Lover Undercover (McCade Brothers 1)

By the time she pulled into her driveway, she’d figured only one thing out—the questions were too complex to resolve during a drive home, especially with her nerves shot and her body craving sleep. The rest of the day would be quiet and calming, she promised herself as she trudged upstairs. Her heart leaped into her throat when the front door suddenly swung open and she confronted a lean, muscular chest encased in a dark blue T-shirt. A quick tilt of her head brought Ian’s amused face into view.

He stepped out onto the landing. “Hey, Kylie. How’s the patient?”

Dazed by his presence, she traded places with him. “Fine. Um, resting comfortably. Is Stacy okay?”

His grin stretched into a wry smile. “She’s a little pissed. Probably my fault. Don’t worry though, she’ll level out once she realizes I’m right and stops fighting the inevitable.” He jogged down the stairs, calling, “See you later.”

“Later,” Kylie parroted, still bemused by his presence and his strange, cocky pronouncement. After closing the door, she dropped her bag and went in search of Stacy. She found her standing beside the kitchen window, wearing a short red robe, looking out at the street below. That alone would have warned her something was definitely off. Her sister wasn’t the type to think about a man, much less chase him with her eyes, after he left her bedroom.

“Stacy?”

Her sister jumped and turned, looking like a peeping Tom caught red-handed. “Hey, Ky. How’s Trevor?”

“He’s all right. He’ll be good as new in a day or two. What are you looking at?”

Stacy glanced out the window again and frowned. “Nothing,” she said firmly, as if willing herself to believe it.

“I, ah, ran into Ian just now.”

“Oh. Well.” She shrugged and hobbled past Kylie and into the living room. “I called him after I spoke to you—strictly to make sure he was okay. He offered to stop by before he headed over to Trevor’s to relieve you…” She trailed off, flopped onto the sofa, and sighed. “Shit. I really don’t know why he came. For sex, I thought, but we knocked that one out of the park about three seconds after he arrived, and for some reason, he stuck around. If his goal was to mess with my head, he did a good job.”

Kylie took a seat beside her. “Really? How’d he manage that?”

She shrugged. “He talked. He told me about last night, about how amped he was at the prospect of finally catching this crazy bastard, how panicked he felt when he saw Trevor go down, and how frustrated when he realized the guy had gotten away. He didn’t hold anything back, but just…he let me in. Me.” With a harsh laugh, she shook her head.

“What’s so laughable about that?”

“Oh, please. The guys I sleep with aren’t interested in talking to me about their innermost hopes and fears. And that’s perfectly fine, because you know what? I’m not interested in hearing them. I’ve got my hands full with my own hopes and fears.”

Kylie didn’t miss the edge of anxiety in Stacy’s voice. She’d never seen her love-’em-and-leave-’em sister so upset over a man, so desperate to deny any emotional connection. Normally the lack of emotion went without saying. And while she liked Ian and thought his calm, innate steadiness might actually be good for Stacy, the realization that physical intimacy hadn’t cured Stacy’s attraction worried Kylie. If anything, sex seemed to have left her sister even more muddled, oddly similar to her own tangled emotions for Trevor.

Uh-oh.

“You told me sleeping with a man was a surefire way to get him out of your head. By your own rules, you should have thanked him for playing and pointed him to the door.”

“That’s exactly what I should have done. But no, after letting him rock my world backward, forward, and sideways, I let him talk. Worse, I let myself—I don’t know—care about what he told me. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, somehow he knew. He knew I cared, the scheming bastard.”

Goodness, this was serious. Stacy had feelings for him. “What will you do now?”

Stacy stared at the wall. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should go with the flow, and see where it leads?”

“Oh, come on, the cop and the stripper? You said it yourself, Ky. Where could it possibly lead?”

Strangely, the sentiment seemed inapplicable whe

n the stripper in question was Stacy, and the cop, Ian. “You never know,” she encouraged.

“Is that what you’re going to do with Trevor?” Stacy challenged. “See where things lead?”

She squirmed under Stacy’s pointed stare and looked away. “No, I’m not, but my situation is completely different.”

“Your situation is better. A yoga instructor is a hell of a lot more respectable than a stripper.”

“Trevor’s attracted to Stacy Roberts—sexy, sassy stripper. He doesn’t even know Kylie Roberts—quiet, responsible yoga instructor.”

Stacy’s trill of laughter jerked Kylie’s attention back to her sister. “What’s so funny?”