She sighed. “I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m stressed about a lot of things.”

“Hey.” He reached out and touched his fingertips to her cheek. “It’s okay. Wanna talk about it?”

She gazed back at him thoughtfully. His gut tightened.

“Okay,” she finally said. “What are we doing, here, Jake?”

“Uh…eating pizza?”

He’d been putting off the conversation about what exactly they were doing all week. Now he was going to have to deal with it.

She gave her head a small shake, a smile playing on her mouth. “Men. All I want to know is…why are you doing this? Is this still just to make Andrew think we’re going out?”

Andrew. Fuck. He’d forgotten all about Andrew. Annoyance tightened his insides. He’d overheard Andrew asking her out for a drink. Andrew, a married man. Jake’s back molars ground together briefly. What had started as a little help had now become a mission. He sure as hell wanted to protect Shelby from Andrew, but there was also Gianna, who didn’t deserve to be screwed around on.

Jake had called to ask Shelby out, not even thinking about that, and he wasn’t even sure himself why. He could tell her it was all about pretending, but deep inside he knew that was a lie. He just couldn’t offer up any reason other than he didn’t like her turning him down. Which made him sound like a perverse little kid who only wanted what he couldn’t have. Shit.

“What do you want it to be?” he finally asked.

She met his eyes. “Here’s the deal. I don’t have a good track record with men. I don’t want a real relationship, not right now when I’m trying to rebuild my career. But…” She bit her lip. “But the sex was pretty good. And I want Andrew to think I have a relationship.”

“Pretty good?” He lifted one eyebrow.

She blushed. “Okay, better than pretty good. It was unbelievable.”

He grinned. “That was my opinion too. Okay then. Sounds like we’re on the same page here. I don’t do relationships, either. And I don’t mind helping you out with Andrew.”

She tipped her head to one side. “And what do you get out of this deal?”

“Same thing as you.” He gave her a wink and a look that made her cheeks even pinker. “Hot sex.”

There. They’d both said what they wanted and it was the same thing. It was a sweet deal all around. Win-win. No need to feel guilty, because they understood each other.

He met Shelby’s gaze and held it. He did like her. A lot. She was so much more than the sex kitten he’d tried to flirt with in the coffee shop last week. She didn’t deserve whatever sinister plans Andrew had for her, Andrew a married man with a wife who also didn’t deserve to be screwed around on.

“Okay,” Shelby said softly, her smile tipping up the corners of her lips. “We are on the same page.”

Guilt smacked him in the back of the head even though they’d been honest with each other, because he hadn’t been completely honest, and he guzzled down half his beer. He wasn’t pretending to care when he asked, “What else is stressing you? Work? Your friend?”

“Yes and yes.” She told him about the power struggles going on with her new project and she’d barely gotten started on it. He knew what she was talking about, had experienced similar issues.

“That’s one reason I wanted to start my own business. Be my own boss. Be the one calling the shots and if the client doesn’t want to listen, fine. In my experience, businesses who’re paying a consultant big bucks to make the changes they know they need usually pay a lot more attention than they do to someone inside the company, even if that person is trying to tell them the exact same things.”

“You’re probably right about that.”

Yeah, the economy had been part of his decision not to start his own business, but the truth was he and Andrew had planned to be partners. Their strengths and weaknesses complemented each other, they’d worked out the whole business strategy including the financing, and they’d been solid in their plan. There was just no way he could have worked with Andrew after what had happened, so not only had he lost the woman he loved and his best friend, he’d lost his business plan too. And ended up stuck at Coast Power.

But Shelby wouldn’t be hearing any of that story. He knew he should tell her, but at this point it felt…weird. Too late. And besides, he didn’t want her pity, either.

They talked about her friends too, and the fact that Adam was probably going to be released from the hospital on the weekend with nursing care at home. Their goal was to keep him comfortable by pumping him full of morphine, which made him pretty much out of it, but aware enough that he wanted to be in his own home when the end came. And Kiara wanted to be with him.

“No wonder you’re stressed,” he said. They finished the pizza and set the plates on the table. He tried to keep his eyes off her luscious breasts, which he was painfully, throbbingly aware were loose and bare beneath that thin covering. Jesus. His hands itched to fill themselves with her softness. Desire buzzed inside him, and it became more and more difficult to focus on their conversation when all he could think about was touching her skin, tasting her mouth, and fucking her.

He’d been such a gentleman after dinner the other night. Then lunch had not been conducive to any kind of fooling around. But tonight, there was no way he was gonna be able to keep his hands off her.

So he kissed her. Soft. On the mouth. Her lips parted and he slid his tongue in, tasting her sweetness. Lust surged through his veins like an intravenous injection, every nerve ending zinging, and his cock hardened even more.

She lifted a hand and rested it on his cheek, so gentle, and he deepened the kiss, sliding his own hand under her hair to the back of her skull. He held her there for him so he could slide his tongue into her mouth and taste her, so sweet. He rubbed his tongue over hers, opened her wider for him in a long, hard kiss.

When he drew back long moments later, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed and her breasts rose and fell with shallow breaths.

“Jake.”

“Right here.” His fingers moved in her hair and he rested his nose against hers, sharing her breath. He closed his eyes and drew the scent of her into him, that light, sweet scent of peaches and pears and something a little flowery. “Wanna make out?”

She choked out a little laugh and then she wriggled onto his lap, just about blasting the top of his head off. His hands went to her hips as she turned in to him and he kissed her again, deeper, hotter, wetter. Her tongue slid over his teeth and he was done. A hot thrill ran through him, his hands still tingling to get on her bare skin, and he slid them under the T-shirt, up her satiny back, then back down. She shivered when his fingertips grazed over the spot at the base of her spine, so he went lower, beneath the loose drawstring of her pants, and into her panties.

She made a noise low in her throat and her hands fisted in his T-shirt at the shoulders, yanking him closer even though they couldn’t get much closer, not with two layers of clothes between them. Two layers. No bra. Christ.

Her glasses bumped against his face and he paused. “I love these glasses,” he murmured, taking hold of them in two hands and slowly pulling them off. “But let’s just take them off right now.”

He set them on the coffee table and returned to her body, sliding his hand back inside her panties, feeling the curve of her ass, the other hand sweeping around to her front and stroking over her tummy. So soft, the skin there, and she shivered again. He slanted his mouth to take her deeper, to take more of her, every sweet sound, every soft breath.

His hand inched higher until it brushed the undercurve of one breast and he slowly, deliberately rubbed there, shifted his hand to rub the side of her breast. She sighed into his mouth again, loosened her grip on his shirt, twined her arms around his neck, and leaned back in his arms, resting on the cushioned arm of the couch. His hard cock pressed up against her ass, and he shifted her weight just fractionally to ease the pain and pressure.