Cutting Loose. Susan Andersen

probably my hips.” Ava handed him the photos with a rueful smile. “I apologize, Dev. I didn’t mean to freak on you. I was a fat kid, and I still have a few issues with my weight.”

      You think? With three sisters, one might reasonably imagine he had an inkling into the female mind, but he didn’t have a clue. So he merely said, “Well, you shouldn’t. There’s not a man I know who wouldn’t kill to get his hands on a body like yours.”

      Yet it wasn’t Ava who commanded his awareness as the three of them pored over the photographs. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but it was Jane who kept capturing his attention.

      She might have a chilly personality, but as he’d already noted, the girl pumped out some serious body heat. He felt it radiating along his entire left side and had to peel himself free for a moment to set his coffee on the table. It was hard juggling the cup and the photos in these cramped quarters anyhow, and at this point he didn’t need any additional heat from the inside, as well. He was plenty hot.

      Plenty. Hot.

       Shit.

      He focused on Jane’s unvarnished fingernails. They were bitten to the quick. It wasn’t very big of him, but it gave him a little surge of pleasure all the same. Hah. Maybe she wasn’t as aggressively confident as she appeared.

      But she had skin like a baby. Not that he could see a hell of a lot of it-she was buttoned up from stem to stern. Still, he couldn’t help but notice its soft texture when their fingers brushed as they exchanged photographs. Or how her bared forearms shone more luminous than the pearls twined around them.

      He shifted uncomfortably. What the fuck was going on here? This was so not like him. He’d had more women over the years than you could shake a stick at, and he was a sailor and a carpenter, for cri’sake-he didn’t think in words like luminous.

      “Well, hey.” He pried himself from between the two females and rose to his feet. “My eyes are starting to cross-I think I’m going to take off. I still haven’t caught up with the jet lag. I need to hit the sack.”

      More like hit a bar and pick up a woman, he thought as he gathered his pictures, said his goodbyes and dashed through the rain to his car a few moments later after letting himself out of the mansion. Someone with cleavage, smiles and red lips. And nails long enough to drag down his back. Someone who’d look at him like he was the hottest stud to swagger down the pike, instead of a lush who was one drink away from oblivion.

      Only…

      Instead of heading out to one of Belltown’s night spots when he reached his apartment house, he took a shower and went to bed.

      Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow night he’d go out and find himself a woman. Because clearly if he was getting all hot under the collar over uptight, disapproving little Jane Kaplinski, it had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.

       CHAPTER THREE

       Sex is overrated. I for one can live just fine without it.

       Really.

       J ANE SAT in the Wolcott parlor the next evening typing annotations into her notebook computer for a meeting with the museum director the following morning. Instead of focusing all her attention on the report, however, she found her thoughts constantly drifting to a certain buff redheaded man.

      What was it about Devlin Kavanagh, anyway? This inability to concentrate whenever he popped to mind-which was far too often for comfort-was ridiculous, not to mention unprecedented.

      Well, there was some precedent, she supposed. It wasn’t as if she’d never been attracted to other men before, because naturally she had.

      But not like this. Never had she been drawn to a guy in such an I-gotta-have-him, out-of-control sort of way.

      And that was the problem in a nutshell. Because she didn’t do out of control. Having grown up in a household that was always verging on or in the midst of some sort of drama, she’d made a firm decision about that before she was even ten years old.

      What had she ever done to deserve parents who were actors? All she’d ever wanted was a nice, normal family, but had she gotten one? Oh, no. God was no doubt up in heaven slapping his knee at the thought of the Dorrie and Mike Show he’d sent her instead. It was unfair, that’s what it was. Her parents didn’t have simple differences of opinion; they had wars, crises of epic proportions. Which she almost could have lived with-had they just once not tried to drag her smack-dab into the middle of them.

      So, no. She didn’t do out of control.

      Which ought to make matters simpler now, right? Except somehow this didn’t feel simple. And she didn’t understand why she was having so much trouble with this particular guy.

      “Crap.” She stared at her computer screen in frustration. “I have got to get a grip.”

      “Well, this doesn’t bode well if the job already has you talking to yourself.”

      She gave an involuntary start, then scowled at Poppy as her friend strolled into the room. “Jeez, give me a heart attack, why don’t you.” Even if it was her own damn fault for allowing a man to distract her to the point where someone could sneak up on her.

      “Sorry,” Poppy said without noticeable contrition. “So is it the job that’s making you carry on conversations with yourself?”

      “I wish,” she muttered. “That would be so much easier.” Then she gave herself a mental head slap. Shut up, Kaplinski. Shut up, shut up, shut up. She wasn’t ready to spill her guts, and until she was she knew better than to give Poppy even an inkling that she might have a secret.

      But of course it was too late. Because as she’d told Devlin just yesterday, Poppy was a pit bull once she sank her teeth into something. Already her friend, who looked deceptively soft and pliable with her curly blond hair, big brown eyes and today’s floaty hippie-dippy-girl clothing, had Jane firmly in the crosshairs of the dreaded Calloway Evil Eye. “Spill,” she commanded.

      And like a leaky old oil tanker in a pristine harbor, she did just that. “I think I’ve gone and fallen face-first in lust.”

      “Ooh.” Poppy plopped down on a nearby chair and wiggled her fingers in a gimme gesture. “Tell sister everything. And don’t skimp on the details.”

      “Me. In lust. That is everything. There are no details, Pop, because there’s nothing to tell.”

      Poppy pursed her lips to blow a skeptical pffffft. “Please. We’re talking sexual attraction. Pounding hearts. Jingly-jangly nerve endings. Am I right?”

      Oh, man. Was she ever. Jane nodded.

      “Then of course there’s something to tell. When it comes to all things sexy there is always something to tell.”

      “Not this time.”

      Poppy gave her an indignant look. “Why the hell not?”

      “Hey, just because I have certain urges doesn’t mean I have to act on them. So I haven’t-and I don’t intend to.” She saved the file she’d been working on and shut down her computer, gazing at her friend over its closing lid. “It’s a random case of lust. I plan to get over it.”

      “Why would you want to?” Poppy blinked, clearly puzzled. “Lust is a good thing, right? I mean, it leads to sex, and sex makes you feel good. Not that I’d know from personal experience,” she added virtuously.

      “Of course not. You’ve only been disclaiming personal experience since you first misinformed Ava and me about sex back when we were nine.” She gave her friend a lopsided smile. “The only difference being that you really were a total innocent then.”

      “What do you mean, misinformed? I was always first with the true scoop, and you know it.”

      “Please. Babies are made when you swap spit with a boy?”

      “Oh.