The first thing he noticed was the smell. Instead of burning, something that smelled suspiciously like chocolate chip cookies wafted through the house.
Oliver grinned as he hurried back to the kitchen. Hopefully, she’d followed the recipe this time. But he made up his mind—he was going to eat the damned cookies and tell her they were great, no matter what.
Well, almost no matter what. He wasn’t eating charcoal.
He pulled up short when he walked into the kitchen. The place was an utter disaster. Flour coated almost every surface and the sink was overflowing with mixing bowls. Ah—she’d found the stand mixer, as well. Cookies covered every square inch of countertop that wasn’t taken up with baking supplies.
Racks and racks of cookies. There had to be eight, maybe ten dozen in all. Some were noticeably darker and some were almost flat and a few looked like they hadn’t spread at all.
That was a hell of a lot of cookies.
“If we eat all those cookies at once,” he said, trying to find a place to set his bags, “we’ll get sick.”
“Oliver!” Renee popped up from where she’d been bent over the oven. “You’re here!”
He grinned at her. “I am. You’ve been busy, I see.”
She glanced around at all the cookies, her cheeks coloring prettily. “You’re out of chocolate chips. Sorry about that.”
For a moment, all he could do was stare at her. The longer she was at Red Oak, the better she looked. The shadows under her eyes were a distant memory now and the lines of worry at the corners and across her forehead had faded away. True, she had a smear of flour across her forehead, but that just made her look even more adorable. She was wearing yet another pair of soft leggings and a loose turquoise T-shirt that made her eyes shine. Her hair had been pulled back into a messy braid and all he wanted to do was mess it up further.
He didn’t. All he did was look. Because for the first time, Renee looked like she was meant to be—a young, beautiful woman enjoying herself.
God, she took his breath away.
To hell with his restraint. The grocery bags hit the ground and the next thing he knew, she was in his arms and he was kissing her like she was the very air he needed and he’d been holding his breath for the last twenty-four hours.
“I brought more chocolate,” he murmured against her mouth before he plundered it ruthlessly with his own.
He hesitated, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, her body molded itself to his, her lips parting for his tongue, her fingers sinking into his hair as she tilted his head for better access.
“More chips are good,” she agreed, but Oliver had already forgotten what they were talking about.
All he could remember was that this was why he had come. To hold Renee and discover her secrets one long, leisurely kiss at a time.
“Tell me to stop,” he muttered as her hands slid down from his hair, over his back and down to his butt. She squeezed and what was left of his self-control began to fray. Badly. “Tell me to stop and I will.”
She pulled away, her eyes closed, and he damn near fell to his knees to beg for her. Him! Oliver Lawrence!
But if she wanted him to beg, by God he would, because at some point, his best friend’s irritating little sister had become a gorgeous young woman he couldn’t walk away from.
He wasn’t going to walk away from her.
“Oliver.” His name on her lips was soft but he didn’t miss the undercurrent of need in her voice. God, he hoped it was need.
“Yeah, darling?”
She opened her eyes and the force of the desire reflected back at him threatened to unman him right then and there. “Don’t stop.”
* * *
This was crazy. Worse than crazy. Dangerous, even.
She couldn’t let Oliver sweep her off her feet and carry her up the stairs—again.
She shouldn’t let him kick open the door to his bedroom and set her down on her feet. And under no circumstances should she let him kiss her as if she were his last chance at redemption.
There would be no redemption. Not for her anyway. It was selfish and shallow but she just wanted to feel good again. Even if it were just for an evening in Oliver’s arms. Nothing permanent. She wasn’t looking for another ’til-death-do-us-part. She’d done that already.
But was it so wrong to want to feel desirable? Was it bad to want a man to look at her with naked want in his eyes, to need her so badly that he kept driving halfway across Texas to see her?
Was it an awful thing to take what he was offering?
“Renee,” he murmured against her lips as his hands slid underneath her loose tunic. The touch of his bare fingers to the skin at the small of her back made her groan.
How was he doing this to her? She was no innocent—she was almost five months pregnant, for heaven’s sake. She’d known desire and want in her time.
But nothing had prepared her for this, she realized as Oliver pulled her shirt over her head and cast it aside.
“Oh, dear God in heaven,” he said, his voice revenant as he stared down at her bare chest. Because she hadn’t been able to bring herself to put a too-small underwire bra on again if she were going to be alone in the house all day.
She’d planned to put the blasted thing on before he got here. She’d had the best of intentions. But Oliver had shown up earlier than she’d expected and it was rapidly becoming apparent that the bra was pointless in more ways than one.
“They’re not always this big,” she told him. “In the interest of full disclosure.” Because no matter what, she didn’t want anything that happened in this bedroom to be
