Page 5 of Stripped Bare

Having left Beaver Bend at the age of thirteen after her parents’ divorce and moved with her mom to New York City, Edwina hadn’t spent much time with her dad over the years, something she’d always been disappointed about. She wanted to have a closer adult relationship with him and this trip had been a lot of fun in spite of Dad’s injury, but Nigel needed her back in New York more than her father actually needed her. It had kept her up the night before, tossing and turning over the right thing to do, but she had come to the decision to cut her trip short and go back to New York.

She wrapped her hair in a towel. “Coming, Dad,” she called, though she doubted he could hear her from the bottom of the stairs. She slipped panties on under her towel and tried to hurry. She did not want him attempting to come up the steps with his leg in a cast, and knowing him, he just might try it.

Preoccupied with how she was going to tell her father she needed to leave in a few days, earlier than planned, she came into the main room of the small apartment.

And screamed.

There was a man standing just inside of the open door.

“Uh, hi. Is Eddie here?” he asked, looking as startled as she felt.

It was Sullivan O’Toole. Insanely gorgeous, charming as hell, and the man responsible for breaking her nose in the sixth grade with a high stick that had gotten him ejected from a tournament hockey game.

He was self-assured, flippant, and determined to break some kind of world record for one-night stands.

According to gossip around Beaver Bend, anyway.

In grade school, she’d had a gigantic crush on him and he’d seen her as nothing more than a tomboy, another dude on the hockey team. Which wasn’t totally inaccurate, given her love of wearing track suits from the boy’s department and oversized pro jerseys in a futile attempt to minimize her height and her thin frame, but it had still hurt her very tender teenage heart.

She had always been shy and painfully self-conscious about her looks and while her mother wanted her to try figure skating, even before she’d shot up to almost six feet tall, the idea of being out there alone on the ice with all eyes on her had made Edwina paralyzed with fear. Hockey had been fun, because she was part of a team and covered in gear. But Sullivan had always made her feel vulnerable, through no fault of his. As far as she knew, he’d never known about her crush, and he’d certainly never teased her about her height like some of her other classmates.

“Why do you ask?” she asked cautiously. She studied the suitcase on the floor next to him and felt a tremor of alarm. Why did he have a suitcase?

Sullivan had burned down his house a few days earlier in what the locals were referring to as Pantygate. Apparently, rumor had it his partner’s panties had gone up in flames when tossed over a lit candle in theheatof the moment, pun intended.

There were those who found it hilarious, those who found it scandalous, and then there was her.

Edwina didn’t care what or who Sullivan O’Toole did, as long as it had nothing to do with him having a suitcase in her personal space.

Because she still found him attractive, and seeing him thrust her back in time to when she’d been a gangly, stammering teen, which frankly, she never wanted to feel like ever again. She wouldn’t take ten million dollars to go back and be her thirteen-year-old self again, even for a single day.

“Eddie said I could stay here,” Sullivan informed her.

“He did what?” she asked, astonished. “When?”

“Starting today.” Sullivan looked at her towel, lingering a little too long, before quickly looking back up to meet her gaze. “Or did you mean when did he tell me? That was two days ago. But I didn’t realize the apartment was already occupied.” He grinned. “It’s not a problem, though. I’ve always wanted a roommate.”

She clutched the knot on her towel, suddenly very aware of how little she was wearing. And why did he still have the ability to make her forget how to speak? She shouldn’t find that crooked grin as disarming and adorable as she did. But undeniably, it threw her back to those awkward middle school years, end of story.

Because he was still very attractive. The years had only chiseled his facial features, defined and hardened his arms, broadened his shoulders. He had blue eyes, dark hair, and dimples that were probably responsible for half the women in Beaver Bend getting naked with him.

Naked.

An image of Sullivan naked popped unbidden into her head. Not that she knew what he looked like without clothes, but she had an active imagination that suddenly had him doing a Magic Mike routine for an audience of just her. Panicked that such a dangerous and inappropriate thought had even entered her mind, given that she had a boyfriend, Edwina felt her cheeks heat up.

“You can’t stay here,” she told him firmly, finding her voice. “I’m staying here.”

“And who are you, exactly?” he asked. “You knew my name when I saw you a few weeks ago trying to park your car, but you refused to give me your name. Which doesn’t seem fair to me.” His dimples flashed at her.

Shehadrefused to give her name. She had probably sounded incredibly rude, but it was a defense mechanism. When she felt uncomfortable, she leaned on sarcasm followed immediately by retreating from the situation as quickly as possible. It was the only thing that had gotten her through the discomfort of being the Minnesota hick in a posh New York City high school after her mother married George, her stepfather.

When she’d seen Sullivan when she’d first arrived back in Beaver Bend, it had embarrassed her that he was so entertained by her humiliating attempt to parallel park her grandmother’s enormous Oldsmobile, and the fact that he didn’t recognize her at all. They’d spentyearsplaying hockey together.

“I’m Eddie.”

He looked at her blankly. “I talked to Eddie. He’s a man, older, definitely not you. He did some remodeling on my bar a few years back. Eddie Hunt. Nice guy.”

The towel on her head was starting to slip, so she reached up and pulled it down, shaking out her hair. She used the second towel to reinforce her grip on the first one, feeling safer with a double cotton barrier between her and Sullivan. “Eddie is my father, Sullivan. I’m Edwina Hunt, but everyone called me Eddie as a kid. I used to skate with you at Winterhaven ice rink.”

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