Tori Carrington - Never Say Never Again

He strode down the hall, throwing open doors as he went. Pops’s room looked the same. So did Marc’s. Jake had added a double bed to his, and his old twin now sported a pink, frilly spread, more likely than not compliments of Lili, but it was still the same. Mitch’s was hardly recognizable now that his wife, Liz, had moved in, but there was no mistaking that it was still his room.

His was the only one they had screwed with.

He rubbed his hand over his numb face, feeling ridiculously like he’d woken up that morning to find he’d been evicted from his life.

He backtracked to Marc’s room, stalked to the bed, then sank down on the new mattress, curious as to why Marc and Mel hadn’t traded the twin for a double, or why they hadn’t put the damn crib in here—but he wasn’t up to dealing with the answer right now. He tossed his shirt to the corner, kicked his boots off, then stretched out, staring at the ceiling without seeing it, his feet dangling from the end of the too-short bed.

Almost immediately an image of Bronte O’Brien filled his mind.

Figured. The first free moment he had to himself and a woman intruded.

He supposed he should be used to it by now, given all the females that had taken over the McCoy place, but this was different, somehow. Bronte was different.

He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over them. Oh, he’d had his share of women in his lifetime. Mostly short-lived relationships that ended almost as quickly as they began. He’d meet someone somewhere, take her out a couple times, go to bed with her, then walk out when she started talking about something more serious.

He found it a little strange that he had never asked Bronte out. Not only now, but back in college. It wasn’t as if she had a sign around her neck that read, “Interested in marriage, only.” On the contrary, if she wore a sign it would probably say, “Mention of the word marriage is punishable by death.”

Normally his kind of girl.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been attracted to her. She’d always commanded his attention the moment she walked into the room. And that certainly hadn’t changed.

There. That was it. His epiphany of the day. He was attracted to Bronte. If kissing her the other night hadn’t proven that, then certainly his inability to stop thinking about her now did.

He jerkily rolled over, compensating when the move nearly threw him over the side of the narrow bed. Her wanton reaction to him hinted that she was as drawn to him as he was to her. By all rights, he ought to just sleep with her and get it over with.

He remembered the way she’d pressed her breast into his touch. How she’d boldly reached down to cup his erection in her hand. Recalled her surprised gasp when she ran her fingers down and around the length and breadth of him.

Connor’s stomach tightened and he turned his head the other way on the pillow. He’d never…wanted a woman the way he wanted Bronte O’Brien. He wanted to kiss her senseless. Watch her lick that full upper lip of hers right before she fastened her mouth around his erection. Grind into her like nobody’s business. Tug her hair until her head fell back, giving him free access to her long neck and breasts. He wanted to possess her inside and out.

The mere thought of being between her thighs made him hard. And the feel of the mattress beneath him wasn’t helping matters much.

He roughly turned back over, determined to ignore his physical reaction, though his mind kept rushing down the same path, a steam locomotive that wouldn’t stop until it reached an unknown destination.

He supposed part of the reason for his different attraction to Bronte was that she’d been a secret fantasy of his for so long. For whatever reason, from the start, he’d put her aside, above other women he dated. Purposely made her unobtainable, out of bounds. He’d immediately sensed in her a…sameness. Glimpsed in her eyes a shared understanding that had nearly knocked him straight out of his shoes the instant he saw it.

Outside he heard distant sounds. Probably Mitch in the later stages of breaking one of his new fillies. He fought to concentrate on the normal sound, to stop thinking about the woman he shouldn’t be thinking of, get some sleep, then get up to figure out exactly who was trying to set him up for Robbins’s murder and why. His sandpapery eyelids blessedly began drifting closed.

Still, the nameless something that existed between him and Bronte tempted his attention. He’d never experienced the same thing with another woman before or since.

And that’s exactly the reason he’d kept his distance—and should continue to keep his distance.

But when he finally fell into a deep, exhausted slumber, there existed absolutely no distance whatsoever between him and Bronte O’Brien.

BRONTE FIGURED SHE REALLY needed to find something more interesting to do with her down time—like defrosting the freezer.

After ten grueling hours of chaos spent juggling ongoing cases while trying to get a handle on the Pryka/Robbins development, she needed something that would take her mind off the office, allow her to take an all-important step back and look at the details with a fresh perspective.

Sitting alone at her kitchen table, Bronte finished pushing the remains of her gourmet microwave dinner around in its plastic container, then leaned back in her chair. Gourmet. Right. More like airplane food for the patently time-impaired single person. She looked around the too-quiet kitchen. The television was turned low in the corner of the counter behind her, but talking heads didn’t quite do it for her tonight.

Neither did the array of interior design magazines and fabric swatches lying on the corner of the table. She reached out and leafed through the top magazine, stopping when she came to a photo of a high-tech nursery, complete with a three-camera-angle monitoring system and automatic diaper dispenser. Absently, she bent the corner of the page back and forth. There was a point when she’d believed motherhood wasn’t a part of her future. A time when she’d seen herself as a lifelong career woman, being completely content, deliriously happy even, building a name for herself in the U.S. attorney’s office. Then came Thomas. She not only began hearing wedding bells, she found herself slowing her step near the children’s section of Saks. Began reading articles on the future cost of higher education in magazines that she usually skipped. Had idly debated cloth versus disposable and began wondering if day care was tax deductible.

Of course all those thoughts went right out the door along with Thomas.

Then why was she wondering what the nursery in the magazine would look like with a different color scheme?

She sighed and pushed the periodical aside. Maybe she should get an animal that wasn’t of the human male variety. Now that would be a switch. Kelli’s criminally ugly dog Kojak seemed to supply her with constant companionship. She twisted her lips. Then again, she’d balked so badly—obsessed with all the possible stains that could show up on her Persian rug—when Kelli had asked her to watch her prized pet, her best friend had finally taken the pooch out to the McCoy ranch in Virginia while she was on her honeymoon.

No, a dog was definitely out. And the thought of being single with a cat…well, she wasn’t even going to go there.

She heard herself sigh again, then pushed her tray aside and pulled the first of the evening edition newspapers in front of her.

Today, especially, had been grueling. The buzz around the U.S. attorney’s office was that there was little question as to Connor McCoy’s guilt in the Melissa Robbins case. A case that rightly should have been hers as head of the Pryka case, but notably wasn’t. Word even had it that Bernie Leighton himself, the senior attorney, her superior, was working up a case against him. While running back and forth to district court juggling two other cases, one an appearance for an evidentiary hearing, the other to sit co-counsel for a rotating attorney during his first preliminary hearing, Bronte had left at least five messages for Bernie. On last check, he’d returned none of them.