If We Never Met (Whisper Lake #5) - Barbara Freethy Page 0,52
This whole situation is my fault."
"I can't argue with that."
"I never wanted Nikki to hurt you. I can't believe she went after you the way she did."
"I'm shocked, too."
"I had no idea she was going to do this. I hope you believe me."
"I believe you."
Relief flooded his gaze. Then he stepped forward and put his arms around her.
She shouldn't have gone into his embrace, but she did. She slipped her arms around his back, feeling powerful muscles under his thin T-shirt. She wanted to explore those muscles, and that was just the starting point of what she wanted. She told herself to get a grip. But her body was fighting her brain.
He tilted her face to his. She leaned into the kiss, closing her eyes, savoring the deliciously hot taste of his mouth. She told herself it was just for a second—one kiss. If she was going to get torched online for breaking him and his girlfriend up, didn't she deserve this moment of madness? That's all it would be. All it could be.
But he kissed so damn good. His mouth, her mouth—she didn't know where she ended and he began. She didn't know how long she could go without breathing, but she needed him more than she needed air.
And then her phone began to buzz and vibrate in her pocket. She broke away with a little gasp as reality brought her back down to earth.
She pulled out her phone and found enough breath to say, "Hello?"
"This is Arlington Appliance," a man said. "We'll be there in ten minutes."
"Okay. I'm here." She looked up from the phone and into Dante's beautiful blue eyes that were still sparking with desire.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"A stove is going to be delivered here in ten minutes."
"Right." He ran a hand through his hair. "Your mom said something about a delivery."
"Probably a timely interruption."
"I was thinking it was very untimely."
Her body was screaming yes in agreement, but her brain was finally taking over. "Maybe not. This has gotten really complicated."
"It was very simple a minute ago."
"That was a minute ago."
"And the minute is over," he said dryly.
"Yes." She tucked her hair behind her ears and tried not to think about kissing him again. She needed to focus on all the problems that came with him, not all the heat. "There were photographers waiting in the parking lot when I left the store today."
He frowned. "What happened?"
"They were taking photos and shooting questions at me so fast I didn't have time to answer, not that I wanted to."
"What did they ask you?"
"If I broke you and Nikki up. When we first had sex. Whether you were going to play again. How I felt about betraying my friend."
"I'm sorry you had to deal with that."
"I've never faced that kind of intense scrutiny before. I haven't read what Nikki posted, but Hannah told me about it, and it sounds like she blamed everything about your breakup on me."
"I haven't read the posts either, but that's the report I got from my agent, my brother, and my publicist."
"Maybe I should have said something to those reporters."
"No. They would have spun your words." He gave her a grim look. "I shouldn't have broken up with Nikki until I left here. I just didn't want her hanging around, and she wasn't going to go if I wasn't brutally blunt. I tried to tell her before that we needed to take a break, but she wouldn't hear me."
"Because she was more into it than you were."
"I don't know if that's true."
"Come on, Dante, you can't keep playing it down. You've said all along that she's not your girlfriend, that it's not serious, but she's acting like she was your girlfriend, and you were serious. You're either not being honest with me or you're not being honest with yourself."
"You're wrong, Keira. I am being honest. It's Nikki who is making our relationship into something it wasn't. We met in February. A month later, I was off to spring training and then the season. We saw each other sporadically. She came to Denver right before I got the surgery, but she couldn't stand being in the hospital. She didn't even wait until the surgery was over to leave. I didn’t see her for six weeks, until she showed up here."
She had to admit it didn't sound like that serious of a relationship. "I can't believe she left before your surgery was over. That was cold. Were you completely alone?"