The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,46

been a highlight, but Mackenzie had given him some things to think about, some new perspectives. She’d challenged him and made him laugh and asked all the right questions.

When he’d come back into the living room with dessert to find her dozing by the fire, there had been that moment when she opened her eyes and looked at him and he could have sworn he’d seen desire in her eyes....

But apparently he knew dick about desire.

He was going to have to apologize to her. Preferably tomorrow, before things got too weird between them. She probably wouldn’t be signing up for dinner again anytime soon, but he would kick himself if he’d drawn a line through their burgeoning friendship with his ham-fisted attempt at seduction. Their normal lives might be a thousand miles apart, but she was the most interesting woman—the most interesting person—he’d met in a long time.

Spitting and rinsing, he gave his reflection one last disgusted glare before heading to the bedroom. Strudel looked at him from beneath her eyebrows as he got beneath the covers.

“Yeah, I know. I screwed up.”

Strudel closed her eyes and rested her chin on his shin. He crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling and wondered how a person apologized for an unwanted, unsolicited kiss. On bended knee? Matter-of-factly? Wryly?

It would be great to be able to pull off wryly, but luck hadn’t exactly been running his way lately.

He closed his eyes. He would fix things with Mackenzie tomorrow. If it killed him.

And if he couldn’t... Well, he would rue the day his libido ruined a friendship that already felt pretty damn unique.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MACKENZIE SPENT a good hour mulling over her own ridiculousness after she got home, trying to understand herself.

Oliver had kissed her. He’d looked into her eyes and said her name as though it was a mystery and a wonder to him, and then he’d laid his mouth against hers and kissed her. It had been a good kiss, too, full of potential and promise.

And she had backed off so quickly she’d smacked her head against the door.

She’d never backed away from anything in her life. She was a grab-life-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck kind of woman. A carpe diem kind of woman. And she liked sex. Not that she’d had much opportunity to enjoy it lately, all her energies having been focused on her recovery, but that was beside the point. She also liked Oliver. A lot.

She’d spent half the evening ogling his thighs and admiring his handsome face and generally basking in his reflected glory. She’d dressed nicely for him and worried about her limp hair and lack of makeup. Yet when he kissed her she’d been so overwhelmed by the experience that her only panicky thought had been to escape.

She winced as she pulled on her pajamas, thinking about how he must be feeling right now. God, she was such an ass-hat.

She climbed into bed and punched her pillow a few times. She needed to apologize to him, of course. Somehow she would have to make it clear to him that her out-of-proportion reaction was all about her and had nothing to do with him. She’d have to explain that under normal circumstances she would have been all over what he was offering.

The problem was, she was having trouble locating normal right at the moment. Her career was in limbo, her body a work in progress. She’d lost sight of so many of the things that used to be important to her, that used to define her. Maybe that was why she’d reacted so strongly. Maybe some deep, wise part of her brain had understood that she had enough on her plate right now without helping herself to a big slice of Oliver, as well. Maybe that was what her precipitous retreat had been about.

Maybe.

Not entirely convinced, she continued to chew on the subject until her tired brain finally loosened its grip and allowed her to slip into sleep.

She woke several hours later feeling hot and oddly unsettled. She flipped her pillow in search of the cool underside, remnants from her dreams licking at the edges of her mind.

A warm bed. A hot body. A man whispering in her ear. The insistent, wet pull of a mouth at her breasts. The delicate, questing slide of a hand between her legs...

Desire throbbed low in her belly. She realized with drowsy surprise that she was wet with need, her nipples hard against the soft fabric of her pajamas. She may have