What was I thinking? The last thing I needed was to see Sophie in a bikini…with water dripping off the slopes of her body…to pool in the smooth valleys. But now that we were there, the pool would actually have to explode and shoot me off into space before I would move. We’d frolicked like kids, swam a couple laps from end to end of the pool, and now we were laying on a two-person raft sipping fruity girly drinks. I blamed the sun for the warmth shooting through me rather than her hip rubbing against mine with each kick of her opposite leg over the side.

I’d given her Andrew’s ring back, but she hadn’t put it on. She was still wearing the ring I bought for her with my casino winnings. If I’d had to rely on my savings, the one I would have been able to afford wouldn’t have been much bigger than a grain of sand. This one was fit for a queen. What was it they said? Three month’s salary? Well, I went with eighty percent of my winnings, and it was so worth it. It put golden boy’s ring to shame. I would have spent all the money, but even drunk, she’d said no.

Next to me, she shifted and rolled to her side. “This is the best idea you ever had.” Her voice was a purr that went straight south, and it wouldn’t be long before I was a human sundial if she kept stroking my ribs with her fingernail.

“What are you doing?” I wasn’t complaining. I just wanted her to be very sure of how this was going to end up.

“Can I tell you something?” She nuzzled my shoulder with her chin, and I was pretty sure she could do whatever she wanted, and I wasn’t going to bitch about it.

“Yeah.” That one word sounded strangled, as if I’d taken a big bite of the concrete patio and it was lodged in my throat.

“You can’t use it against me later.” She’s scooted closer, and there wasn’t enough blood left in my brain to manage syllables. I nodded my agreement. “I think I might have had too many piña coladas.” Her finger strayed to my stomach and circled my belly button. Yep. Sundial.

I hadn’t counted, but I only recalled us having one each. Although I couldn’t honestly say I’d been paying a lot of attention to more than how her top fit. “True?”

She lowered her eyes. “No.” After a few long breaths, she started again. “Is it wrong that I’m lying about drinking so I have an excuse for why I want you right now?”

I didn’t want to be a good guy. I wanted to be her guy, but this was something she’d regret, and I knew it. Tricking her was for her own good, and I stood by that, but I didn’t want to be a regret. “A little bit.”

Rather than answer, she rolled off the raft into the water. When she climbed out and left the patio area, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the order of the presidents of the United States, but all I could see was her and the sway of her hips, the fullness of her mouth. Well, hell. I abandoned the float for a few more laps. It was a while before I could follow her to the room, but when I walked in, she was dressed and throwing her things into her suitcase.

No. Not yet.

I had to stop her. I at least had to tell her enough that she didn’t run back to Andrew. “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”

“I’m going to the airport, and I’m getting a flight home.”

“Why?”

“Because, Harley.” She slammed the lid of her suitcase closed and zipped the top before she turned back to me. “I can’t stay here with you. I need to get back to real life where everything makes sense.” She crossed her arms and glared at me. This was her angry lawyer pose, and now I was about to get an argument worthy of the Supreme Court. “You have me off balance. My life is planned. It’s set already, and here you are being fifteen kinds of charming and—and I’m confused. I am marrying Andrew in a month, but all I can think about is what it would be like to be with you.”

God, help me.

“Soph, I’m not trying—”

“No. I know that. You’re just this guy.” She plopped down on the bed, and I sat beside her, close enough to touch, but not making a move. “I can’t remember sleeping with you.” I knew I should have just told her nothing happened and we weren’t married, but I didn’t. “And now, I feel like I missed out. And it’s wrong, but I can’t help it, and I’m trying like hell not to think about it, but…I am. Thinking about it.”

I wanted to be the guy who didn’t take advantage of the situation, especially since it was based on a lie, but I also wanted to be the guy who held her as the sun came up in the morning, the guy whose name was on her lips when she fell over the edge. “What about Andrew?”

She looked up at the ceiling then threw herself back on the bed with a moan that seeped through my skin all the way to my bones. “I don’t know.”

This was my moment to make her see the truth about him, about their entire relationship. I just had to make sure to think with my brain and not my dick. “What do you see in that guy?” During her drunken ramblings the night before, she’d let slip that they hadn’t slept together in months. So maybe it was nothing more than need. But what kind of friend would I have been to send her out into the world with that all pent up inside her?

A good friend. One who doesn’t use her need to satisfy his own.

But I’d been a good friend for years. I sat back and watched him treat her as less than he should because she asked me to. And yeah. As soon as he proposed, I might have used a few government resources to discover that while he wasn’t sleeping with her, he hadn’t been celibate either. Not telling her right then wouldn’t win me any best buddy awards. But then or now, finding out would break her, make her question herself. I couldn’t bear to see that happen either. She would see flaws where there weren’t any and weigh them against everything I knew about her to be true. And with the way her mind worked, she wouldn’t bounce back. As a friend, her best friend, I couldn’t let that happen either. It was tricky, and I tried to work it out.

“He’s good to me, and my folks like him. You know how they are. There’s been so much pressure to settle down and get married. Mom isn’t getting younger, and she wants grandkids before she dies. Andrew will be a good father, a good provider.” Those weren’t the right reasons to join her future with his. I had to make her see.

“Since when do you need a provider?” She made more money in three months than I made in a year. She could damned well provide for herself.

“I don’t, but if I have kids, I want to be there for them completely. That would mean not working.”

At the crux of her argument, there was something big missing. “Do you love him?”

She bounced up like she was wearing panties with springs attached. For a moment, my mind wandered to her panties and it took the full force of her anger to snap me out of it. “Why ask me now? Or more to the point, best friend, why didn’t you ask me that before when I showed you the ring or when I asked you to stand up with me? Why are we only now having this conversation?”

It didn’t escape me that she hadn’t answered. “Do you love him?”

She sighed. “I always heard that even drunk, you wouldn’t do things that you didn’t subconsciously want to do. And I slept with you. And married you. What does that tell you?” Before I could answer, she went on. “It tells me that there is something between us and whether or not I decide I love him…there’s something between us.” Misery deepened her voice. And to be honest, it didn’t do much for me either.

Still, I couldn’t stand to see her beating herself up over it. First, I was going to make her smile, then I was going to tell her the truth and let her decide. “I am pretty irresistible.” And there it was. That heart-stopping pull of her lips. “Soph, we…”

And I would have told the entire truth had she not used the force of her weight to push me into the mattress and cover my body with hers. But it was hard to think past her tongue in my mouth, her hips grinding into mine.