Free Anything For You by Sarah Mayberry Page B

He was thirty. He should be able to have a minor crisis in his life without reverting to the stratagems of a thirteen-year-old. The number of times he’d taken his anger and fear out on the skate park when he was a kid…And here he was, a supposed adult, ostensibly in charge of his world, turning to the same old solace.
    Worse still, he knew that the acknowledgement that he was being juvenile wasn’t going to stop him from spending another hour or so on the ramp. The thought of going in to work and looking Delaney in the eye…He just couldn’t do it.
    That made him a coward and a cad and probably a whole bunch of other things, he knew. Climbing the stairs to the top of the skate ramp, he placed the board in preparation to do a drop-in.
    The problem was, he’d ruined everything—everything. And he had no idea how he was going to make it right again.

    DELANEY SLID HER CAR into her parking spot outside Mirk and tried to think of a reason—any reason—why she didn’t have to go in there right now. She kept flashing back to the moment when she’d grabbed Sam’s T-shirt and kissed him. How had all the self-control she’d learned over sixteen years fallen by the wayside like that? One minute she was ordinary old Delaney Michaels, frustrated, unrequited lover of her best friend, and the next she was some kind of sexual Valkyrie, straddling Sam like a rodeo queen and glorying in her conquest.
    Then she’d made things worse by spending half an hour in the shower, trying to get her courage up to go face Sam, only to find him gone. She winced every time she remembered calling him chickenshit over the phone. In her defence, she’d been pretty overwrought at the time, having searched her apartment from top to bottom, unable to believe he could bail on her like that. The sinking feeling in her belly had swiftly given way to anger, and the next thing she’d known, she’d had the phone in her hand and was breathing brimstone down the receiver.
    But rational thought had not taken long to return. So, Sam had gone back to his apartment to try and get his head together. Was that any more or less shocking than her retreating to the bathroom and hiding under the shower for half an hour? How long had he hung around for, waiting for her to come out and talk to him? What must he have been thinking when she rolled away from him and hightailed it out of there?
    It was hard to admit she’d behaved poorly, but she knew she wasn’t exactly standing on a pedestal in this situation. And that was before she even took in to account the fact that she was the one who’d instigated the whole thing in the first place. Granted, he had put his hand on her breast. And rubbed her nipple with his thumb. But she was the one who’d turned into a tigress and ripped his clothes off. And grabbed his erection like a joystick, refusing to let go. And raced ahead to the finish line thanks to years of pent-up fantasy and anticipation.
    So, really, they were kind of at a draw in the self-recrimination and blame stakes.
    Which only left the small, insignificant task of how she was supposed to face him again. Because he must know. Her reaction had been such a giveaway. How could he not know?
    Forcing herself to get out of her car, Delaney decided to give herself a small break. Probably she wasn’t going to come up with a world-class solution to any of her major problems right now, with her body still humming from Sam’s expert touch. The one really, really important, vital thing that had to happen was that she and Sam talk about what they’d done, get things out in the open and deal with the resulting issues. Even though she was in the process of edging him out of her life, she wasn’t ready to lose him just yet. Not like this. She refused to let a few minutes of sexual heaven destroy a friendship that had survived all other obstacles.
    Her heart in her mouth, Delaney pushed open the door to their offices and tried to look normal. Whatever the hell that