New and…Improved? & Andrew in Excess

sister thought of him.

But she hugged Becca. With a soft sigh, she hugged him too. “You’re a very sweet man.” She drew back and smiled at him. “Take good care of her,” she whispered.

Then she was gone.

Uh-oh, Kent thought, the warning signals finally coming back. There was that sweet thing again.

He wasn’t sweet. He didn’t have a damn sweet bone in his body and he liked it that way.

And take good care of her? What did that mean?

How had this happened to him? One minute he’d been vaguely concerned about Becca getting hurt in her adventures and the next he was kissing her as if his life depended on it.

In the silence, Becca clasped her hands, still looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry about all that. She likes to put people on the spot and see how honest they are. It’s a thing with her. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

Okay, that was good. This was still light and easy. Temporary.

And he was the tooth fairy.

Damn. “Let’s go rock climbing,” he said gruffly.

She sent him a curious glance. “I can go by myself if you’ve changed your mind.”

He had visions of her hanging from the rope thirty feet in the air. A hundred things could go wrong. No, actually, with Becca a thousand things could go wrong. “I’m going.”

“Because there’s probably people there who could show me what to do-”

“Becca, I’m going.”

Her smile widened. “Okay, if you insist.” She picked up the gym bag that sat next to the door and led him out.

HE’D REMEMBER LATER that he’d insisted. The good news was that Becca loved rock climbing.

The bad news was that he loved watching Becca.

She climbed the thirty-foot wall with ease, laughing and smiling and so thoroughly enjoying herself that he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She climbed the forty-foot wall, too, and then looked up at the fifty-foot wall. “Race you,” she called out breathlessly.

He’d been climbing for years. Years. So the only excuse he could possibly offer for losing was that the view from beneath her, and the snug pink shorts she’d changed into, were so incredible, it kept him one pace behind her.

At the top she smiled at him, flushed with success and thrill and excitement, and never in his life had he wanted to kiss someone so much.

Luckily they were hanging from ropes, so kissing would have been not only impossible, but incredibly stupid.

Coming down, Becca bounced away from the wall, still laughing and smiling, and still looking so damn wonderful and appealing it should be illegal.

“Watch what you’re doing,” he told her. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’m watching.” She grinned with pleasure from ear to ear as she slowly and correctly lowered herself to the ground. “See? Perfect.”

Yep, just about, he decided, still watching her. Which explained how he slipped and fell the last eight feet to the ground with agonizing pain twisting up from his ankle.

“HOW’S YOUR ANKLE?”

Kent shrugged, and the movement shifted the cold pack. They were in the emergency room, waiting for his X- rays to come back from the lab.

Becca leaned across the hospital bed to adjust the cold pack, but Kent’s hand caught hers. “It’s fine,” he said through his teeth.

“Uh-huh.” Becca looked at him with exasperation. “Why do guys do that, hide everything? You’re pale and shaking and looking like you might throw up. Why can’t you say it hurts like crazy? What would it kill you to admit a true feeling?”

His brow lifted. “I can admit my feelings.”

“Oh, really.” She crossed her arms. “Then tell me what this is all about, could you? Because I don’t have a clue.”

Wariness filled his pained expression. “A clue about what?”

“About us.”

“Us?”

“I admit, at first I didn’t think about there even being an ‘us’,” she said. “I just wanted something new and exciting, which I planned on doing by myself. But then you kept interfering. And then there’s that attraction problem,” she added lightly.

“Attraction?”

She narrowed her gaze. “Are you sounding like a parrot on purpose?”

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“So…are you going to come clean?”

“Uh, yeah…”

The doctor came in, interrupting the moment. “No break,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll need to stay off it, though, while it recovers.”

Becca listened politely to his instructions, but the minute he was gone, she gave Kent a pointed stare. “Where were we? Oh yeah, you were going to tell me what’s really going on. And don’t even think about using the worry excuse. I’m not the one who got hurt here.”

Kent sighed. “Fine. I’ll tell you the truth.”

“Good.”

But then a nurse came in with forms. While Becca waited, nervousness filled her. The truth. Suddenly it hit her-she couldn’t handle the truth! She didn’t want him to say something he didn’t mean, or was it just that she didn’t want to confront the fact it was entirely likely he was attracted to an illusion?

A few minutes later, she helped Kent to the car. They walked in silence, their bodies close. And hot.

“I’m sorry you hurt yourself trying to keep me safe,” she said, her mind racing, her body throbbing, yearning. “I think you should sit out the next adventure.”

“That won’t be possible.”

She stopped. “Why?”

“Because I intend to be your next adventure.”

“Oh. Oh my,” she whispered, and Kent’s dark, heated gaze held hers. She could hardly breathe for the pure joy and terror of it all.

7

THE EVENING WAS CLEAR, crisp and beautiful, as only a night in the high altitude Sierras could be. And pain throbbed like crazy through Kent’s system, centering in his ankle, making him delirious.

That had to be it; he couldn’t think of any other reason why he’d said what he’d just said.

“You didn’t mean it,” Becca said lightly enough, but not so casually that he couldn’t hear her uncertainty. “You couldn’t have meant it. You don’t do relationships with women, other than for…”

“For…what?”

“You know. S. E. X.,” she whispered, looking everywhere but at him, which must have been difficult since she was supporting at least half his weight and he was draped all over her.