Pushing His Luck - Rhyannon Byrd

Chapter One

Late March

No matter how you looked at it, there was no getting around the sad fact that the guy was tall, dark and painfully gorgeous.

As in one of the best-looking men she’d ever seen.

Standing beside the roaring bonfire her cousin Chris had made on the beautiful stretch of beach in front of the condominium complex where they lived, Karin Riley tried not to notice how the flickering flames played over the rugged contours of Sean Cartwright’s handsome face and ripped, masculine body.

God, I can’t believe I actually kissed him.

Not Sean. No, he was taken, and he and his girlfriend, Natalie, had become good friends of hers since they’d started dating in the fall of last year. It was the sportswriter’s older brother—who looked so much like him it was uncanny—that she’d been crushing on for months…and then disastrously played tonsil hockey with two weeks ago. The one and only Paul Cartwright. Gorgeous San Diego PD homicide detective. A brave, heroic alpha male who the department put in front of the TV cameras as often as they could, but who also just so happened to be a complete and total ass.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Karin instantly cringed at the use of the F-word, even in her head. She had a seven-year-old son who repeated everything he heard, which meant she was constantly having to monitor her language. Not an easy thing to do, when the three-year anniversary of her divorce to the “douchebag from hell”—a.k.a. her ex—was fast approaching. It was all she’d been able to think about, until two weeks ago when Jase, her son, had been at her parents’ house for the night, same as he was now, and she’d accepted an invitation to Chris and Sophie’s first Friday-night bonfire.

She and her cousin had both bought condos in the small, upscale complex a few years ago, after her divorce, and not long after their grandfather had passed away and graciously left them some money. She was so grateful to have Chris around, and so was Jase. He worshipped his Uncle Chris, who was always taking him down to the beach to kick around a soccer ball or giving him swimming lessons in the pool, and it’d been great to see her little boy have such a positive male influence in his life. Especially since his dad, Ben, who was nine years older than Karin, had celebrated his midlife crisis by fucking his twenty-year-old receptionist…and then shacking up with her.

She wouldn’t give up her precious baby boy for anything in the world, but Karin had long since realized that the best thing she could have done was break things off with Ben the moment she got pregnant, doing the single mom thing from the beginning. Marrying the jackass had been the worst mistake of her life.

Kissing Paul Cartwright and agreeing to go on a date with the gorgeous bastard had apparently been a close second.

There were about twenty people gathered on the beach for the get-together, many of them ones she recognized as people who either worked with Sophie and Chris, or were Chris’s surfing buddies. She forced a smile onto her lips when she spotted Sophie heading over to her. Soph was a beautiful, petite brunette scientist who worked at the research institute where Chris was the Head of Security, and the two had only just started dating last year, but were already madly in love and engaged. Chris was one of the best men Karin had ever known, and she couldn’t have been happier for him. Plus, she got an awesome friend in Sophie.

“Hey, K. Love the sweater,” Sophie said, her fair cheeks flushed from the warmth of the fire despite the cool breeze blowing in off the nearby Pacific. Though the blush on Sophie’s cheeks could have also been from the kiss Chris had just planted on her lips before she’d headed over to Karin. “It looks amazing on you.”

“Thanks, Soph. I found it at Peyton’s boutique on Tuesday.” Peyton Mitchell was Sean and Paul’s younger half-sister, and she owned a gorgeous little boutique in La Jolla, not far from the condominium complex where Karin lived. The sweater was a long, cashmere, charcoal gray cardigan, and Karin had fallen in love with it the second she saw it.

“It was a great find. You look like a movie heroine, with the wind whipping it around your legs and your long hair flowing over your shoulders.” Sophie’s concerned gaze studied her expression, searching for proof that she was

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