to revise his opinion. “Um...”
“Disappoint Tess?” she repeated.
“Well...who else?” he asked.
Her mouth pinched together into a little mulish shape that he probably shouldn’t point out looked just like a heart, because of the red lipstick. “Who else?” She whirled away from him, whirled back. “You are...are... Words can’t even describe.”
“Well, while you’re coming up with some other manner of communication, can we get a move on?” He didn’t think it was prudent to be here, alone with Polly, when her temper was high and his nerves and libido were acting up. He was a heartbeat away from saying something stupid like “You’re beautiful when you’re furious.”
She was his buddy, not beautiful.
He was glad he stopped himself from saying that, too, because she was staring at him as if she was trying to remember where she’d left her favorite butcher knife.
His feet shifted on the floor, his instincts going on highest alert. “Look, Pol—”
“No, you look,” she said, and then her fingers reached for the little button beneath the bodice of her dress.
He took another hasty step back, but it was too late. Between one breath and another, she’d unfastened the thing, and sure enough, there was nothing else to keep the cherry-red fabric wrapped around her body. She shimmied her shoulders and the fabric dropped, pooling at her feet in a circle. It looked like the petals of a flower, a hibiscus maybe, with Polly’s mostly nude body rising from the center.
Polly’s mostly nude body.
Oh, God. There it was, her small, strong body covered with nothing but those strappy sandals and a pair of flesh-toned lace panties. Her chest moved up and down, drawing his gaze to her small, palm-sized breasts, the pale pink nipples tight. His belly tightened. His cock went hard.
And it hit him then, that he’d had fantasies of this, of her, in the deepest darkest hours of the night. Fantasies that he’d done his best to forget if they flickered across his consciousness during daylight.
In shock, he took another step back. And then another, and another and another until his shoulder blades slammed against the front door. Mind reeling, he stood paralyzed, still struck dumb. Then he tried for coherence. “Polly...” He made a vague gesture. “This...”
You...you’ve staggered me, he thought, his mouth too dry to push out the words. And I don’t really understand what’s happened.
“Just go,” she said, spinning on her heel. “Just go away.”
And he did it, he obeyed her, rushing off without even taking the opportunity to gawk at her fine ass. Because he was convinced he’d make less of a fool of himself at Tess’s party than he’d managed to do in Polly’s bungalow.
* * *
WALKING UP THE FRONT path to his sister’s elegant Spanish-style house in the upper-middle-class suburb of Cheviot Hills, Gage found himself wishing desperately that Skye had agreed to come with him. He’d texted her and asked—since yesterday, they were back in contact, if only via phone so far—but she’d been obliged to meet a repairman at one of the cottages and would arrive later.
Feet planted on the front porch, he hesitated. Stalling, he knew, because once inside he’d be stuck. Damn it, why hadn’t he waited for Skye? Then he would have had a buffer between himself and what he’d face inside. Like that visit he’d made to the mall, he knew the party would deliver another jolt of culture shock. There’d be a shitload of people he’d be expected to small talk with, and he had a bad feeling that celebration or no, his twin was going to corner him. Maybe he shouldn’t have ignored Griff’s calls, but in the days and nights during which he’d holed up at No. 9, waiting for Skye to get over her unnecessary awkwardness and return to him, Gage had found himself unable to sleep. It wasn’t due to that little lap dance he and his pen pal had enjoyed—he was a guy and not so hung up on perfectly natural bodily responses and perfectly pretty partial nudity. It was some residual aftereffects of his near disaster overseas that were to blame.
His brother would have known something was up if he’d heard Gage’s exhausted voice. He still might, even though after the yeah-we’re-good-again text exchange with his pen pal, Gage had managed twelve hours of shut-eye. With all the lights on, of course.
An unfamiliar couple came up behind him, and he was forced through the door, drifting in their wake. A household helper—hired for the occasion, Gage assumed—had let