Just This Once

by Mira Lyn Kelly

  He’d just pulled his T-shirt over his head when he looked up to find Molly doing the same.

  He swallowed. Hard. She was wearing a bikini he’d seen before. Hell, she’d probably been wearing it last year this time, but for some reason, today, it was different. Today, that bikini seemed criminally small and painfully sexy. Today, he found himself looking around, with the insane need to prevent anyone else from seeing what he was. Like somehow he had the right to keep her all for himself.

  “Hurry up, hotshot,” she said, waving her hand all let’s go, let’s go.

  “Relax, babe. The water’s not going anywhere.” Dropping his shirt over his sandals, he stood back up and found Molly missing the eager smile that had been on her face seconds ago. “What?”

  Her eyes cut away uneasily. And she shook her head. “You just called me ‘babe,’ and it sounded funny.”

  He hadn’t, had he? Babe wasn’t what you called your best friend. It was one of those intimately affectionate names he rarely used with anyone. The women he dated, the ones he was photographed with and who usually knew his parents before they knew him, never went by babe. And the girls he hooked up with? There generally wasn’t time to establish that level of intimacy. He wasn’t the kind of guy to call just anyone babe either, and he never used it as a crutch when he’d forgotten someone’s name.

  So calling Molly babe?

  “Don’t worry about it,” she insisted. “I’m just being weird again.” She started to leave, but Sean reached out and caught her wrist, pulling her back a step.

  “No, you’re not. It’s me.” Those big blue eyes peered up at him, bright as the sky above, and suddenly, Sean was aware of the way his hand had drifted from her wrist, and now his fingers were caught in a loose tangle with hers. Jesus, what was wrong with him?

  He needed to look away, but instead, he found himself searching deeper, getting caught in all that blue, looking for…hell, looking for something he wasn’t going to find.

  Releasing her, he took a step back and smiled. She’d just told him it was weird that he’d called her babe. Standing there getting lost in her eyes probably wasn’t the best way to come back from that.

  “All right, Moll. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  A smile flitted across her lips, and then she was turning toward the lake, starting to run, and then launching herself out into the open air. And just like every time he’d seen her take that leap before, his gut clenched as he watched her plunge deep, holding his breath until she broke the surface again.

  A second later, she bobbed up and, treading water, pushed her hair back from her face. The smile stretching her lips was one of pure delight.

  “Come on in. The water’s great!”

  He was betting the water was cold as shit, just like every year. Taking their things, he dropped down to a lower rock formation and then the one a few feet below that, where he set their stuff. Pushing himself back up, he returned to the top and waved for Molly to swim a few more feet to the side before taking off and jumping himself. It was pure exhilaration, those seconds of free fall, and then he was taking the plunge as well. Cutting through the icy water, he kicked toward the surface and came up a few feet from where Molly was swimming over. The sun glistened across her wet skin, while the water turned the white blond of her hair golden beneath its rays.

  She was beautiful.

  “See? Wasn’t that worth it?” she asked, grinning ear to ear.

  Jesus, that smile. “It always is.”

  * * *

  Turned out Sarah wasn’t really interested in more than getting her feet wet and Max wasn’t interested in anything more than following his new wife around, so they’d headed back after a few minutes, leaving Sean and Molly to splash around in the lake for a good half hour on their own before returning to the campsite themselves. It was quiet when they got back. Brody’s car was gone, and there was a note on the picnic table letting them know they’d all gone into town to grab a few extra ingredients for dessert.

  “Think I’m gonna head over to the showers,” Molly said, ducking into their tent to grab her things. She was still wearing her bikini, and Sean was still feeling like a shit for the way he kept looking at her and it. For the things he kept thinking.

  Like how he never had fun with the women he dated the way he did with her. How no one’s smile had ever done to him what hers did. How when she was looking up at him with those eyes, for the first time in his life, his heart and head had started to say the same thing.

  She popped back out, holding her little satchel of toiletries, and he tried to imagine what it would be like if that wasn’t his tent she’d been crawling out of. What it would be like when she found her someone…and it wasn’t him.

  “Want me to zip it up?” she asked, holding the tent flap closed.

  Clearing his throat, he shook his head. “Nah. I’ll get cleaned up too. You saw where the bathrooms were when we drove in?” They’d been to this park half a dozen times probably but had never stayed on this side of the campground before.

  “Yep, I’m good. Meet you back here when we’re done,” she said, already walking toward the road.

  Sean nodded, waiting until she turned around and then waiting some more before grabbing his own stuff. He was just tucking his phone into his boot when it lit up with a call from his assistant.

  As a rule, when they went camping, they tried to leave work behind. But with everybody doing their own thing, he gave in to the pull and answered. He was glad he did, since the question took less than two minutes to answer and probably saved the guy an afternoon of hassle. When he was done, he headed up toward the showers, still thinking about Molly and that suit…about Molly in the water…about Molly in his arms and in his bed and all the places and all the ways he wasn’t supposed to think about her at all.

  The showers at this campground looked like they did at every other one he’d ever been to. A brown wooden structure with empty windows and the doorway partly obscured by more brown fencing at either side. Out front, there was a waterspout on a concrete slab surrounded by a bunch of soupy mud.

  Through the open windows, he could hear Molly singing “Radioactive.” Damn, he loved it when she sang. She didn’t hit even half the notes, but when she sang, he knew she wasn’t just happy. She was bubbling over with happiness. And it just didn’t get any better than that.

  He walked up to the hut, following the sidewalk to the men’s side, but his steps slowed as he neared the door. The singing was louder, not quieter. He looked up and checked the sign again. Men’s.

  Uh-oh.

  Sean tentatively stepped through the doorway, knowing what he was about to encounter but hoping against hope he was wrong.

  “Hey, Moll?” he called above the spray of the shower, stepping down the row of open stalls.

  Holy hell, there was no way he was going to survive this. Molly stood beneath the spray, rinsing a thick lather from her hair so the suds spilled over her shoulders and chest, slipping past her belly button and down her back…making a playground of that body he hadn’t been able to get out of his head. But this wasn’t fun and games. This wasn’t about getting an eyeful of the girl he needed to remember was his best friend. This was about getting Molly out of the men’s room before she completely lost her shit when she realized where she was. Thank God she was still wearing her bikini and a pair of sandals. Hopefully, that would be enough.

  “Um, Molly?” he said again, calmly, quietly, not wanting to startle her.

  Her eyes blinked open, going wide at the sight of him standing there, and then she laughed, her arms crossing over her chest even though she was wearing the bikini she’d been swimming with him in for the last hour. But standing there, with the water and suds and his dirty thoughts, it felt different to him too.

  “Sean! What are you doing? This is the ladies’ shower. You can’t be in here.”

 
; He nodded, holding up one hand and knowing she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  “Okay, thing is, Moll, it’s not the ladies’ shower.”

  That knockout smile went brittle and stiff before cracking just enough for one lip to curl. Molly had a thing about men’s showers. Back in college, Max found out she’d been slipping into the showers on their floor, despite it being guys only. She’d thought it was no big deal since she only snuck in at odd hours when it was deserted. No surprise, big brother didn’t feel the same.

  So he’d told her all the depraved and dirty things guys did in their bathrooms—the most obvious true, while other accounts had been embellished or flat-out fabricated to the furthest degree his imagination would allow. And based on Molly’s posttraumatic response to whatever details he’d given her, Max Brandt must have been way more creative than Sean had given him credit for. Because even a decade later, Moll was about to lose it, finding out where she was.

  “Oh no,” she croaked, her eyes shooting to the concrete floor where the water was sloshing through the open toes of her sandals. And then more urgently, “No.”

  She raised one foot and then the other, as if she was trying to keep from getting contaminated but didn’t know which foot to sacrifice first, while her increasing stomping only served to splash more water around her ankles. “Sean…Sean, Sean, Seanseansean…”

  Shit. “Yeah, I know. It’s touching you.” He stepped closer. “Not a big deal, Moll. Just come with me.”

  “It’s touching me.”

  One look at those wild eyes, and he recognized the crazy train had left the station. Molly was beyond reason, and the only thing he could do was get her out of there before it got any worse.

  “Not anymore.” He ducked down, catching her around the waist and backs of her thighs, and picked her up against his chest. “Come on, Moll, wrap your arms around my neck.”

  She did, holding tight to him as though her life depended on it. “Get it off!”

  “We will. Just bend your knees and kick your feet back. We’ll get them rinsed off, and I’ll carry you out.”

  She looked at him with pleading eyes. “Hurry.”

  Seconds later, he was carrying her outside, promising her she was clean and that she could put her feet down. Finally, he felt the rigid muscles of her body relax against him.

  “I’m completely nuts,” she whimpered into his neck where her face was burrowed.

  “No,” Sean soothed, rubbing her back with one hand while he held her against him with his other arm beneath her ass. “Not completely. I mean, sure, a little, but I’ve always kind of liked that best about you, so it’s okay.”

  She laughed and lifted her head to look him in the eyes. “Thank you, Sean.”

  And shit, she wasn’t giving him that look—the one that had brought him to his knees and pushed him past sense the weeks before—but something in those too-blue eyes was pulling at a spot in his chest he couldn’t quite ignore.

  It was time to set her down. Time to take that necessary step back and let her go, but her arms were still wound around his neck, and fuck if holding her like this didn’t make him feel like he could take a full breath for the first time since they’d promised nothing would change between them.

  “Sean?” she asked quietly, searching his face for answers he knew weren’t there, answers he didn’t have. “Are you going to let me go?”

  Was he?

  “I’ve been trying,” he said solemnly. “But the truth is, I’m not sure I want to anymore. Molly, I’m not sure I even can.”

  He’d said it. The truth he hadn’t been able to admit to himself until that very moment, but now that it was out… Yeah.

  Her eyes filled with shock, and her breath stalled in that small space between her parted lips. Way to blindside the girl.

  He ought to tell her it was up to her. That he’d respect her feelings, but that thing that had been beating against his ribs for the last weeks had finally found its voice. “I want you, Molly.”

  “Sean, we agreed—”

  “We shouldn’t have,” he interrupted, his heart starting to pound. “We shouldn’t have agreed to anything, because we both still feel it. This thing between us isn’t going away.”

  She was nodding, her eyes a little too wide, her voice a little too calm. “Sean, I get that you feel this way right now. But you know this isn’t what you want.”

  He shook his head, more certain with every second that passed. “No. Molly—”

  “Hey, there you two are,” Max called from down the road. “What’s going on?”

  Molly shook her head, pushing back from Sean’s hold.

  He let her slide down his body, half tempted to turn to her brother and lay it out there. Tell Max that he’d just realized he was in love with his little sister.

  “I wasn’t paying attention and ended up in the guys’ shower.” Molly sent him a pleading look before turning back to her brother. “Sean rescued me.”

  Max let out a hearty laugh, his eyes squinting shut as he shook his head. “Shit, Molly, you know I was making half that stuff up, right?”

  She nodded tightly, peering back at the showers, and Sean couldn’t help but wonder if it was because she didn’t want her brother to see her face. “Regardless, the damage is done. I hope you feel guilty forever.”

  Max stepped closer to Sean, clapping him on the shoulder. “Probably not as guilty as I should.” Then, hitching a thumb over his shoulder, he added, “Everyone’s back, and Brody’s got some assortment of snacks set out, so don’t take too long.”

  “No problem.” Molly started walking toward the road. “Sean’s still got to shower, but I’ll head back now.”

  Sean watched her go, rubbing his chest when she cast him a single uncertain glance over her shoulder.

  So, this wasn’t going to be easy.

  Chapter 14

  Molly walked back to the site in a daze.

  She couldn’t believe what he’d said. He wanted her.

  Maybe it was true. Fine, she knew it was…for now. Temporarily. But the future Sean’s parents had outlined for him, the one he’d been working for all these years, didn’t include her.

  What was she supposed to do with that? She wanted Sean. She’d always wanted him…but to set herself up for heartbreak like this? She couldn’t do it.

  She’d be insane to even think about it.

  “Molly, you’ve got to try this,” Sarah called from beside the table where cocktails were set out in tall, narrow glasses with a pitcher beside them for refills. After the bomb Sean had just dropped, one of Brody’s concoctions was just what the doctor ordered.

  She wondered if anyone would notice if she just took the pitcher and skipped the glass.

  Sarah stirred through her ice with her straw and took a long pull.

  “Whoa, you may want to go easy on those, Sarah,” Molly offered with a laugh. “Brody’s drinks are known for their punch.”

  Sarah’s eyes gleamed as she nodded, taking the straw out of her drink and pointing it at Molly. “I am aware. In fact, I’m banking on it to help me get through.”

  At Molly’s curious look, Sarah went on, waving her hand around as though whatever she was about to reveal was no big deal, but something in her eyes said it was. “I have a little thing about bugs where I’m sleeping. They don’t bother me when I’m up. Sitting out here around the campfire? No big deal. It’s when I have my guard down. When I’m sleeping. I don’t like being vulnerable to them.”

  Molly set her drink back on the table and pulled Sarah in for a tight hug. She couldn’t tell her about what had happened with Sean. Heck, she didn’t even know what had just happened with Sean. But she could share what happened before. “You do not know how much better I feel hearing that. I just made a complete scene because of my hang-up about guys’ showers.”

 
Sarah’s face scrunched up. “Like Max’s shower?”

  Molly shook her head and looped her arm through Sarah’s, recapping what had happened up at the shed and why she couldn’t get past the whole public shower thing. Sean was back by the time she finished her story, and Sarah couldn’t stop laughing as she stumbled over to her husband and laid into him for being the worst big brother of all time.

  That wasn’t true. Max was probably the best big brother on the books. But he was still a big brother, and Molly didn’t know one who could resist the lure of tormenting a little sister from time to time. Besides, what goes around comes around, and while she’d never given him any real trouble, she’d made sure he paid in the little ways little sisters knew best.

  Sean climbed out of the tent. He’d changed into a long-sleeved fitted shirt and a pair of jeans. He straightened and started walking toward them, his eyes landing on hers as he scrubbed the top of his head a few times, leaving his hair in a wild state of damp disarray.

  Geez, he knew exactly what he was doing. Pushing buttons she probably should’ve known better than to reveal to him.

  They needed to talk, but she’d been too chicken to stay and finish what he’d started up at the showers. She hadn’t seen it coming, wasn’t prepared, and had run off before clearing the air between them. And now she was looking at serving out the rest of her night surrounded by an audience she wasn’t ready to share her drama with.

  Sean dropped into the chair Sarah had just vacated. Leaning over, he pulled Molly’s chair closer. Her eyes cut to his, a warning he wouldn’t miss in them.

  The corner of his mouth hitched up, and he stretched an arm over the back of her shoulders, casual as can be.

  “We need to talk, Sean.”

  “We were talking. You ran off.”

  She nodded, letting out a slow breath. “You’re lucky I did, with Max right there.”

  His eyes twinkled with mischief. “True. I definitely wasn’t thinking about your brother.”