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His family. “Is he going to help?” she asked. “Your brother,
I mean?”

“Of course. He’ll be by in the morning. We’ll go to your
house in force.”

Kim had become a lean silhouette at the foot of the bed. It
was easier to see his white shirt than his face. The room smelled of smoke and
hot wax. Nothing about this night seemed real except for the moments Kim had
had his arms around her.

His silhouette disappeared behind the loveseat where he
presumably tried to arrange his long frame for the night. Earlier, she’d been
relieved to have his ear, his shoulder, his help. Now she was relieved he was
saving her from herself. If he’d continued kissing her, she’d be wrapped around
him. And then where would they be? Her more attached than ever—unless she
decided he was a pig after all, going for a sexual opportunity he’d promised
not to pursue.

Thanks to his gallantry, they’d get a good night’s rest
instead. Imagine—a man with strength of character, a man with more strength
than her.

“Thank you, Kim,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

She lay on her back in his bed, looking at the odd shadows
on the exposed industrial works in the ceiling. “Tell me about him? Kerry?”

“Family man, generous guy. You’ll love him. Everyone does.”

“It’s nice to hear you say that, but I thought you might
help me understand how he got on your bad side. I mean, it’s just us here, in
the dark. You can be honest.”

Fabric rustled beyond the foot of the bed as Kim made
another, unseen adjustment. “Kerry always knew he’d take over his father’s
business. He likes certainty. He likes plans to be checked and double-checked.
So it made him nuts to see me graduate high school without having diagrammed a
life for myself.

“He said if I’d go to college, he’d pay for it.”

Generous was putting it mildly. And Isabelle couldn’t see
the problem with a man trying to help his kid brother prepare for the future.
But she’d asked for Kim’s confidence and it seemed rude to contradict him.

“After the first semester, he told me my grades had failed
to impress him and started checking up on me, even calling my girlfriend to see
how much I’d been studying. After the second, he called a summit to discuss my
major and draw up plans for improving my academics in the fall.”

Well, calling the girlfriend was intrusive. She’d give him
that much.

“What happened?” Isabelle asked.

Kim’s laugh was harsh and humorless. “I told him to keep his
money. Dropped out. Apprenticed as a plumber, became his worst nightmare.”

Time to turn the mood to something more restful. “His worst
nightmare is to have a plumber in the family? Strikes me as a very good thing.”
She smiled as she said it. He wouldn’t be able to see it, but it should color
her voice.

“Dropout, blue collar, working stiff.” His clipped words
defined the sharp line he drew between himself and his brother.

“I’m a working-stiff dropout too, if it helps,” she said,
then wondered why she had. Though it was technically true, she never thought of
herself in those terms.

“And Kerry didn’t need to hover like that,” she added. “I
mean, he’s not your father. And if you didn’t
ask
for his help…”

“Exactly!”

She could hear his relief at being validated. What would it
be like to live in the shadow of a successful older sibling, subject to his
well-meaning charity? She liked gifts as well as the next person, but she had
her pride.

“Thank you again for calling him. I hope you don’t have
cause to regret it.”

“Really. Don’t worry about it. I hope it helps.”

Minutes passed in silence and lightning continued to bathe
the room with staccato blasts of blue-white light. Kim had said he’d slept in
smaller tents. Isabelle hadn’t slept in a tent since her Girl Scout days in
middle school. It had been fun, then. Maybe it could be fun again, with the
right company. Of course, Kim probably camped way high up on mountains or
something.

More minutes passed without sleep. Occasional sounds at the
end of the bed convinced her Kim wasn’t sleeping either. Well, how could he,
tall as he was?

“Kim?”

“Yes?”

Damn. She was right. Isabelle sat up but still couldn’t see over
the back of the loveseat, couldn’t see him. “Sleep in the bed,” she said. She
heard him draw breath to argue and overrode him. “I’m not sleeping and I won’t
sleep as long as I know you’re not sleeping.”

“What?”

“Get in the bed. Please.” She blushed at her word choice,
but Kim wouldn’t be able to see that in the dark. His silhouette appeared at
last. He materialized into white muscle shirt on shadowed flesh and dark,
indistinct, pants-covered legs. She pulled back the covers in invitation. He
slipped in.

Electricity slid through her body as if the bedding had
carried a charge from the friction of his body onto the sheet. Then, as the
covers settled over them, she could smell him, a subtle scent that made her
think about last night—made her want to taste his skin.

Maybe asking him to bed had been a bad idea.

No. She could do this. They were grown-ups, both of them
clothed, and it was a big bed. No reason why flesh should ever touch flesh.
“There,” she said, “now we can both sleep.” Her voice sounded so sure, and yet
she turned her back to him and faced the window to minimize the chances of
catching his scent again. She only had so much willpower.

“Good night, Isabelle,” Kim said.

“Good night, Kim.”

She woke with her head on his chest, her arm draped possessively
over his warm body. The storm seemed to have ended. It was still very dark.

It wasn’t like her to snuggle in her sleep. If she had
gotten all the touching her body had wanted before going to bed, she likely
would have left him alone. As it was, she clearly couldn’t trust herself to
share a bed with Kim Martin.

She lifted her head from the warm softness of his shirt and
eased away from the hard whipcord body beneath it. When she saw the way shadows
pooled in the architectural perfection of his face, she nearly lost her
resolve, but somehow, she managed to slink from the bed without waking him and
reorient herself in the relative safety of the loveseat. With the chenille
afghan to make it feel cozy, it wasn’t bad at all. Except for not having a
sexy, exciting man in it, a man who had every advantage here tonight and yet
wasn’t pressing any of them.

Kim could be relationship material after all if they made it
to morning with their clothes on. And if there were no smarmy platitudes, like
the kind Steven had used, and Daniel before him, she’d know Kim deserved
something better than what he’d seen from her. A little of her heart. A helping
of trust to go along with her lust.

She only had to make it until morning.

* * * * *

Kim woke alone, which made it easier to resist rolling over
and taking Isabelle into his arms and kissing her until she agreed to stay a
week, which was the first thing that had entered his head on waking. Seemed
likely she was in the bathroom. He debated staying where he was until she was through
in there—maybe she would come back to bed—and cashed out his last willpower
chit by getting to his feet instead. He was nearly to the kitchen when he
realized Isabelle hadn’t been in the bathroom. She was asleep on the loveseat.

Had he done something to her last night, something he didn’t
remember? He hoped not. He needed to have kept that promise if he were going to
be someone she could believe in.

Someone she could love.

The idea scared him a little less in the morning light, a
welcome surprise. It didn’t hurt that Isabelle looked both safe and
comfortable. Well, safe in the sense she hadn’t had to stay in her
recently-broken-into home. With her legs bared all the way up to rich,
plum-colored panties he wouldn’t be seeing if the orange t-shirt hadn’t hiked
up and the blanket hadn’t fallen to the floor, she didn’t look safe from him.
She looked curvy and soft and warm in the morning light.

And comfortable. And asleep. He picked up the afghan and
draped it over her. He must have had one more willpower chit than he’d thought.

He used the bathroom, then started some coffee. He didn’t
have a thing in the refrigerator that could count as breakfast food. Leftover
delivery, a jar of salsa, some beer, some bottled water and a bottle of stuffed
olives left by a past girlfriend who’d been on a martini kick. Most mornings,
he’d have a power bar and a banana and call it done. Today he didn’t even have
any bananas. He hadn’t expected to have Isabelle here. He should run out and
get them something, but she woke before he found the will to leave.

Remembering how he’d startled her last night in the lobby,
Kim let her be as she sat up and got her bearings. When she seemed to both see
and focus on him leaning against the kitchen counter, he said, “Good morning, beautiful.”

She ran a hand through her hair and laughed. She did a
double take at the windows. “Hey, it stopped raining.”

She stood up, a corner of the afghan in either hand. As she
faced the window, she treated him to one of her remarkable stretches, arching
her back, her hands slowly rising. The afghan rose too, preventing Kim from
seeing whether the t-shirt was exposing additional creamy flesh, but her
silhouette was easy to see through the blanket, backlit by the window. Isabelle
Caine welcomed the day with arms outstretched and head thrown back in a giant
yawn, a lioness ready for a day of hunting. Magnificent. He hoped to see her
bring down the jackass who seemed bent on making her life hell, maybe even help
if she’d let him.

“Is that coffee?”

While he was dreaming, she’d come nearer. Deliciously
nearer, and without the afghan to hide her still very bare legs. “Yes,” he
said. He even managed to get out a couple of clean cups. “If you need cream,
you’ll have to give me a minute to run to the mechanics shop next door. If
we’re lucky, they might even have donuts I could steal.”

“It smells great,” she said, sounding happily muzzy with
sleep. It made her entirely too sexy, especially wearing that half-smile as she
inhaled deeply and began to weave drunkenly, her muscles not yet fully
coordinated. She grabbed at his shirt for support, fell against him and sighed.

He couldn’t make himself push her away, but until he was
sure she was operating on her own, he couldn’t cuddle, either. So he reached
over and around her to pick up and pour the coffee, letting her continue to
lean against him.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the cup he offered.

For a time, they stood hip to hip at the kitchen counter,
blowing on hot coffee and sipping. Easy. Right. Comfortable. But it was only an
illusion with seductively orange breasts. They hadn’t even slept side by side,
and he needed to know more about that. “You were on the couch.”

“Mmm.”

How to ask this. “I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t a bad host, was
I?”

She looked at him quite seriously, frowning. He started to
sweat.

Her mouth formed an “O” and her forehead cleared. “You’ve
been a wonderful host and a perfect gentleman.”

He relaxed.

She kissed him.

He tensed, confused and more than a little concerned. He was
officially out of willpower. If she meant this as an “I’m so glad we’re
friends” kind of kiss, he was screwed.

She was frowning again. “And you’ve changed your mind?” she
asked.

“About what, Isabelle?”

“Wanting to date.”

“I have not changed my mind. I haven’t even aired it out on
a chair overnight.”

She snorted. She wrapped her arms around him and rubbed her
cheek against his chest. It might not be as recognizably erotic as her
stretching against him in bed the other night had been, but he wasn’t just
coming off the best sex of his life here, so its rating got a lift, so to
speak—which she had to recognize, given the way she was pressing against him.

So he was astonished to hear himself say, “I’m confused. You
said you’d changed your mind. About sleeping with me.” Since when had he become
Willpower Man?

“I did? Oh, I did. Can I change my mind again?”

Did that mean yes or no? It was hard to think with her this
near. “How ‘bout I just shut up?” He slid his fingers into her hair and brushed
his thumb over her jaw.

“Good idea.” She seemed to find his mouth interesting. She
put down her coffee and took his away from him. She continued to watch his
mouth as her fingers made a tickly trail from the hollow of his throat to the
“V” of his undershirt. She tugged until he could no more have resisted kissing
her than he could defy gravity.

Luckily, that seemed to be exactly what she wanted.

He took her in his arms. He took her to bed. He kissed her
until she squirmed and rolled and tried to get away. He learned he could take
one of her delicate ears entirely into his mouth and that it made her laugh. He
learned she didn’t like him to touch her breasts, but loved to have his mouth
on her. He learned his fingers were far more welcome in the soft, molten folds
between her legs. He learned a wider range of the sounds of her ecstasy and
hearing them only sharpened his hunger to hear more.

And when at last he was buried deep in her body, embraced by
the liquid heat of her, he learned his own ecstasy seemed to have no limits.
That Isabelle Caine could take him on an unimaginably scenic climb that made
him want to weep even as he threw himself against her in a primitive,
bone-crushing dance.

He lay beside her, drenched, spent, euphoric. Wishing he
never had to close his eyes so he wouldn’t miss a second of her special beauty
in the morning light.

Damn.

So this was love.

Isabelle tingled as if her blood were laughing, dancing,
getting gloriously, messily drunk. Kim lay just barely beside her, the two of
them still pressed together, both still so heated and slick it was hard to say
where her skin ended and his began.

Mere moments earlier, it had been impossible.

Kim was unquestionably the most fun she’d ever had in bed.
Imaginative, silly, thorough—very thorough—and infectious in his enthusiasm.
And yet, when her head lolled his direction and she saw the way he was looking
at her, laughter was the farthest thing from her mind. It wasn’t silly, that
look. Wistful, maybe. Tired, probably. Tender? Tender seemed a fair choice for
the depth and stillness in his beautiful, ringed eyes.

Fair or not, it caught in her chest and made her heart skip
a beat. She wanted nothing more than to lie here and have him look at her like
that all day. She kissed his calloused palm with as much warmth as she could
spare without choking on emotion. He smelled like her, tasted like her. He
could probably say the same of her.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, touching her lips with
rough fingertips.

“How amazing it is that two people as different as we are
can lose our boundaries so completely.”

“Are we so different, Isabelle?”

She laughed at the idea they might be the same, she and a
man who danced on walls, taught kids to take on risky adventures and lived in a
condo with no room to entertain friends or even a real kitchen.

Smiling softly, likely a sign he would soon drop off to
sleep, he said, “I’ll prove it. We’ll go slacklining. It’ll make you crazy, and
I kind of suck at it, but you’ll get a taste of why I love climbing. We’ll get
dirty in the great outdoors. Laugh ‘til it hurts. And guaranteed, no heights.”

“Sounds horrible,” she said, grinning. “It’s a date.”

“At last, a date!” He glanced heavenward as if in thanks and
pulled her close for a lingering kiss.

At last, a good guy. A nice, unbelievably sexy,
good
guy.

And, mmm, so accommodating.

A brisk knock at the door pierced their bubble of bliss. Kim
frowned. The knock repeated. Realization came over his face and he said a word
she’d not heard him use before. He rolled to look at his bedside clock and said
it again.

He leapt out of bed. “It’s Kerry,” he said. He disappeared
behind the curving concrete wall and reappeared, holding her suit on its
hanger. She stood up on the bed and took it from him. “I am so sorry, Isabelle.
I should have kept track of time. Please forgive me.”

She held out her free hand and he helped her step down off
the bed. The knocking sounded again. She kissed him. “I thought you were
shutting up?” Halfway to the bathroom, she stepped on something and dropped the
hanger, which sort of spoiled her exit. When she bent down to pick it up, she
found she’d stepped on a plastic bag. She recognized it as the one Kim had had
in his hand yesterday.

More knocking.

“Hang on, Kerry,” Kim yelled. He was pulling on his pants.
Isabelle picked up the bag rather than leave it for someone else to step on,
taking it into the bathroom and closing the door. She heard most of the
conversation that followed as she tried to pull herself together.

“Kim.”

“Kerry.”

“I thought you said this was important.”

“It is. I’m sorry.”

“What the hell—Kim! Another client?” He’d seen the bed,
obviously.

“It’s not like that, Kerry.”

“Yeah, you told me. You’re not dating.”

Ouch. Wait. Another? Just how many women?

Their voices dropped—Kim must have told his brother she was
just on the other side of the door. Isabelle zipped and buttoned and fluffed as
quickly as she could. She’d need lots more time and supplies to have a prayer
of looking like anything other than a woman who had recently had a peak sexual
experience.

Which was unfortunately what she was. It hadn’t seemed
unfortunate sixty seconds earlier.

“Go ahead, Kerry,” she heard Kim say as she reached for the
bathroom door. “Explain to me how I’m wasting my life.” The brothers’
conversation, for all it having been briefly quiet, had apparently not become
any less heated. “Explain how it’s better to build something slowly and
methodically than take a risk. Far better to be hemmed in by your obsessive
need for certainty than dare to trust yourself—choose something with the potential
to be amazing.”

She didn’t want to walk into the middle of this.

How she wished for some lipstick or a little cologne to give
her an extra shot of confidence in front of Kim and his pushy brother. She
didn’t. She splashed water on her face and knocked the damn plastic bag back to
the floor while reaching blindly for a towel.

As she patted her face dry, she realized what Kim had said.
Obsessive about certainty. Unwilling to trust.

Not said,
hurled
. As if they were insults. Faults.

But then anyone who could hang fifty feet in the air with
nothing but a thin nylon rope between himself and certain harm
would
have a different ideas about trust.

And just like that, her doubts came back to swamp her.

Are we so different, Isabelle?

Her body swam with an unhappy mix of disappointment,
self-recrimination for getting attached and hormones. She got on her knees to
collect the contents of the bag she’d spilled—real estate leaflets, mortgage
applications, a bunch of pictures of houses printed on a realtor’s stationery,
with red circled numbers beside them. That was all fine. But then she found the
street map with corresponding red-circled numbers.

The Austin street map, two hundred miles from here. He was
buying a house in Austin?

He hadn’t thought to mention it—the man who’d gotten pissy
at learning Steven had threatened her? The man who just now had proposed their
next date, as if there were all the time in the world? Or did he merely assume
she’d be okay with a long-distance arrangement?

Daniel’s betrayal had made good and sure she’d never be okay
with a long-distance arrangement.

As she was once again about to open the door, this time to
confront Kim, Kerry said, “I should have taken my time getting here. Another
day and maybe you’d have moved on—found another girl with another set of
problems to make you feel special.”

Another girl with another…

Another client. Another waitress. Another nubile young
climber.

Another day to move on.

Of all the—

Forget the earth-shaking sex. The world-altering kisses. His
jokes and smiles and way of putting her at ease. Forget even the fact she’d had
to discover his moving plans by accident. She would not be just another in an
apparently endless line of women.

Girls.

Isabelle tore open the bathroom door, all but spitting, just
in time to see Kim’s fist connect with his brother’s jaw. She assumed it was
Kim’s brother. Looked nothing like him. This other man had darker hair,
including a gray-streaked beard, bonier build, taller, and wore a three-piece
suit and tie.

Isabelle didn’t care.

“Moving on, Kim Martin?” she said, her voice rising. “Moving
on? When were you going to tell me?”

His eyes looked a little wild. “It’s not like that,
Isabelle.”

“No,” she said, “it’s like that.” She pointed at the
sex-induced wreckage of his bed. “And a broken desk. And a waitress who will
forever be grateful for your help.” Other girls. Other clients, even. She knew
it. She knew it all along.

“Son of a bitch,” she said. She opened the front door. “Go
and help lots of girls in Austin. Whoop it up. Break all the furniture. Do it
with my blessing, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, Kim
Martin, it’s the importance of letting go. Consider yourself let.”

She slammed the door behind her.

* * * * *

Kim didn’t know where to look, what to do with the outrage
boiling up inside him. Leave it to Kerry to push his buttons, dredging up the
past, while Kim was still getting used to the idea of a very different future.
His gaze darted between the still-vibrating door and his now-recovered brother.

Isabelle was gone. He couldn’t let that happen. He broke for
the door. Kerry grabbed him on the way past. Only the grip on Kim’s arm
prevented another not-so-brotherly punch. Kim wasn’t keen to follow up on the
first such punch in nearly ten years, but Kerry was asking for it.

“Get off me, man,” Kim warned.

“Let her go.”

Kim followed his arm, shoving his shoulder against his
brother, surprising Kerry into releasing his grip.

“Kim, don’t,” Kerry said. He flattened himself against the
front door as if daring Kim to go through him. “She’s pissed, you’re
pissed—give her some space. I’ve been married fifteen years. Trust me on this
one.”

“Trust you? You’re the one that set her off. Get out of my
way.” Kim grabbed the lapels of Kerry’s suit coat to physically move him.

Kerry’s hands covered his, probably trying to spare the nice
fabric getting wrinkled. Too late for that. “Sounded to me like it was more
about a waitress than anything I said.”

“Mind your own business.” Kim tore open the door and ran out
into the breezeway. The elevator would take too long. He turned toward the
stairs. Maybe he could catch her before she left the garage.

“If you love her enough to chase her, love her enough to
help her,” Kerry shouted after him. “Love her enough to appraise the ring.” Kim
paused, his hand on the doorknob of the stairwell door.

“You do love her, then,” Kerry said.

Kim kicked the metal door. His feet were bare, which only
proved he hadn’t been thinking straight. It hurt like only steel doors could.
He cursed.

“Congratulations, Kim. Now listen to me. She has a problem
you can fix. Fix it. Then talk to her.”

Pain lava’d through his toes. Kerry had a point. Isabelle
was still in trouble. And now she was going home to face trouble alone. He
couldn’t let that happen, even if she pushed him from her life forever after—a
prospect that hurt more than his foot. He pounded the door with the side of his
fist, but the pain wasn’t enough to give his heart any real company. “Fifteen
years, huh?” Kim said.

“Sixteen right after your birthday, should you trouble
yourself to send champagne.”

“Don’t push it,” he grumbled.

“Get in here and put on a shirt. You’re scaring the
neighbors.”

* * * * *

Even after a lengthy bout of screaming in the car, Isabelle
was barely holding it together when she got home. She wanted a long, long
shower, possibly followed by a bath. And if there were water streaming down her
face by then, well, it might be written off as humidity.

It ought to be humidity—she had no business shedding tears
over Kim Martin. It was her own stupidity that had led her to this.

Whatever this was.

Thinking too much of him. Hoping for more from him.
Projecting a future into his kisses. But any possible future would depend on
separation and hours of travel.

Phone calls and texts. And wondering who else was in his
life.

She unlocked the back door and had already pulled off her
first shoe before she got past the mudroom. She nearly tripped over the toolbox
still sitting on its towel in front of the washing machine, where she’d dragged
it yesterday morning. An age ago.

Crap. She was going to have to see him again. Maybe she’d be
a coward about it—arrange to be away and leave Charlie to handle the exchange.

She aimed the shoe in her hand at the kitchen door and let
fly. It hit the doorframe and ricocheted halfway back to her instead of making
it all the way to the dining room.

Figured.

She may as well be a coward. It couldn’t be worse than
merely being stupid. Just because a man was kind and sweet and had a great
sense of humor didn’t mean he wasn’t also a pig—look at Charlie! And just
because he showed concern for her well-being didn’t mean he wanted the same
things she did—things that went deeper than fun.

Respect.

Trust.

Love.

She’d been pretty sure of Kim’s respect, although having
heard him disparage his brother for being methodical and productive made her
wonder. Maybe one of out three wasn’t so bad, given they’d only known one
another a few days.

Of course, she’d been sure of Steven’s love—Daniel’s
love—and look where that had gotten her.

Was she wisely protecting herself from another Steven? Or
was she a fool for giving up so quickly?

She collected her shoe and was weighing the potential
satisfaction of flinging it again when she spotted an unusual flash of color in
the dining room. She stalked to the doorway. Her stockpot, heavily beaded with
condensation, sat on the dining room table atop a stack of bright orange
dishtowels. Within it, a pair of Shiner Bock beers bobbed in a sea of melting
ice. Beside it, her bud vase held a single daffodil, suspiciously similar to
the daffodils she’d admired in her neighbor’s garden. And between the stockpot
and the bud vase, her spare house key and a page torn from the memo pad she
kept by the phone in the kitchen. She recognized Charlie’s scrawl. “Thanks,
sis,” it read. “Cheers.”

She dropped the shoe to grab the sweating stockpot and haul
it to the kitchen sink. What had Charlie been thinking? If he had ruined her
dining room table…

She hurried back to grab the towels. They hadn’t soaked
through. She made herself take a breath. And another. It was a sweet gesture,
really, chilling her favorite beer for her. So he was sloppy about the finer
points. That was Charlie for you—easygoing, wonderful heart, essentially
clueless. To judge from this display, Gina must have forgiven him his
cluelessness. She smiled.

The doorbell rang. That would be Kim and his easygoing,
wonderful heart, dying to explain away what had happened at his loft. Her pulse
raced at the prospect. It would make perfect sense and she’d laugh at her own
foolishness. They’d fall into one another’s arms, and…