He steered Cassie toward the opposite end of the terrace, where flagstone stair steps led to a landscaped garden filled with rosebushes and shrubbery. In the twilight, the scent of flowers mingled with the fresh fragrance of grass and salt breeze. “Let’s stop and smell the roses, you know?”

“You’re so Zen,” she teased.

“No, I just want a minute alone with you.”

She glanced up at him in puzzlement. “What for? You’re alone with me all the time. You ought to be sick of me by now.”

“You aren’t usually wearing that dress,” he pointed out. Even in the dusky dimness, he caught her blush. “And no, I’m not sick of you, not even a little.” He took her hand and led her down a winding path toward the cliffs, where a guardrail offered a layer of protection.

“Wait, are you trying to get me alone so you can push me off a cliff?” she joked. “You want the hangar all to yourself, don’t you?”

“Damn, how’d you guess my master plan? Am I that obvious? I thought I was being obvious for completely different reasons.”

He stopped behind an evergreen shrub, where they were completely sheltered from all the prying eyes back at the Seaview. He turned her to face him. The moon wasn’t out yet, so only the light from the nearby Seaview and the last gasp of twilight allowed him to see her face.

Her eyes glimmered with questions. “What reasons?”

“You just look so amazing. That’s all. I see you all the time with your coveralls and your work gloves and that sexy-ass headlamp you wear. And that’s all good, but right now, you just have no idea how beautiful you look. I just wanted to tell you that somewhere where none of your brothers might hear me.”

She tugged her lower lip between her teeth. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of my brothers.”

“Nope. Not afraid. I just see how they tease. I don’t mind if they rag on me, and I know you can handle yourself, but I’m sorry, this is private. When I tell you that you’re stunning and a total hottie, it’s between you and me, not us and your brothers.”

“Oh.” His compliment clearly flustered her. “Well, thanks. I appreciate the thought.”

“It’s more than a thought.”

Just ask his cock, which was swelling hard behind his best black trousers. That bad boy wasn’t thinking. It was reacting exactly the way it so often did around Cassie.

She got his meaning right away, judging by the lightning-quick glance she sent toward his lower half. The color intensified in her cheeks. Her mouth opened, then closed again, as if she had something to say but thought better of it.

“Don’t worry, I remember what we decided. I know nothing’s going to come of this, I just wanted you to know how incredible you look tonight.”

She took a step closer to him. “Is that what we decided? I mean, I know there was a discussion. With some very good points raised by both of us. But we didn’t exactly sign on the dotted line.”

He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “True that.”

She tilted her body closer to him, just a few inches, enough so that her front came achingly close to his. “I have been wondering lately if maybe we can’t find a loophole or two.”

“Loopholes are good.”

Yeah, it wasn’t the most brilliant reply, but it was all he could come up with when she was standing that close and smelling that good, and when her smile was beckoning and his cock was throbbing like a drum.

His arms went around her in a loose circle, settling right at her waist. He told himself it was because they were so close to the edge of the bluff, and he had a responsibility to keep her safe. But when she snuggled into the embrace, he abandoned all pretense. This wasn’t about safety. It was because an irresistible force was drawing him to her—a little something called mutual attraction. The orbiting planets had nothing on it, if you asked him.

“I did have one idea,” she murmured.

“Mmm, hmmm.” Her hair smelled like night-blooming flowers and made him imagine lying on a beach with her somewhere tropical. Except if they ever found themselves at a beach, Cassie would probably be playing in the waves, tossing a Frisbee in a bikini or showing off her surfing skills. Lying on a beach blanket didn’t seem like her style. Or maybe it was—he didn’t know for sure, but he really wished he could find out.

“The way I see it, there are two roadblocks here,” Cassie was saying. “There’s Holly, most importantly. And then there’s me wanting to keep my love life separate from my work life. So maybe the key is not to think in terms of ‘love life’.”

“No problem, since I’m not a character in a chick flick.”

She chuckled, leaning fully against him. “No, you’re not, but you could be. Sexy mechanic like you? You’d definitely fit the part of the hero who’s good with his hands, who beats out the shallow stockbroker dude who has no morals.”

“Hey, I own stocks. And morals.”

With a hint of surprise, she tilted her head up. “You own stocks?”

“Sure. Gotta look out for my daughter’s future. But I feel like we’re getting off track here. You were saying, about your love life?”

“Sex life. That’s what I was saying. If we think of it that way, then there’s nothing really to worry about.”

He squinted at her in some confusion. Whether it was thanks to the champagne or the heady effect of her presence, his brain was having trouble catching up to her words. “You lost me.”

“Sex. S.E.X.” God, the way her lips formed the word, and then spelled it out—he could watch that all day.

“I’ve heard of it.” And been somewhat obsessed with it lately, thanks to her.

“Well, then you know it doesn’t have to have anything to do with love. I mean, not that it would in our case, because we just met, really. Not too long ago. Not too short ago either. We know each other well enough so I know you’re not a jerk. And hopefully you don’t think I am either. Or at least, most of the time. I know I have my moments, don’t we all? Except I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be a jerk, so that’s cool.”

She stopped herself by drawing in a long breath. He stared at her, still a little befuddled. “I’ve never thought you were a jerk. Not once.”

“That’s good. So basically, what I’m saying is, maybe we should just go for it. If it’s just sex, there’s no reason for anyone to know or care, except for us. Since it’s not a ‘relationship,’ Holly doesn’t need to worry about it. As long as we both see things the same way, we should have no problem working together. Or side by side, really. We don’t even work together, strictly speaking. So that means there’s even less of a problem. Oh God, I really am babbling. It’s because of the way you’re looking at me.”

He blinked to break the spell of her cascade of words. When a woman talked “sex,” he listened. But this time, he wasn’t really sure he liked what he was hearing. “So you’re saying we take love off the table and focus entirely on sex, and that somehow that would keep Holly out of it and avoid all potential complications at Knight and Day.”

“Exactly.” She beamed a pleased smile up at him. Then a frown drew her eyebrows together. “You said ‘somehow’ in a very skeptical tone.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be skeptical. But—”

She poked his chest. “There you go again. That ‘but’ was also very skeptical.”

God, she was adorable. And that, right there, was the problem. “I’ve done the no-strings-sex thing. A lot. In fact, it’s all I’ve done since Sylvie and I split up. I know exactly how it works.”

Her eyelids flickered. “And so have I. In my case, it’s because I’ve moved around so much. There you go! We both already know the drill. It’s perfect.”

“It’s not perfect.”

“Okay, of course it’s not perfect. But we could make it work.”

“We couldn’t make it work,” he said firmly. Because as much as it pained him to do so, he had to nip this idea in the bud before she took it any further.

“Why not?” She glared at him in a blaze of indignation. “You think I’m not sophisticated enough, that I can’t separate sex and love? You’re totally wrong, I can do that, and—”

“That’s not the problem.” He splayed his hands across her lower back, feeling the micro-adjustments of the muscles along her spine. The silky material of her dress was like magic, the way it allowed him to feel her body underneath.

“So what’s the problem?” Despite her frown, she was so appealing, so alive in the deepening starlight, as if she herself were a star who had landed in his life.

“This.”

And finally, finally, he kissed her.

Not the almost-kiss of the first time they’d met, or the close call from Knight and Day. This was the real thing—and it felt as if he’d been waiting for this moment for years. As if kissing Cassie was like throwing himself down a waterfall, his entire being tumbling end over end, completely immersed in the moment. The warm champagne sweetness of her taste was everything, the eager opening of her mouth, the slide of her tongue, the oops of their teeth clicking against each other before they figured out exactly how to fit together.

A tight quiver ran through her body, and for a moment he wondered if he’d gone too fast, kissing her like this.

In the next moment, she linked her hands around his neck and lifted herself on tiptoe, pressing her breasts against him. He felt the points of her nipples against his chest, and thanked God once again for that miraculous dress that hid nothing from him. Skimming his hands up her sides, he cupped the soft swells of her breasts. The perfect, delicate curves triggered a pulse of lust inside him, but even more than that, a fierce sense of rightness. As if her body and his were meant for this moment, and for so many moments to come.

And that…that…was why her plan wouldn’t work.

He sent his hands on one more lustful tour of her body, savoring the long lines of her spine, the sensual curve of her ass, the firmness of her hipbones, the secret tenderness of the dip that led to her groin. So much to feel, to discover.

And so many reasons not to.

He ended the kiss, their lips clinging together until the last possible moment. A sigh drifted through the air between them as he finally managed to separate from her.

“See what I mean?” he managed in a rough voice.

She stared at him dazedly. “What?”

“I can’t take anything off the table when it comes to you. I just can’t. It would be a lie. And that’s the one thing I refuse to do with anyone I get involved with.”

Blinking, she put a hand to her lips, touching the place where his mouth had been just a moment ago. “Crap,” she whispered.

“Crap?”

“That’s just…I mean, that was some kiss.”

Yeah. It had been. He was still reeling from it, to be honest. “Exactly.”

“So basically you’re saying, because it was such a good kiss, we can’t do it again?”

He cocked his head, frowning down at her. His arms were still wrapped around her, which was potentially big trouble. Ending the kiss was hard enough, and not touching her at all seemed frankly impossible at the moment. “I guess so.”

“So we should have made it a really bad kiss?”

Her impish, sparkling smile froze him in his tracks for a moment. Then he threw his head back and let out a laugh. Something inside him loosened as the laughter poured out of him. It came from a place that hadn’t been touched in a very long time. A joyful, playful, sky’s-the-limit kind of place. “Yeah well, too late for that. We can’t take it back now. I wouldn’t want to if we could. That kiss was epic.”

“But you don’t want to do it again.” The moon was finally rising over the hilltop beyond the inn, its silvery light making her expression hard to read. Did she look…hurt? Rejected? That would be a total misread of the situation.

“I sure as hell didn’t say that,” he said firmly. “I want to do it again. Along with every other dirty, sexy thought I’ve had about you. Kissing is just the start. But there’s a lot more going on between us than that—and you know it. I’m not going to act like there isn’t.”

Silence throbbed between them. Or maybe that was the ache in his cock, which was probably furious with him right about now. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. His days of being ruled by his libido were in the past. He was still influenced by it. But he didn’t have to do everything it said, dammit.

Cassie pressed her lips together and stepped out of the circle of his arms. “Are you sure this isn’t just a fancy way of saying you don’t want this to go any further? You really don’t have to go to so much trouble. I’m a big girl. I can handle a little rejection.”

“Hey.” He caught her arm as she spun away from him. “You know that’s not what it is. And if you don’t know, you should know. You knock me right off my feet, every time I see you. And judging by that kiss, you’re not exactly indifferent to me. So how is some ridiculous ‘this is just about sex’ thing supposed to work between us? It never would, and you know that.”

He knew she did, he could see it in her eyes, even though a shadow of hurt remained. He hated that he’d wounded her, that he’d put that look on her face, that he’d extinguished all the heat, all the fire and fun.

Of course, the only thing he could think to do about it was to kiss her again. And that would be…

“Ah, fuck it.”

Awareness flared in her eyes as he drew her close again. Her lips parted, her breath hitched…

And then her cell phone buzzed. She startled and would have stumbled on the grass if he hadn’t been holding her hand. “That’s my emergency ringtone.”

“Shit. Go ahead, check it.” He let her hand drop from his so she could check her phone.

Looking a little rattled, she fumbled in the pocket of her dress. After glancing at it briefly, she stepped away from him.

“I have to go.” All her warm, vulnerable openness was gone, as if a steel gate had dropped over her expression. She turned away and headed for the parking lot.

“Wait.” He jogged to catch up with her. “What’s going on?”

“I have to go,” she repeated. “It’s personal.”

“Okay.” He didn’t want to push her, but Jesus. If it was serious, he wanted to help if he could. “Can I do anything? Want me to get your brothers?”

“No, I can handle it. I don’t want to disturb Ben’s party.” They reached the parking lot. After a quick scan of the parked cars, she muttered, “Shit,” and turned to him. “It’s my mom. She took the car, so I could actually use your help if you’re really offering.”

“Of course.” He felt a weird rush of happiness that she trusted him to help with something so personal.

And that, more than anything—even more than the kiss—told him he was right. There was no way he could take anything off the table when it came to Cassie. He was already in too deep.