Free That's Amore by Erin McCarthy Page B

mom’s.
    “I’ll see what Paige wants to do.”
    Liar. He was a total liar.
    Only a man who didn’t want to have sex would tell Paige what was going on.
    But since he did want to have sex, and right
now
, he would wait until the morning to explain things to Paige.
    What difference would it make?
    Just the difference between his cold, lonely, empty apartment and this place with a warm, willing, and eager Paige in his arms.
    No contest.

♦ Chapter Seven ♦
    HE MUST BE CRAZY to be doing this.
    Paige tore through the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet and looking under the sink, knocking over toothpaste and toilet paper willy nilly.
    It didn’t feel like she was crazy. It felt like she was in love. With Jeff. Again.
    Maybe she had never stopped loving Jeff. Maybe if she had had a little more confidence, she would have called him herself after their night together and gotten the whole thing straightened out three years ago.
    That didn’t matter now.
    What mattered was that she was here, alone, well sort of alone, if you didn’t count Justin, with Jeff, and she wanted to make love to him.
    Hence her very embarrassing blurting out of exactly that. Jeff hadn’t seemed to mind, though. The look on his face showed he clearly wanted her as much as she wanted him.
    The love thing she would deal with later.
    Right now this was about giving in to three years’ worth of desire, patiently stored up and ready to go.
    Boy, was she ready to go.
    Giving up on the bathroom, she hovered in the doorway of the bedroom. If she were a condom, where would she be?
    Easily reached. In the night stand, that’s where.
    Tiptoeing carefully around Justin, she pulled open the drawer. Eureka! There they were. A completely unopened box of condoms.
    Grabbing them victoriously, she vowed to give her cousin Loraine a big thank you gift for being such a Girl Scout, always prepared.
    Forcing herself not to run, she went into the living room. Jeff was setting her cell phone down.
    “Did someone call?”
    “Uh, it was Gina.” He stood up and started towards her, strutting in her direction in a totally sexy way that distracted her.
    If she didn’t look at his chest she could think. Or his mouth. Or his hair. Or his… she’d better just look at the floor.
    “Has there been any change?” Paige felt guilty for looking forward to a passionate night when Gina was suffering imprisonment. Some friend she was.
    “No, no change. Gina’s fine though.”
    Don’t look, don’t look… Paige blew it. She looked up at him, unable to resist. Whew. He was hot, plain and simple.
    While she drooled, his eyes dropped to the box in her hand.
    “You found some.”
    “Yes.” Paige was overcome with embarrassment. The passionate moment between them had passed and she felt ridiculous standing there with a box of protection in her hands. Protection that she had darted all around looking for.
    Afraid that her desperate desire was in her eyes, she stared at the wall to her right and concentrated on slowing her heart rate. Right now it was doing a way too rapid tha-thunk, tha-thunk.
    There was a black and white framed photo of a flower on the wall. It looked like a daisy. She started counting the petals, willing herself not to blush or throw herself at him like a sex-starved maniac.
    Wait a minute. She was a sex-starved maniac.
    “Hey.” Jeff took her hand and pulled her closer until her nose was snuggled into his warm chest.
    She offered no resistance. Embarrassed or not, she wasn’t walking away from this opportunity.
    Then he bent down and took her lips with his. It was heat, it was passion, it was her love for Jeff rising up and blending together until she went weak in the knees and whimpered.
    His arms came around her tighter. She clung. Their mouths dipped and swayed and tasted, his teeth nipping along her bottom lip in a way that sent bursts of heat zinging through her body.
    This was the way she remembered him tasting. Warm and clean, a light smell of