Still So Hot!. Serena Bell

He might have just showed up.”

      From where they were standing, they couldn’t hear the whir of the digital shutter, but Brett knew he had to be shooting. It was too good an opportunity. The two of them, conspiring over the prone body of the sleeping TV star. “Do you think he heard any of our conversation?”

      She eyed the distance between them and the burst of color in the foliage. “Probably not.”

      “So it’s all visual. Stick out your hand. Like you’re shaking mine. Look businesslike.”

      “Isn’t it a little late for that?”

      “Probably. But we can at least not give him any more raw material for scandal, right?”

      She stuck her hand out, and he took it. Her hand was small, slim and surprisingly soft. She was angular and regal, but she still had that ultrafeminine, satiny feel to her skin. He wanted to rub his thumb over the back of her hand, over her wrist and up the inside of her arm. He wanted to see if the rest of her was as ridiculously soft and sweet. As her cheek. As her mouth.

      Man, he was despicable. She was right about him. She’d always been right about him. And she’d been altogether right to get herself out of his life, because if she’d stuck around, he would have found a way to get in her pants. And there was no reason to think he’d have treated her any differently than the other women he’d discarded.

      He’d proved it by running out on her that night and again two weeks later with her sister. God, he didn’t like to think about that.

      He was still holding her hand. She took it back and said, all business, “Good luck with drinks.”

      “Thanks.”

      “If you’re lucky, you won’t see me again, except maybe the back of my royal blue bathing cap as I do lengths of the pool.” She waved, then turned.

      “Okay.”

      But it wasn’t okay. Not at all. She pivoted to walk away in earnest, and he checked out the bathing suit from the rear angle, that admirable contrast between the curve of her ass and the narrowest point of her waist, and hoped his bathing trunks weren’t obviously broadcasting his admiration.

      He hadn’t actually said he’d leave after he ended his “relationship” with Celine. He hadn’t looked up earlier flights home, and he didn’t want to. It would be the gallant thing to do, of course. He should walk away and let Celine turn the weekend into a triumph. And it would be the prudent thing to do. The network was already going to be ticked at him for getting himself in the spotlight and not in a “family man” way.

      But as he cursed that stupid, old-fashioned bathing suit, and its unexpected effect on his brain and cock, he knew one thing for sure. He wasn’t ready to have Elisa Henderson walk away from him for good, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to walk away from her.