Try Me (Take a Chance 1)

She bit her lip. That luscious lower lip, that one little tic that gave her away like a poker player’s tell no matter how steady her voice might be. “You don’t get to ask me that, Jeremy.” She turned away, her back stiff. “Come on. The bathroom’s this way.”

She took the stairs quickly, her heels a sharp and almost accusatory staccato. With a sigh, Jeremy followed. Him and his big mouth.

Fucking idiot.

Chapter Two

Erica escaped into the guest room, usually reserved for Tommy during his increasingly frequent business trips. She was probably lucky his company had put him up in a posh hotel this time, to keep him close at hand for their international clients during some marketing conference or another. If Tommy had seen Jeremy, things would have gone terribly south.

Like they hadn’t already.

How had she ended up in this situation? And with Jeremy, of all people? God, he looked even more gorgeous than she’d remembered, with or without the bruises and dirt. Those blue eyes, that thick black hair she just ached to run her fingers through—and when had he filled out so much? That hardened soldier’s body made her want to touch. To find out all the ways he’d changed over the years, in minute detail.

She shook her head and yanked the closet door open. She hadn’t brought him here for…that. Or for any reason other than to help him. What were the odds that she’d be the one to find him on the side of the road?

Was it fate, giving her a second chance?

No. That was silly. Impractical. Sighing, she grabbed a T-shirt a

nd a pair of jeans, then headed back out into the hallway. He could go commando or wear his sweaty skivvies. She wasn’t digging into her brother’s underwear. The bratty little sister under the cultured woman she’d become still insisted Tommy’s boxers had cooties.

And she didn’t want to think of Jeremy in the same light as her brother.

Calm. Breathe. She closed her eyes and leaned against the bathroom door. Jeremy had brought back too many memories. Most of them sweet, but some of them just as bitter. She’d always had a thing for the dorky boy Tommy had dragged home from school one day. The way he smiled, the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners, the easy way he moved…he could make her forget how to breathe, even back then. She’d hid it as best she could. She’d been the annoying little sister; the tagalong. Unwanted. Annoying.

Or so she’d thought, until that night.

She refused to replay it. Not again. Not for the millionth time. That was a long time ago. Things were different, and they’d moved on. He’d said so. She wasn’t about to embarrass herself by telling him that he was the only one who’d really moved on.

She straightened, knocked on the door, and waited. She could hear water running, but no response. She cracked the door open. “Jeremy?”

He stumbled and grabbed for a towel, but not before she glimpsed the firm, tight muscles of his ass.

“Oh God.” She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to chase the image away. Instead it leaped into hyper-focused clarity, along with the taut flow of his back and the broad flex of his shoulders. Damn it.

She heard the shower curtain pull closed in a rustle of plastic and a scrape of rings against the rod. “Erica?” he called. “Were you just staring at my ass?”

“I wasn’t staring!”

“But you just saw me naked.”

“No. I mean yes. I mean—” She sighed. Running away would be good right now. “Um. A little. Maybe.”

A muffled groan was his only answer. Her cheeks were on fire.

“Sorry,” she tried. “If it makes you feel better, you looked great? Wait! No. Um. No, you didn’t.” Shit, damn, crap, son of a— “I don’t—look, I didn’t really see anything, okay?”

His laughter echoed against the shower tile. She peeked one eye open and peered through the crack in the door. He leaned over to watch her past the shower curtain, his eyebrow raised and his eyes crinkling with laughter in just that way she remembered. Her throat constricted.

“Which is it?” he asked. “I look good, bad, or invisible?”

She couldn’t answer. She could only see his shoulders beyond the curtain, but that was enough. Water tracked in slick trails over tanned sinew, each twist and pull of muscle gleaming. Her mouth tingled. She wanted to lick, to taste, to chase the cool taste of fresh water over the heat of his skin. Her fingers twitched, and she squeezed her eyes shut again.

“I’m gonna go now.” God, she sounded like a teenager. Not someone who regularly presented summations before skeptical juries. She wedged an arm into the bathroom, dropped the clothing on the counter, and backed away. “Enjoy your—I mean—oh, fuck. I’m gone before I make even more of an idiot of myself. How about I’m the one who turns invisible?”

“Why?” he teased. His husky voice did terrible things to her. “So you can stay and watch?”

“Funny. Really.”