Midnight Sun (Sinclair Sisters) by Kat Martin

finally begun to stir to life inside him again. Instead, he had apologized to Sally and headed back home.
    He could tell himself it was Susan, that he felt like he was being unfaithful, even after all these years, but it wouldn’t be the truth. Sex had never been that important in their marriage. At least not to Susan. Call had always had a high sex drive, but Susan had never placed much value on intimacy, aside from having kids. They’d had other things in common, other dreams and goals that had drawn them together. Since he was the kind of guy who didn’t believe in cheating on his wife, he had sublimated part of his drive with work.
    Not that that was any excuse for the sixteen-hour days he had put in.
    Since the accident, depression and guilt had kept him celibate, but in the past few months he had finally begun to overcome those feelings and start moving ahead with his life.
    The truth was, his wife was gone and he was a single man again. He was ready for some hot, uninvolved sex—he just didn’t want it with Sally Beecham. He wanted it with Charity Sinclair and that posed a definite problem.
    Call raked a hand through his hair. Charity wasn’t a bar-maid who had offered him a no-strings relationship. She wasn’t some divorcee who hopped from man to man, looking for a good time. If there was ever a poster girl for the all-American, clean-cut girl-next-door, Charity Sinclair was it.
    Of course, he could be wrong.
    The thought started his blood pumping. He hadn’t felt a single moment of lust for Sally, but he was hard just thinking maybe Charity might be up for a little casual sex. Even the low-cut blouse Sally had been wearing, showing off a set of plump, milk-white breasts, hadn’t done it for him.
    Not like this morning when he’d stared at Charity’s luscious mouth, measured the tantalizing breasts beneath her mud-spattered shirt, and wanted to drag her down on the ground. He’d wanted to rip off her clothes, wanted to bury himself inside her.
    “Jesus.” Call turned off Hunker Road and started the slow, bumpy drive up Dead Horse Creek. Coming back to the real world was proving more of a problem than he’d imagined. After four years of going without, he figured just about any warm, willing woman would do. Maybe he was worried that after all this time he wouldn’t be any good, but he didn’t think so. Like Sally said, having sex wasn’t something a man forgot how to do.
    Hell, if Sally wasn’t the one, there were other women in Dawson. What about the little redhead waiting tables at Klondike Kate’s? Toby had offered to introduce him, said she was a real party girl and she wanted to meet him, that she would be moving away in July and just wanted to have a little fun in the meantime.
    Whatever he did, the last thing he wanted was any sort of emotional entanglement—with the redhead or anyone else. Making love to a woman who lived in the house right next to his was asking for serious trouble.
    Trouble. It was Charity Sinclair’s middle name.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    Call still felt restless Sunday morning. Sitting down at his computer, he punched up his e-mail. Half a dozen messages were waiting, including one from his brother. Zach lived in Los Angeles, but planned to come north for a few weeks this summer. Call replied that his brother couldn’t get there fast enough to suit him. Not the reply Zach would have received even a couple of months ago.
    It was a good sign, Call thought, that he was so eager to see his sibling. It meant he really was coming back to life.
    Next, he printed a lengthy attachment from the game company, Inner Dimensions, that had come in Friday morning. It showed some of the advertising being planned for their newest software game, King Cobra, expected to be the hottest ticket of the season.
    There was also an e-mail from Peter Held. The kid was really excited about the progress he was making on a process that would dramatically increase the capacity for hard-disk storage. If the