Page 27 of Temptation at His Door

AWKWARD.

In capital letters.

Joa pulled down the throw lying over the back of the sofa and dragged it up her still pulsating body. She darted another look at Ronan.

His face was granite hard and his mouth, so soft and sensuous earlier, was compressed into a hard line.

She didn’t need her advanced psychology degree to know that he was feeling guilty, regretful and, yeah, pissed.

At himself? At her? Who knew?

Ronan stared up at the ceiling as Joa stood up and yanked on her clothes. When she was dressed, she pushed her hands through her hair, which fell down her back in what she was sure had to be a tangled bird’s nest because she’d lost her hair band. With her back to Ronan, she touched her lips, remembering his kiss, his passion-soaked eyes, his gentle touch.

It had been the best sex of her life.

Sex he obviously and immediately regretted. And because he did, so did she.

Joa looked over to the piano, to the silver frame containing the large photograph of Ronan’s wife. Thandi was laughing at the camera, her smile wide and full of joy. Sam stood at her side and she had her hand on her massive belly, in that age-old gesture of connection.

Thandi had watched them make love. Sort of...

Joa covered her mouth with her hand, feeling a little sick. Oh, rationally she knew the woman had died a while ago, but Ronan’s reaction made it feel like they’d had a quickie on the couch while she was out of the room.

It made no sense but she definitely felt like the other woman.

Thandi was everywhere in this house. There was a note to Ronan in her handwriting on the fridge—something along the lines of Thandi wishing her pregnancy to be over so that Ronan could start treating her like a sex object again—and her designer scarf still hung on the coatrack. There were photos of her pinned to the fridge by magnets, in frames and on the walls of the halls.

Joa wrenched her eyes off Thandi’s face and stared at her bare toes, ridiculously angry with herself. She’d done it again, thrown herself at an unavailable man. Okay, she hadn’t been thinking of Ronan in terms of his family and wanting to be part of their close-knit circle of three but she’d stepped over a line she’d never crossed before: she’d slept with a man who wasn’t only emotionally unavailable but also completely in love with his dead wife.

How messed up was that?

Feeling a little sick and a lot sad, Joa picked up her shoes and ran up the first flight of steps to her room. After using the facilities, she looked at herself in the mirror above the basin and stared into her sex-fogged eyes. It was just sex, she told herself, nothing more.

You aren’t working for him, staying with him, looking after his kids on an ongoing basis. You were always going to leave in the morning...

If only the sex hadn’t been so mind-blowing. She wasn’t an idiot; she’d realized, possibly from the first time they met, that they were attracted to each other, that something was bubbling between them. But this was more than a bubble; this was full-blown chemistry.

And if she didn’t leave, if they kept connecting, sleeping together, it would blow up in their faces. Because she’d always feel like the other woman with Ronan.

She wasn’t doing this to herself again; she wasn’t going to look for happiness and fulfillment when there was none to be had.

Thandi might be dead, but Ronan was still very, very married.

Time to go, Jones.And she’d never be back.

Nobody knew how difficult it was to date after losing the love of your life. It was intensely hard. Not only did he feel like he was betraying Thandi’s memory, Ronan felt like he was cracking open the door to a world he’d closed off, a world he no longer had access to.

Even if he hadn’t had sex with Joa—sex, such a tame word for what they’d shared!—he’d still opened to her; their conversation had flowed easily and smoothly. He’d felt completely comfortable with someone other than the person he’d originally planned on spending his life with.

It felt both wrong and right, crazy and desperate. Ronan rubbed his hands over his face, staring at the note Thandi had left on the fridge, days before she went into labor. She’d been grumbling about feeling fat, uncomfortable and horny. She’d been desperate to meet their second son and neither of them imagined, not for one minute, that a half hour after he placed Aron in her arms, she’d be rushed into emergency surgery and be gone.

It was so freaking unfair.

They said that life went on, that he would, at some point, need love, companionship and intimacy. And sex. He’d done without it for so long and had been,was, comfortable in his self-imposed, lonely state because if you didn’t get close to anybody, you could avoid the pain of losing them. Up until tonight, he’d avoided one-night stands, casual flings, brief affairs. He knew that people, his brothers and his friends, didn’t understand, but in his head, he was still married, and any of the above would be cheating on his wife...

Ronan picked his still half-full wine glass and took a large sip.

The problem was that while by his own definition he’d cheated on Thandi, he didn’t feel as guilty as he should. He’d had fast and furious and fantastic sex with a woman who wasn’t his wife and he was...

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