Heat of the Night
Page 2

“Nice, have fun. I should get going too,” Jane said, shifting her purse to her other shoulder. “Beck and I are going to look at a few places.”
She gave each of them a hug and kiss on the cheek, even Matt, who was still all wet. Then she offered her usual cheerful wave and flounced off, while Ryan watched after her, feeling slightly dismayed.
“Get that look off your face,” Matt sighed, slinging his towel around his neck. “She’s off-limits.”
“I know she’s off-limits.” Ryan’s lips tightened. “You don’t have to remind me of that every time she’s around.”
“Yeah, I do. Because I see the way you look at her, and it’s not healthy, man. She’s having a baby with Beck, for God’s sake.”
Ryan didn’t answer. Fuck, he should have never told Matt about his attraction to Jane, but the guy was his best friend. Besides, Matt had the uncanny ability of knowing things without Ryan even telling him. They’d gotten drunk a few months ago and when Ryan mentioned Jane’s name in some random, unimportant sentence, Matt had quietly set down his beer and said, “You have a thing for her, don’t you?” Just like that. Ryan ended up confessing his completely improper feelings, which he now regretted, seeing as Matt rode him about the issue whenever he could.
“You need to distract yourself,” Matt said as they drifted toward the back entrance of the building. “Go out tonight or something.”
Ryan shrugged. “Don’t feel like going out.”
“Then visit the lovely Christina.” Matt grinned. “I mean, I know she likes me better, but since I won’t be around, I’m sure she’d be willing to settle for second best.”
“Funny.”
They entered the stairwell landing and climbed the two floors to their apartment. Matt immediately made a beeline for his bedroom, calling out, “Gotta finish packing” while Ryan headed to the small kitchen and grabbed a beer from the fridge before flopping down on the living room couch. He untwisted the cap and took a long swig of alcohol, hoping it would soothe the lump of sadness and faint bitterness stuck in the back of his throat. Damn, he was pathetic. He had absolutely no business wanting Jane. She was his friend. She was Becker’s pregnant fiancée. And besides, what could he really offer her, even if she was available? He’d never been in a long-term relationship before, wasn’t sure he even wanted one.
Matt was right. He needed a distraction.
The red numerals on the DVD player’s clock read four thirty. Christina volunteered at the hospital every afternoon until five, then worked as a bartender at a local bar until midnight. She wouldn’t get home until close to one, which meant he had about, oh, eight hours to kill before he could pay her a visit.
Ryan leaned his head back on the sofa cushion and forced all thoughts of Jane, Becker and their new baby from his head. Fuck, it was going to be a long night.
Annabelle Holmes took another sip of her vanilla and lavender tea and glanced down at the lined sheet of paper in front of her. She’d torn the page from the legal pad sitting on the nightstand, and now she stared at her own loopy handwriting, wishing she hadn’t written anything down. It made the words feel a little too…real. And they weren’t real. They were fiction, fantasy, just a silly exercise meant to prove to Bryce that the speech he’d unleashed on her two days ago was pure and total bullshit.
I need to walk on the wild side, Annabelle.
Translation: the vanilla sex we’ve been indulging in is boring the shit out of me.
It wouldn’t hurt either one of us to experiment.
Translation: you’re a prude in bed and I’d like to screw around with someone a tad more adventurous.
The funny thing was, there was only one prude in the bed she and Bryce had shared for five years, and it sure as hell wasn’t her. She couldn’t remember how many times she’d suggested they spice things up, how many hints she’d dropped about straying from the missionary and exploring the raw, wild and indecent.
How quickly Bryce forgot. He’d implied that she was the one holding back, promptly following that zinger with the admission that he wanted to take a break, play the field and let loose before they made any serious decisions about their relationship. She’d been tempted to laugh, because, really, they’d pretty much been engaged since they were six years old—their relationship had never been anything but serious.
How could he be so freaking insulting? At first she’d been hurt and depressed, but after Bryce left the spacious San Francisco condo they’d shared for five years, leaving her alone and upset, she’d gotten pissed off. And now here she was, two days later, staying in a strange apartment in San Diego and jotting down a list of every naughty act she’d ever fantasized about. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the list. Rip it up? Deliver it to her insensitive fiancé?
Annabelle looked at the list again, feeling her cheeks grow warm as she read the last item she’d written. Having sex with someone else—while you watch.
She took another sip of tea and added another item. Sex in public (preferably a place without security cameras).
Now that would be a lark, seeing the suddenly-uninhibited Bryce pull down his Armani trousers and risk a random passerby seeing his cock.
She snorted. Yeah, right.
The cell phone next to her glass began to ring. She didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who was on the other end of the line. Her parents nearly had joint coronaries when she’d announced she was going to San Diego for a few weeks. They hated the fact that she was “slumming it”, though Christina’s apartment was hardly a hovel. The apartment building was small, but pretty and clean, and Annabelle was looking forward to taking a dip in the pool tomorrow morning. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone swimming anywhere other than her father’s country club.