Page 45 of Winning His Wager

He pulled back. “I am going to stop now. I won’t take advantage of you, like a jerk or anything.”

“I’m not sure who would be taking advantage of whom here, Fletchie. How did this even happen?”

She leaned back. Fletcher could feel every perfect inch of her under those silky little shorts she had no business wearing in his house. In his orbit. Hell, on the same planet they were on. Those shorts were just too damned tempting.

The top was unbuttoned halfway now. His doing. He vaguely remembered doing that. It just reiterated one thing: when he finally did get her in his bed where she belonged, they were going to light the place on fire.

He kept that thought to himself. “I think you are the most dangerous woman I have ever met.”

“Even more than Ch?—”

He covered her lips with one finger. “No. Don’t bring her into here. Not tonight.”

Green eyes just watched him. That was when he got it—she felt insecure. Especially when it came to Charlotte.

How in the hell was he going to get past that little stumbling block?

He had been romantically, intimately involved with her cousin. Yes, it was almost ten years ago, but it had happened. There was no denying that. And he loved Charlotte, always would. But it wasn’t likethatwith him and Charlotte any longer.

Would not, could not, ever be again.

They were just two completely different kinds of people. He wasn’t what Charlotte had needed—and Charlotte wasn’t what he had needed, either. No. But the Talley in his arms now—shewas the one meant for him. Period.

How was he going to make Dylan believe that?

“Charlotte is a part of my past. I don’t regret that we were together, but she is not the woman I want now.”

It was unstated, but they both knew it.

Dylan was the one he wanted.

But he bet only he was the one who knew that it was forever.

28

Well.Dylan was quieter than Dylan usually was—Dixie studied her smallest sister silently as Dylan set out the now-thawed food trays from the cooler. They would bake them in the ovens before they were ready to be put on the buffet bar.

“Okay, spill.”

“What?” Dylan turned. Her cheeks were a little red. Her eyes—had she been crying? And her lips—definitely a little swollen there. But it was the wild look in the big green eyes that stood out the most.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on. First, why have you been crying?”

Dylan’s hands went to her eyes. “Oh. Nightmare. Woke up crying.”

Believable. Dixie wasn’t stupid. Dylan had been through hell, after all. Meyra was still having nightmares from what hell that had been too. They probably always would. Dixie touched the scar at her own temple. She still had nightmares of her own from what had happened with her the Beise woman several years ago. “Okay, so, who have you been kissing?”

She waited. Dixie wasn’t stupid—she knew. She knew exactly who had reddened those lips and put that confused look in her baby sister’s green eyes.

“Okay, so Fletcher heard me crying and he came in my room and then we were talking. And then next thing I knew we were kissing. Like hot, I wanted to rip off my clothes kissing. But I don’t know if he really kissed me or if I am the one who kissed him. Or maybe we just sort of kissed each other.”

Dixie had no trouble following, even though the words came out in a crazy rush.

“Okay, then what?”

“Then…he pulled back, said he wasn’t going to take advantage of me. And then I ended up here. But—” Dylan sent her a totally confused look. “I don’t think there would be any taking advantage of anyone involved. I could see myself being with him, Dixie. Just like that. Instantly. Without thinking it through, just right there getting naked with him, no hesitation at all, and that just isn’tme. I don’t rush into a relationship with a guy like that. And how do I know I’m not just rushing into something because of proximity and because I’m trying to distract myself from…things…and what is he really wanting and…what about the whole Charlotte thing?”

Dixie wrapped her hands around Dylan’s arms—it was easy to do. This Talley was definitely on the scrawny side, unlike the far curvier Dixie. Dylan may have been their smallest, but damned if she didn’t have the most sensitive heart of them all. Dixie had realized that pretty quick. “First, Charlotte was over ten years ago when they were both practically kids. Immature and hurting, both of them. It never would have worked and they both knew that—that was one reason why Fletch called it off between them.”