Free Wild at Heart (Walk on the Wild Side #1) by Lara Archer

to stop and think before answering. Whether it made her weepy or not, it really was best for Amber to go on thinking he’d actually slept with Ruby.
    “You know she’s coming off that nasty breakup with Vinnie La Russa,” he said. “I’d bet that’s got a lot more to do with her mood than anything that happened with me.” There. Just ambiguous enough—he wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t clarifying the truth, either. “Maybe kissing a new co-star reminded her of the whole fiasco with him.”
    Amber looked at Nick skeptically. In the past, she’d have flopped down in the armchair by now and put her feet up, probably have appropriated his coffee mug and complained like usual about how he never used enough sugar. Instead, she was hovering by the door as if she might need to make a hasty escape. “Vin La Russa is a cheating asshole, and Jake Hultensaalt is a total sweetheart. I can’t imagine one reminds her of the other.”
    Nick shrugged. “That close up and naked, one man’s pretty much the same as another.”
    “Really?” A wash of pink color crossed Amber’s face. “Same with one woman and another? When you get up close and naked? I think I’m starting to understand how your mind really works.” She picked up a little carved wooden eagle that was sitting on the desk to her left and fiddled with it nervously, turning it upside down and spinning it on its head. “I prefer to think of each person as unique.”
    He was tempted to defend himself, but it was better to just let it go—let her get it off her chest. At least she was speaking to him. They’d work their way through this somehow, and once it didn’t feel so raw, maybe she’d actually like him again. Or tolerate him. Whatever.
    As long as he didn’t have to deal with life without her.
    Amber leaned her hip against the desk now, flipping the eagle over, round and round, her mouth tight.
    And then without any warning at all, her fierce façade just cracked wide open.
    Her eyes welled with tears, and her angry expression crumpled, and the eagle thudded on the floor. “Oh, shit,” she said, and buried her face in her hands. “Two days ago, everything was fine, perfectly fine, and now it’s all going to hell at once. I’m not getting married, and my movie’s ruined, so my career is shot, and I slept with my best friend and now he’s acting like I’m radioactive....”
    Oh, Jesus. This was not going to be okay.
    Before he had a chance to think, he’d moved to her, put his arms around her. And he seemed to be kissing her forehead and her temples and the top of her hair. “Amber, hey,” he was murmuring. “It’s okay, kiddo. It’s fine. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
    He thought she might push him away or maybe punch him, but she didn’t. She leaned in hard instead, dug her fingers into the material of his t-shirt, pressed her face into his shoulder, and burst out sobbing.
    And everything inside his chest dissolved, like a sandcastle hit by a wave.
    “Shh, shh, Amber,” he said against her ear. “It’s okay.”
    “It’s not! I ruined it. Completely fucked it all up. And I don’t even understand how.”
    Another kiss against her temple. “No you didn’t ruin anything. Shh. Stop. This isn’t like you.” His hands stroked her back, his thumbs massaging the bunched-up muscles. “C’mon, we both know that you’re basically the perfect human being. You do everything right, sweetheart.”
    And he would do anything, anything, to make her feel like her usual happy self again.
    “I don’t know what was up with Ruby today,” he said. “But it wasn’t your fault. All this is a tiny bump in the road. You’ll pick yourself up and just get stronger. Because that’s what you do .”
    She was still crying in this horrible, shuddering way that made his stomach turn over. And he couldn’t stand it. Amber was fearless, confident. At least she always had been those things, before he crossed the line with her in the meadow