Free Five's A Crowd by Kasey Michaels Page A

couple of kids of his own.
    But he’d bet she’d make great kids if they were anything like their mother.
    Now cut that out! he screamed silently, nearly biting the end off his two-dollar cigar.
    All right. So Taylor was beautiful. And funny. And intelligent. And gutsy. And not a bit afraid of or impressed by him, his reputation or his money. That didn’t mean anything. Wanting her in his bed meant something—but that something wasn’t love. It was desire, pure and simple. The gut-wrenching pain he’d unexpectedly felt earlier, when she suggested that they put an end to the sham and she leave Ocean City, leave him—well, that had just been some stupid aberration, a fleeting fear that he’d have to deal with explaining her departure to the press.
    That’s all.
    Nothing more.
    Taylor Angel was no more than a fairly enjoyable moment in time, a temporary attraction he’d overcome the minute he was back in circulation, a beautiful pain in the neck who used a little Yanni, a little scented oil, a little blood-heating massage to drive him out of his mind, then filling that same mind with thoughts that would make even Thelma Helper blush.
    “So? You getting her a ring or what?” Woody persisted when his stepbrother didn’t answer him.
    “Yeah, Woody. I’ll get her a ring,” Holden said fatalistically, making up his mind. “My cover’s blown anyway, so I guess we can all drive up to Atlantic City tomorrow. We’re bound to find a suitable paperweight in one of the casino jewelry stores.”
    “The casinos! All right!” Woody leaped to his feet “Of course, Tiffany isn’t old enough to get in to gamble, you know. But she’ll want to go to the shops. Then we can have dinner at one of the steak houses—they do have steak houses, don’t they? Man, you know what, Holden? This is gonna be neat. Really neat. Taylor’s so, like, well, normal— not like Peter’s wives. I don’t think Tiff and I really ever had that. We can actually do things together with Taylor—play gin, do jigsaw puzzles, eat dinner together, talk about stuff. Just like a real family, you know?”
    Holden took a deep pull on his cigar, blew out a thin stream of blue smoke. “Yeah, Woody, just likea real family.” He closed his eyes on Woody’s youthful, hopeful smile, deciding he had a problem on hishands. Yeah. He had a real problem….

6
    D AWN OF THE DAY AFTER her “engagement” announcement arrived—baffling Taylor, who felt sure the world would come to a merciful end sometime during the night—and she dragged herself out of bed for her morning run, hoping to leave before Holden could join her.
    Her luck, which hadn’t been good, definitely hadn’t improved overnight.
    “You ready?” Holden asked easily, doing some muscle stretches against one of the porch poles as she closed the door to the condo and just before she could breathe a sigh of relief at getting out of the house without running into anyone.
    She looked at him in the yellow glow from the porch light, for the sun had yet to break over the water and erase the gray of dawn, his palms pressed against the pillar. He had his left knee bent, his right leg stuck out behind him, giving his Achilles tendon full extension—and giving her a truly remarkable view of his white-running-shorts-clad rear end. The man was a near god. Perfect form. Perfect muscular delineation—not too “stringy,” not too musclebound.Perfect tan. Perfect teeth. Perfect hair. Perfect face.
    Perfectly infuriating.
    “Aren’t you afraid some reporter is lurking in the hydrangeas?” she asked, voicing her own private fears aloud. She definitely did not like being in the public eye, at least not when she wasn’t prepared for the exposure.
    “The sun isn’t up yet, Taylor,” he said, grinning at her. “They’re probably still all hanging upside down in their caves, sipping coffee through straws. Although one of our neighbors just jogged by a couple of minutes ago to say he saw us on television