Free Tangled Up in Love by Heidi Betts Page A

him.
    Having Dylan think of her in sexual terms wouldn’t have been so bad. He was a man, she was a woman, and that’s what men did around any woman who didn’t look like she’d just climbed out of the primordial ooze. They were horny bastards who could get turned on watching paint dry.
    That was fine.
His
lust she could handle.
    The problem was that she very much feared a similar desire would be visible in her own eyes if she let him meet her gaze. She was pressed up against him—how in God’s name had that happened? She didn’t even like him, didn’t think she’d ever touched him willingly before, but suddenly she was draped along his side like she was trying to share his skin. Gads!
    And she was suddenly warm, warmer than she suspected the temperature in the apartment called for. She could feel the flush of her cheeks, the blood pulsing in her veins, the shakiness in her limbs.
    That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The worst was that in addition to being warm all over, she was wet. Down there, between her legs, where arousal couldn’t be denied no matter how vehemently she tried.
    Oh, God. Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god. This couldn’t be happening. She
could not
be sexually attracted to Dylan Stone. She would rather eat glass . . . walk across hot coals . . . cover her body in paper cuts and jump naked into a vat of lemon juice . . .
    Panic pressed in on her from all sides. She tried tobreathe, but her lungs refused to expand. Her head began to spin as she fought for oxygen, but the seconds ticked by with little success. She had to get out of there and away from him, before she freaked out.
    “Water,” she croaked, jumping to her feet.
    Dylan leaned back slightly, cocking his head to stare up at her. He looked as confused as she felt. “What?”
    “Water. I need a drink of water.” She plucked her glass from the coffee table before he could notice it was still half full, sloshing water over her fingers in the process. “Do you want anything?” she asked, making a beeline for the kitchen.
    She was already at the sink, splashing cold water on her face and, unfortunately, down the front of her shirt, when he answered from the living room.
    “Only that beer, if you find one.”
    She didn’t have beer, but she did have wine, and suddenly keeping it for a special occasion didn’t seem nearly as important as it had an hour ago.
    Shutting off the spigot, she dug in the cupboard for the hidden bottle of Pinot Grigio in the back. It wasn’t an expensive brand, but it was tasty—one of the best she’d found within her price range—and would do the trick.
    “How about a glass of wine instead?” she called back.
    “If that’s the best you’ve got, I’ll take it.”
    She already had the cork out and was pouring herself a glass, draining it in one long gulp. Feeling the smooth, slightly fruity, pale liquid rolling down her throat and into her belly fortified her and steadied her nerves.
    “Mind if I use your computer to check my e-mail?”
    Even from a distance, his voice rolled over her like awarm ocean wave. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the edge of the counter and tried to slow her out-of-control heartbeat.
    “No, go ahead,” she told him, mortified when the words came out weak and squeaky.
    What was wrong with her? Where was her strong-as-nails, steel-heeled personality? Her fuck-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on attitude?
    Her world was tilting off its axis, and she didn’t like it one bit.
    Pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, she concentrated on her breathing and struggled to regain her equilibrium.
    A little misdirected sexual frustration, that’s all it was. Dylan was a man, she was a woman, and she supposed women could be as indiscriminate as the male of the species. That had never been her practice, but after a while, when a dry spell dragged on a bit too long and things below the equator started to thrum, apparently any guy in close proximity would do.
    That