Page 30 of His First Baby Rodeo

“He’s my brother. He’s not going to know about this.”

“He’s going to know if you and I fall out over it.”

She got to her feet and pulled him up too, wrapping her arms around his waist, holding him close. He closed his eyes and breathed her in, wanting nothing more than to freeze time in this moment. This moment before they had done anything they might regret, when everything still seemed possible.

“We won’t fall out,” she said. “It isn’t like that.”

“I want you so bad,” he confessed. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not going to hurt me.”

“I don’t want Jeff coming after me because you got your heart broken.”

El chuckled. “There’s an image. I think you could probably take him, you know.”

“Right. But I don’t want this ending with me cleaning Jeff’s clock. He’s still my friend.”

“Mac, don’t worry.” El tightened her embrace, but she leaned back a little so that she could look up into his eyes. “It’s not going to end badly. You’re worried I’m going to fall for you, and that you’re going to break my heart. Isn’t that about right?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, give me some credit, all right? I’m not a little girl anymore.” She smiled. “I can look after my own heart. I can take care of myself. I’m not going to fall apart. But Iamgoing to lose my mind if we don’t get you out of those clothes.”

“You really want this.”

“I reallyreallydo.”

“And tomorrow morning we’ll be—?”

“We’ll be the same as we are today,” she said. “We’ll be friends. You’ll be my boss. It doesn’t change anything. But we deserve to get this satisfaction. You know it’s going to be so good, right? For both of us. We deserve that.”

“Oh, God,” he murmured.

“Just for one night, let’s stop worrying about it. Have you been holding back as much as I have?”

“I’ve been driving myself insane,” Mac admitted. “I’ve been wanting you since you got here, and just fighting to keep my hands to myself.”

“Let go,” she breathed. “Just for tonight.”

She took his hands in hers, and a bolt of sheer pleasure shot through him at her touch.

And he knew in that moment that he was going to give in to the desire that had driven him from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Jeff be damned, there had never been a chance of this going any other way.

El was right. She could be trusted to manage her own feelings about the situation. If she said she was capable of looking after her own heart, the decent thing to do was to believe her.

His last defenses crumbled. He grabbed her and kissed her, deeply and passionately.

He had overwhelmed her for a moment — he could tell by the pause in her energy — but then she was kissing him back fiercely, and the only thing that mattered was their hands and their bodies, exploring one another, moving in tandem.

He broke away from her and searched her gaze. Her eyes were hungry, mirroring the way he felt. “Bedroom?”

“Yours?”

He nodded. “My bed is bigger.”

He felt more than saw her shyness. She hung back, perhaps hesitant at the idea of entering the one room of the house she’d never been in.

Mac grinned. “Getting cold feet now?”

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