As they drove up the mountain in silence, Charley’s nerves multiplied exponentially. The thought of telling Tyler she wanted to leave made her feel sick. This was exactly why she didn’t get “involved” with men. Inevitably, she always wanted out, and it was much easier to escape when there were no feelings involved.

He had them for her, and she couldn’t deny she’d begun to have them for him.

“What’re you thinking about over there?”

His deep voice startled her. “I . . . um . . .”

“Did you have fun today?”

Grateful for the reprieve, she said, “I did. You?”

“It was great. Your brothers are insane on skis.”

“They’re insane off skis, too.”

“I’m exhausted. That’s what I get for trying to keep up with them. I hope I can move tomorrow.”

“You’re in good shape.”

“Skiing always makes me sore the next day. Different muscles.” He yawned loudly. “How do you feel about an early dinner and a movie in bed?”

Now would be a great time to tell him she wanted to move to her parents’ home until she recovered enough to go to her apartment.

“Charley?”

“Um, sure, that sounds good.” He was tired and hungry. What she had to tell him could wait until tomorrow.

When they got to his house, Tyler helped her get settled on the sofa, doled out her pills and then went to heat up the lasagna her mother had sent home with them. They ate that, salad and bread on the sofa in front of the fire he’d lit.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Charley nearly choked on her bite of lasagna.

“And don’t say it’s nothing because something has been different since I got to your parents’ house to pick you up.”

She leaned forward to put her plate on the coffee table. Her heart beat fast, making her feel breathless. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him when he’d been so good to her.

Tyler took hold of her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles and setting off a reaction she felt everywhere. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”

“I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

Groaning, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the sofa. “Don’t, Charley.”

“Don’t what?”

“Give me the gratitude speech before you tell me it’s over between us. You said you were going to give me a chance, but you haven’t.”

“I’m such a cliché,” she said with a sigh, wishing for just that moment that she could be someone different for him.

“What? Why in the world would you say that?”

“Because I’m going to say it is not you. It’s me. It’s most definitely me. You’re great and handsome and sexy and so nice. You deserve so much more than what I can give you.”

“I want to understand, Charley. I want to know why you think you’re incapable of this when this is already happening. We’re two weeks into it, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing fine. I’ve never been happier than I’ve been since you came to stay here. I hate that you got hurt, but I love taking care of you.”

“You can’t love taking care of me,” she said, her voice catching on a sob.

“Why not, honey?”

“Because! I told you! I don’t do this. I don’t do boyfriends or relationships and I don’t do love. Any kind of love.”

“And I told you I’m okay with that. You told me your rules, and I intend to play by them.”

Charley shook her head. “I see the way you look at me.”

“How do I look at you?”

“Like you want things I’m not capable of giving you.”

He raised their joined hands to his lips, setting off a firestorm of sensation that flooded her senses with awareness of him. “What I want most from you, right now, is something you’re perfectly capable of giving me.”

“Sex.”

His soft chuckle made her want to punch him. There was nothing funny about this conversation. “That’s second on my list.”

“What’s first?”

“Time. I want to spend time with you doing exactly what we’re doing right now—eating dinner in front of the fire, planning to watch a movie and turn in early. I want to take you on that date in Boston, but we don’t have to call it a date if you’d rather not. I want to go to your brother’s bachelor party on Thursday night—and yes, I was actually invited. I want you to ask me to come with you to his wedding next weekend. On Christmas Eve, I thought maybe you could come with me to my parents’ house. My mom does a big dinner every year. Christmas Day is all yours to decide what we do. Whatever you want to do with your family is fine with me. So you see it’s not really all that complicated unless we want to make it complicated.”

“Everything about that is complicated.”

“How so?”

“All that time together, families involved, important events.” Charley shuddered. “It would be like having a boyfriend.”

“You say the word boyfriend the way other people say herpes,” he said with that adorable smile that set her heart to racing.

“I don’t want a boyfriend.”

“I don’t want herpes, so we’re on the same page.”

“I fear you aren’t taking me seriously.”

“I take you, Charlotte Abbott, as seriously as it’s possible to take anyone.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of!”

With his free hand, he caressed her face, gently dragging his thumb over her jaw. “You have no reason whatsoever to be afraid of me.”

“I’m beginning to think I have every good reason to be afraid of you.”

Still smiling, he shook his head, leaned in and kissed her cheek on the way to her mouth as he brought both hands to her face, holding her in place so he could kiss her more intently.

How did he do this to her? How did he make her forget that she hadn’t intended to kiss him again? How did he make her forget that she’d planned to tell him they couldn’t do any of this anymore? When he kissed her, she forgot everything other than how he made her feel. Her hand found its way around his neck because she couldn’t seem to get close enough to him.

Somehow he managed to arrange them so he was lying on top of her without breaking the kiss or causing her any pain. She wasn’t sure how he did that either, but with his erection pressed tight against her core, she couldn’t spare the brain cells to figure it out.

He stopped only to pull her sweater up and over her head before he kissed his way down her neck to nuzzle the tops of her breasts. “God, Charley. You’re so sexy. You have no idea what you do to me.”

She arched into him, wishing she had the wherewithal to tell him to stop. This had to stop. Soon. Soon she would say it, but not quite yet. Not when he was easing the strap of her tank top down her arm to expose her breast. Her nipple tightened immediately, and she held her breath, waiting to see what he would do.

Tyler cupped her breast and ran his thumb over her nipple, making her gasp from the sensations that rocketed through her. “Could I ask you something?”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

“Um, okay . . .”

“When was the last time you had a real, honest-to-goodness boyfriend?”

She hadn’t been expecting that question and had no idea how to answer it. Did she tell him the truth or make something up?

“Tell me, Charley.”

Something about the open, honest way he looked at her made it impossible for her to lie to him. “Never.”

“Not once ever?”

She bit her lip and shook her head.

“How have you gotten to age thirty without having had a boyfriend?”

“I’ve never wanted one before. Except for once, and there was nothing real or honest-to-goodness about that.”

His brow lifted, which was when she realized she’d said too much. “What happened that one time?”

“Nothing I want to talk about now or ever.”

“Is that why there’s been no one else?”

“Partially.”

“What’s the other part?”

“I’ve told you before. I’m not cut out for relationships and all the crap that goes with them.”

“What crap?”

“You know.” She tugged her tank top back up. If he was going to force her to have this conversation, she wasn’t going to do it with her breast hanging out. “The dance. The bullshit. The empty promises. I’m not interested in any of that.”

“Someone hurt you, Charley.” There he went again, pretending to see inside her. “Who was he?”

“Stop.” She shook her head. “We’re not going there.”

“How can we move forward from here if I don’t know what I’m up against?”

“I’ve told you I don’t want to move forward from here.” She cupped him intimately, making his eyes bug before he groaned. “Isn’t where we are good enough for you?”

“Where we are is great for me, but it could be so much better if you’d just trust me when I tell you I’m for real here, Charley. I’m not out to hurt you. That’s the last thing in the world I’d ever want to do.” As he spoke, he caressed her face so tenderly and the way he looked at her, as if he’d give her anything if only she’d let him . . . Though he continued to throb in her hand, he drew back from her, forcing her hand to drop to her side. “Will you do something for me? Just one simple thing?”

“Nothing with you is ever simple.”

That drew a grin from him complete with small dimples she hadn’t noticed before now. Damn, they were cute and sexy, too.

“What is this one simple thing you want from me?”

“Your brother’s wedding, the holidays, the night in Boston. Let me be your boyfriend for the next couple of weeks. If we do all that and you decide this relationship business isn’t for you, I’ll respect your wishes.”

“By respect my wishes, you mean . . .”

“I’ll leave you alone. But between now and then, though, you’re all mine.”

Charley swallowed hard at the implications behind his forcefully stated words. “Between now and when?”

“You want like an expiration date?”

“That’s the only way you’ll get me to agree to this harebrained plan of yours.”

“Harebrained,” he said with a laugh. “Ouch.”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“Brilliant? Inspired?”

Charley rolled her eyes but had to hold back a smile that was bursting to get out. He was awfully cute when he negotiated a deal.

“You tell me. How long do I have?”

“Until the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day when you turn into a pumpkin.”

Glancing up at the ceiling, he did the math. “Seventeen days. And in that time, I’m all yours and you’re all mine. No restrictions, no limits.”

“Why do I feel like I’m making a deal with the devil?”

His grin was positively devilish. “Baby, you have no idea what you’re getting into.”

Though his tone was teasing, her stomach knotted with nerves and a tiny bit of fear. In the years since Michael deceived her, she’d never come close to anything like what Tyler was proposing. But she was only potentially agreeing to a short-term arrangement with an expiration date and a get-out-of-jail-free card.

“If I go along with this harebrained scheme of yours, do you promise that you’ll step aside on New Year’s Day as promised?”

“If that’s what you want, you’ll never hear from me again.”

“And when we run into each other around town?”

“I’ll say, ‘Hello, Charley, how are you?’ And go on with my life.”

“And you won’t act all hurt and disappointed?”

“I’ll be disappointed for sure, but you’ll never see any sign of that.”

“And I won’t hear about your disappointment—or your hurt—from anyone?”

“I’ll never speak of it to anyone. You have my word on that.”

“What about the running club?”

“When you feel up to rejoining the club, I’ll step aside. I’ve run marathons before. I know how to train for them. The club was about companionship during the training. You won’t have to see me every week if you don’t want to.”

“I already feel like a jerk, and I haven’t even dumped you yet.”

Laughing, he said, “Has it occurred to you, even for a second, that maybe you won’t want to dump me?”

“No, it hasn’t.”

Groaning, he flattened a hand over his chest and gasped from pretend agony. “You wound me, Charlotte.”

“That’s what I’m trying to avoid!”

“I know what I’m getting into, and I accept the possibility that you may dump me despite my very best efforts. Is that what you need to hear?”

“Seventeen days, and Tyler, I will dump you when our time is up.”

“We’ll see about that, Charlotte. We’ll just see about that.” He slid the tank top strap back down her arm. “Now where were we before we were rudely interrupted?” His lips encircled her nipple, stifling any protest she might’ve formed.

Charley buried her fingers in his hair and closed her eyes. When he touched her this way, he made her think anything was possible, even things she didn’t want. Those frightening thoughts faded with the insistent tug of his lips on her nipple.

“Charley,” he whispered. “Let’s go to bed. Let me show you how much I care about you.”

It had been a very long time—hell, it had been forever—since any man had made her crave the way this one did. As he lifted her off the sofa to carry her to bed, she realized she was going to have to be very careful not to give him more than she intended to.

In the past, she’d never had any problem keeping the emotion separate from the act. She was an expert at compartmentalizing, and those skills would come in handy now.

He set her on the bed, careful as always to ensure her injured leg was properly supported. Then he began helping her out of her clothes, starting with the tank top that left her bared to him from the waist up after it cleared her head. His greedy gaze took in every inch of skin as he removed the brace on her leg so he could help her out of the jeans she’d worn to the shower. He moved slowly and patiently to ease the denim down over her knee.

“Let’s put this back on,” he said of the brace.

“It’s okay. Debbie said I can leave it off to sleep as long as I’m careful.”

He laid his hands flat on her ribs and then slid them to the waistband of her panties.

Charley panicked, putting her hand down to stop him.

Pausing, he eyed her deliberately. “We’ll leave them on,” he said. “For now.” He stood to pull the sweater over his head and then the thermal shirt he’d worn under it.

Charley watched him reveal himself to her, her mouth watering at the sight of well-defined pecs and ripped abs, covered by a nice bit of dark chest hair. A needy feeling overtook her at the sight of him reaching for the button on worn denim. He unzipped carefully, working around the huge bulge, and kicked off his jeans impatiently. While he undressed, he never took his eyes off her.

She had to fight the urge to squirm from the intense way he looked at her, as if he wanted to chain her to the bed and have his wicked way with her.

“Why did your whole body just turn a lovely shade of pink?” he asked as he crawled onto the bed next to her, placing his hand flat against her belly. He’d left his boxer briefs on for the time being, which was a relief. It gave her a minute to catch her breath. “What’s going on inside that pretty head of yours?”

“All sorts of dirty stuff.”

“Oh please. Do tell.”

“I was thinking about how you look at me like you want to chain me to the bed and have your wicked way with me.”

“That’s exactly what I want. And you say we don’t belong together. You’re already reading my mind.”

“You’re a shameless opportunist.”

“I have to take the openings where I can get them.” His hand slid down the front of her, sliding over her panties and coming to a rest between her legs. “Mmm, it’s getting warm down here.”

There he went again, derailing her thoughts and making her tremble with desire.

His fingers delved deeper, finding the knot of nerves that tightened as he stroked her. “I want to taste you here, Charley.” With his lips against her thigh, his words sparked an outbreak of goose bumps. “Let me taste you.” He tugged at her panties, and this time she let him remove them.

She’d never been more acutely aware of her body than she was as he settled between her legs. He lifted her good leg and propped it on his shoulder.

“Tyler.” His name sounded like a gasp. “Wait.”

“Don’t want to wait,” he said as he nuzzled her most sensitive area.

“I don’t really like . . . Ahhh, God.”