Just Once More...: Once is Never Enough / One More Sleepless Night / The One She Was Warned About

“Here’s the thing.” Shaking her head, Nichole tucked a wild curl neatly behind her ear. “Tonight was an accident. An error in judgment on both our parts. So why don’t we both agree to put it behind us? I mean, it’s not like we’ve been tripping over each other these last few years. I’m guessing it’s a pretty safe bet our paths won’t cross again anytime soon. And, believe me, I’m okay with that. This wasn’t supposed to be more than a single night anyway.”

He blinked. No way. She was just being tough to protect her pride.

Except those almond eyes were steady, clear as they held his. And wasn’t that an ironic twist? The first woman he’d pursued with the intent of having something “more” didn’t see him as anything more than the kind of one-night stand he’d been ready to leave behind.

It shouldn’t have rubbed—but, man.

Shaking it off, because he knew it was for the best, Garrett nodded his acceptance. Walked back to the bed and, catching the soft line of her jaw in his palm, tipped her face to drop a kiss at her temple. “I’m sorry about this, Nikki.”

She blinked at him, the corner of her mouth tipping the barest amount. “Don’t be. I’m not.”

Two hours later and Nichole had given up on the idea of sleep altogether. And if ever there was a time for a BFF to step up it was after she’d been busted selling out the details of her friend’s nonexistent sex-life to The Panty Whisperer. Which was why Nichole was parked in front of her laptop, staring down the video feed as—across the country—Maeve paced in a knee length T-shirt in front of her own laptop.

“It’s not like I was detailing the chronicles of your personal Red Shoe Diaries on Twitter, for God’s sake.”

Nichole balled her hands on her hips, glaring through cyberspace as she waited Maeve out.

It didn’t take long before her friend gave under the pressure, her entire form signaling defeat as the arms crossed defiantly over her chest went spaghetti-loose along with the rest of her body and she spilled into the couch behind her. “Okay, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have told anyone about your personal business and I don’t even know why exactly I did—except Garrett isn’t like a real person. He’s just got this knack for extracting information from people. He’s patient. Unrelenting. And when he wants to know something … nothing gets in his way.”

This she’d heard before. But it didn’t change one simple fact. “My sexual experience is none of his business.” None.

God, the way he’d looked at her so apologetically as he’d nailed her with the “commitment” tag and “nice girl” nonsense. This guy she’d brought home without even knowing his name had wrapped her up in all the labels she’d spent three years trying to shed. She wasn’t looking to get married. Didn’t want—anything. Especially not from him, and so it didn’t matter what he thought.

With that reminder, Nichole blew out a stiff breath. Sliding the arm flung across her eyes up to her brow, Maeve frowned at her. “I know. I know. And I really am sorry. But now that you’ve met him, how can you even wonder about his ability to get what he wants?”

Nichole shook her head. “The guy lives in town. If he’s so worried about your lifestyle why doesn’t he meet your friends?”

Maeve stared up at the ceiling. “When it comes to my dates, given the opportunity, you better believe he’s all over them. But girlfriends not so much. You know that saying about having to beat women off with a stick? That’s what it was like for him with Bethany’s, Carla’s and Erin’s friends. Mine to a lesser extent. But he avoids our girlfriends pretty much like the plague. Besides, the last few years he’s been so tied up with building the company and working to get his degree there hasn’t been a whole lot of time for anything else. I barely see him.”

Nichole blinked as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. She’d forgotten about the school thing. A detail Maeve had shared with her. Garrett had put all of his sisters through school and only started himself when everyone else had been paid for and finished.

“So that’s what he meant by saying he was trying to get back to living a little.”

Maeve, casting all dramatics aside, sat upright, leaning forward. “Really? What else did he say?”

Suddenly Nichole felt unsure about the lines in this family dynamic she’d somehow gotten tangled in. Rather than try to sort them out, she opted to put the conversation back on track. “Okay, I know you would never be careless with my privacy or indifferent to my feelings—it just took me by surprise.” Like so many things that evening. “But from now on can we agree—?”

Maeve waved her off with a shake of her head. “I swear. Never again. Not another word about your sexual experience to him.”

Nichole arched a brow. “How about you just leave me out of the conversation completely?”

Maeve’s mouth squinched up and she cocked her head. “Yeah, that’s probably not entirely realistic. This is Garrett we’re talking about. And now that you’re on his radar I imagine he’s going to feel a little protective of you. Which means I’m probably going to be answering some questions from time to time.”

Nichole’s mouth popped open, but Maeve just shrugged. “He kind of can’t help himself. So … welcome to my world!”

“Maeve!”

Her friend sprang up from her slump at the couch and hustled right up in front of her laptop, resting her chin in the vee of her palms. “So now that we’re back to being besties again … on a scale of skim milk to heavy whipping cream….”

Garrett pried one eyelid open, scowling hard as the screeching of a tiny banshee emanating from down the hall reached his ears.

“I know you’re there, Garrett Carter. You pick up this phone right now or so help me….”

So help her, what? She was going to fly home and jab her little finger at his chest? Scowl up at him with those eyes that said he’d betrayed her in the most fundamental way and she was both hurt and disappointed?

Garrett’s other eye was open and his feet were swinging over the side of the bed in a second flat. Reaching for the extension at his nightstand with one hand, he rubbed at his morning stubble with the other.

“A little early, isn’t it, Maeve?”

“You’re alone?”

He blew his breath out with a good deal of his patience. “It’s only been …” squinting at the clock, he noted it was just after five “… a few hours since I left her apartment. Do you really think I’d stop and pick up someone else on the way back?”

The answering silence said she wouldn’t put it past him.

“Geez, yes, I’m alone. And, for what it’s worth, I had no idea who she was.”

A little hiss sounded through the line. “Yeah, but everyone else did. What were you even doing at Sam’s party?”

“It was a party for his brother. You know Jesse? My oldest friend? Artist? Touring for the past two years? Any of this ringing a bell? So, Nikki’s close with Sam?”

“We’re out with him, like, once a week at least. He’s part of the core crowd.”

Garrett’s brows dropped down, the fog of sleep clearing faster now. “Wait. He hangs out with that old crowd from my class—”

“Give me a break, Garrett. I see Sam and the guys all the time. These days they’re more my friends than yours.”

What the—?

“I’m not surprised you don’t know. Aside from the fact you’ve been AWOL for the last few years, doing your twenty-two-hours-a-day summa-cum-look-at-Superman-earning-top-honors-while-running-his-company thing, you’ve got a reputation as kind of a psycho when it comes to your sisters. I wasn’t about to tell you, and it doesn’t surprise me no one else had the guts to do it either.”

This time the deafening silence was booming out of his corner as he let that little gem sink in.

Maeve.

Hanging out with his friends.

A pack of low-life scum who thought the nickname Panty Whisperer bad-ass enough to ooh and aah at its inception, giving high-fives and back-slaps as though going home with whomever it had been back then hadn’t simply been some callow escape, but a conquest worth celebration.

They’d been hanging out with his little sister.

And lying to him about it.

“Oh, wait. Before you flip. I’m not talking about Joey and those guys. Mostly Sam. Once in a while Rafe and Mitch show up. And, to be clear, I don’t date any of them. Ever.”

A relieved breath hissed through his teeth and a few seconds later his jaw unlocked too.

“Helloo? Earth to Panty Whisperer, betrayer of sisters’ trust everywhere.”

Wow. Little Maeve with the one-two punch. The girl knew how to drop a bomb and then turn the tables in a heartbeat. God help the guy who landed her.

“Maeve, just give me a minute to catch up. To wake up, okay?”

He could hear her tongue clucking through the line. Could practically see that impatient posture and pouty scowl. The same one she’d been pulling since she was six years old. Of course back then it wouldn’t have been directed at him. Back then he’d been her hero. The one to intervene on her behalf with older sisters who didn’t want clumsy hands breaking their stuff.

“Ready yet?”

“Yeah, why not? Go ahead and give it to me.” He pushed up from the bed, figuring there wouldn’t be any getting back to it after this, and headed in search of sustenance of the coffee-and-cookies variety.

“I can’t believe you told Nikki you knew how long it had been since she had sex. I can’t believe, after you figured out who she was, you would be so thoughtless as to violate my trust like that. And you didn’t just stop at …

Pushing the start button on the coffeepot, he grunted his acknowledgment of wrongdoing, knowing it would be a move just short of suicide to interrupt the rant in progress for the petty satisfaction of pointing out that she’d broken Nichole’s trust first.

Garrett was halfway through his first cup of coffee when the quiet from the other end of the line hit a point where it was clear this wasn’t just Maeve taking a breath, but she was waiting for a response.

Setting the mug aside, Garrett rubbed a palm over the smooth finish of his kitchen table. “So, aside from being pissed you’d told me about her dating history, did she sound okay?”

There was another silence from across the miles, though this one Garrett wasn’t quite sure how to read.

Then, “She was fine. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“You know. Because she’s a commitment girl.” He still didn’t know how they’d gotten their lines crossed so badly. In all these years he’d never made such a mess—

“Oh, that. Yeah. Get over yourself, Garrett. She wasn’t looking for serious with you. Which I’m pretty sure she actually told you already.”

Yeah, she had. But maybe he just hadn’t liked the sound of it. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to believe it was true because for some reason he didn’t like the idea of it in the context of her … with him.

“Okay, I can practically hear you worrying over there. But you’re going to have to take my word for it. Nikki is fine. This was exactly what she needed. Except the part about it being you and all.”

Thank you, Maeve.

“She wanted to prove to herself she could have a little fun without it having to turn into some white-dress event. And she did. So no biggie.” Maeve let out a giggle in the background. “Though next time I’m guessing she’ll get the guy’s name first.”

Next time.

Garrett closed his eyes against the words. Figured out it only facilitated the mental peep show—Nichole leaning back on her bed with those big brown eyes peering up at … not him. Hell.

Walking over to the counter, he refilled his mug and threw half of it back at once. Time to wake up and get on with the new day.

“Yeah. Hopefully.”

CHAPTER SIX

NICHOLE SANK THE six and watched the cue ball come to rest neatly behind the four. Nice.

Across the felt landscape Maeve tapped her foot impatiently against the leg of her stool, watching as Nichole adjusted her stance and lined up her shot.

“Wow, your form’s really improved.”

Nichole paused, glanced up. “Huh?”

“No, really.” All nonchalance, Maeve waved toward the pool cue, the twitch at the corner of her mouth a warning of what was to come.

Hard to believe it had only been a week with the amount of ribbing she’d taken. But there it was. A week since she’d had the hot press of Garrett’s mouth against hers, the weight of his body—

“You’ve got a firm grasp on that butt … while the shaft just glides through your fingers. I don’t know … it’s almost like you’ve had some practice with the wood lately.”

Mouth hanging open, Nichole fought the slow burn spreading across her cheeks and neck … and lost. “Seriously?”

Maeve smirked. “Ohh, shoot! Your alignment just went to hell.”

“You wish.”

Leaning over the table she straightened out the shot, drew back, focused—

“Gentle with the tip.”

—and scratched. “Maeve!”

Her friend looked less than chagrined. “What? This is pool. I was working the lingo. Whatever your depraved mind does with it is on you.” Jumping from the stool, she winked. “Plus, I really want to win!”

Nichole waited until Maeve was all lined up before settling a hip at the side of the table. “You know, Maeve, there’s more to the game than your stroke. The stick you choose, for example.”

An expression of horror crept over Maeve’s face. “You wouldn’t.”

No, she wouldn’t.

Well, maybe just a little. “I recently had my hands on a nice hard wood. I think I’ll tell you about it. In detail. Let’s start with—”

“Enough!” Maeve’s frantic squeak was punctuated by the one-two thud of the eight and the cue sinking in short order. “You win! Oh, my God, I feel dirty.”

Nichole tossed her hair over her shoulder, reveling in the victory. “As you should, cheater.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maeve grumbled, too competitive to let any loss go without at least a brief sulk and most likely one more go at retaliation. Only she seemed to shake it off in a blink, her smile returning to full blast. “So, what do you want from the bar?”

“Whatever. You pick.”

Maeve leaned in and craned her neck in an exaggerated manner. “Garrett? You want something too?”

Nichole froze in her spot as the skin across her back began to tingle and burn.

“Hey, Nikki, maybe Garrett would like to hear what you thought about that stick you were using? How much you liked the feel of that hard wood and all? Heck, maybe he could even help you perfect your hold!” And with that she darted off for the bar.

He wasn’t there. He couldn’t be.

And yet even as she turned she knew.

Her gaze started at the floor and the size-twelve boots planted in a wide stance less than a handful of feet away, crawled up the saddle-brown twill of cargo-style pants and followed the gray long-sleeve tee stretched to perfection over his torso before making the unsettling jump to firm lips slanted in an off-kilter smile and the single raised brow demanding clarification.

“Maeve just being Maeve?” he asked, and the breath Nichole hadn’t realized she’d been holding rushed out in relief.

No lie necessary. “Exactly.”

Only those too intense blue eyes narrowed the slightest bit. “So the wood you guys were talking about was really … wood?”

She hadn’t believed it was possible to choke on words that weren’t her own, but there she was, sputtering as though she’d swallowed a string of oversized letters cut from rough stone. They blocked the pathway from her lungs to her mouth, making the intake of breath an impossible thing.

Lie. Simple. Just lie now and everything would be fine.

Except she could already feel his gaze following the hot path of her heated skin over her cheeks, down her neck … lower.

Clearing her throat, she dug in the front pocket of her jeans, pulling out a couple of quarters. “We were talking about pool. Sticks. Cues.”

The corner of his mouth twitched and his eyes flashed back to hers. “Shafts and butts?”

“Technical terms.”

Garrett stepped closer, resting his hand at her waist as he bowed his head toward her ear, close enough so she could smell the clean masculine scent of him. Soap and skin and the barest hint of lingering sawdust. Close enough so fingers of warmth from his body could reach out and touch hers. Close enough to send her senses reeling as his breath washed over her ear, carrying his gruff, taunting words. “Yeah? Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Nichole’s eyes flew wide with her mouth. “No—nothing,” she managed, stumbling back only to be steadied by Garrett’s strong hand.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” he laughed in challenge. Then, with a conspiratorial wink, added, “Red.”

And with a word she was back to that night.

To the flirtation, the slow pulling need, the fast-rising hunger. Dim hallways and dark shadows. His mouth, his hands, his body … his name.

Garrett.

Her eyes pinched shut as she cleared her mind and drew a cleansing breath. “What are you doing here?”

“Jesse.” He nodded toward the table across the bar where she and Maeve had been sitting with the guys before starting their game of pool. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

And, though he hadn’t tried to avoid her, it was pretty clear if he had known, he wouldn’t have come. She got it. That was how one-nighters went. One night.

“I didn’t know you were coming either.” If she had she might have glanced at her hair before she left home. Gone for the cherry ChapStick instead of the original. She might have worn a skirt.

And not with the expectation that those big hands would find their way under it. No!

She cleared her head with a stern shake.

“It was a last-minute thing. Deciding to come out. But …” His jaw cocked to one side as his gaze slid over the second-floor bar before returning to search her eyes. “I don’t have to stay if this is uncomfortable for you.”

Nichole was already shaking her head when a tall glass of what was probably rum and Coke cut between them, followed by Maeve’s disgusted voice. “Didn’t I tell you to get over yourself? Nikki couldn’t care less about you showing up here.”

Not exactly true, but at least it was Maeve saying it instead of her. And, judging from the glint of amusement in Garrett’s eyes, his little sister’s biting words didn’t faze him.

His focus shifted to Maeve. “How’d that job in Denver work out?”

“Same ol’, same ol’.” Maeve shrugged, snaking an arm around her brother’s waist for a quick hug. “I’m scheduled to go back next week.”

Nichole watched the two fall into the conversation she knew one side of by heart, and wondered how it was possible she hadn’t recognized Garrett for who he was.

Only on some level she had. She’d seen his face at least a hundred times in photos in Maeve’s old albums. And, though most of those pictures were of a kid rather than a man, some of them had been recent. Which had to be the reason for that sense of connection. The immediate click.

Watching them together now, though, there was one thing she couldn’t miss. Being around Garrett wasn’t going to be a problem in any sense. His focus on Maeve was utterly complete.

There wasn’t any lingering tension—at least not from his side. He’d showed up, said hello when he saw her, been friendly and then moved on as though nothing had happened between them at all.

Maeve had been right about her brother being the expert in keeping relationships simple. And lucky Nichole to have the Panty Whisperer for her mentor.

Garrett stood with his back to the bar, his eyes focused on the pool table across the room where Nichole was lining up her shot, his tongue lodged somewhere halfway down his throat.

She moved from one spot to another, bending at the waist, bracing her weight with a hand on the table, widening her stance until—

Until every damn guy in the bar was leering as she took her shot. Just like him. The only thing setting him apart from the rest of the hounds panting after her was he knew just exactly what he was missing. He knew what it felt like to kneel between those legs. He knew what it felt like to spread his palm over the flat of her belly. To run his tongue the length of her.

Which meant, right then, he envied them. At least they could tell themselves it probably wouldn’t be as good as their imagination was making it.

Nichole let out a whoop, high-fiving Maeve as two guys he didn’t know took losing with dopey grins and an offer of more drinks.

Garrett’s eyes narrowed as he started sizing them up. They looked harmless, but guys put on a lot of façades.

His gaze shot over to his sister, who seemed to be handling the attention fine, passing on the drinks—good girl—and whatever else the guys were offering. Same as Nichole. Only there was something different about the way the two women handled it. Maeve leaned into the conversation, taking the flattery with grace even as she rejected it, while Nichole simply didn’t seem to register it at all. She was smiling freely at the guys, but without any kind of sexual recognition whatsoever.

Even when one of the guys reached for her hand, trying to angle in for some eye contact, she just wrapped her free hand around his fingers and basically handed them back to him … with a smile.

She was friendly.

Like he’d never seen “friendly” done before. Some girls played at it. Used it like a kind of game of push-and-pull. But Nichole … she was completely open and available only in one clearly identifiable way that said “not a chance” without ever having to say it at all.

“What’s up, man?”

Garrett shot a look over his shoulder to where Jesse was moving in beside him, his brother Sam a step behind.

“Just wondering how in the hell I ever got past that,” he answered with a nod in Nichole’s direction.

Jesse’s hands came up with the corners of his mouth. “Don’t look at me. I thought about asking her out back before I left, but she ‘friended’ me so fast there was no point in even trying.”

Jesse was one of the few friends Garrett had maintained regular interaction with over the years. He’d been a mellow, genuine guy from as far back as Garrett could remember. And through those first years after losing his dad, when it had seemed like the world was going to collapse around his shoulders and there was no way he’d be able to be everything he needed to be for everyone who needed it, Jesse had unrelentingly been there for him, refusing to let Garrett be alone no matter that the life he’d been a part of—the one with sports and chicks and hanging out—was gone. He’d been the guy to get his twenty-four-year-old sister to babysit once a month so Garrett could go out for a couple hours. The one who hadn’t crowed about cheap conquests. The one who’d understood. Maybe his artist’s mentality gave him more insight than the other meatheads. Whatever. He was a good friend—one of the only ones he truly felt comfortable confiding in.

An hour later Garrett was having to put significantly more effort into not feeling like a stalker than he generally cared to. But, honest to God, he just couldn’t keep his eyes from working their way back to that auburn tumble of hair and contagious laugh.

“She like this with everyone?” he asked Sam, watching as she yucked it up with yet another group of what he’d bet good money had been strangers until just that night. It seemed like she could talk to anyone about anything.

“What do you mean—friendly, easygoing?” Sam flagged the bartender for another round. Then, at Garrett’s nod, he shrugged. “Pretty much. But she can take care of herself. With one recent exception, nobody gets past her ‘friend’ zone. Some jack-off burned her pretty bad a few years ago and she’s been avoiding the flames ever since. So you don’t really need to worry about looking out for her. Aside from doing a damn good job of it herself, she’s got a lot of people who care about how she gets treated.”