down to her level and kissed him, and there wasn’t even a millisecond of hesitation on his part. Everything in her said, Yes! She blocked out the ringing of the phone, and the whisper of her own nagging doubts, and concentrated on the softness of his lips, the taste of his mouth, the burn of his beard stubble against her chin. Good Lord, did the man know how to kiss. He was tender, yet demanding. It was addictive, like a drug, and all she could think was more. Her body ached for his touch.
Nathan’s big hands tightened around her hips, and suddenly her feet were off the floor. Her butt landed on the hard surface of the countertop, and her legs instinctively wrapped around his waist.
Closer. She wanted to be closer to him. Needed to feel her breasts crushed against the hard wall of his chest. Nathan cupped her behind and tugged her against him, trapping the stiff ridge of his erection against her stomach. He slid his hands upward, under the hem of her shirt, and his warm palms settled against her bare waist.
Naked. They needed to be naked, right now. She wanted to feel his skin, the hard ridges of muscle that used to be as familiar to her as her own body. She clawed at the tails of his shirt, tugging them free from his pants, and Nathan must have had the same thing in mind, because he was sliding her shirt up…
The doorbell rang, followed by frantic pounding. What the hell?
Nathan broke the kiss and backed away. “I think someone is here.”
No, no, no. This wasn’t fair. Maybe if they ignored it, the person would go away. They stood motionless, waiting. Then the bell rang again, followed by more pounding. At this rate, whoever it was, they were going to wake Max.
“I had better go see who it is,” she told Nathan. So she could kill them.
She straightened her top and darted for the door just as the phone started to ring again. This had better be damned important. She yanked the door open to find Beth standing on her porch, hand poised to knock again, cell phone to her ear. As soon as she snapped her phone closed, the house phone stopped ringing.
“Hi!” she said brightly, muscling her way past Ana into the foyer. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I would stop by.”
In the neighborhood? At eight forty-five on a weeknight? Beth lived twenty minutes away. From the frantic knocking she was obviously a woman on a mission, and Ana knew exactly what that mission had to be.
Beth looked past Ana and her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
Ana turned to see Nathan walking to the door, his tails retucked, clothes neat. To look at him, no one would guess that he’d been about to jump her bones.
“Hello, Beth,” he said.
“Hi, Nathan. I didn’t realize you were here.”
Like hell she didn’t, and Ana could see Nathan’s bullshit meter zip into the red zone.
“My car in the driveway didn’t tip you off?” he asked.
“Oh, is that your car?” She cut a look Ana’s way. “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time.”
That was exactly what she was hoping.
“Actually, I was just leaving,” Nathan said, grabbing his jacket from the coat tree.
Damn it! “Beth, would you excuse us for just a second?”
“Of course,” Beth said, shooting her a look that said, Don’t try anything funny.
Ana followed Nathan onto the porch, shutting the door behind her. “You don’t have to go. I can get rid of her.”
“Is that really what you want?”
Her first instinct was a big fat yes, but something made her pause and consider what he was asking. Was it what she wanted? Thirty seconds ago she was one hundred percent sure. But now that she’d had a minute to calm down, to think rationally, she had to wonder if she was making a mistake. She would sleep with him, and then what? Have another brief affair that would end in a month or so with her heart sliced and diced again? Was that worth a few weeks of really fantastic sex? If he decided to keep seeing Max, she would be stuck with him for a very long time. At least until Max was eighteen. And weren’t things uncomfortable enough already?
“I think we both know that it would only complicate things,” he said, and her heart took a steep dive.
She knew a brush-off when she heard one. What he really meant to say