Page 51 of Kiss Me Tonight

Yeah? Is that why you cleaned her up at the Golden Fleece? Why you couldn’t stop touching her, even after you wiped away all the caked-on makeup?I’d had no reason to keep caressing her skin. No other reason but that she’d felt soft and smooth and I’d enjoyed the hell out of watching the pulse in her neck flutter to life the longer I lingered.

My phone vibrates again.

Levi: Head’s up. Topher’s going to invite you over for dinner. He’s wicked excited to have you living next door. I tried to tell him that just because we’re neighbors doesn’t mean we’re friends but . . . kids. They pretend cluelessness to get what they want, and Topher wants you over for dinner.

I close my eyes. Pretty sure I’m already getting entangled, and I’ve only been in Maine for a week and a half.

I jump in the shower without responding to Levi’s text. I wash my hair. Rinse out the suds. Purposely ignore my angry hard-on that’s begging for some sort of release. When I accidentally brush it with the bar of soap, I swallow a desperate groan.

Head coach.

Assistant coach.

I’ve got to keep the lines between us firmly drawn.

If I give in . . . I have no doubt that I’ll end up driving her away. I’ll fuck her body and then somehow fuck up her life because that’s generally the way things work out for me. And, as a single mom who’s been through a divorce and probably a nasty marriage, Levi doesn’t deserve having to deal with my hang-ups too.

Before we head out to the golf course, I send her one last text.

Me: Thanks for letting me know. I’ve got plans—I’ll figure out a way to make it up to him.

15

Aspen

“Oh, hello there, sexy.”

The words are crooned into the crook of my neck.

“Willow,” I mutter, craning an arm behind me to swat at my younger sister’s face, “seriously. Do you not know how to knock?”

She plunks down on the matching Adirondack chair next to mine. “Did you or did you not give me a key and invite me to visit whenever I wanted?”

Hand to the back of the laptop, I hastily snap it shut, all the better to keep my secrets. Dammit. I’m the worst sleuther in the history of sleuthers. Can’t a girl catch a break and do a little online stalking in peace nowadays?

“I could have been naked,” I protest, tucking a flyaway blond strand behind my ear.

“Seen it,” Willow says with an exaggerated yawn. “Nothing I don’t have myself. Plus, you stopped walking around naked the day Topher was born. I had nothing to fear.”

Ugh. Touché.

Racking my brain for a counterargument, I settle on, “I could have been having sex?”

It’s not supposed to come out as a question.

Willow only kicks up her legs onto the bottom of her chair, ankles crisscrossed, and turns her face up to the sky. She’s wearing one of those sun hats that’s three times the size of her face and looks good on her but would look absolutely ridiculous on me.

“Sex with what? That vibrator I got you for your thirtieth birthday that younever used?” She pokes up the front of her hat so she can still see me. “Sex isn’t your thing.”

I swear, younger sisters are put on this earth purely to torture their older siblings.

And Willow can be the worst.

“Oh, don’t look so put out.” She pats the back of my hand all sweet and innocent-like. “I still love you even if you’re testing the hymen theory.”

Since we were teenagers, Willow always liked to joke that without consistent sex, a woman’s hymen regrows. I’m here as proof that the theory is wrong, even if it’s a ridiculous theory to begin with.

Letting out a sigh, I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I love you too. Now will you please tell me why you’re—oomf!”

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