It was dark by the time Amber pulled up to the little house. She’d stopped at the grocery store in town to pick up a few supplies to get her through the night. She knew she wouldn’t feel like going out again once she got settled and she was definitely looking forward to a hot shower and a quiet night in.

With the grocery bag balanced on one arm, she pulled her suitcase behind her and up onto the porch. Using the light from her cell phone, Amber found the key under the flower pot, just the way Josie said she would. She opened the door and tucked the key back into her pocket. There was no way she was putting it back under there. It was ridiculous to leave a key to your home right there on the porch where anyone who happened to be walking by could get it. Especially considering Josie said everyone in town did it.

Craziness. And there was no way Amber would have anything to do with that kind of blatant disregard for her own personal safety.

She made her way into the little house, left her suitcase by the front door and took the bag into the kitchen, where she unloaded the few things she bought and opened the retro fridge to put her orange juice inside. There wasn’t much inside, which was a bit concerning for Amber. Wasn’t Josie eating properly? She never did. She was always so thin, but could survive on potato chips and beer. Speaking of beer…

Amber eyed the beer in the fridge. It had been a long time since she’d let herself indulge in alcohol. Five months, three weeks, and two days to be exact. Not that she was counting, because she really wasn’t. But she remembered the last time she’d had any alcohol, because her boyfriend Randy had bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate her graduation from college. The bubbles had tingled and popped on her tongue, and two glasses had made her head fuzzy, but not so fuzzy that she didn’t sober up immediately when he broke up with her by telling her he didn’t want to settle down to a boring and predictable life.

And that’s what she offered.

They’d dated for over two years. She thought he was going to propose that night. After all, it was the next logical step.

Logical. Everything she always did was logical. Planned. Organized. Despite the fact that he was an asshole about it, Randy was right. Life with her would have been boring and predictable. She couldn’t blame him for not wanting that. Heck, she didn’t want that. And it was her life.

She grabbed a beer and cracked it open. She was done with being boring and predictable. Before she put it to her lips, she paused and grabbed a tea towel to give the can a wipe. Okay, she wasn’t totally done with being predictable and boring, but she was working on it.

She’d spent the last few months finishing her internship in San Francisco at Wallace and McKwade, the accounting firm she’d expected to be offered a job at. She’d had a few other offers, but she was still waiting for the offer to come in. But now instead of being excited about the opportunity, Amber didn’t know whether she wanted it anymore. She loved San Francisco. She’d moved down to California from Vancouver after getting a full scholarship at Berkeley, which was incredibly hard for a Canadian to do. It was a huge opportunity for her to stay and work at a firm in San Fran, and six months ago she would have jumped at the chance. But now…

Amber took a deep drink of her beer, grimacing a little at the sour taste. She’d never been a big beer drinker. It was all too much to think about for one night.

“One thing at a time,” she told herself. After all, she’d just taken a plane to the Midwest, to a strange town in the middle of nowhere, to visit a friend who wasn’t even there. If she was looking to burst out of her comfort zone, she’d done enough bursting for one day. There would be nothing wrong with sitting in front of the television and doing a bunch of nothing for the rest of the night.

Josie had to have a television.

She took her beer, and the packaged salad she’d bought at the store, and made her way into the room she assumed would be the living room. She flicked the light switch.

Nothing.

Of course. Electrical was probably on the list of things Josie would be fixing.

With her hands full, Amber did her best to navigate her way through the room. Her shin bumped into the coffee table and she set her beer and salad down, picking up the remote control she felt next to it. When she clicked it, the screen came on, illuminating the room enough for her to back up and plop down on the couch.

“Oomph!”

Amber screamed, jumped up and turned to see whatever—or more likely, whoever—had made the noise when she’d sat on what was decidedly not a couch. She wielded the remote in her hand like a weapon and crouched into an attack position.

“Who the hell are—Cole?” Amber took a step back. If running had been an option, she would have turned and ran all the way back to California in less than ten seconds. But running wasn’t an option because her body had gone from shock to fear to…full on arousal.

* * *

Cole blinked once and then again, hard. He’d been having a very nice dream that involved the Australian beach, a surfboard, and a woman in a very small bikini. Being woken by someone sitting on him wasn’t exactly the way he’d been hoping that particular dream would end.

The voice sounded familiar, but in his sleepy fog, he didn’t quite register who was staring at him, wielding a remote control.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

And there it was. The icy formalness that could only be Josie’s old roommate. “Amber.”

“Yes. Who else would it be?”

He pulled himself to a sitting position and scratched at the scruff on his face. It had been a least at few weeks since he’d shaved. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “For starters, I might have been expecting my sister, since this is her house after all.”

Amber scowled, but he could see the flush working its way up her neck. Cole tried not to smile, but he remembered very well the effect he’d had on his little sister’s roommate two years ago. It wasn’t entirely one-sided, not that he’d ever admit that out loud.

“Josie isn’t here.” Her voice trembled just a little. “You should know that.”

He shook his head. “Nope. Didn’t know that.”

“Then why are you here?”

He chuckled. “My sister’s house. Remember?”

The flush moved up to her cheeks. But it wasn’t Amber’s cheeks that Cole was looking at. It was where the heated skin disappeared into her cleavage that he was focusing on. His cock twitched Damn, she was definitely hot in that stick up your ass, wound up tighter than a top, kinda way.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here.” She jabbed the remote in his direction.

Cole moved to stand, but Amber’s gestures with the remote got a little wilder. He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, I’ll sit. But you should too. And put that remote down before you hurt someone. I come in peace, I promise.” He stopped himself before adding something crude that she probably wouldn’t appreciate. Too many months spent on an Australian cattle ranch had left him a little rougher around the edges than usual.

He didn’t really think she’d sit down, but to his surprise, she did. In a hardback chair across the room. The remote control was still clutched in her hand.

“Amber, I’m not going to hurt you. You know me.”

She looked as if she were going to say something but then her face turned an even brighter shade of red and she shook her head. “Tell me why you’re here,” she said after a moment. “Josie didn’t tell me you were here and I just talked to her before I got here. She would have mentioned it. She knows how I like to…”

She let the sentence trail away, but she didn’t need to finish it. Amber always had been the planner type. The exact opposite of Josie and him, for that matter. He wasn’t surprised that she was thrown off by his appearance. And now the he thought of it…the fact that Amber had a trip planned was probably the very reason Josie told him not to come until after Halloween when he’d called the other day. His sister wasn’t stupid. She would have seen the way her roommate had reacted to her big brother the last time they’d been together. And as much as she loved him, there was no doubt that Josie thought Cole would be a bad influence on her straight-laced friend.

He laughed a little to himself at the ridiculous idea. But when he looked across the room at Amber—at the way her breath was still coming a little too quick, and the sexy flush that was starting to fade a bit—a very recognizable flash of desire fired low in his gut.

Maybe Josie had a reason to be concerned after all.

Cole cleared his throat and forced all dirty thoughts out of his mind. For the moment. “I arrived a little earlier than planned,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m only here for a short visit and then back to Australia. Now, since you seem to have more information than I do, are you going to tell me where my sister is?”

“Right.” Amber, clearly resigned to the fact that Cole wasn’t going anywhere for the moment, reached forward and exchanged the remote control for the beer on the coffee table. “She said something about having to fly to Washington to close on a deal that was going sideways. She should be back in a few days. So if you come back then, you’ll be able to—”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She paused mid drink. “You have to.”

“No I don’t.”

“But I’m here.”

“And?”

“You can’t be here when I’m here.”

He laughed out loud. “And why not? You seem to be perfectly comfortable helping yourself to my beers.” He pointed at the can in her hand. “Why not with my presence?”

She quickly put the can on the table and sat back.

“You can drink it.”

She shook her head and must have realized she was being ridiculous because she quickly added, “Thank you. And, just so you know, I’m not uncomfortable with you being here.”

He tilted his head and tried not to laugh.

“I’m not,” she insisted. “I was just a little bit unprepared is all.”

“A little bit?”

“Okay…a lot.” She picked up the beer again and took a drink. “But really, if you could just come back…”

“I have nowhere else to go, sweetheart. So it looks like you’re stuck with me.”

* * *

Sweetheart? Sweetheart?!

Who did he think he was, calling her a name like that?

Amber practically threw her prepackaged salad inside and slammed the fridge shut. Her appetite was totally gone.

Sweetheart.

Dammit. The worst part was, she’d liked it when he’d called her that. The word had sparked some kind of full body reaction and she knew she was blushing again. He had that effect on her. He always had. Well, the only other time she’d met him anyway. But that had been enough to fuel her dreams for months. Okay, longer than months. Even when she’d been with Randy, she’d thought about what it would have felt like to have Cole’s hands on her instead, his lips on—no!

She needed to stop that. She couldn’t allow herself to think about Cole like that. Absolutely nothing good could come out of that.

“Are you hungry?” His deep, sexy, slightly Australian-accented voice called from the living room.

Was she hungry? Was she hungry? If the way her body was singing was any indication, the answer was yes. Yes. She was really damn hungry.

“No,” she replied, keeping her voice as steady as possible. “Not even a little.”

“Well, I’m starving.”

She whipped around to see him leaning against the doorjamb, looking even sexier than he had lying on the couch. How was that even possible?

“Let’s go into town and get some food. I saw a pub when I was coming through. I bet they have wings.”

At the mention of a little deep-fried goodness, Amber’s stomach growled. When was the last time she’d indulged in something like pub food? She didn’t want to think about it. But going out with Cole? That probably wasn’t a good idea.

He must have seen her waver, because he added, “Come on. My treat. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to discuss the arrangements here. I’m sure you’ll want a plan.”

Was he teasing her?

Yes. One look at the cocky, but admittedly very sexy smile on his face, told her that he was definitely teasing her. But, it didn’t slip her notice that he remembered that about her. Had he thought about her at all?

Amber almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of that thought. Why on earth would Cole Price ever have given a second thought to his little sister’s uptight roommate, who he hadn’t seen for two years?

But wings actually did sound like a pretty good idea. And teasing or not, Cole was right: she needed a plan. Or, in the interest of trying not to over plan everything, she needed some idea of what they were going to do because it certainly didn’t seem like either of them would be leaving.

“Okay,” Amber agreed after a moment. “But give me a minute to freshen up. It’s been a long day.”

“Take all the time you need.”

He didn’t move from the doorway, so she had to walk directly past him, turning to the side to squeeze by. “Excuse me.” He grinned, but didn’t move. Despite her best effort to avoid him, Amber’s breast brushed his chest, and the zing of electricity between them almost dropped her to her knees. She couldn’t be sure how, but somehow she kept walking and grabbed her suitcase.

“Amber?”

She froze, her hand on her bag.

“Just for the record,” he continued when she didn’t turn around. “I don’t think you need any time at all to freshen up.”