Her Sexiest Mistake by Jill Shalvis Page A

time.
    Don’t wait up.
    The door shut. Kevin shook it off. He couldn’t keep agonizing over every single person in his life, over their inability to make good decisions. It was too tiring. So he showered until the scalding water ran out, then pulled on a pair of sweats and wandered through his dark house toward the kitchen. The refrigerator wasn’t promising. It held leftover pizza of questionable quality, a soggy-looking apple, and a beer, which he grabbed. Yeah, he was a party animal all right.
    A hollow, empty-feeling one.
    Just as he took a long pull from the bottle, someone knocked on his front door. Probably Mike, who’d forgotten something. Flipping on the porch light, he pulled the door open in one movement, then went still in surprise.
    Mia.
    She was beautiful. Maybe even crazy beautiful. And wickedly dangerous to his mental health.
    Blinking from the sudden glare, she wore only that creamy, elegant robe, a pissed-off, hungry expression, and nothing else. He knew this because the light cast her in bold relief, cutting through that thin, drenched silk and highlighting her gorgeous body.
    It was still raining. Her limbs glistened, her skin glowed damply. And everything within him tightened in anticipation. “What are you doing here?”
    “Can you cut the light?” She lifted a hand to protect her eyes as rain dripped from her hair to the silk, plastering it to her skin, revealing that she was good and chilled.
    She looked amazing, if not oddly solemn. He should send her home, for nothing else than she also looked vulnerable, and then there was that melancholy in her eyes…
    But to hell with being the good guy, to being the guy everyone came to when they needed something. He needed, too, goddamnit. And what he needed in this moment was to look at her.
    “The light?” she said again.
    “I don’t think so.” He drank in his fill. Just look, don’t touch. “You never know who could be prowling around late at night.”
    “Funny.” She drank her fill as well, her gaze lingering on his bare chest, wet now from the rain blowing at him. “You going to let me in?”
    Her cool, icy voice was back, overriding any vulnerability he’d caught a glimpse of. Even wet and chilled, she now looked put together, in charge of herself and capabilities, and sexy as all hell.
    Which meant he was in big trouble. Trying to maintain composure, he propped up the jamb with his shoulder, his beer dangling from his fingers. “Why? Need to hit me with another Mack truck?”
    Arms crossed over her chest, Mia glanced behind her, as if worried about someone seeing her. “I’m not dressed.”
    “I noticed.” He took another long pull of his beer, letting his gaze soak her up, all that long, still-damp chestnut hair tumbling just past her shoulders. Her eyes flashed her frustration louder than a shout, that compact, neat, tight, toned body quivering with God knew what beneath that silk. All he knew for sure was that her nipples were still poking against the material, her softly rounded belly rising and falling with her every breath. And those legs. He needed a good long time to sigh over those legs. “Where’s Hope?”
    “Fast asleep, and snoring like a buzz saw.”
    “You’ve got a real thing about snoring.”
    “Move,” she said and went to brush past him, only he straightened, trapping her between his body and the jamb.
    She let out a sound that spoke volumes about how frustrated she was, and glared up at him.
    God, she was something, all shimmering with pent-up aggression and a barely repressed excitement, and he felt a glimmer of his own excitement, which made him a very sick man, he decided. “Do you ever say please?” he asked.
    Her mouth tightened. “Fine. Will you pretty please let me inside so you can do me?”
    He let out a surprised laugh. “What, is it my birthday?”
    “Yep, and I brought you just what you wished for,” she said with just a slight hint of that Southern drawl in her voice now, a sound that