Brenna dragged her eyes away from him, wishing she could turn her feelings off or at least turn them down.
She told herself it was the tequila that was making her emotional.
“Are you ready?” She turned to the little girl who had been building the snowman, explained what she wanted her to do, and together they skied down, Brenna holding her all the way.
Tyler was waiting at the bottom, his helmet and goggles lying in the snow at his feet as he laughed and joked with waiting parents who didn’t seem at all alarmed or angry that their children had come down one of the most difficult runs in the resort. And she didn’t need to look far to find the reason for their unusually mellow acceptance.
The reason was standing right in front of her, all six foot three of him.
One of the mothers asked if they could take photos, and Brenna waited for Tyler to refuse, but again he surprised her, posing with each of the children in turn. At the insistence of one of the fathers, he pulled Brenna into the photo, too.
He looped his arm round her shoulder, dragged her against him and she pinned the obligatory smile on her face.
“Great to meet you.” Richard’s father shook Tyler’s hand and then ruffled his son’s hair. “That’s one for the album. Thanks. And thanks to your girlfriend.”
Brenna didn’t dare look at Tyler.
* * *
“IT WOULDN’T TURN OFF with the key or the kill switch?” His phone wedged between his shoulder and his jaw, Tyler dumped two cans of tomatoes and a can of beans on top of the meat and turned up the heat.
The food looked unappetizing, and he had a feeling that nothing he did was going to improve the situation. He jabbed at the mixture with a spoon and listened while Jackson outlined the problem. “I’ll do you a deal—you come and fix dinner, and I’ll fix the snowmobile. You’re a better cook than I am.”
Brenna walked into the kitchen, her hair wet from the shower. She was wearing a strappy top with a pair of yoga pants, and her feet were bare. Avoiding his gaze, she walked cautiously across his big open kitchen. Long legs. Bare feet.
Unfortunately, the lack of eye contact did nothing to ease the tension that now seemed to be a permanent part of their relationship.
It wasn’t just living together that had caused the problem, it was the shift in the way they responded to each other.
When he’d encouraged her to speak her mind and be more assertive with people, he hadn’t realized he would be one of those people.
It didn’t matter whether it had been the tequila talking; she’d said things that couldn’t be unsaid.
They’d talked about subjects neither of them had broached before.
Like sex.
Was she planning on having sex with Josh?
He felt something rip through him. An emotion he didn’t recognize and had never felt before.
Jealousy.
He was never jealous. It was ironic that the first time he should experience jealousy would be with Brenna. He’d protected their friendship more carefully than anything else in his life apart from Jess. It shouldn’t matter to him who she saw or what she did.
That wasn’t the way their relationship worked, and it never would be.
Jackson was saying something from the phone but Tyler didn’t hear him.
There was a roaring in his ears, and his brain was doing crazy things.
He wanted to flatten her to the wall and kiss her until she could no longer remember her own name, let alone think about Josh. He wanted to trail his mouth over her bare shoulder and lower. He wanted to rip that inadequate strappy top off her taut, mouthwateringly perfect body and feast on every part of her.
She dragged open the fridge and finally glanced at him, and maybe she saw something in his eyes she hadn’t seen before because she froze. It made him think of a gazelle spotting a lion, afraid to move.
Given that he was on the verge of pouncing, it was an uncomfortable analogy.
She might have been safer with the lion.