And Then He Kissed Me by Kim Amos Page B

figured she’d have nothing but ire and anger for him. But, wouldn’t you know it, she was as open-hearted as ever. She should have shoved him away in that bathroom, told him to get lost and never touch her again, but instead she’d made demands on him, same as he had on her. She was playful and bold instead of bitter. And he’d been able to kiss her until they were both breathless.
    The memory of it had his jeans tenting all over again.
    Audrey still felt something for him. He knew it as surely as he knew his own feelings for her had come roaring back unexpectedly, a tidal wave he hadn’t prepared for, but that had taken him under anyway.
    He stopped his manic strides and took a deep breath. All around him, used Harleys sparkled in the light, lined up like soldiers ready for battle.
    If he’d had more time, he would have pushed Audrey against the wall and licked the long, graceful line from her collarbone to her ear until she shuddered with tenderness. He would have kneed apart her legs and placed his raging erection between them—pressing the long ache of him into her until she gasped—and then taken her to his apartment to finish what he’d started.
    He shuddered, thinking about the past, when their bodies had come together. They’d been passionate but exploratory, just getting to know one another. The realization hit him that he didn’t know whether Audrey preferred back rubs or foot rubs, if she liked to be held in the morning after lovemaking or turned loose to start her day, or how many times she could come apart in his hands— with his hands, and with other things—in a single night.
    He clenched his fists. He could not go on like this, being tormented.
    But he couldn’t face Casey again. She not only knew about his black past, but they’d made a terrible deal together. One that he’d thought would save his mom.
    In the end, he’d lost both Mom and Audrey.
    And now—if he told Audrey the truth, it might come at the unbearable price of shattering her.
    He raked his hands through his hair, wishing desperately for some way around this impasse. He wanted to pull Audrey close, to be near her.
    Except… no .
    Kieran gritted his teeth. The thought was impossible . The idea of being with Audrey Tanner was like wishing for the moon. You could stretch and stretch, you could imagine your fingertips brushing its chalky surface, but in the end you’d just come away with empty space.
    And yet, he had to admit he’d had fantasies about what life could be like in White Pine—permanently. He’d allowed himself to imagine the things in his life that would be possible if he had someone like Audrey believing in him. Now, with her so close, with five years of trying to forget her undone in a matter of days, maybe it was time to make the fantasy a reality. At one point he’d been the man she wanted. Now, perhaps he could work to be the man she deserved.
    He shook his head. It was insanity, he told himself.
    Then again, how many times had he taken ridiculous odds and come out ahead? He could still picture the bet he took in a back-hole gambling den in Reno. The dry desert wind had rattled the thin walls of a shabby room that was cobbled onto the side of a dark bar. He swore he tasted sand every time he swallowed. Around him were four other players, but only one of them was still in the game with him. It was the last card of a hand of Texas Hold ’Em. The river card.
    He was all in. He’d bet everything on a terrible hand, starting with a smattering of low cards. But they were black, everything in his hand was black (some days he felt like everything in his goddamn life was black), and as the cards turned over on the table, he began to think he could pull together a straight flush. All spades.
    Spades to dig him into a hole, or dig him out of one. Naturally.
    The meat-fisted man across the table had stopped rolling the toothpick from side to side in his mouth. It was his “tell,” the physical tic he exhibited when