Reckless

Sweet mercy…

She felt better than any woman had a right to.

He told himself that he was reacting so powerfully to her because he’d gone so long without a woman’s company. But he’d never been very good at lying, not even to himself.

He grasped the flesh of her bottom more tightly, holding her still as he thrust into her again, the action causing her breasts to jiggle. He gritted his back teeth, staving off climax. No. He’d waited too damn long for this for it to be over so quickly.

Kyle paced himself, slowing his strokes until his balls felt as though they might explode. Yes. That was…

Heidi’s back arched and she stretched her neck, letting loose a moan that bespoke her own pleasure. Her muscles contracted around him and she shuddered, reaching her own crisis point.

Just knowing that he was the one who had caused her so much pleasure rendered Kyle helpless to withhold his own climax.

HEIDI HAD HEARD of the morning after. But what did you call this?

Whereas she might now be seeking to cuddle with Jesse, she found herself slowly returning to the kitchen counter, hard and cold beneath her back.

Kyle appeared to be experiencing the same intrusion of reality, for while he lay against her, he was stiff and unmoving. And she guessed it wasn’t simply because he’d just come, but because he’d come while inside his best friend’s girl.

The instant she formulated the thought, Kyle pulled away from her, turning to put himself back together while she pushed up from the counter and did the same.

Oh, my God. What have I done?

Heidi had pulled on her panties and slacks and was reaching for her bra when the floor bucked under her. She grasped the counter edge for balance and closed her eyes tightly against the images of Kyle kissing her, touching her, making love to her.

She’d spent so much of her life avoiding situations like this that she had no idea what to do now that she had actually gone through one.

“Heidi?”

Kyle’s voice was soft behind her.

She held up a hand. “I’m okay.”

By okay, she meant that she wasn’t about to pass out. But she was by no means okay in the emotional sense.

“Are you sure?”

She forced herself to stand straight and take a fewdeep breaths, clutching her bra between her breasts as if the lacy material were enough to protect her against the world.

She nodded. “Yes.” She smiled at Kyle shakily without really seeing him. “I’m sure.”

She reached for her shirt and finished dressing.

Kyle cleared his throat, looking about as comfortable as she was. Which was not at all.

“Maybe I should get going…”

“Maybe you should go…”

They spoke at the same time.

Heidi averted her gaze, completely incapable of looking him in the eye for fear of what she might see there. It didn’t matter if it was the cool regard that she was used to seeing from him, or smoldering need; she didn’t think she could handle either just then.

“I’ll call you later,” he said, moving toward the door.

“No. No, don’t. Please.” Heidi swallowed thickly, hating the plaintive sound in her voice.

“Heidi…”

“Please. Just go.”

He did.

Chapter 5

HEIDI WASN’T SURE what time it was. If forced to guess, she’d say after midnight. She was fuzzy on just how she’d gotten home, or why she’d ended up sitting on the kitchen floor, beyond that she’d gone to the refrigerator to get something cold to drink after a shower and had instead slid to the floor, holding the door open with her foot so that the cold air hit her hot face. She’d long since allowed the door to close but hadn’t been able to summon the energy to get up.

She was thankful that Jesse hadn’t popped up, as he sometimes did even when she requested time alone. She didn’t know what she would have done if he had. In the state she was in, likely she would have spilled everything the moment she opened the door to him.

And then what?

She rested her head against the shelf of her bent knees and tightly closed her eyes.

God, what had she done?

She hadn’t known it was humanly possible to want something so badly that you took it regardless of the consequences, only to find those same consequences hitting you in the face the moment after the deed was done. What had been up was now down, what had been right was now wrong.

And where she had been good she was now bad.

“You’re so judgmental, Heidi. If you’re not careful you’re going to be a bitter old woman by twenty-five.”

The words were a familiar refrain from her mother and, lately, her sister.

She’d never paid much attention to them and their opinions because, well, she’d always been in the right. She wasn’t the single mother of five children from three different men, only one of whom she’d ever been married to. And now her younger sister appeared to be following in their mother’s footsteps, marrying as soon as she found out she was pregnant and then divorcing before the kid was even born.

Melody lived on and off with their mother in the same cramped clapboard house where Heidi had been raised, with little more than two nickels to rub together between them at the end of the week.

“And now I’m one of them.”

She snapped open her eyes, the words serving to jerk her out of her state of shock.

Everything had happened so quickly she’d only thought about how her actions would impact her life with Jesse. She hadn’t stopped to consider the soul searching she would have to do to understand her actions.

She’d struggled to be such a good girl all her life, but the struggle hadn’t been about defeating temptation. Every child born with the name Joblowski had a soiled reputation from day one, and Heidi was determined hers wouldn’t be justified. But even though she’d never shown interest in any of the boys throughout middle school, she’d been called Heidi Ho merely through her relationship with her mother and her younger sister Melody, who had enthusiastically lost her virginity at thirteen and rushed headlong into womanhood without a care in the world.

It wasn’t until high school and meeting Jesse that she’d achieved any kind of identity of her own, separate from her family. And she’d always be grateful to him for that.

She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead, trying to loosen the tight knot there.

Gathering her wits about her, she slowly got to her feet. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but whatever it was, losing Jesse wasn’t an option. She loved him. He loved her. And there was no reason not to proceed with their plans.

She moved toward the bedroom, realizing she hadn’t turned on any of the lights since she’d arrived home, relying on familiarity to find her way.

But what was familiar in her life now? Certainly not what she’d done at the café.

And what about Kyle?

She stumbled over her own feet.

What agenda might Kyle have after tonight? As Jesse’s best friend, would he feel compelled to tell Jesse what had happened?

Kyle would go back to being nothing more than Jesse’s good friend, she told herself firmly.

KYLE HAD MANAGED to avoid running into Jesse all morning, but couldn’t miss the meeting set before lunch because it was the final review of the Kitchner house. He did, however, arrive late, happy to find that things were already moving ahead without him.

“There he is,” Jesse said by way of greeting. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were avoiding me today.”

Kyle knew he meant it as a joke. He only wished that it weren’t true.

God, what in the hell had inspired him to sleep with his best friend’s girl?

The question had kept him up most of the night and he found himself alternately picking up the phone to call Jesse…and Heidi.

He’d awoken to find he hadn’t come any closer to an answer than he’d been the night before.

“Do you have the prints for the kitchen redesign?” Jesse asked.

Kyle unrolled the drawing Jesse was looking for on the worktable set up in the foyer of the thirteen-thousand-square-foot mansion they were building together. Jesse was the head of the construction team, Kyle the head architect.

“As you’ll see,” Jesse was saying to the owner, pointing at the redesign, “when we reconfigure the scheme the way you want, there isn’t room for the industrial-sized double-door refrigerator that you chose. One solution—”

Kyle peered at his friend. The issue he was discussing was two design revisions ago.

Thankfully Jesse seemed to catch himself and grimaced at Kyle before pretending the prints were upside down and turning them right again.

“Why don’t you explain it to him, Kyle?” Jesse said, looking at his watch. “There’s another appointment I need to make in fifteen minutes.”

“Sure.” Kyle stepped up, clearing his throat to regain the attention of the five men crowded around the table who were watching Jesse instead of the prints. “As you see here…”

He began explaining the proposed adjustment to the room dimensions and offered up alternatives and cost overruns. As soon as he had everyone’s attention, he switched to autopilot and watched as Jesse took off his hard hat and then climbed into his truck cab, looking as distracted as Kyle felt.

Was it possible that he knew what had happened last night? Had his friend stopped by the café? But the door had been locked, and so far as he could tell there was no way to see inside the kitchen from the parking lot.

Jesse’s tires kicked up gravel as he left the site.

Kyle frowned and finished up. “If you decide to pursue the changes, completion date will be pushed back at least five days.”

“Five days?” the owner said.

Kyle began rolling the print back up and shrugged. “It is what it is. The skeleton has already been built and the team already moved to another site. We’d have to pull them back…” He could recite the words in his sleep because he’d run into similar setbacks in nearly every project he’d worked on. Either the wife decided she wanted an Olympic-sized bathtub instead of the regular whirlpool in the original design, or the husband wanted a larger work area. It always meant delays and cost increases.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket.

He fished it out and started at the caller ID even as he finished up his spiel. Heidi.

“If you’ll excuse me a minute, gentlemen, I have to take this call.”

“I THINK Jesse knows.”

Heidi nearly dropped the plate of boneless chicken breasts she was planning to turn into croquettes for a barbecue that night. She lowered the plate to the counter then stepped away for fear of doing even more damage in her distracted state.

“What do you mean you think Jesse knows?”

“I’m not sure. Did you say anything to him?”

“Me? I haven’t even talked to him yet.” Heidi realized she was whispering even though she was alone in the house. She paced into the living room. “How about you?”

“I just saw him at a meeting, but he left quickly—like a man with something on his mind. I think he might be on his way to see you.”

“Here? Me?”

Heidi stopped cold in the middle of the living room, no longer whispering but bordering on shouting.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

“Heidi? Are you still there?”

Yes. Unfortunately she was.

She made a choking sound thatwould have to pass for confirmation as she edged nearer the front window and peered around the sheer curtains, looking for Jesse’s truck.

“Actually, I’m surprised he isn’t there yet.”

“Which site are you at?”

He told her.

“That’s only a fewminutes away.When did he leave?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

She swallowed hard. If he’d been coming here, he surely would have arrived by now.

“He hasn’t called?”

“No.”

“You’ve had your phone on?”

“Of course I’ve had my phone on. I may not like what happened, but I’m not about to hide from it.”

Or whatever happened as a result of it.

She’d worked on various explanations all morning while cooking for the Johnson barbecue, where she would be both caterer and guest…along with Jesse and probably Kyle and half of Fantasy, Michigan.

“Are you going to tell him?” Kyle asked quietly.

Heidi bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know yet. What about you?”

“I’m kind of playing this by ear.”

She heard him curse, cutting off her need to do the same.

Heidi resumed her pacing, staring at the empty driveway every time she headed in that direction.

If Kyle was right, and Jesse planned on coming to the house, she’d have to face him and make her decision about how to handle the situation sooner than she would have liked. But if given a choice between sooner or later, she supposed it was probably better to get everything out in the open now. If only so they could begin the healing process.

“You know, there’s always the option of not telling him,” Kyle said softly.

Heidi gripped the telephone receiver tightly, vivid images of his hands against her skin, the expression on his face as he’d reached climax sliding easily through her mind.

“I know,” she whispered.

She heard another voice on his end and he said, “Look, I’ve got to go.”

“Sure,” she said. “Okay.”

“Is he there yet?”

Heidi checked through the curtains again. “No. Not yet.”

“Okay.”

She wanted to ask what he was thinking, but decided she had enough to work out without adding his troubles.

“Heidi?”

“What?”

She realized her voice sounded a little impatient, but, damn it, she figured she was entitled.

So she’d experienced a weak moment. She was only human, right? Surely Kyle should have been the stronger one, stopping what should never have started after she’d kissed him.

“If you need anything…” he said.

“Yeah. I know where to find you.”

“Just call.”

Oh, trust me, she thought. I will.

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