Page 27 of Beach Cottage Kisses
As he paused, Iris glanced up at him. And continued to look. As she had the previous weekend.
Not staring. More like searching. Definitely crossing a line from friendly to…more.
Until she blinked.
And he looked away.
He meant to move down the hall. His feet remained in place. His gaze resting on the package in Iris’s hand.
Seeing not his twin sister, at all—the package wasn’t opened—but Iris…as though she’d brought the thing into the house with her.
“She got it as a gag gift from a law clerk a couple of years ago,” the gorgeous woman said, her amber hair like a fire around her, over her shoulders and down her body.
The kind of flame that burned a man with pleasure. Not pain.
“I just found it on the top closet shelf, back in the corner. Looks like it fell out of that thing of plastic storage drawers she kept there…”
She seemed to be rambling.
Not at all Iris-like.
“I’m off to Leigh’s room,” he said.
And with a nod, he took off.
Chapter Seven
He’d seen her standing there, holding an object that had very clearly been made to take the place of a man’s penis.
Other than the wrong color, lack of warmth of any kind and batteries, she figured the sex toy could do the trick. For a woman who was sexually healthy and unable to commit herself to another human being in any way that involved a belief in, or desire for, a happily-ever-after.
Dropping it back in its drawstring gift bag, she placed it in the bottom of the box she was packing without the least bit of temptation to know more.
Let alone have one of her own.
Dress her friend in blue jeans and give him a hard-on, and she became mush. But a chance for adult sexual release—no commitment, no risk of getting messy, no human unpredictability involved—and she’d rather sit alone, fully dressed, in the sand with her camera.
She never had been one to make things easy.
Too much depth, Ivy used to say. Her ability to be aware of hidden emotions, to see in moments things that others couldn’t, defined her.
According to her identical twin.
That week, her definition was a curse. And on the blink. Showing her things that weren’t real. Taunting her physically until,on Monday afternoon, on her way back to Sage’s to help Scott with final details after the movers were gone, she actually thought about ordering one of those toys online.
Surely, there were better options than the one she’d found on Sage’s shelf.
As unappealing as the thought was, she preferred a practical resolution to the condition bothering her, rather than losing one of her best friends.
Someone who could be that person because he respected, accepted and even seemed to welcome her limitations, rather than trying to analyze or change them.
He was waiting for her in the front room of Sage’s cottage when she got there. Seeing him there, on the heel of the thought she’d been having, she felt a well of…gratitude…for him.
To him.
“What’s that look for?” he asked, sounding as though she’d just made him uncomfortable.
In a rush to reassure him, she said, “You’re the only person I’ve ever told that I don’t believe in love or happily-ever-after and you were okay with it. You didn’t challenge me. Or try to convince me otherwise. You just accept me. I was thinking how nice that was,” she told him. More than she should have.
