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“Then why are you here?”
He chuckled. “My sister’s house. Remember?”
The flush moved up to her cheeks. But it wasn’t Amber’s cheeks that Cole was looking at. It was where the heated skin disappeared beneath her sweater, which pulled tightly over her currently heaving chest. His cock twitched.Damn, she was definitely hot in that stick up your ass, wound up tighter than a top kinda way.
“That doesn’t explain why you’re here.” She jabbed the remote in his direction.
Cole moved to stand, but Amber’s gestures with the remote got a little wilder so he held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, I’ll sit. But you should too. And put that remote down before you hurt someone. I come in peace, I promise.” He stopped himself before adding something crude that she probably wouldn’t appreciate. Too many months spent on an Australian cattle ranch had left him a little rougher around the edges than usual.
He didn’t really think she’d sit down, but to his surprise, she did. In a hardback chair across the room. Far away from him. The remote control was still clutched in her hand, but at least it wasn’t pointed at him anymore.
“Amber, I’m not going to hurt you. You know me.”
She looked as if she were going to say something but then her face turned an even brighter shade of red and she shook her head. “Tell me why you’re here,” she said after a moment. “Josie invited me to stay with her for a few days, and I just spoke with her. She didn’t tell me you’d be coming and I know she would have mentioned it. She knows how I like to…”
She let the sentence trail away, but she didn’t need to finish it. Amber always had been theplannertype. The exact opposite of Josie, and him, for that matter. He wasn’t surprised that she was thrown off by his appearance. And now that he thought of it…the fact that Amber had a trip planned was probably the very reason Josie told him not to come for a few more weeks when he’d called the other day. His sister wasn’t stupid. She would have seen the way her roommate had reacted to her big brother the last time they’d been together. And as much as she loved him, there was no doubt that Josie thought Cole would be a bad influence on her straight-laced friend.
He laughed a little to himself at the ridiculous idea. But when he looked across the room at Amber—at the way her breath was still coming a little too quick, and the sexy flush that was starting to fade a bit—a very recognizable flash of desire fired low in his gut.
Maybe Josie had a reason to be concerned after all?
Cole cleared his throat and forced all dirty thoughts out of his mind. At least for the moment. “I arrived a little earlier than planned,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m only here for a short visit and then back to Australia. Now, since you seem to have more information than I do, are you going to tell me where my sister is?”
“Right.” Amber, clearly resigned to the fact that Cole wasn’t going anywhere for the moment, reached forward and exchanged the remote control for the beer on the coffee table. “She’s in Vancouver to fix up a rental she had that went bad. It was last minute and she should be back in a few days. So maybe if you came back then, you’ll be able to—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She paused, the beer halfway to her lips. “You have to.”
“No I don’t.”
“But I’m here.”
“And?”
“You can’t be here when I’m here.”
He laughed out loud. “Why not? You seem to be perfectly comfortable helping yourself to my beers.” He pointed at the can in her hand. “Why not with my presence?”
She quickly put the can on the table and sat up, her back stiffer than ever.
“You can drink it.”
She shook her head and must have realized she was being ridiculous because she quickly added, “Thank you. And, just so you know, I’m not uncomfortable with you being here.”
He tilted his head and raised his eyebrow.
“I’m not,” she insisted. “I was just a little bit unprepared is all.”
“A little bit?”
“Okay…a lot.” She picked up the beer again and took a drink this time. “But really, if you could just come back after I leave…”
“I have nowhere else to go, sweetheart. So it looks like you’re stuck with me.”
Sweetheart?Sweetheart?!
Who did he think he was, calling her a name like that?
