Free Sinful Seduction by Ann Christopher Page A

her away from him.
    He wanted her, this crying woman whose name he didn’t know.
    He wanted her bad.
    She stepped closer, tipping up her chin and nailing him right between the eyes with her earnest urgency. “I woke up this morning, and I didn’t recognize my life anymore. I’m heading down a path I didn’t mean to take. And I can’t figure out how I got here.”
    Sandro waited for more, but there wasn’t anything else.
    That was it? The big problem that made her cry? Was he missing something?
    “Take a different path,” he told her.
    “It’s not that easy—”
    “It is that easy. Take a different path. You can do it.”
    She faltered, the beginnings of a frown creasing her forehead.
    A beat or two passed, during which the world shrank around them.
    Was she drifting closer? Was he? When had her eyes become the only thing in his field of vision? When had he gotten close enough to feel the warmth of her skin?
    “But…I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said, low.
    He had an impulse to touch her. He didn’t try to resist it. Reaching out, he used his thumb to swipe a lingering tear off her cheek.
    Once that was done, he discovered that he didn’t want to move his fingers away from the sweet satin of her skin.
    When she should have moved away, she didn’t. When he should have dropped his hand, he couldn’t. His attention was riveted on her sparkling eyes…her dewy lips…her words…her....
    Only when he caught himself leaning in and lowering his head did he stop. His body, which was taut with sexual tension, didn’t appreciate this late display of gentlemanly behavior. But kissing this woman now wouldn’t be the right thing, and he always tried to do the right thing, even when it hurt.
    Especially when it hurt.
    “If you were on the right path,” he said, stepping back and letting her go, “you wouldn’t be out here crying. Would you?”
    She shook her head, her gaze still locked with his. When she spoke again, her voice was throaty bordering on hoarse.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Alessandro. Davies.”
    There was a pause.
    A long, awful pause.
    Her expression rearranged itself into one of dawning comprehension and…dismay. “Alessandro?”
    He, meanwhile, was experiencing his own unwanted epiphany.
    He tried to ease into the knowledge, but it was already overwhelming him and congealing into a leaden ball in the pit of his gut.
    Pistons fired in his overheated brain; dots connected; phrases replayed.
    I’m heading down a path I didn’t mean to take. I don’t want to hurt anyone—
    “What’s your name?” he asked, but he knew, even before an unwelcome male voice, the confident voice of his brother, Tony, the man who’d bested him every day of his life, called out.
    Tony emerged from the shadows, grinning, flushed and happy.
    “Skylar! Where’d you get off to? You’re not hiding from me, are you— Ah, I see you met my worse half. You’ll notice I got all the looks in the family. Sandro, this is Skylar, my fiancée.”
    Tony hooked an arm around Skylar’s waist, reeled her in, ran his hand through her hair and kissed her on the very same mouth that Sandro had just been lusting after. Sandro watched it all happen, sickened by a feeling of loss that he couldn’t justify and the sudden realization that he was the biggest and stupidest punk in the world.
    Skylar broke the kiss first, looking flustered. “Tony—”
    “Come on, baby.” Tony steered her toward the house and out of Sandro’s life. “They want us to cut the cake.”
    Then they disappeared up the path and were gone, leaving only Skylar’s white flower on the gravel at Sandro’s feet. Naturally, he picked it up and kept it. Oh, he hated her, but he kept the damn flower.
    The day after that, Skylar broke up with Tony.
    A month after that, they were back in Afghanistan.
    A person could die in a firefight, or in a car accident or in a plane crash. Those were the usual ways. But could memories choke the life out of a person?