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Dreaming about you….

She wanted him to hold her and—she’d never seen Danya
so cold and angry before. With someone else, she could have walked away—but then, she’d hurt him and didn’t know how to say the right words. “Just tell me where they’re staying and tell them that I’ll be there.”

“My place,” Danya said slowly. “They’re staying at my house.”

Danya watched that information register in Sidney’s wide brown eyes and damned his need for revenge. But it was there, simmering, the need to make her pay for walking away from a future they could have…. There wouldn’t be another love for him, not with the damage Sidney had done to his heart—it wouldn’t be fair to another woman to gift her with that dark residue of love gone wrong….

Taking it a notch deeper, he wouldn’t have children with another woman and that’s just how it was for him, and he knew it deep inside.

Her hair had grown just a bit, enough to catch the breeze and lift over her pretty little ears—he really liked those ears. Sidney’s mouth was just as soft and pink, parted in surprise, and he remembered how sweet she tasted inside, how she’d suckled his tongue as they made love….

He continued his survey of her, taking his time to let her know that he remembered every intimacy, how she tasted, and her hunger for him. Maybe that wasn’t nice, but he wasn’t feeling exactly sweet. She’d knotted her chambray shirt just below her breasts, and just a bit of her sports bra showed. From there, her stomach was smooth and soft, and those jean cutoffs sagged low enough on her hips to reveal—nothing.

Now that was mind-blowing, because Danya knew exactly what those shorts concealed, all soft and fragrant—He tried to keep his focus as he continued deliberately taking in those long slender legs, down to her little bare feet braced apart in the sand. He wanted to emphasize that they’d been lovers. Then he forced his gaze upward to her face, to the hot blush riding it.

“You want to have this out here, or in private?” he asked
and damned himself again as the tears welled to her eyes and she dashed them away.

“I’m crying an awful lot now, and you’re the reason. You’re wrecking everything.” She sat quickly, brushed her feet free of sand, and jerked on her boots.

What was he supposed to do? Forget that she’d walked out on what they could have? That she’d gone to see another man? “Oh, am I? How so? And by the way, you forgot your socks.”

He scooped them from the log and Sidney swept them from him. “You planned this whole thing. You involved my family to deliberately make me come back. You kept them here.”

“I wanted to know them better. Let’s have this out in private.” Danya bent to pick her up in his arms and started walking up the beach toward his new house. For once she wasn’t arguing, but her slight sniff and the damp tears on his shoulder were telling him that something other than temper ruled her now. And he still wanted her….

When she began to squirm, he fairly dumped her to her feet, then gripped her hand as he continued walking. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She dug her boots into the sand, and Danya took a steadying breath, cursed his lack of patience—she had done that to him, wrung every bit of patience from him.

“I’m not good at this emotional stuff, guy, and you’re putting me through an awful lot of it.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t even started yet.” And another thing—he’d never really liked to argue, either. He still didn’t, but out of necessity, there was one woman in his life who really deserved a good argument from him, and he was going to give it to her.

“How dare you capture my family!”

Now, he’d really enjoyed that. And the knowledge that eventually, Sidney would come hunting them, the woman who had caused him to lose his temper, his patience and could cause him to argue. “They seem to like it. Roy is enjoying
himself. You must really bully them, or else they would have told you where they were.”

“I never—Okay, sometimes I have to keep them from running over me, because I’m the youngest. My dad’s name is Bulldog, and you shouldn’t pick on an old man…. I—”

She was staring at him and in that instant, Danya felt the air between them still, then heat slowly and swirl, binding him to her. Oh, no, he thought helplessly, as he picked up the pace. He wasn’t getting all caught up in his passion for her, for the tenderness she could wrap around his heart—not this time, not without settling what brewed between them. He couldn’t let her take even more of his pride—“nailing” him on the spot without some kind of admission that she really did love him—

“Where are we going?”

He wasn’t going to let her take him so quickly this time, Danya promised himself firmly, not before they had settled that he loved her and he’d asked her to marry him, and she’d walked out after giving him a whole lot of herself in every way…. He’d awakened during the nights since then, dreaming about her welcoming body, that tight moist pulse of her, the sweet way she’d given herself to him—several times. No woman should ever make love to a man like that, then walk off and leave him, he decided darkly. “Someplace private to talk.”

“There’s plenty of beach right here.”

Danya glanced at the tall beach grass that could provide privacy for lovemaking. “I don’t think so. If you’re going to yell at me, the wind would carry it. It just could speed up the game your sisters are already losing.”

“Fine, then.”

“Fine.”

At his house, Sidney steamed up the steps leading from the beach. In her wake, Danya was left to admire the sway of her bottom, the long, slender strength of her legs. On his deck now, a wooden expanse with a view of Strawberry Hill from huge lawn chairs, she noted the checkerboard on the table be
tween them. Sidney paused at the doorway leading into the house and stared at the newly installed hot tub.

“What’s that? That wasn’t here last time.”

“Things change. Or most things do,” he added curtly. The hot tub overlooking the ocean and Amoteh was where he’d treated his abused muscles after trying to work Sidney out of his system, the need to go after her…where he’d sat for two weeks and brooded about her and listened for the call she should have made…. Danya opened the sliding door for her, gesturing her inside with that gallant sweep of his hand—

His hand hesitated in mid air just above that delectable curved bottom and just then, inside his home, Sidney pivoted to him. She glanced at his open hand and at his expression, and backed away. “You wouldn’t dare. Don’t you dare.”

“Do what?” he asked with a touch of the nastiness he felt as he took a step toward her and once inside, slid the door closed behind him. Since Sidney was backing up, he decided he might as well press his advantage—he moved toward her and watched her eyes widen as she backed away a few more feet.

“Never mind. I thought for a minute you were—”

“Going to spank you? Never crossed my mind, Sid,” he stated honestly. He didn’t like the dark primitive urge within him to take her now, to wipe away any other man, to let her know that she was a part of him now. New to jealousy, Danya didn’t like how he was feeling. Great, just great…offer a woman a home and love and she runs to a former lover.

“Um…okay then.” She continued backing nervously away from him into the center of the living room. “Who plays checkers? I saw the board outside.”

“Roy does. He likes to sit in the evening and play checkers. Sometimes Fadey or my father comes over and they like to watch the sun go down together. Some of the boys Roy has met on the beach like to come over, too. Leigh’s younger brother, Ryan, has a crush on your sisters—he can’t make up his mind which one—but he’s here a lot, talking about surfing—which apparently they like, too.”

“I imagine your cousins know how to surf, too?”

Danya smiled at that. Sergei and Kiril frequently took breaks from their Montana ranch and had won a few amateur trophies in Hawaii and Australia. “A little.”

Sidney was furious now, turning on him. “You can’t set up my family like this, Danya, just to get at me.”

“I just told them that they were welcome here. They seemed to like it. I’ve got plenty of room, you know.” He thought of Sidney in that big bed in his bedroom, of how much he wanted her there, snuggled close to him.

Or here. Or with him, in any way she wanted him.

Her next question startled him. “So where do I bunk?”

With me. At least you need me there and there’s no denying that…
Instead Danya said, “Anywhere you want.”

In bed, they were compatible—it was the other times that Danya intended to smooth out—but pride demanded that Sidney meet him halfway….

Sidney noted the new pool table standing alongside one wall, the cue sticks standing in the rack nearby. She studied the new living room furniture, heavy dark wood with subtle melon and brown fabric cushions. Two large Stepanov-styled chairs with cushions and footstools sat in front of the panel with the big screen television, a checkerboard table sat between them. She sniffed delicately, then trailed her hand over the new pool table on her way into the kitchen where Danya was cooking the family’s pot roast dinner in his slow cooker.

When she came out, Danya said, “You’re welcome to stay for dinner, if you want.”

Sidney looked as if she hadn’t eaten a decent meal; she looked terrified, as if her world was slipping away and she was all alone and vulnerable. He wouldn’t beg—
Stay. Work this out. I know you’re scared and doubting, but just give us a chance…and don’t run away again, or this time, I just might come after you….

Danya wiped the Seagull Perch’s gleaming bar. At ten o’clock in the evening, he’d given Sam, the bartender, the rest
of the night off. Throughout dinner, the Blakelys had been too quiet; the sisters and Bulldog had seemed uneasy. Sidney wasn’t making things easy, sending dark accusing looks as she ate at the table with them. Deciding that the whole family could vent much easier without his presence, Danya had excused himself to let the Blakelys’ tense, brewing argument ripen fully.

Clearly, Sidney considered them to be deserters: “You should have let me know where you were at—if you just had to stay here. Touch-points, remember? One of the Blakely family rules? Everybody knows where everybody else is?” she’d demanded darkly.

Clearly the sisters weren’t relenting and after losing the volleyball games with Sergei and Kiril, they were feeling nasty: “Lay off, Sid. Bulldog likes it here, the whole baby and kid thing. We couldn’t just desert him…he’d be all alone. He needed our support, because we’re team players. And babysitting isn’t that bad.”

Sidney had done that blinking, take-two thing she did when she was stunned. “Huh? You baby-sit?”

“Danya does. If a man does it, why can’t we? And by the way, sister dear, in order to get you by himself, he promised his cousins that he’d baby-sit for a week if they’d keep their wives from moving in on you.”

Sidney had turned to Danya. “You did that?”

“Hey, I like to baby-sit,” he’d said, defending himself.

“So you planned even that—”

He’d left at that point and Bulldog had followed him out onto the deck. “This could get nasty,” Bulldog stated uneasily. “Think I’ll just go over to Fadey and Mary Jo’s and see if I can rummage up a checker game. I’d advise you to go somewhere safe since Sidney’s on the warpath. She’s a scrappy little thing, like her mother, and can hold her own against both Stretch and Junior if it comes to that. Better let my girls settle their own hash.”

Danya placed the glasses he’d just washed onto the Sea
gull Perch’s bar just as the door opened and Sidney entered. Her eyes locked instantly, defiantly with Danya’s. Every man in the bar turned to watch her.

But then, any man would notice a curvy woman wearing a black spandex sports bra and snug black tights and worn work boots. The men who looked too long met Sidney’s fierce What Are You Looking At, Bozo? glare.

She walked to the pool table, chalked up a cue stick, and began shooting. When she took her shots, bending over the table, the tight sports bra did little but enhance the swell of her breasts and men stared at that soft rounded backside, the sleek feminine legs below it.

Every man in the place stared at that soft bottom as she bent over the table and the women with them were irritated at the distraction.

Danya remembered that she hadn’t worn any underclothing at the social—

“Bar is closed,” he announced loudly as he whipped the bar towel over his shoulder and walked to the door, opening it. “Everyone out.”

Sidney continued to shoot expertly, smoothly, ignoring the people who were grumbling and emptying the bar.

Danya closed the door and came to lean against the wall, watching her shoot pool. Over her shoulder, Sidney said, “I thought I’d walk you home.”

Danya took in the curved line of her body as she lined up a shot, legs braced, elbow up as her hand gripped the cue stick, other arm extended, finger hooked to form a bridge around the stick, hand flattened to the pool tables green cloth. “Nice getup.”

“Thanks. My usual when playing seriously—nothing to get in the way.”

“You smell like lemon.”

“Polished the vanity in your room. That beeswax-and-lemon stuff of Mary Jo’s is really good. While we were at it, Stretch and Junior and I polished all the furniture in the house. Odd house—the walls are totally bare, not that much furniture either.”

“You came here to tell me I need a decorator?”

“No, I came to tell you that your cousins have got my sisters in a snit. They hate losing. I just hope you’re enjoying it.”

Bulldog had been right—when the sisters got into an argument, it was better to hole up, away from the flurry. “So how did that go? Your sisters and you?”

“We worked out a few kinks.” She chalked her cue stick and looked at him. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? For Stretch and Junior and Bulldog to like it here? You seduced them, didn’t you? Now was that fair?”

“Seemed like a good idea. You’re mad about that, are you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Too bad. They’re enjoying themselves and I like having them around.”