Free Seeing Stars by Vanessa Grant Page A

man prepared to play permanent house.
    The truth was, Blake didn't have room in his life for that sort of commitment. He was still working overtime, taking on more jobs than a man could reasonably handle, to pay his youngest sister's university tuition. He'd stretched himself to the limit with the shipyard, the boys, and his family, but he'd always had the sense to avoid more complications by picking the kind of woman who was strictly temporary.
    The trouble was, the older he got, the more he realized that when a woman agreed to temporary, she wasn't always telling the truth. Not that he thought Claire was lying, but this thing was starting to feel damned complicated for a no-strings week of flirtation and romance. He wanted her badly enough that he didn't trust his own judgment, and it was one thing to take a boat out in a storm, but another to knowingly set out in hurricane force winds when you didn't trust your own reactions.
    Mac had always had the sense not to pilot a vessel drunk, and this wasn't much different. Maybe it had been too long since he had a woman, or maybe it was something about Claire herself, some high-potency charge he hadn't realized went with the eyes and the legs. Whatever the reason, watching her in that dress, feeling his own out-of-proportion reaction, he knew it was time to get some air before he found himself in deeper than he'd bargained for.
    Any guy who liked speed as much as Mac did, and wanted to live, knew how to listen to his intuition on the rare occasion when it told him to slow down.
    If anyone knew how to cool it with a woman, it was Mac. The dance would offer a perfect opportunity. The guys would be lining up to dance with Claire when she walked in with those legs and that hair. It would be hard enough to get time alone with her if he was looking for it, and easy to simply step back.
    He took her to dinner first, the same restaurant as before, an inside table this time because that dress wasn't designed for evening air. Once she sat down across the table from him, he couldn't see her legs, and he found it marginally easier to stop himself from thinking about how the creamy skin of her thighs would feel under his hand, how her throat would let that little moan out—the one he'd heard when he grabbed her earlier today and gave way to the temptation to kiss her the way his hammering pulse demanded.
    He talked about the kids—mainly Jake and Tim, because she'd met them, and it was the only topic he could think of that didn't have sexual overtones.
    "I didn't get to talk to Jake," she said. Then she sent his pulse hammering when she lifted one hand and pushed the sleek fall of her hair back, hooking it behind one ear.
    "You're off the hook on that." He forced his eyes away from her throat, from the way it flexed when she swallowed. He picked up his glass—straight water—and took a long drink. He cleared his throat. "I think I might have cracked the kid, a bit anyway. We took a motorcycle ride."
    Her eyes flashed something disturbing. Just a smile, with eyes instead of lips, but it sent his blood pressure into the red zone.
    "A motorcycle ride could do it," she said softly, using the voice he remembered from that day back in high school, when he'd held her on the verge of falling, when she'd looked up at him and said words he couldn't hear because of her eyes.
    "You liked the motorcycle?"
    "I loved it. It had that forbidden excitement. I'm thinking of taking lessons, learning to ride by myself. It would be fantastic in the mountains."
    He frowned at the thought of Claire hurtling over treacherous mountain roads on a big bike. "You want to be careful on the curves until you've got a lot of experience."
    "I'm good at being careful."
    He wasn't sure he liked the idea of her riding. He didn't want to worry about whether she was doing something crazy and not knowing it was crazy, like asking a guy like Mac to have a temporary affair. OK, so he'd been stupid enough to encourage her, to tell