her center. And then his tongue, just the barest flick of his tongue. Her hips bucked instinctively, a wordless plea for more. Yes. More.
He clamped onto her hips, holding her immobile while he took her with his mouth, licking and nibbling and sucking while she gasped and moaned. He took his time, drawing out her pleasure. And then, finally, her body flew apart, shattering into billions of shards of exquisite sensation, and he held her while all those sparkling pieces free-fell from the heavens.
“Open your eyes, Avery.”
She managed to do so, though her gaze was still unfocused, the world still spinning. He rose up over her, then he slid into her—one slow, deep thrust that filled her deeply, completely.
This time, he moaned, a low sound of satisfaction. She tilted her hips, taking him just a little bit deeper, and though she would have sworn it wasn’t possible, her body went from loose and languid to primed and ready again in a heartbeat.
He began to move in a slow and steady rhythm, stroking deep, deeper, causing the pressure to build inside her. Gradually he increased the pace. Faster. Harder. His skin was damp beneath her palms, his breath rasping out of his lungs in shallow pants.
She could tell he was close to his own release, but he was holding back, waiting for her. She’d never had a lover who was so completely unselfish, so single-mindedly focused on making her feel good. She wanted to reciprocate, to give back to him even a fraction of the pleasure that he’d given to her, but she was already caught up again in another maelstrom of desire, a myriad of sensations battering at her, overwhelming her.
Finally he stiffened, every muscle in his body going rigid, and then he emptied himself inside of her. When he could finally summon the energy, he shifted to lift his weight off her, but he didn’t let her go. He tucked her head against his chest, where she could feel his heart beating in tandem with her own.
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