His Best Mistake Read online

  She should tell him about her real relationship with J.W., but that secret was Leah’s last line of defense. A line that had begun to blur. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, Kevin.” That was the honest-to-goodness truth.

  “That’s what I thought.” Disappointment filtered out in his tone.

  She stood and pulled at the hem of her top. “You’re right. We should sleep in separate beds and forget this happened.” At least she could attempt to forget.

  He pointed at her. “And I’m going to take care of Carly tonight so you can get some uninterrupted sleep.”

  She was too weary to argue with him. “Okay. Anything else?”

  When she started forward, Kevin backed up a step. “Yeah. Go to bed before I say to hell with principles and change my mind.”

  Leah was overcome by an odd sense of power. “Don’t worry, Kevin. I’ll try to resist the urge to ravish you in the middle of the night. But I make no promises.”

  She turned and strolled back into the house while mulling over how wrong Kevin had been about her motivation. She didn’t desire a diversion. She didn’t care for convenience sex. She wanted him—so much she ached. She always had. But having him came with a high price, because she did know Kevin O’Brien.

  She knew his innate ability to make a woman feel as if no one else had ever existed. She also knew he had a habit of leaving a trail of broken hearts—hers had been among them. Yet she was tougher now. She could steel herself against emotional entanglement. She could take what he was willing to give as long as she didn’t cross the love line.

  Of course, she would have to convince Kevin to participate. That would require patience and playing hard to get. Experience had taught her that anticipation was the greatest aphrodisiac on earth.

  But was it really worth the risk? Oh, yes, it was. He was.

  KEVIN ROLLED OVER in bed, glanced at the clock and realized he’d slept through the night…without getting up once with Carly. He sat up and focused on the monitor’s illuminated red light that indicated it was working. Unless the receiver had quit functioning. Or someone had intentionally shut it off.

  He suspected who that someone might be. Leah had probably slept in the nursery in order to take the nightshift, ignoring his attempts at giving her a break. At least the arrangement had lasted almost a week. And three days ago, she had finally agreed to let him pick Carly up at noon from day care.

  Since then, he’d settled into a good routine with his daughter—he worked in the mornings and played Dad in the afternoons. In the evenings, both he and Leah pretended nothing had happened that night on the deck. But for six solid days, he’d thought about nothing else, while she’d become aloof, plying him with subtle overtures designed to drive him to the brink of madness. An accidental brush against him in the kitchen, walking through the den wearing only a towel and then acting shocked to find him in front of the TV. Sheer torture.

  Forcing the thoughts from his brain, Kevin crawled out of bed, put on a pair of workout shorts, and, when he entered the hall, he sought out the person rummaging around in his kitchen. He found Leah standing at the sink, filling the coffee pot with water…dressed in those damnable animal-striped pajamas. Talk about the worst kind of punishment—look but don’t touch.

  He slid onto a bar stool and folded his hands before him on the counter in an effort to control them. “Where’s the baby?”

  “Amazingly, still sleeping,” she said without looking at him. “I checked a few minutes ago.”

  “How many times did you get up with her last night?”

  She faced him, looking half startled, half confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t get up with her once.”

  Alarms rang out in Kevin’s head. “Neither did I.”

  He raced out of the kitchen and down the hall, Leah following closely behind him. As he grasped the nursery’s door handle, one terrible thought whizzed through his mind. She was ill and no one had been there for her. Or she was in her crib, kicking her feet and making unintelligible baby noises.

  “Is she okay?” Leah asked from behind him.

  Quietly he closed the door and smiled. “She’s fine. I’m not sure what she’s saying to her hands, but she sounds pretty animated. And since you didn’t get up with her, and I didn’t get up with her, that means—”

  “She slept all night.”

  Without warning, Leah launched herself into Kevin’s arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. He spun her around a few times before sliding her back down to her feet, putting them in close contact with barely any clothes between them. Worse, she didn’t immediately let him go. Huge mistake.

  A hundred push-ups and a forty-five-minute shower nightly had been the only means he’d had for keeping his libido in check. Bearing in mind his current state, he’d have to resort to two hundred push-ups and spend an hour in the shower before he got on with his day.

  With the last of his will intact, Kevin turned his back on her, laced his hands together behind his neck and started toward his bedroom. “Take care of Carly, please. I need a few minutes.” He needed a bucket of ice down his shorts.

  “Do you have a problem, Kevin?”

  He stopped and sent a glance over his shoulder to find her grinning. “You could say that.”

  “Would it happen to be that exclusively male morning condition known as nocturnal penile tumescence?”

  He faced her again at the risk of confirming her diagnosis. “You know how much I love it when you talk dirty to me in medical-speak, but this has nothing to do with the time of day. You just rubbed your half-naked body down my half-naked body. Add that to your ongoing seduction, and that’s what’s causing my problem.”

  She looked down at said problem, then back up again. “You had your chance the other night on the deck.”

  How well he knew that. “We’ve already been through this, Leah.”

  “I know, and we need to discuss it further when I come home this evening.”

  He remembered the e-mail he’d received last night after she’d gone to bed, and the dilemma it presented. “I won’t be here when you come home. I have to fly to Atlanta this afternoon.”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been summoned by the magazine’s top brass. I tried to get out of it by suggesting a conference call, but they want a face-to-face meeting. It’s only a couple of days. I have to play golf on Saturday with the big guns, but I’ll be back late Saturday night.”

  “How convenient. Now you have a real excuse to avoid me.”

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “It’s not a damn bit convenient, and I’m not avoiding you.”

  She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Yes, you are. When I come home, you either go to the gym or to the cabana and work out for hours. After dinner, you retire to your office until it’s time for the baby to go to bed.”

  Okay, so he had been avoiding her, with good reason. “I’m just doing what you asked, Leah. Letting you have some quality time alone with Carly.”

  “You barely look at me, Kevin. I feel like I have some kind of deadly virus and there’s no cure.”

  She did—a viral sex appeal that sent him into a cold sweat. “I’m looking at you now, and it’s killing me not to take you back to bed and take care of my problem. But I figured that’s exactly what you intended by wearing those damn pajamas.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t have anything else to wear to bed since I haven’t had time to do laundry this week.”

  Lame excuse, as far as Kevin was concerned. “My housekeeper comes in every Friday morning, which happens to be tomorrow. If you’d let her wash your clothes when she does mine and Carly’s, that won’t be an issue.”

  “I’m capable of doing my own laundry, thank you very much.”

  “Come on, Leah. Admit it. You’re trying to keep me hot and bothered.”

  “I’m not trying to do anything, Kevin. Besides, you have a tendency to overheat over fairly insignificant things.”
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  “Like the fact I can practically see through that top you’re wearing?” And the effect that his perusal had on her breasts.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Look who’s talking. You’re not even wearing a shirt.”

  He ran a hand down his sternum to the low-riding waistband on his shorts, only to see how she would react. And she reacted by biting her lower lip. “Does that turn you on? Because now you know exactly how I feel. Or are we engaged in some kind of competition to see who cries uncle first?”

  “I believe I did that last week on the deck.”

  “No, you moaned.”

  They continued to stand there, facing off, while Kevin envisioned backing her up against the wall and kissing that sly smile off her face. Taking off those man-killing pajamas really slowly…

  The sound of Carly’s cry temporarily suspended the tension hanging between them, and served as a reminder as to why he couldn’t act on his urges. But that tension was going to be present as long as they lived together. And as soon as he could think clearly again, he’d have to decide what to do about it.

  “What time do you leave?” Leah asked as she began retreating toward the nursery.

  “My flight’s at 4:00 p.m.” But he had an appointment two hours prior to that. An appointment at the lab, something he wouldn’t mention until he had the results, if he even mentioned it then.

  When she turned toward the bedroom and gave him a bird’s-eye view of her bottom, one of his favorite aspects, Kevin just couldn’t help himself. “Nice ass, Cordero.”

  She opened the door, looking as if she needed a quick getaway. “I’ll call the day care and tell them Carly will be there all day.”

  “And I’ll call you tonight.”

  LEAH HAD WAITED all evening long for Kevin to call. When the phone finally rang, she’d been lounging in the den aimlessly flipping through the channels and thinking about nothing—except him.

  She answered with a casual “Hello”, and he responded with “Hey.”

  Now what? Something general would be best. “Did you have a good flight?”

  “It was crowded, thanks to the holiday.”

  Leah hadn’t even considered that. “I’d totally forgotten it’s July Fourth weekend.”

  “That reminds me,” he said. “I hope you’re not on call this weekend because I talked to my mom and volunteered our place for the celebration on Sunday.”

  Our place. She still didn’t view the house as hers. “No, I’m not on call. What do I need to do to get ready for this little get-together?”

  “Not a thing. I’m going to grill burgers and the rest of the family will bring something to add to that. They’ve been doing this so long, they have it down to a science.”

  They did, maybe, but not Kevin. From what he’d told her in the past, he’d avoided most family gatherings in recent years. “Sounds like it should be a great time.”

  “And you’ll finally get to meet my parents.”

  Lovely. “I hope they’ll be okay with that.”

  “They’ll be fine. Just remember what I’ve told you about my dad. Prepare for a lot of Irish sayings that make no sense.”

  She laughed. “I’ll remember.”

  “How’s my other girl doing?” he asked.

  The way he’d said other girl gave Leah pause. “She’s been a little fussy, but right now she’s sleeping like a baby. Probably because she is a baby.” Real bright, Leah. “She misses you.”

  “And I miss her. I miss you, too.”

  She didn’t quite know how to respond to that, so she chose to flip to another subject. “How did your meeting go?”

  “Fine. Good actually. They want me to relocate to Atlanta and assume the position of Executive Creative Director. It means a bonus and a salary increase. But it also means longer hours and some travel.”

  Leah silently scolded herself for caring whether he traveled or not. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. She had her career, and he had his. “Are you going to accept?”

  “I’m leaning in that direction. The house is going to be quiet when you and Carly move out. I’ll need something to occupy my time. Besides, Atlanta’s only six hours from the Jackson area. I could make that drive in a day to see Carly.”

  “When you’re not traveling,” Leah added, an unmistakable edge in her tone.

  “It’s not a done deal yet. I told them I’d give them an answer by September. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing from home.”

  Another topic needed to be broached, and now seemed like a good time for Leah to tackle it. “About this morning, Kevin.”

  “I know. I kind of lost control of my mouth. I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Okay, I’m not. But I wasn’t the only one tossing out the innuendo.”

  Leah couldn’t very well dispute that. “You’re right. And while we’re being open with each other, I have a confession to make.”

  “About?”

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I fabricated the extent of my relationship with J.W. In reality, he’s only a friend.”

  A span of silence passed before he asked, “Then the two of you weren’t a couple?”

  “A couple of childhood buddies, but that’s it. Granted, he was there for me when Carly was born, but more or less as a surrogate uncle.”

  “After your reaction when I told you about his girlfriend, I thought—”

  “That I was upset over the end of our presumed relationship. My crying jag was the result of stress, not J.W.’s girlfriend.”

  “I’m confused, Leah. Why did you lie about it?”

  “I thought that if you thought I was involved with someone else, then what’s been happening between us wouldn’t happen. And it did work for a while, until J.W. blew it by leaving that message.”

  “For the record, you don’t need protection from me. Like I’ve said before, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”

  And that was the problem. She wanted him to do anything he’d like—aside from breaking her heart again. “Are you mad?”

  “No, I’m not mad. On some level I do understand the self-protection aspect. I’m a master at building walls.”

  She’d been on the outside of those walls, trying her best to break them down, without success. At least until recently. “You seem much more open than you used to be, Kevin.”

  “I’m working on it, Leah. But I still have a few issues to deal with.”

  Continued confirmed bachelorhood could be one of those issues. “Can you elaborate?”

  “Let’s just say a lot went on in my life while we were apart. Those events caused me to do some serious soul-searching. We’ll talk about it when we have more time. It’s going to take a while for me to explain.”

  His cryptic attitude piqued Leah’s curiosity. Yet if she pushed him for more information before he was ready, that could lead him to shut down and shut her out. “In the meantime, what do we do about this thing between us?”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  Leah hated it when someone answered a question with a question, especially when the answer was risky. “Well, we’re both consenting adults. As long as we know where we stand before establishing a physical liaison, that we’re going to enjoy each other until I leave, then I see no logical reason why we can’t let nature takes its course.”

  He released a bark of a laugh. “I feel like I just had a session with a relationship counselor.”

  She always tended to go into analytical mode when it came to conflict. “In layman’s terms, I don’t think we’re going to be able to prevent what’s happening unless one of us consents to being locked in a closet for the next few weeks.”

  “We both have a free will, Leah. The point is, neither of us wants to stop.”

  How very, very true. “Then we’re agreed we’re going to quit fighting it?”

  “On one condition. I’d like to know that you’ll f
orgive me one day for how I ended it with you.”

  “I have forgiven you, Kevin. But it’s something I may never forget. That’s why I have to tread cautiously.” Exactly why she had to treat lovemaking with Kevin casually. That could prove to be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Then we’ll let nature take its course.”

  Leah checked the clock and, after realizing the lateness of the hour, decided the time had come to end their conversation. “Now that we’ve settled our chemistry issues, it’s time for bed.”

  “Sounds good to me, sweetheart, but since I’m here, and you’re there, the bed’s not all that appealing.”

  Little by little, the Kevin she’d known before had begun to surface. The sexy-talking, sweet-nothing-whispering Kevin, who could keep her on a prolonged high with only the sound of his voice. “Believe me, I seriously need to sleep. But I really have enjoyed our talk. It reminds me of the conversations we used to have when you were out of town for an interview.”

  “Not a chance, unless I say something like this.” He lowered his voice and listed a litany of sensual, stimulating and somewhat graphic suggestions about what he’d do to her if he were there.

  Leah laid a palm over her rapidly beating heart. “Why, Kevin O’Brien, I’m shocked.”

  “Are you really? You used to give as good as you got, and if I remember correctly, you didn’t utter one anatomically accurate term.”

  Luckily he couldn’t see her blushing. “That was before I was the mother of a daughter.”

  “It’s okay to be bad, Leah. Being a mother shouldn’t impact your natural sexuality. Besides, how do you think kids get siblings?”

  The smile in his voice brought about her own smile. “Surely you’re not suggesting we make a brother or sister for Carly.”

  A stark, deafening silence ensued, leading Leah to believe his fear of settling down still existed, in spite of his love for Carly. “I’m kidding, Kevin.”