WHAT IN THE ACTUAL hell?

I was pretty sure that when I’d stepped back in time to the city streets where I grew up, the molecules in my body had merged with someone else’s, someone much more daring and flirtatious than I ever was. That was not me in the public library back there, caged between a stranger’s well-muscled arms and a shelf of Lisa Montgomery paperbacks, while I wished he would just kiss me already.

But holy shit, it had been hot. He had been hot, with his mirrored sunglasses and the way his just-woke-up blond hair fell over them, that stubble along his chin that had lightly scraped against my cheek when I turned my head, and the way he kept looking at me. Even with those sunglasses hiding most of his face, the power of his gaze slid up and down my body like an actual caress. I could still feel it, and it pulsed a hum between my legs that refused to go away.

And he knew my name. How could it be that he was a stranger to me, but I wasn’t to him? Did I know him from somewhere? Surely I would remember meeting someone who looked like they’d just strutted out of Lick Me, I’m Gorgeous magazine.

Between the enigma that was him and the D.C. heat on a late May afternoon, my brain was thoroughly scrambled. I’d forgotten what this kind of sweltering heat felt like. Humidity swelled the air so thick, I could hardly breathe.

I needed something to take my mind off everything so I could get to my destination without accidentally flinging myself into traffic—something like my best friend Kay. Somehow, while towing all my luggage, I pulled my phone from my pocket without missing a step.

“H-hello? Paige? Aaron, take mommy’s bra off your head and the stilettos out of your mouth,” Kay warned her two-year-old. “I swear my son loves my clothes more than I do. Can cross-dressing begin this early?”

“Try not to judge,” I said between pants. “It’ll just confuse him.”

She sighed. “Maybe it’s just a phase.”

“Or it could be...because he’s two...and your clothes smell—and taste—like you.”

“Ugh, you’re right. Are you there already? Why are you breathing hard?”

I could confess one cause without giving her any reason to believe there was a second, much hotter, sexier cause. “I’m walking to Riley’s.”

“Are there no cabs in D.C.?”

“It’s only...four blocks.” Maybe I should’ve rethought my strategy, though. Nothing says ‘Thank you for letting me stay with you for six weeks’ like a good whiff of rank body odor. But I’d walked these tree-lined streets as a child, and a part of me wanted to relive those carefree days. Plus, the whole notion of time travel and mixed-up body molecules prompted the Dr. Who theme song to play through my head, and I didn’t want to stop it.

“Well, it’s your funeral.”

“Thanks, Kay,” I said dryly.

“So, I’m thinking about hooking up with the cute handyman here for some male influence.”

“For you or Aaron?”

“Both of us, silly. Speaking of male influence, you didn’t forget to pack Slave, did you?”

A flush burned through my cheeks. A balding man tended to the flowerbed around the mailbox just ahead, and I quickly looked away while trying to convince myself he couldn’t have heard talk about my vibrator through my phone. I’d turned my speaker up loud so I could hear over my rolling luggage, but surely he couldn’t hear, too. He looked up and smiled, but that was all.

“No, I didn’t forget,” I hissed once I passed him.

Kay laughed. She’d bought me the sex toy for my last birthday. Her current reading habits dictated her nicknames for them. For example, she’d named her handcuffs Hogties. We have different reading habits, so I didn’t know the meaning behind that one, nor did I want to. But Slave was a...nice companion. Okay, an explosive, try-not-to-wake-up-the-neighbors companion.

“Then again, maybe you won’t need it since you’re staying with Riley,” she said in a low, suggestive voice.

“Maybe.”  Riley Cleary was my childhood friend, and our families swore we’d be married one day. There was even a picture of us when we were about five with a dishrag veil on my head and a bouquet of dandelions in my hand. But I had no romantic interest in Riley. I never had, but especially now that my thoughts kept straying to the stranger who knew my name in the library. “Hey, I’m almost there. Call you later?”

“Knock ’em dead, sugar plum,” she said and ended the call.

I paused at the street corner to unhook my stiff fingers from my luggage and flexed them to work out the kinks. Speaking of kinks, my neck felt like it’d been contorted into a chocolate-and-vanilla twist cone.

Oh, that sounded good right now. Nice and cold... I licked my lips while I rubbed at the crick in my neck. And that was how I was standing, on a street corner, rubbing and licking and dripping sweat all at the same time, when a red car booming loud bass turned the corner. Sometimes, it amazed me how classy I could be.

The dipping sun cast a glare on the windows, and the car thankfully rolled past without slowing. Good thing, too, since my hope for a successful career in prostitution ended after second grade once I found out what they actually did for money. Plus, I didn’t have exact change.

I collected my luggage and set off once again. Riley lived in the second house up the street...exactly where that red car was turning in. A friend of Riley’s maybe?

As I drew closer, a man, half-hidden behind the green canopy of trees and bushes, hopped out of his car and shot inside without knocking. A close friend, then. We would meet soon enough.

I stared up at my childhood home away from home, a gleeful smile spreading all over my face. It stood two stories high with a fresh coat of white paint and gray shutters. Well-maintained bushes grew along the front, and a large tree in the middle of the yard provided lots of shade. In the backyard was a pool, which I’d practically lived in during summers. Riley’s parents left him the house, or sold it to him or something, when his dad’s political career became much more promising a few years back. My old house was across the street and one block up. I’d have to check it out later, post-shower.

The front door was left wide open thanks to Riley’s friend, and voices drifted from inside.

“You could have told me,” a male voice said, faint enough so I could barely hear.

“I only found out two days ago. She was going to stay with someone else, but a burst pipe turned her house into Niagara Falls.” That was Riley’s voice, familiar only because I’d talked to him on the phone for the first time in close to seven years a few days ago.

“And that was two days you had to warn me about it. Jesus!” Slightly louder that time, and somehow familiar.

“Calm down,” Riley said. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out about this since you’re never here. She’s staying. And what the hell happened to you? You’re bleeding all over the place.”

Well, this wasn’t awkward at all. I knew this was an inconvenience, and guilt gnawed at me for putting Riley in this situation. Six weeks of staying in his house was a long time, after all, but I didn’t have any other affordable options.

I tentatively stepped toward the open door, the roll of my luggage announcing my presence for me, and gasped as a blast of blessed air conditioning hit my body. The frigid temperature dried some of the sweat bucketing from my skin, and I melted into it.

“Is there a librarian in the house?” Riley asked.

I snapped my eyes open, and there he stood. He had grown taller, much taller, in the seven years since I’d seen him, but his bright blue eyes and easy smile were the exact same. He wore a white button-down dress shirt with a few buttons opened at the top and a pair of dark slacks, typical after-work attire for a hot shot at one of the country’s best political consulting firms, I supposed.

“Paige,” he said, and before I could protest, he scooped me up in a hug.

“Sorry if I stink,” I said, but pulled him in close anyway because it was so good to see him again.

“I’ve missed you too much to care.”

“Are you sure my being here won’t be too much trouble?” I asked, scanning the living room for the source of the other voice.

“Of course not,” he said, pulling away, but the hard crinkle in the corner of his eyes said otherwise while he stared at the wall that separated the entryway from the kitchen.

If I was forced to choose between inconveniencing my childhood friend and my dream internship at the Library of Congress, I would choose homelessness in a heartbeat. The LOC had steps to sleep on. I would be fine.

“It’s okay, Paige. Really,” he said and smiled, clearing the doubt from his face. He waved me farther into the house then tipped his chin toward the kitchen. “You remember SamRam? He lives here, too, but just barely.”

I shifted my gaze, and the first thing to catch my attention was a once blue-striped dishtowel soaked in blood. The man who clenched it in his hands leaned against the wall next to the stainless steel refrigerator. His tight black T-shirt accentuated his broad shoulders and the corded muscles in his arms. As my gaze travelled upward, my stomach flipped over on itself. Facial scruff. Messy blond hair, but instead of flopping over a pair of sunglasses, it skimmed over a massive shiner on his right eye. And those eyes...they were a startling shade of baby blue that shocked the air from my lungs.

The whole package was devastatingly familiar, likely because he’d had his body pressed against mine less than a half hour ago.

So, that was Sam? As in Riley’s little brother Sam? The last time I’d seen him, he was maybe ten or eleven and he’d been a little sweetie. He would offer to bring me lemonade by the pool and he would tell me the best hiding places during a round of flashlight tag. He even volunteered to teach me badminton so I wouldn’t suck so bad.

So, yes, I remembered him. And I doubted I would ever forget.

“Sam,” I said, lowering my greeting into an accusation.

He had known who I was because we’d grown up together and he’d changed too much for me to realize it. He’d taken advantage of the situation, and of me, too, though I sure had flirted right back. Riley’s little brother. How embarrassing.

“Paige,” he rumbled, and I felt the timbre of his voice deep inside me.

I tried to ignore it, tried to ignore him, but the bloody dishtowel was like a matador’s red flag.

“What did you do?” I asked since he definitely hadn’t been bleeding half an hour ago.

“What? This?” He shrugged down at the dishtowel then pinned his gaze to mine once again. A small smile tilted his lips. “My hands get carried away sometimes.”

Heat ignited over my skin. Was that some kind of a promise or was he just stating a fact? Did he have his hands all over someone else and been attacked by a frothing-mad boyfriend? Disgusting, which pretty much summed up my feelings about myself for almost letting a public library display of affection happen between us. I had been so close to kissing him.

I quickly shifted my gaze away. “So, Riley,” I said, then cleared my throat. “Tell me everything that’s happened to you over the last seven years.”

Riley chuckled. “First things first. Do you need anything? Beer? Water?”

“No, I’m good,” I said. “But I’m in desperate need of a shower.”

“Right this way, my dear.”

I gave Sam my back as I followed Riley out of the kitchen, but the force of his gaze behind me felt like a sensual touch. I almost glanced over my shoulder, almost, just to see what he might be thinking. But I refused to give someone like him any more of my attention. He’d had plenty, and if I was going to be living with him for six weeks, then I needed to learn how to control my molecules.

“You’ll be in my parents’ old room so you can have your own bathroom,” Riley said, breathing hard as he climbed the stairs with my bulky luggage. “What do you have in these anyway? Bricks?”

“Books. In one of them anyway. I plan to do some reading this summer.” A lot, actually. Graduate school had been killer on my to-be-read list.

“Good to see nothing has changed,” he said, his voice teasing.

In a lot of ways, he was right. He still had the same cute butt that all the girls at school had talked about in barely contained whispers when he passed them. For me, he was always the brother I never had, though, not some pretty boy to drool over. Which was why I averted my gaze from his butt.

“But you know, I hear they make these things called,” he started, then groaned and heaved up the last step, “e-books now. You should really look into it.”

“Oh, I have an e-reader. It’s in there, too,” I said.

“Of course it is,” he muttered.

At the top of the stairs, Riley pushed into a large bedroom on the left and set my luggage down. Inside, three tall windows lit the cream-colored carpet with bright square patterns. A queen-sized bed covered in red pillows of all shapes and sizes took up half of the floor space. On the opposite wall stood a large dark oak dresser, and next to it, another door opened into a massive bathroom with both a whirlpool tub and a shower. Holy hell. This was not how I remembered this room.

I whistled. “You better be careful, Cleary, or you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”

He laughed, and though it was deeper than seven years ago, the rhythm of it still sounded the same. “Mom and Dad remodeled before they moved to Alexandria into something more ‘presidential hopeful,’ as Mom calls it. They said to tell you hi.”

Sergeant Maxwell Cleary was expected to announce his bid for presidency any day now, according to Riley, since he’d been turning heads across the political spectrum with his stunning military career and his effectiveness as a senator. To me, he’d always just been Max with his quiet, calm demeanor and a barbecue spatula permanently glued to his hand. Maybe it was because he always made me the juiciest hotdogs I had ever eaten, but I thought he made a great senator and would probably make a great president.

“Tell them hi back for me. When is your dad going to throw his hat in the ring, so to speak?”

The same crinkle I’d seen downstairs hardened the corners of Riley’s eyes. He scrubbed it away with a hand over his face and a sharp nod. “Soon. I can tell you all about the statistics I have on proper presidential bid timing, but you’ll probably be begging me to stop in five minutes. Remember those days I bored you into a coma by telling you all about baseball camp? You pretended you were listening when really you were reading underneath the table.”

I gasped, faking innocence. “I was listening.”

A smile curved his mouth. “Mm-hm.”

“Well, if I remember correctly, you whipped out your book, too, and caught up with me so we could dissect Voldemort’s childhood with charts and maps.”

“Good old Voldy. Those were the days, huh?”

I laughed at our shared pet name for the Harry Potter villain. “Do you still read a lot?”

“Sadly, no. I work too much, which means you’re going to be bored stiff here all alone for the next six weeks.”

My ears perked up at the sound of running water downstairs. What had made Sam bleed so much in the few disorienting moments since the library?

“Should we be worried about Sam and all that blood?” I asked.

“He’s not a kid anymore. He can take care of himself.”

“Of course he can.” And why wouldn’t he be able to? “So...” I didn’t need to know this, shouldn’t want to know. “He lives here? You didn’t say so on the phone.”

“He lives here in theory, but he’s never here. He’s...” Riley shook his head and sighed. “He’s a mess, is what he is.”

“Yeah, he’s not like the Sam I remember.” Now he had long fingers that had stoked a fire in my lower belly hot enough to melt steel just by handing me a paperback. I flushed at the memory. The man, once a sweet, innocent boy, had some serious know-how in the turning-women-on department that had little to do with actual touches and a lot to do with...experience? Yet another reason I should feel disgusted by him and the series of women he must have practiced on.

He was a mistake waiting to happen, and I’d already had my share of mistakes, which was part of why I dropped out of existence after moving to Kansas and needed therapy with Dr. Morrison. Besides, Sam couldn’t do anything for me I couldn’t do for myself. I hadn’t come here for some random hook-up. I was here to better my library career, continue with my carefully crafted life. Nothing else.

Riley glanced behind him to the hallway and ran a hand through his short, blond hair. “He always has work and parties, so he shouldn’t be much bother to you.”

Good. Outstanding.

“Was it a party that gave him the black eye?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. “Mom and Dad are too busy to do much about him, and they don’t know half the things he does, anyway. He’s a walking time bomb, and I don’t have time to babysit him, even though it could cost Dad the presidency.”

“Can’t Rose talk some sense into him?”

At the mention of the youngest Cleary, all the irritation on Riley’s face washed away into a blank stare. I knew Riley’s expressions too well, but this was not one of them. It was too practiced, too rehearsed.

“She’s at a private school in Virginia,” he said in a monotone that matched the emptiness on his face.

That didn’t answer my question at all. Rose had been a dreamer, perfectly content watching the clouds drift by, while her lopsided pigtails that looked like warmed honey streamed out on the grass above her head. She was adorable and just as innocent as Sam had been. So why the robotic evasiveness?

Riley cleared his throat and hefted one of my suitcases onto the bed. “Is it still Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine?”

“Uh, no. My reading tastes have matured some.” I smiled down at the suitcase, my fingers itching to tear—I mean gently open—the books and give them a good long sniff. “I’ve moved on to books with half-naked men on the covers who carry a loaded weapon. Sometimes wearing a kilt. Sometimes...not.”

He slid me a playful grin. “So, book porn?”

I smacked him lightly in the ribs, laughing, and it didn’t go unnoticed that my hand had just bounced back from a solid wall of muscle. Between his busy schedule, he must work out. A lot.

“No,” I said. “Romantic suspense, and yes, there is a difference. And don’t judge because I know all about disposing bodies so they’ll never be found.”

Riley stepped closer into the sunlight and held up his hands in defeat. The rays threw sharper angles onto his face and highlighted the faint whiskers along his jaw. He’d grown up to be handsome, just like his dad, but even when I was surrounded by the gushing girls at school, I always wondered why I wasn’t attracted to him the same way they were. He was a catch, sure, but he didn’t inspire a searing ache like...like no one.

“No judging, Sullivan,” Riley said, then folded me into another hug.

He felt good, cool and warm at the same time, and smelled like lemony wood and coffee.

“It’s too good to see you again to be judgmental,” he said, his breath sliding across my temple.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

He squeezed harder, sliding his hands farther down, and pressed a lingering kiss to my hairline. I frowned at the show of affection. Our friendship had never gone past simple elbow jabs and kicking feet underneath the dinner table. This felt peculiar, like we were crossing a straight, orderly line that I was perfectly content to stand behind.

Someone cleared their throat loudly in the doorway. I tried to pull away from Riley, but he held fast, his eyes narrowed and aimed over my shoulder. The air sizzled with thick silence and a tension that skittered up my back. With my palms against Riley’s chest, I pushed myself away and turned to see Sam, whose bright blue gaze knifed into Riley.

Sam ticked his eyes at me for a second, a tortured grimace rolling across his bruised face, before returning to Riley again. A deep, ugly cut slashed across the knuckles of his right hand, but he didn’t seem to notice it when he balled his fingers into a fist.

“I’m leaving,” Sam said, his voice more composed than the rest of him. Then he turned and disappeared down the stairs.

I blinked after him, my mind roiling with constant replays of his single glance at me. He’d seemed hurt somehow, but not in the physical sense. Surely he wasn’t jealous of Riley and his hand-roaming hug. Was he?

With my finger pointed at the empty doorway, I turned to Riley. “What was all that about?”

“No idea,” he said and rubbed his hands together, seeming to dismiss the whole thing. “So, what do you want to do tonight? Go to a club? A movie? We can do anything you want, and we’ve got six weeks to do it all in.”

I smiled at his enthusiasm. “Food. I’m kind of a fan.”

“Food first. Works for me.”

“Shower first because I can’t go anywhere smelling like this. I must smell like sweaty goat.”

“If I agreed with you, would you dispose of my body somewhere where someone could find it within a few days, at least?”

I shrugged. “Doubtful.”

“At least you’re honest,” he said, grinning. “No reading your book porn in the shower, okay?”

With a loud snort, I shooed him out of his parents’ room. After the best shower of my life and smelling much less goat-like, I padded downstairs in my bare feet, my strappy sandals swinging at my side. I had no idea where we were going to eat, but I’d dressed myself in a casual black dress that skimmed my thighs, and I wore my long hair down so it waved in soft curls around my shoulders. One last glance in the mirror had assured me I looked well-organized, like book spines all lined up in a tidy row. Yes, I might’ve had some obsessive compulsive tendencies.

Riley stood in the living room with his cell pressed to his ear, his mouth pinched tight. “I left it on my desk. Are you even looking at my desk?”

Uh-oh. I leaned against the hallway wall to put my sandals on while trying to appear like I wasn’t eavesdropping. The latter was easier than the former.

“Fine. I’ll be there in ten.” Riley ended the call then held the phone in a tight fist, like he was seriously considering whether to throw it or not.

“Trouble?” I asked.

He gave me a slow once-over, and his mouth dropped open as his gaze snagged on all my curves, of which I had more than a few. My Puerto Rican mom passed down a certain plumpness to various parts of my body, parts Riley had never seen before, let alone seen squeezed into a little black dress. Under his heated stare, I suddenly had the urge to cover up, even with the scorching sun outside the window that hadn’t yet ended its plunge into twilight. Why couldn’t it be like we were kids again, so easy and carefree?

“You look incredible.” He walked toward me and then trailed his fingertips down my bare arms, tracking the movement with his eyes. “But I have to go to my office. My assistant can’t find the report she needs for Dad, and he’s flying out to Dallas first thing tomorrow.”

“We’ll just eat after, then,” I said. “No problem.”

Riley sighed and took his suit jacket from the back of the couch. “I mean we’ll have to stay there and redo the report. My assistant said her computer crashed, so if she can’t find the report, we’ll have to redo the entire thing.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, and failed to keep the note of disappointment from my voice.

“We’ll catch up another time, okay?” he said. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge. Help yourself to anything you need. I’ll be back later.” He shrugged into his jacket then dropped a kiss on my head. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s your work,” I said.

“I’m really sorry,” he said again. Frowning, he walked out.

I sagged against the closed door to fight with the straps on my sandals so I could take them off. All dressed up with no place to go. I allowed myself a full thirty seconds of a pity party complete with anguished violin music screeching through my head before I trudged back upstairs to change.

Do I know how to empty a house or what?