Free Riding Hard by Vicki Lewis Thompson Page B

regroup.
    Now she’d taken that time, and several things had come to mind. First of all, the man who’d wronged her mother, aka Tracy’s father, had neglected to mention that he was married. Drake wasn’t married. Not even close. No wives or fiancées waited in the wings, because Regan would have known about them and told her.
    And Regan brought up the second point. Drake had won Regan’s seal of approval, even though Regan easily could have told her to stay away from Drake. He hadn’t because, other than that one slip, Regan believed in the guy.
    Last of all, the jerk who had inadvertently become Tracy’s father had claimed to have had a vasectomy so he could have unprotected sex with Tracy’s mother. Tracy couldn’t imagine Drake lying under those circumstances.
    Maybe that was the bottom line for Drake Brewster. He had made a mistake, which meant he was human. It was a dilly of a mistake, but he obviously regretted it deeply. Other than his one false move, which from all indications had been a spur-of-the-moment bad decision, Drake was an honest man.
    He was also hot, and she might have blown her chance to find out just how hot. That gave her a selfish motive for fixing what she’d broken. It wouldn’t be easy. If she managed to fix it, Drake could still break her heart, and because her feelings for him were intense, it would likely be a nasty break.
    She picked up another piece of corn bread. Risking heartbreak was the kind of chance people had to take if they wanted to experience something besides lukewarm sex. Until meeting Drake, she’d wondered if lukewarm was all she was destined to feel.
    He’d corrected that misunderstanding. Had he ever. But when given an opportunity to prove that she, too, could have a grand passion, she’d been afraid to let herself go. She was still afraid, but no longer quite so terrified as she had been after the holding-out-her-chair incident. She was nervously ready to suit up and get into the game.
    First she needed to check on something, though. She’d already raided Regan’s toiletries once, so maybe taking one other item wouldn’t hurt. And she’d replace everything, of course. No doubt he’d taken a box to D.C., but Drake said Regan liked backup supplies, so logically another box should be tucked away somewhere.
    She found the item in question under the sink. After opening the box, she carried it to the guest room and set it on the nightstand next to the queen-size bed. Looking at that bed and imagining what might take place there later gave her goose bumps. But she also had to be prepared for rejection. Drake had a perfect right to turn her down.
    Back in the dining room, she wolfed down her soup, which was almost cool, before dumping Drake’s soup back in the pot and turning it on low. Then she wrapped the remaining corn bread in foil and put it in the oven on warm.
    The clock was ticking. He must be wondering when he’d get to eat, but she had more to do before texting him. She located a pen, paper and an envelope and brought them to the table. The note took her longer than she would have liked, but it had to set the tone. Licking the envelope was the worst part of the job. So far no one had come up with envelope-flap glue that didn’t taste like motor oil laced with menthol.
    She wrote his name on the outside of the envelope and propped it against his water glass . After dishing his soup, she put the corn bread back on the table and ducked into her bedroom. Finally she emerged in her red silk bathrobe with her hair loose, and texted him that she was finished eating.
    Time to disappear. She made a beeline for the guest room, barely making it before she heard his booted footsteps on the wooden porch. The screen door creaked open. He must have been hungry.
    She lay in his bed in the dark, because dark was how he’d left the room. A light on in there might have alerted him to a change in the situation. Sound carried perfectly in the still house, which allowed her