Too Close to Resist. Nicole Helm
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focused on the two buckets she had on the patio table. Watching him run could be...distracting, and she wasn’t going to be distracted.
She picked up one bucket of lemonade, and when he was close enough, she put her plan into action.
“Hey, Kyle?”
Right as he looked up, she upended the contents of the bucket over the balcony. He tried to move out of the way, but surprise allowed most of the contents to hit their target. When he didn’t move, instead just stood there holding his arms out as liquid dripped off, she upended the other.
“Damn it, Grace. This is not funny.” He shook his fist at her, which made him look even more ridiculous, and she doubled over in laughter.
“By the way,” she said, struggling to stop laughing enough to speak, “it’s not water.”
When he dropped a very loud F-bomb, Grace laughed even harder.
He peeled off the wet shirt, cursing impressively for a repressed suit. But her humor was short-lived when the chorus of oh, craps returned. Because she hadn’t exactly expected him to take off his shirt and give her a firsthand view of the hard plane of his chest or the slight ridges of his abs.
And his shoulders without a stupid polo or button-up were quite impressive, and that tattoo? Well, that was—
Wait a second.
“You have a tattoo!”
He quickly flung his wet T-shirt over his shoulder, hiding the black mark of ink before she had a chance to make out what it was. “No.”
“I saw it!”
“No, you didn’t.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he was stomping away. Delighted with herself for finding out Mr. Stuffy had a wild side, Grace scurried into the house, determined to find him before he could put his shirt back on.
Kyle had a tattoo. The very thought made her giggle. She bounded down the stairs, hoping that the design was something hugely embarrassing. A butterfly. Fairy wings. A unicorn. Oh, the possibilities of her imagination were endless.
All the crap he’d given her about her tattoo and he had one. It was too great. She laughed again, unable to stop herself.
She managed to get to the bottom of the stairs just as he stepped into the house. The shirt was still draped over his shoulder.
“You have a tattoo,” she repeated, poking a finger at him. “I saw it.” She tried to reach for the T-shirt to pull it off his shoulder, but he was too fast and stepped away. “Come on. Let me see it. After all the crap you’ve given me about mine, I deserve to see what yours is.”
“The difference is I don’t flaunt mine.” He turned his back to her, tried to exit on that line, but she grabbed his shirt in the nick of time, starting a tug-of-war with him. He won, but had to turn in order to do so. When he faced her, his eyes were blazing angry, his scowl wedged so deep, grooves appeared around his mouth.
A smart woman would back off. He was livid. It was the principle of the thing as much as it was fascination in making Mr. Reserved and Stoic lose his cool. “Don’t be such a baby about it.” She tried to snatch the shirt again.
His hands clamped around her wrists. “Knock it off,” he growled through clenched teeth.
It probably said something wrong about her that his authoritative directive and his big hands around her wrists caused a slow, tingling sensation of awareness to flow over her skin.
“I just want to see it.” She blinked up at him as he stepped close enough to her that their knees were touching. She could smell the lemonade on him, feel the sticky sugar of it on his hands. If she leaned just a few centimeters forward, her breasts would brush his wet, sticky chest. The tingling of awareness went deeper now, became more of a longing.
“It was a stupid mistake I made a long time ago. Forget it.” His voice was low and strained, as if it was with great effort he spoke at all.
His eyes, that dark, intense blue, held her gaze. She was tempted, so damn tempted, to close the little distance between them. The weirdest thing though was, from the way his eyes held hers, the way his jaw clenched tight as if he was holding back, she had a feeling he was just as tempted.
It was hard to catch a full breath with her heart beating so damn fast, and when she spoke it came out breathless. “Are you thinking about making another stupid mistake?”
He didn’t speak or move for a full thirty seconds. She knew, because she was counting. It was the only thing that kept her from imagining what it might be like to let him touch her, press his mouth to hers.
His hands gentled on her wrists, and then he let them go. He exhaled loudly. “I don’t make stupid mistakes anymore,” he said flatly.
Grace swallowed, all too afraid regret was the feeling washing through her instead of relief. She took a deep breath, determined her parting comment would be flippant. He didn’t need to know she would have been more than willing to go at it on the floor with him.
“Too bad.” She flashed him a saucy smile and then flounced out of the kitchen. But when she made it to her room, she collapsed onto her bed and let the oh, crap chorus take over.
Except, even as the oh, craps rattled around in her mind, she found herself smiling. It might be kind of fun to poke at this weird attraction. It would be downright fascinating to see how Kyle responded.
When her phone buzzed, she didn’t even care that it was Mom.
* * *
KYLE KEPT HIS entire body tense as he walked through the house and up the front staircase. He had to focus on the anger, the fury, or he might be all too tempted to follow Grace up the back staircase.
And then...
Well, he didn’t want to think about “and then.” He wanted to think about what kind of idiot made two buckets of lemonade and doused some unsuspecting victim with it. He wanted to think about why his best friend’s sister was such a royal pain in the ass and why that was suddenly his problem.
He managed to think all of that. At least until he stepped into the shower and the warm spray began to soothe the tense muscles. The smell of lemonade dissipated, but the smell of Grace did not.
Damn it, he didn’t want to know what she smelled like. Something sweet and light and intoxicating. Kyle rested his hands on the cool tile of the shower wall, let his head hang. The anger washed away with the lemonade, leaving something that might have been pleasant if it weren’t so unnerving.
Calmed and relaxed by the warm water pounding into his back, the moment played over for him. When they’d stood there, so close his breath had fluttered the hair around her face, she’d looked at him as if...as if she felt some inkling of that same jolt. As if he wasn’t her brother’s stuffy, boring roommate.
He liked that look way too much. Kyle wrenched the water to cold for a few minutes, then stepped frigid and shivering into the bathroom. Grace was off-limits for a lot of reasons. She was his best friend’s sister. She was the antithesis of everything he looked for and respected in a woman. And no matter how often he forgot it when she was poking at him, there was a very serious reason she was here.
A reason he was all too familiar with. How many times had his father been released from jail, leaving Kyle with the sick fear he might show up and ruin this amazing life he’d worked his ass off for? How many times had Dad gotten close to doing just that?
Too many. When a man was constantly getting locked up for petty drug charges, releases were quick and inevitable. The only reassuring part was that dear old Dad always wound up back in jail. It was the one thing Kyle could depend on. It just sucked to be dragged into a knock-down, drag-out fight every damn time.
Kyle stepped out of the bathroom, realizing with a sigh that he’d tracked a mess through the house. So intent on distancing himself from Grace and her melted-chocolate eyes he’d completely forgotten he’d been covered in sugary liquid.