Praise for the novels of
USA TODAY bestselling author
VICTORIA DAHL

“A hot and funny story about a woman

many of us can relate to.”

—Salon.com on Crazy for Love

“[A] hands-down winner, a sensual story

filled with memorable characters.”

—Booklist on Start Me Up

“Dahl has spun a scorching tale about

what can happen in the blink of an eye

and what we can do to change our lives.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4 stars, on Start Me Up

“Lead Me On will have you begging for a re-read

even as the story ends.”

—Romance Junkies

“Dahl smartly wraps up a winning tale

full of endearing oddballs, light mystery

and plenty of innuendo and passion.”

—Publishers Weekly on Talk Me Down

“Sassy and smokingly sexy, Talk Me Down

is one delicious joyride of a book.”

—New York Times bestselling author

Connie Brockway

“Sparkling, special and oh so sexy—

Victoria Dahl is a special treat!”

—New York Times bestselling author Carly Phillips

on Talk Me Down

Real Men Will
Victoria Dahl

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my husband.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All the credit for this book goes to my family and

friends. The romance community is notoriously

supportive, and I felt that support in full this year.

I can’t possibly name all the friends who helped

push me forward, but I’ll have to do my very best.

Thank you, Lauren, Jami, Courtney, Tessa, Carrie,

Julie, Barb, Jeri, Louisa, Zoe, Meljean, Rosemary,

Viv, Ann, Megan, RaeAnne, Anne and Carolyn.

Jodi, Carrie P. and Lara, thank you too! Whew.

It takes a village!

And to Jennifer Echols—

friend, therapist and critique partner

extraordinaire—thank you for making me laugh

in good times and bad. You’re the best.

Thank you to Amy, Tara and Leonore

for all your hard work and patience.

And thank you to all my wonderful readers!

But most of all, thank you to my amazing

husband and the best two boys in the world.

I’m so glad we’re in this together.

REAL MEN WILL

CONTENTS

COVER

PRAISE

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

BETH CANTRELL HADN’T thought about him in almost six months.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true.

Beth cleared her throat and shifted, glancing around as if everyone in the brewery could feel the lie she was telling herself.

The truth was that she’d thought about Jamie Donovan plenty of times. She’d remembered the hour or two they’d shared, she’d fantasized about what might’ve happened if she’d stayed the whole night in that hotel room.

But in the past six months, she’d never once let herself think about seeing him again. She hadn’t considered calling him or making contact in any way. That had been their agreement, after all. One night. One time. No strings attached and no expectations. She’d had to abide by that, because she would never have let herself meet him in that hotel room otherwise.

He wasn’t her type. He wasn’t part of her social circle. And she definitely wasn’t part of his. Beth Cantrell managed the White Orchid, the premiere erotic boutique in Boulder. Her friends were her employees: women she loved like sisters. They were bold and powerful and sexually progressive. And they dated people like themselves: tattooed, pierced, educated and cool. Absolutely cool, even when they’d only reached the pinnacle of cool by being so incredibly nerdy that they actually circled around to cool again.

Beth, on the other hand, wasn’t cool. She was just… Beth. But that was okay, because she was their manager and they loved her, and they did their best to pull her into their sphere. They fixed her up with guys. Friends of theirs. Men they knew and liked. Men who were cool and hip and progressive. And not one of those guys had ever pushed her buttons the way Jamie had.

She still flushed when she thought about him in his tidy polo shirt and khaki pants. His wide white smile and broad shoulders. He’d looked even better in a business suit. The perfect vision of middle-class preppy beauty. And Beth had wanted him so much it hurt.

They’d been strangers, despite this small town. But in that hotel room, with the promise that it would happen only once…the isolation of the act had made it safe. Yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

And right in the middle of the first good date she’d had in years.

“Hey,” her date said as he waved a hand in front of her face. “You okay?” He smiled, taking any sting from the words.

“Sorry.” Before she’d started thinking about Jamie, her date had been talking about…something. She racked her brain. Something artsy and important about Robert Mapplethorpe’s early career.

“I’m really sorry,” she finally said. “I didn’t realize how tired I was until the glass of beer hit me. I’m not usually so rude.”

He smiled in a way that told her he hadn’t taken offense. “I’m glad you didn’t mind coming to the party with me. Faron and I have been friends for years. I didn’t want to miss it. And I figured you knew her, too.”

“Yes, we have mutual friends.” The party wasn’t the problem. Or the guest of honor. The problem was that Beth had had no idea the party would be at Donovan Brothers Brewery. Not until her date had pulled into the parking lot, and Beth’s heart had sunk to her toes.

It wasn’t his fault that the party he’d decided to take her to just happened to be at Donovan Brothers.

She’d spent the forty-five minutes since scanning the line of customers and servers at the bar, but Jamie wasn’t there. It was pure luck on her part. Jamie Donovan was an owner of the brewery, but he was also a notoriously friendly bartender. Or so she’d heard. When she’d spent time with him, he’d struck her as serious and intense.

She didn’t want to see him again like this. Didn’t want him to think she’d bring another man to his brewery. She kept expecting Jamie to walk by at any moment, and she couldn’t think past the torture of that.

“I’m going to run to the restroom,” she blurted out. She watched as her date took a beer from the waitress, giving her a warm, open smile as he said thank-you.

“Do you want me to order you another beer while you’re gone?” he asked Beth.

“No, thank you….” Her mouth hung open for a moment. Oh, God, she’d forgotten his name. Yes, it was their first date, but he’d been so nice. “No, thank you,” she repeated, grabbing her clutch purse and sliding out of her chair so quickly that she nearly stumbled. “I’ll be right back.”

Unfortunately, she had to walk past the bar to get to the restroom, and her knees felt as if they wanted to buckle under her weight. She scanned the bar, noting that the guy behind the tap was the same slender young man she’d spotted before. Then her eyes raced over the whole room again, her heart drumming a terrified beat.

He wasn’t here, thank God. When she reached the short hallway that led to the bathrooms, she nearly broke into a run. She pushed open the door, said a quick prayer of thanks that the bathroom was empty and pressed her hand over her eyes.

“He’s not even here,” she told herself.

Once her heart had stopped its mad gallop, she set her purse on the counter and washed her hands in cold water. The icy shock made her feel better. “It’s going to be fine,” she whispered, trying to convince herself that she was ready to go back out. But when Beth met her own wide eyes in the mirror and saw just how pale her face was, she knew she’d need a few more minutes.

She put her hands on the sink and leaned closer. “It’s going to be fine,” she repeated.

Two minutes, and then she’d walk out with her head high and her heart back in the right place. And she wouldn’t think about Jamie Donovan again tonight.

GOD SAVE HIM FROM THE sexually liberated.

Eric Donovan crossed his arms and frowned at his shoes, trying to process what he’d just heard from his brewmaster. “Wallace, I don’t understand. Faron is here with her husband. Her husband. How can you be upset about that? She’s married to the man.”

“He’s a philandering scoundrel!” Wallace yelled, shaking his fist toward the front room of the brewery as his face flooded red with rage.

A scoundrel? Eric ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. They have an open marriage. As a matter of fact, you’re dating Faron, so how can her husband be cheating on her?”

Wallace Hood, a bearded giant of a man who looked like he went home to a log cabin every night, gave Eric a look of prim horror. “I’m not dating her, man. I’m in love with her. And of course her husband can cheat on her. Don’t be an idiot.”

Eric probably should’ve felt irritated at being called an idiot, but he was too confused by the conversation. He glanced around the tank room of the brewery as if someone else could help. But they were alone amongst the brewing tanks and mash tuns. Eric shrugged and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t get it.”

The brewmaster sighed and ran an impatient hand over his thick beard. “There are ground rules in open marriages, and her bastard of a husband has stopped even pretending to follow them. He cheats on her. He lies about it. And then he vetoes all the men she wants to see, claiming that he doesn’t like them. That’s what he did to me, despite that I’ve known them both for years. And then tonight he brought her here on purpose.”

“Why?” Eric asked carefully.

“He’s taunting me, because he knows I see him for what he is. I tried to tell her a few months ago. Faron is a queen, and he’s not worthy to even kiss her feet. But she’s loyal and sees the best in people. She wants to give him a chance.”

“She seems really sweet.” And she had, the one time that Eric had met her. In fact, he’d been startled by her quiet voice and shy smile. The tiny girl with gentle brown eyes hadn’t fit Eric’s assumptions about that lifestyle at all.

“She is sweet.” Wallace sighed. “And she was falling for me. And now that bastard is taking her away to California, and he purposefully arranged this farewell party for her friends at my brewery.”

Technically, it was Eric’s brewery, but Wallace was as possessive and passionate as any owner, so Eric just rolled his eyes. “You can’t leave right now, Wallace. I need—”

“Well, I can’t stay here, can I?”

What was Eric supposed to say to that? He gazed into the kitchen through the glass wall of the tank room. Despite the late hour, there were still workmen out there, laboring overtime to cut a ventilation hole in his wall. Eric grimaced.

“She’s right there, man,” Wallace grumbled. “I know it’s a bad time, but…she’s right there.”

It was a bad time. The bottling line was acting up for the third time this month, they were behind on branding for the winter brews, and the kitchen had been invaded by outsiders. Granted, the outsiders had been brought in by Eric’s brother and sister, but still… These changes to the brewery weren’t Eric’s idea, even if he’d approved them, and he wanted nothing to do with them. “I really need you here tonight. You promised to stay late and transfer that small batch of amber to the new oak barrels.”

Wallace looked so heartbroken at Eric’s words that he wished he could take them back. “But…” Eric finally conceded. “I guess it’s just a few hours.”

“I’ll be in early tomorrow. I swear.”

Eric sighed. “Maybe it’s a good thing she’s moving to California.”

“She’s a good woman,” Wallace said, his voice suspiciously raspy. “She wants to trust the man, and she won’t walk away until she feels it’s really over. But he’s going to break her heart.”

Eric still couldn’t understand what marriage meant to someone who dated at the same time, but he’d never really understood Wallace’s lifestyle. Despite the man’s intimidating mountain-man looks, Wallace dated men, women and some people who seemed to skate between genders. But this was the first time Eric had seen Wallace in anything other than complete control. Love had hit him hard, it seemed.

Eric stole another look around the tank room, trying not to feel a sense of greedy anticipation. “All right. I’ll take care of the barrels. You—”

“Oh, I don’t know if I want you to—”

“Wallace,” Eric snapped. “We’re already off schedule.”

Wallace narrowed his eyes. The man was protective of his beer. Almost obsessively so. But it was Eric’s beer, too, and he’d lost enough control over his life this year. He wasn’t going to let Wallace think he could snatch a little more.

“Fine,” the brewmaster finally said. “Just don’t screw it up.” Wallace tossed his work gloves on the table and stalked out, slamming the door behind him. He paused for a moment, his eyes locked like lasers on the double doors that led to the front room and Faron, but then he shook his head and stalked out the back door.

“Jesus,” Eric muttered. Everyone around him seemed to be controlled by love and sex these days. His brother and sister were both in serious relationships, and now Wallace, a man who treated dating like a professional sport, was miserably in love with a married woman. Eric felt like the only person untouched by the craziness.

Not that he didn’t have any experience with it. He’d had his brush with it a few months ago, and even that brief encounter had left him shaken. He couldn’t imagine being faced with that kind of emotional intensity every day. Maybe he could forgive the fact that his siblings seemed to have lost their minds.

Eric rolled his shoulders, trying to dislodge the weariness that had settled in. He was always tense at work. But the stress usually didn’t bother him, if only because he couldn’t imagine life without it. He ran a business; of course he was stressed. What he didn’t like was the gnawing uncertainty that had taken him over in the last couple of months.

It had been one nightmare situation after another. Lost deals, theft and fraud, and now this mess in the kitchen. His brother, Jamie, was turning the family brewery into a pizza-serving brewpub, and Eric felt as though he’d lost complete control.

Grimacing, he watched masonry dust puff from the kitchen wall like a tiny cloud. Eric would much rather stay hidden in the peace of the tank room, but unfortunately, the casks would have to wait a couple of hours.

When Eric stepped into the kitchen his scowl faded away despite the roar of the masonry saw. The place might be chaotic and dusty, but Jamie stood watching it all with a grin on his face. This wasn’t Eric’s dream, but it was Jamie’s, and Eric would do everything he could to make sure it happened.

Jamie glanced over with a quick smile. Things had been easier between them for the past few months. Thank God. It still felt tenuous, but Eric was relieved as all hell that their years of fighting seemed to be behind them.

He walked over and slapped Jamie on the shoulder. “How’s it going?”

“Great!” Jamie shouted.

Eric turned to watch the progress with his brother for a few seconds, but he knew nothing about ovens or restaurant equipment, so he eventually slapped Jamie’s back again. “I’ll go check on the front, make sure everything is running smoothly.”

Laughter roared from the front room as he drew close. Eric glanced toward the crowd as he pushed through the doors, keeping a close eye out for Faron and her scoundrel of a husband. Before the doors had swung closed behind him, someone crashed into Eric’s shoulder. He grabbed for the woman, trying to steady her before she stumbled. She reached out, too, and her hand slid along his side just as she looked up.

Her face was so close to his that, for a moment, Eric thought he was imagining things. He smiled even as the nerves of his fingertips seemed to activate one by one. The wash of stark feeling progressed slowly up his fingers, his hands, his arms. By the time she pushed away with a gasp, his whole body felt as if an electrical shock was running through it.

Beth. His hands were on Beth Cantrell. His brain flickered through panicked thoughts.

Holy shit. His hands were on Beth Cantrell in his brewery.

He felt her trying to step away, but somehow his hands tightened on her shoulders as he glanced at the doors behind him. Jamie was still in the kitchen. As long as he didn’t head out to the front room, everything would be fine. No harm, no foul. No reason to panic.

Except, what the hell was she doing at the brewery? Had she come to see him?

“Beth,” he started, just as she slipped away from his hold. The tingling in his fingertips faded slowly, but now it had progressed to his brain.

If Jamie walked into the front room, Beth would be awfully surprised to meet him. Emphasis on awful.

When she backed a few feet away, Eric followed, hoping they’d be unnoticeable in the hallway.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” She was just as stunning as she had been six months before. Just as gorgeous and sophisticated. Her dark hair wasn’t pinned up tonight, and it fell over her shoulders in soft waves. Her body, all long legs and generous hips, had mesmerized him the first time he’d laid eyes on her, and it was no different now. He drank in the sight of her curves until her dark gaze slipped past him.

He looked behind himself again, but no one was there. If Jamie walked in, if someone said his name…

God, maybe he should just tell her. Maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Funny thing, when you called me Jamie at the business expo…I should’ve corrected you. My name’s actually Eric. Crazy, huh? And then she’d laugh and shake her head and tell him it didn’t really matter because it had just been a one-night stand.

Yeah. Sure. He’d be lucky if she didn’t murder him right there with one of her stiletto heels.

Beyond the adrenaline pushing through his veins, Eric’s skin still prickled at the idea of being close to her again. Because he could still picture that night perfectly. Her body naked. Her lips parted on a moan. Her ass plump and firm, the muscles flexing as he fucked her from behind. Heat washed over him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Heat seemed to wash over her, too. Her cheeks turned pink. Had she come to see him? As anxious as he was, Eric felt a sudden, ferocious hope. He wanted to touch her again. Wanted to feel those sparks. The lust. The need.

He shifted closer, close enough to touch. When Beth closed her eyes, he clenched his hands to fists and stopped himself while he still could.

BETH ALMOST CONVINCED herself she was just imagining him. He smelled the same. And he looked exactly the same: dark-haired and tall, his brow furrowed in worry, as if he never set his thoughts aside, no matter what month or week or time it was.

“Beth?” he said again, and she suddenly felt as if she’d swallowed a heart that was way too big for her chest. She wanted him to touch her so she could turn to him. At the same time she wanted to edge around him and run away.

She shook her head and opened her eyes.

He stole another quick glance over his shoulder before turning back to her. “How are you?”

“Good,” she managed to say. “Great. I’m actually here with a party.”

“Oh.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You know Faron?”

“Yes! I…” She shifted her purse to the other hand, then back again. “Exactly. I know Faron.” It wasn’t quite a lie. They had friends in common. They’d been introduced a couple of times over the years.

The hallway was too small, despite being five feet across. His shoulders were so wide, and her memories too big, and the space just kept getting tighter and tighter. He cleared his throat, and she saw that he was just as uncomfortable as she was.

“I’m sorry,” Beth said. “I didn’t realize the party was here when I agreed to come. I honestly didn’t mean to…”

“Of course not,” he said quickly. “Come by anytime.” But his gray-blue eyes darted nervously down the hall again. Maybe he had a girlfriend now. Maybe she was one of the servers.

Beth wished the floor would open up and swallow her and her sickly thumping heart.

“I was just leaving,” she finally said.

Jamie stepped back. “Great. I mean, sure. Of course. That’s good. Have a nice night.”

Mortified, she edged past him and hurried back to the party. “Welcome back!” her date said when she found him and hovered a foot away.

“Thanks.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” She smiled and he handed her the beer she’d left behind. When she saw the way her hand was shaking, Beth took a seat at the nearest table and carefully set the beer down.

When he joined her, she hid a cringe. Was Jamie watching? She took a sip of beer to try to wet her parched mouth.

Beth glanced toward the bar, but didn’t spy Jamie anywhere. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say, then hesitated over his name again. “I…”

Davis! That was his name. Not David, but Davis, after Miles Davis, because this man had been cool since the day his parents had named him.

Beth felt guilty for her snarky thought, but her guilt vanished in an instant when she heard a girl cry out, “Hi, Jamie!”

Beth’s head snapped up so quickly that Davis’s voice cut off as if she’d sliced his words with a knife.

“Beth? Are you sure everything is okay?”

Definitely not. She scanned the crowded area near the bar, but she didn’t see him. While she watched, a cute blond guy in a brewery T-shirt waved toward someone. A girl broke free of the group and gave him a big hug.

“Listen, maybe a going-away party packed with people you don’t know isn’t an ideal first date.”

“No, it’s not that.” She tried to think of something witty to say. Tried to concentrate on this man. Yes, he was hip and overeducated, but he was also a nice guy. And his smile could melt butter on a cold day. In fact, the moment she’d met him, she’d thought she might actually enjoy herself on this date. That she might actually look forward to touching this man, to kissing him.

For the first time in six months, Beth had thought maybe she’d finally found another man who could turn her on. And like an evil genie summoned by the thought, Jamie Donovan had popped back into her life, reminding her what it had been like with him.

Yeah, she hadn’t had to wonder about whether sex with Jamie would be good. He’d turned her on just by feeding her dessert. The way he’d watched her, his gaze glued to her mouth as her lips parted. She’d wished—

Davis put his hand over hers for a brief moment. “I’ll say goodbye to Faron, and then we’ll go.”

“No. I’m sorry! I don’t want to cut the party short for you.”

“No big deal. Come on. Let’s find Faron.”

Davis took her hand again and led her through the packed room to the tiny woman standing at the edge of a large group of people. Beth wondered how tall she was without the perfectly round Afro, because even with it, she wasn’t bigger than five foot two. A skinny guy with long hair had his arm draped over her shoulder, a proprietary smile on his face. Faron wasn’t smiling when they walked up, but her sweet face broke into a grin when she saw Davis.

She hugged Davis and then Beth before they said their goodbyes. Faron’s husband had taken a job in Santa Barbara, but no one wanted to see her go. Nobody seemed that broken up about her husband, though.

“Ready?” Davis asked.

“Yes,” Beth answered, realizing it was the most honest thing she’d said all night. As she walked through the door, she dared one look back, but Jamie was nowhere to be seen.

The sharp cold of raindrops on her face startled her from her thoughts.

“Run!” Davis said, tugging her along. Beth ran, and by the time they reached his car, she was laughing so hard with relief that she couldn’t draw a breath. Davis reached to open the door, then shut it behind her before dashing around to the other side.

“My feet are soaked!” she gasped, stomping her heels against the carpet. “I think one of those puddles was more like a pond.”

“Your everything is soaked,” he corrected. He touched her cheek, sliding a wet strand of hair toward her temple. A drop of icy water trickled down to her jaw, and then he leaned close and kissed her.

Beth inhaled sharply and felt him smile against her mouth. When his lips brushed hers again, Beth told herself to relax, to enjoy it.

And there was no reason she shouldn’t. He smelled good. His lips parted just enough to encourage hers to part, as well. And his hand was a sweet touch on her jaw. Beth sighed and refused to think about Jamie Donovan. He hadn’t wanted to see her any more than she had him.

But then Davis pulled back and the kiss was over before she’d had a chance to make herself enjoy it.

“I’m really glad Cairo introduced us,” he said softly.

“Me, too.” And she was. When she wasn’t thinking about Jamie, she could imagine this man being her lover. She knew from experience that a first kiss said a lot about how a man would perform in bed. For example, that guy two years ago who’d immediately thrust his tongue down her throat…that had been his level of restraint and subtlety during sex, as well. Foreplay had been something along the lines of “Brace yourself, I’m coming in!”

But Davis…he might be quite lovely.

“I admit, though…” He started the car and glanced at her. “You weren’t quite what I was expecting.”

Her warm thoughts froze. “What do you mean?”

“Well, with the store and the advice column, and…you know. Cairo and the rest of her friends are…”

Beth knew exactly where this was going. She smoothed a hand down her skirt and hid a resigned smile.

“I just haven’t dated a woman with no tattoos in quite a while. You’re kind of a rarity here in Boulder.”

She managed a genuine laugh at that. He was straightforward, at least. She turned her gaze on him and let it slide over his body. He was older than most of Cairo’s friends, and a little alternative without being sloppy. Dark jeans and an expensive-looking T-shirt under a tailored leather jacket. And though she could see the edges of a few tattoos peaking past his clothing, not even his ears were pierced. Though there were always hidden spots.

“I get that a lot,” she finally said, offering him the same honesty he’d given her. “I’m not what anyone expects, I guess.” Even though she said it with a flirtatious smile, the words still squeezed her heart with a painful grip.

“I don’t mind being surprised,” Davis answered.

It was the right answer, and she liked him, but as he pulled away from the parking lot of the bar and turned toward Beth’s part of town, her heart sank. She wasn’t what he’d expected. She never was. And she could already see how this would end. He liked her well enough. He was intrigued by her. After all, she was the manager of the White Orchid, a high-end erotic boutique. She might look like any other professional businesswoman, but she spent her days selling sex toys and expensive lingerie. And she spent her evenings giving sex education classes and writing a new advice column as a sex expert.

On the surface, she was fascinating. But underneath it all…

Beth wrapped her hands tight around her purse and tried not to think. She always thought too much. The only time she’d ever been able to turn her brain off had been with…him.

It had been easy to dismiss her thoughts of him on previous dates. She hadn’t been attracted to any of those men, so naturally, she’d thought of Jamie. But now he was haunting her good dates, too, and she was beginning to feel a little hopeless.

“I’m glad I didn’t pick you up on the bike tonight,” Davis said. “Running through the rain is one thing, but it can be brutal on a bike.”

She pictured Davis in his leather coat, leaning close against a motorcycle, her arms wrapped around his waist. The picture should leave her shivery. It would any other red-blooded woman.

Davis pulled into her driveway and shut off the car to come around and open her door. He might have been raised by hipster Boulderites, but he had been taught the niceties of dating. There was nothing wrong with this man. And there was definitely nothing wrong with the way he kissed her once they were safe beneath the shelter of her patio. “You’re all wet again,” he murmured, his mouth sliding against the rain on her lips. Maybe she could be, if she let herself give in. So when his mouth urged hers to open, Beth touched her tongue to his. And what a nice tongue it was. Warm and slow against hers.

Beth kissed him and thought of inviting him in. He tasted so good. He was tall and cute and, as far as she could tell, he’d look great naked. His hand touched her hip, his fingers spreading along her curves as he deepened the kiss.

Yes, she could let him touch her. She’d enjoy it. And probably he’d enjoy it, too. But she wasn’t a girl with tattoos. And she had no hidden piercings. And despite what she wrote in her columns, the things she liked to do in bed were just as vanilla as everything else about her.

So he’d enjoy it, but he’d also be secretly puzzled. They all were. Wasn’t the manager of an erotic boutique supposed to be…erotic? Wasn’t she supposed to be a little freaky in bed? Or even better…a lot freaky? Shouldn’t she be better than other women?

Beth clenched her eyes shut and tried to turn off her brain, but it didn’t work. It never did. She was too aware. Aware of the way his fingers tightened a bit on her hip. He was getting into this. Getting aroused. And she was just…thinking. Again.

She broke the kiss and drew in a deep breath. “Thank you, Davis. I really had a nice time.”

His hand stayed on her hip. “Me, too.” He waited one heartbeat, then two, giving her a chance to invite him in.

She couldn’t do it. Not tonight, with the thought of Jamie so close at hand. There was no doubt how it would turn out. She’d be thinking the whole time, comparing him to Jamie, comparing herself to who she’d been that night six months ago.

She had to find that again, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Not with Davis. “Thanks,” she said again.

His hand finally slid away and Davis stepped back, looking only slightly disappointed. “I’ll call you. Maybe we’ll dare more next time. Dinner?”

“Maybe,” she said coyly, offering a quick kiss on his cheek before she escaped into her apartment.

Beth set her purse on the table, then hung up her coat in the hall closet. Her apartment was so quiet and so palpably solitary, that she was already regretting sending Davis away as she walked to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. She’d lied to him about that. One glass of beer hadn’t been enough. She should have had three, and then maybe she would have been brave enough to let him in. She could’ve tried to lose herself. It wasn’t impossible.

It was in her somewhere, and it couldn’t just be about one man. Beth wouldn’t let it be.

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE NEXT DAY, BETH WAS thoroughly pissed at herself. One minute with him, one glimpse, one touch, and she couldn’t get the man out of her mind. And the worst part was, it was becoming more and more obvious to her that he’d been desperate to get her out of there. First, he’d edged her farther down the hall, then he’d jumped at the chance to say goodbye as quickly as possible.

He was in a relationship. Which was fine. But what if he was married? What if he’d been married then?

Her heart thumped so hard at the thought that she had to press her palm to her chest. That would explain everything, wouldn’t it?

She tried to put it from her mind as she walked into the shop and waved to Cairo. She tried not to think about it as she unboxed the newest toys and put them on display. But as she unboxed the high-tech vibrator and showed Cairo how it plugged into an MP3 player to thump in time to one’s favorite music, Beth couldn’t stop the thoughts swarming through her head.

“Cairo?”

Cairo was busy scrolling through songs on her phone, trying to find something with just the right beat. “Yeah?”

“I was at Donovan Brothers last night and—”

“Oh!” Cairo looked up with a big smile on her face. “I forgot to ask how your date went.”

“My date?”

“With Davis!”

“Oh. Great!” Beth nodded with too much enthusiasm. “Yeah, it was wonderful!”

Cairo’s brown eyes lit up. “Wonderful? Oh, yeah? Do I detect a little dirty morning-after tone to those words?”

“You do not. But Davis was really nice.”

“And hot, right?” Cairo pressed, smiling as if Beth was hiding something. “How’d you like that dragon tattoo on his stomach?”

Beth raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t see his stomach, Cairo.”

The girl laughed, her glossy black bob swinging forward to frame her pretty face. “I know. I already talked to him this morning.”

“He called you?”

“No, I saw him at yoga. Which is how I know about the dragon tattoo, and why I fixed you two up in the first place. If I didn’t have two men already, I’d hit that so hard he’d never recover.”

Beth rolled her eyes. “It was a nice date. Though I’m not sure about a man who’d tell you whether he spent the night or not.”

“He didn’t say anything about that, but I figured a guy wouldn’t need to show up for an 8:00 a.m. yoga class if he’d spent the night in your bed. Good sex is way more relaxing.”

Well, that would be an interesting test of Beth’s abilities. Let Davis spend the night, then see if he went to yoga the next day.

“By the way…” Cairo said with a familiar twinkle in her eye. “You really, really want to see that tattoo. It’s done by the best artist in Colorado. And it follows the muscles in his abdomen all the way past his waistband. His very low waistband. I’m pretty sure he waxes. Everything.”

Beth must have winced.

“What?” Cairo said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been with a man who’s waxed?”

She tried to keep her face neutral. She really, really did. But she obviously couldn’t hide her horror.

“Oh, Beth!” Cairo gushed. “I swear, it’s the best. All that smooth flesh. Nothing between your mouth and his skin…. And with a guy like Davis, you want to get as close as possible, don’t you?”

“I…I…” She couldn’t imagine the process. Did he have to put his feet in stirrups for the waxer? “I’m sure it’s lovely.”

“Well, maybe you’ll find out for yourself.”

“So…” Beth tried to set the image away and couldn’t. “Harrison and Rex are waxed?” She’d met both of Cairo’s boyfriends on many occasions.

“Oh, Harrison has always kept it nice and smooth. Rex wasn’t interested, but he got jealous of all the attention I was giving Harrison, so, yeah…” Cairo’s smile seemed to stretch all the way from one ear to the other. “Now they’re both clean as a whistle.”

Oh, God. She shouldn’t have asked. She was going to faint from all the blushing she would do the next time Harrison or Rex came into the store. But that wasn’t the correct reaction for a sophisticated professional in this business, so Beth tried her best not to cover her face in embarrassment. “You’re a lucky woman,” she said instead. “And if I had a dollar for every time I said those words to you…”

“We’ll talk about it later, if you keep seeing Davis.” She hit Play on the phone and they both looked down at the pulsing head of the vibrator. LED lights blinked and twinkled. Cairo bumped her shoulder into Beth’s. “Are you going to keep seeing Davis?”

“We’ll see.” She stared at the dancing lights and tried not to picture Davis without body hair.

“You’re off at seven, right?” Cairo asked. “If you want to leave now, I’ll cover for you. Maybe you should give him a call.” Cairo was Beth’s best employee, always friendly, cheerful and just as busy as Beth. In fact, Beth had just made her assistant manager. “I’m good, but thanks.”

“So, what were you going to say about Donovan Brothers?”

“What?” Beth asked a little too loudly.

“The brewery. You said you were there last night.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Um, my friend wanted to know if Jamie Donovan is married. You’ve mentioned him before, right?”

“Oh, God, he’s definitely not married.”

“Okay. Good. I’ll pass that on to—”

“But he was in here last week with his girlfriend, so he’s not available, as far as I know. Maybe they date around, though.”

Beth was nodding before the words really hit her. “What?” she said breathily.

“I know, I know. No gossiping about the customers. Sorry. I’ll get back to work.”

Cairo left the unboxed model out as a sample, then headed back to the cash register to finish cleaning the glass. Beth just stood there for a moment, as a pulse in her head started to beat hard. He’d come here? With his girlfriend?

No, that couldn’t be right, could it? He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t bring his girlfriend to Beth’s workplace, knowing that they sold sex toys and lingerie and cute, sexy gifts. That would be too cruel.

Cairo must be wrong.

Beth nodded, trying to convince herself, but she didn’t feel even a hint of reassurance. Because…why wouldn’t he come here?

This was the twenty-first century. Beth was a modern woman with obviously modern beliefs. They’d hooked up one time, no emotions involved. No strings attached. Certainly, plenty of Cairo’s ex-boyfriends came into the shop, with friendly hugs all around. Maybe it hadn’t even occurred to Jamie that Beth would be hurt if he came by with another girl.

They’d specifically agreed that their night together would mean nothing. Just because Beth wasn’t so good at holding up her end of the bargain didn’t mean that Jamie had any problem with his end.

She pressed her hands tight together and told herself that she wasn’t hurt. Still…thank God she hadn’t been here. There would’ve been no denying the pain of watching him wander through her store with another woman, holding her hand, picking out items to use together later in the bedroom.

Beth drew a sharp breath at the thought of it. Had it not even occurred to him? In the brief hours she’d spent with him, he’d seemed considerate and kind. Or hell, maybe he was just more sexually evolved than she was.

But last night, he’d looked downright sneaky. It didn’t make any sense.

She retreated to her office and shut the door. And suddenly she was pissed. She’d felt guilty as hell being at his brewery with another man. And he’d dared to bring someone here? What kind of an asshole was he? And when exactly had he acquired this girlfriend? All the sneaking around that had seemed so exciting at the expo suddenly took on a new, sinister light.

“That bastard,” she growled.

She should drop it. Leave it alone. Now, six months later, it hardly mattered anymore, but Beth found herself overwhelmed with the urge to confront him. She turned on her phone, but that was hopeless. She’d deleted his number from her phone two weeks after she’d met him. She’d had to delete him from her life because the memory of that encounter had become its own aphrodisiac, and she’d known she would get to this point sometime. She’d known the temptation would rise up and swallow her.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

Maybe it would be easier for her to contact him through the brewery anyway. Less privacy, less intimacy. And no memory of the night her phone had rung and he’d said two simple words. “Room 421.”

The hair on her arms prickled as electricity zinged through her body.

Beth cleared her throat and shook her head. She shouldn’t call him. She knew that.

But maybe she could find out the truth another way. Between Facebook and Twitter and everything else on the web, people’s private lives were no longer private.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. If he was some sort of creepy two-timing cheat, that wasn’t Beth’s fault. But she gave in to the weakness and searched his name on Google anyway. Thousands of hits appeared, all of them seemingly about beer and awards and the brewery. Looking for something more personal, she clicked on a link to Twitter. The account said Jamie Donovan of Donovan Brothers Brewery, but the picture was wrong.

Frowning, she clicked on the photo to enlarge it. The guy definitely wasn’t Jamie. As a matter of fact, he looked a lot like the blond man she’d seen tending bar at the brewery the night before. “What the hell?”

Thoroughly confused, Beth clicked back to Google and hit the Images tab. The first picture was the young blond guy again. She clicked back to the results page. Most of the pictures were of the blond guy. The only ones she saw with Jamie were group shots. Clicking on the largest of the group shots, she looked at the caption. Wallace Hood, Eric Donovan, Tessa Donovan, Jamie Donovan, Chester Smith.

This didn’t make any sense. She clicked through to the next page of images, but they were mostly Donovan Brothers logos and pictures of mugs of beer.

Then she noticed there were two video hits and clicked on that tab, light-headed with anticipation.

The first video linked to a local news channel. Beth pulled it up and waited, holding her breath.

The news theme song played, and then the camera focused in on a tight shot of a perfectly coiffed blonde reporter smiling widely. “Today we’ve got big news from an iconic local establishment! I’m coming to you live from Donovan Brothers Brewery in Boulder, Colorado, and I’ve been joined by one of the actual Donovan brothers.” The camera pulled slowly back, revealing first an arm, then a shoulder, then the man with the dark blond hair whom she’d seen in the bar. Beth frowned.

The reporter beamed up at him. “This is Jamie Donovan, one of the famous brothers.” He winked at the reporter while Beth’s mind reeled.

Jamie Donovan. Jamie. But not the man she’d slept with.

This made no sense. The man and the reporter were still talking, their words jangling around in her head like broken glass scraping against her skull. Jamie. But not Jamie. She stared at the name that hovered beneath the man as he spoke: Jamie Donovan of Donovan Brothers Brewery.

Her hand shook as she reached for the mouse and clicked the pause icon.

A weight grew in her throat. Not tears or illness or emotion. It felt as if her actual flesh was swelling up and pressing her throat into a smaller and smaller space. She tried to swallow and couldn’t.

The man worked for Donovan Brothers. He’d been at the brewery. He was in the pictures. But he wasn’t Jamie.

Beth clicked frantically back through the pages until she pulled up that group picture again. She opened another window and tried querying every name, but she didn’t get any good image results. Just picture after picture of the Donovan Brothers’ green logo and photos of the awards and labels of the various beers they sold.

Who was he? Was he Wallace or Chester or Eric?

Beth stood up so quickly that she banged her thigh hard into the desk, but the pain barely registered. She stumbled out from behind her desk and into the cheerful brightness of the shop.

“Cairo?”

Cairo popped up from behind the cash register. “Yes?”

“What does Jamie Donovan look like?”

Cairo shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s cute. Pretty preppy-looking. Straitlaced, but he’s got a sweet smile.”

“Dark hair?” Beth made herself ask, even though her throat tried to close over the words.

“No, not dark. Sort of gold. Not super blond. Why?”

“Just… We…” All that blood pounding in her brain was doing her no good at all. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even feel. Her body had gone numb. “No reason,” she managed.

“Are you okay, Beth?” Cairo started to reach for her, but Beth backed away.

“I’m fine. I just…I’m not feeling well. Are you still willing to cover for me for an hour? I think I’d better head home.”

“Of course, but…”

Beth rushed back into her office to grab her purse and her phone. She shut down her computer and cleared the history, not quite sure why—all she knew was that she felt ashamed. Ashamed because she’d been tricked. Made a fool of. And, my God, that was an awful, familiar feeling she hadn’t had to deal with in years.

She started hearing the words in her head that she’d absorbed over years of studying sexuality and women’s history. Someone else can’t bring you shame. Shame means you did something wrong. You did nothing wrong. But how else was she supposed to feel after being tricked and lied to?

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she growled her frustration as she blinked them back.

She wasn’t seventeen this time. She didn’t have to simply sit quietly and take it. This time, she’d confront it head-on, and give the shame to the one who deserved it.

When she stalked out of the office, Cairo was helping a customer, dusting a sample of honey body powder on the woman’s arm, but she looked up with concern in her eyes as Beth passed. Beth watched the customer bring her arm up and tentatively touch her tongue to her wrist. The sight would have made Beth smile on any other day, but today she simply watched in blank confusion.

Her body was still numb, her head still beating like a pulse. It occurred to her that she probably shouldn’t drive, but she pushed through the doors and headed straight to her new cherry-red Nissan 370Z. The engine roared to life with the barest turn of the key. She’d purchased it for herself five months before, because she’d wanted it, and she was trying to train herself to take what she wanted. Though right now all she wanted to do was kill someone. Someone whose name she didn’t even know.

The shock of it hit her again, and she gasped in a breath to try to stop the dizziness. She was in a car on a public street. She couldn’t indulge the black spots dancing at the edge of her vision. She took another breath, and another. And even though her whole skull still thumped with every beat of her pulse, her vision cleared, and the closer she got to the brewery, the calmer she felt. Not less furious, but more. Angry in a focused way.

When she pulled into the brewery lot, she shut off the engine, got out of the car and quietly shut the door.

Her heels ground sand against asphalt as she walked. She watched her own hand curl around the door handle as she opened it, as if her fingers had nothing to do with her.

She stepped into a cheerful scene. Fiddle music fell from speakers. Laughter erupted from a table nearby. Beth walked through the laughter as if she were in one of those dreams where nothing made any sense, but she just kept moving.

The man behind the bar turned around, and she felt her heart brace itself, but he was no one she knew. A stranger. Though they were all strangers, really.

She waited until he looked at her. “Is Jamie Donovan here?” Her skin burned with regret as she spoke the name.

The man—a boy, really—leaned forward. “I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

The music had seemed quiet when she’d walked in, but now it swelled in her ears, along with the noise of the early Friday crowd. “Jamie Donovan?” she said more loudly. “Is he available?”

“He’s not working the bar tonight. Is there something I can help you with?” He said it as if the request was a common one. As if women walked in here all the time looking for a man named Jamie who’d lied his way into sex. A scalding wash of shame crashed through her. She’d been laughed at before, and she couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t. So she nodded and started to back away.

A door opened to her left, and she jumped in horror, thinking it could be him. But it was just a customer coming out of the bathroom.

When Beth realized that she’d felt genuine fear, she smashed it down and turned it into anger, like pressure turning coal into diamonds.

She stood straight and met the gaze of the bartender again. “I need to see him. It’s personal.”

The boy’s eyebrows rose, but after a wary moment, he shrugged. “I’ll see if he’s in the back. What’s your name?”

“My name is Beth Cantrell. Tell him that and see if he’ll come out.” She put a hand on the bar, not to steady herself but to give her fingers something to squeeze, because the anger was eating her up.

And then she waited to find out exactly who she’d had sex with six months before.

ERIC PICKED UP A HALF-FULL bottle of pilsner and squeezed the neck tight in his hand. He wouldn’t throw it against the wall. He wouldn’t. But this damn bottling machine was supposed to have been fixed last week, and now it was doing an even worse job, jostling the bottles so much that half the beer foamed out before it reached the capping station.

“Shut it down!” he yelled at Wallace.

Wallace scowled and shut down the line, and when the roar of machinery died down, Wallace’s stream of creatively foul curses pealed through the cement-walled room.

Wallace didn’t care about bottling or distribution or profit margins. His only concern was the beer, and a lot of it was slowly crawling its way toward the drain in the floor.

Eric cursed. “I’m going to have that mechanic’s head on a platter.”

“Not until I’ve torn it off his neck,” Wallace yelled.

Eric glanced down at the tubing that snaked across the floor. “Goddamn it. You know what needs to be done. There’s no way we’re getting this back on line today. Maybe not even tomorrow.”

Wallace bit back what sounded suspiciously like a sob, but it was hard to read his emotions behind the thick beard that covered his whole lower face. His giant shoulders sunk, bringing his height down from about six-six to six-five. “It’s a damn tragedy,” he wheezed before turning to stomp toward the door that led to the tank room. A moment later he was back, the valve having been locked, and he mournfully unhooked the hose from the bottler and moved it over to the drain. He thumbed the valve and pilsner poured from the tube directly into the screened hole in the floor.

“I’ll kill him,” he muttered.

“We probably shouldn’t.”

“That batch was fucking stellar.”

“And there’s plenty of it left.” Eric put a reassuring hand on Wallace’s shoulder and they shared a moment of silence over the beer as it spiraled down into the sewer system.

Wallace sniffed, but Eric was afraid to look and see if there were tears wetting his beard. “I’ve got to make a phone call about this.”

“Rake him over the fucking coals,” Wallace insisted.

Eric strode through the silence of the tank room and emerged into the chaos of the…well, it was a kitchen now, though it never had been before. In fact, two men were currently wrestling a gigantic pizza oven into place against the far wall.

Months of prep work had led to this very event, and Eric wished he felt more than just happiness for Jamie. He wished he felt excited instead of nervous. But Jamie was grinning as he turned away from the stove and headed toward the doors to the front room, Henry hot on his heels.

“Henry,” Eric called before the boy could disappear. “Are you working cleanup tonight?”

Henry jerked to a stop, his hand already on one of the doors. His freckles stood out against his pale skin, as if Eric had frightened him.

“I am, but…Jamie has me filling in at the bar so he can supervise the installation.”

“Great. But when you’re done I need you in the bottling room. Dump all the beer and put the bottles into recycling, then mop the floor.”

“Got it.”

Henry disappeared and Eric retreated to his office. He wanted to spend time helping Jamie, but he had his own work to do, boring as it was. His muscles tightened to stone as he shut the door and called the mechanic.

He felt a little better after yelling at the guy and demanding that he get his ass to the brewery at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday or not. Eric hung up with a little less tension in his shoulders. Still, there was no silencing the laughter from the other room. It reminded him of his brother, and how different they were.

Eric tried to make himself smile at the sound of it. He wanted Jamie to be happy. Without a doubt. But Eric couldn’t help the feeling that his own happiness was slipping away. Melodramatic, maybe, but still true.

This place was his whole life. This brewery. This office. This role he had here.

Eric dug his fingers into the back of his neck and took a deep breath. There was no point sitting around brooding. He had work to do.

A minute later, someone knocked on the door. Eric looked up, expecting to see Jamie, but it was Henry. “Hey, did you get to the bottling room yet?”

“No. Um…some woman is pissed at Jamie and he asked me to come get you.”

“If she’s pissed at Jamie, then it’s Jamie’s problem, not mine.”

Henry’s face creased with embarrassment, but he just stood there with his fingers wrapped around the door.

“Fine.” Eric sighed. “I’ll be there in a second.” What the hell was this? A year ago, Eric wouldn’t have been surprised by anything involving Jamie and a woman, but now…Jamie had a girlfriend. A really nice girlfriend. If he was screwing around on her, Eric didn’t want to know. It would put a whole lot of strain into their newly easy relationship.

Still, he felt a little surge of satisfaction. This was like the old days, when Jamie had needed him. In fact, if Jamie’s girlfriend hadn’t been a consideration, Eric would’ve smiled as he stood up and headed for the barroom, off to make sense of Jamie’s screwup again.

The workmen stood in the doorway, holding the doors slightly open as they peered out. Their eyes widened when they saw Eric coming, but he ignored that and tipped his head in the direction of the oven. They shifted toward it as if they were only pretending to go back to work, but Eric held his tongue. He didn’t want to step on Jamie’s toes.

He pushed through the doors. “Jamie,” he said when he spotted his brother standing at the end of the bar with his arms crossed. “What’s the problem?”

And then Jamie shifted to the side, and Eric’s world split apart as if an earthquake had just torn through the ground beneath his feet.

For a long moment, Eric could only look at her. Her. He should have anticipated this, after last night. But his relief had made him stupid. And now here she was, standing next to Jamie.

Reality hit him then, with all the subtlety of a two-by-four across the face. Eric’s eyes shifted to Jamie, who was also staring at him, though his eyebrows were raised in incredulity. “Eric,” he said, and Eric caught the way Beth blinked in shock.

Oh, shit. This was bad. Worse than bad.

Jamie cocked his head. “Eric, this is Beth Cantrell. There seems to be some confusion about something that happened at the business expo earlier this year.”

Something that happened. Okay. Maybe he could still salvage some part of this. If Beth hadn’t said anything to Jamie yet… “Beth—” he started, but she stalked toward him like a vengeful goddess.

“Eric?” she sneered. “Eric?”

His eyes darted to Jamie. “I can explain.”

One of her elegant fingers poked him in the chest. “You can explain? Explain why you told me your name was Jamie?”

“I didn’t actually—”

“Explain that you lied to me?”

“Beth, if you’ll just—”

“Explain,” she yelled, her finger digging a hole in his sternum, “that you let me think you were someone else when you had sex with me?”

“What?” Jamie yelled.

That was it. This was an official disaster. The solemn silence that had fallen over the barroom seemed to confirm the horror of the situation.

“I can explain,” Eric said again, weakly. He thought the low growl was coming from Beth, but he couldn’t be sure, because at that moment Jamie surged forward, grabbed Eric by his shirtfront and twisted.

“Henry!” Jamie shouted, as if Henry wasn’t standing right there, wide-eyed. “Cover the bar. You…” His green eyes burned into Eric. “Into the back. Right. Now.”

Oh, this was a new experience, being the one who’d done something wrong. Something hot and scalding slid into his veins. Shame. Eric didn’t like it one bit.

He pulled away from Jamie’s grasp and kept his eyes on Beth. “Beth, let’s talk about this. Alone.”

She moved toward the doors with a jerky nod, and Eric held his hand up to stop Jamie from following. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“You’ll fucking talk to me now,” Jamie countered.

As Beth pushed through the double doors, Eric spared a look around the room. Every eye was on them, and it was a Friday evening, so there were a lot of eyes. “Let me talk to Beth alone. She doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of us.”

“Seems like she’s already right in the middle of us. Or did I misunderstand something?” But Jamie had fallen back on his heels, and his jaw jumped with frustration instead of aggression, so Eric turned and followed Beth into the back.

She was pacing across the kitchen area, her movement followed by the workmen’s fascinated eyes. She wore the same kind of hip-hugging skirt he’d seen her in last night, but this time her stiletto heels were dark purple instead of black.

Eric swallowed hard. “My office is this way.” He gestured toward the hallway and she glared at his hand as if she wanted to snap it off.

“We might want to stay out here. Whoever you are, you’re less likely to end up dead if there are witnesses.”

One of the men made a noise that was somewhere between a bark and a laugh, but when Eric shot them a glare, both men pressed their mouths into straight lines.

When he didn’t respond, Beth passed by him with a sneer and stalked down the hallway. He gestured toward his office and the chairs in front of his desk, but she didn’t sit down. Instead she paced to one corner and then spun around to glare at him.

“You came back,” he said quietly as he shut the door.

“Yes, I came back. Is that your big concern right now? How about, who the hell are you? How about we start with that?”

“Of course,” he said, his face flaming with embarrassment. This was no longer a gorgeous secret they shared. It wasn’t a quiet whisper he could offer into her ear to make her smile. There was no more titillation in this for her; it was all betrayal.

Her eyes looked furious and frightened.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” he said. “I can’t… Listen. When we met, you thought I was my brother because of the name tag on the table. He was supposed to have been working the booth that day.”

“Well, that explains the first fifteen seconds of our relationship,” she snapped.

“I know. I mean, I knew at the time that it wasn’t right. I did try to correct you—”

“You’re kidding, right? Did you try really, really hard, Eric?”

“I—”

“This is…this is horrible. You lied to me just to…”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I swear.” Eric felt sweat prickle along his hairline, and his stomach turned as he registered the hurt on her face. “Beth, I’m so sorry.”

“Why would you do that? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know. At the time…at the time you said you’d heard of my brother, you knew his reputation, and maybe that made it easier.”

“You pretended to be him because you thought that’s who I wanted?” she shouted.

“No. Not that. I knew you wanted me.”

Her gaze had been shifting wildly around his office, but her eyes flew to him at those words. “You should have told me. Right at the start. Or later, when we met for wine. Or—” Her voice stopped as if the words had been cut in half. They’d met for wine the first day of the expo, and he’d touched her in that hidden booth, making her come while the rest of the bar moved around them unaware. The memory seemed to flash over her face and turn into shame.

“Who are you?” she growled, her hands clenching to fists.

“I’m Eric. Donovan,” he clarified stupidly. “I’m Jamie’s brother. I thought it would be easier if…” Hell, what else was there to add? He was the brother of Jamie and Tessa Donovan and he helped run the brewery. There was really nothing more he could think to say. That was all there was. Which was why he’d been able to talk himself into this mess in the first place. Because he hadn’t been willing to risk ruining the brief, wild spark that had arced between him and Beth. He’d needed that moment to be someone he’d never been before.

Beth closed her eyes and shook her head. “You thought it would be easier,” she whispered. “Easier to get me into bed.”

“That’s not what I meant. I swear to God, Beth, that wasn’t it. We were just… It was all just a fantasy, wasn’t it? I didn’t want to make it…”

“Real?” she filled in. And yes, that was what he meant, but it sounded cruel now. It sounded horrible.

Tears flashed to life in her eyes, and Eric reached for her, knowing he shouldn’t. She stepped back and his hand fell, but she watched it as if it were a snake.

“You made me into a fool.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“And now—” She swept an arm in the direction of the barroom. “Now I let everyone know you made a fool out of me. Jesus.”

He shook his head.

“I did,” she insisted. “But that’s okay, because I wanted everyone to know that you were the one who should be ashamed. Not me.” She pressed a finger to her mouth. Her eyes looked far away. “I didn’t want it to be me feeling that.”

“You shouldn’t. I wasn’t trying to trick you. I just didn’t know how to stop and say, ‘Can we start over? My name’s actually Eric.’”

“That’s no excuse.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You should have told me then. Or last night. Or anytime in the past six months.”

He nodded, and Beth met his gaze again, her dark brown eyes deep with sorrow. “You’ve ruined it.”

“I know.” He did. It had been a perfect memory. A perfect moment in his life. Her body and her mouth and her trembling hands. And now it was something sordid.

Beth stood a little straighter and seemed to reset herself. The tears stopped and her chin rose in disdain as she stepped forward and brushed past him. “I just wanted you to know that. That you ruined it. Don’t ever call me. Don’t get in touch. But I guess that was your plan from the start, right?”

She was right, so he didn’t dare touch her arm to stop her. He didn’t even apologize again. He just let her slam his office door and disappear from his life as quickly as she’d reappeared.

Eric collapsed into a chair, let his head fall into his hands and called himself every name in the book. And yet there was still that small, stony part of him that didn’t regret what he’d done. Not at all. It was that same part that had always been selfish, but lately it seemed to be growing.

CHAPTER THREE

AS SOON AS SHE’D SLAMMED the door behind her, Beth lost her ability to hold it together. She couldn’t draw enough air. She was breathing too hard, too fast, and she worried she might pass out at any moment. That would be the only thing that could make this unbearable situation worse: being found passed out in the back hallway of the brewery as if she were some delicate flower of womanhood, overcome with sexual shock.

So Beth put her hand to the wall and made herself breathe slowly in and slowly out. She bowed her head for one moment, keeping an ear out for the sound of Jamie’s—Eric’s—door opening behind her.

But he didn’t follow her, and Beth calmed down, and when she opened her eyes she was steady enough to walk. There were two men on the far side of the kitchen, and they watched her as if they feared she might snap at them like a mad dog. She ignored them, and was reaching for the double doors when they swung inward.

She stopped short, clasping her hands to her chest. It was him. The man who was really named Jamie. And it was all so obvious in that moment. This man was the Jamie Donovan she’d heard rumors about. He was handsome and roguish-looking, and she could perfectly picture him wearing a kilt and flirting as he delivered beers to customers. Eric, on the other hand, looked like a man who never bothered with flirting. If he wanted you, he wanted you; it was as simple as that. It certainly had been the night they’d met in his room.

“Hey,” the real Jamie said, his eyes looking down the hall for a moment before refocusing on her. “Is everything okay?”

She almost laughed. Sure, everything was just great. Except that she’d been betrayed and used and made a fool of. Her cheeks warmed. “I just want to go,” she said, hugging her arms to her chest.

“Oh. Sure. I’m just sorry about the…” His eyes darted toward the offices again. “Confusion,” he finished weakly.

“Confusion. Right.” She wanted to smile, to pretend it was no big deal, but instead she found herself blinking back tears. “Sorry I yelled at you earlier,” she said quickly. “I was a little surprised.”

She brushed past him and started to push through the doors, but he turned and held out a hand to stop her. “Do you want to go through the back?”

She froze. At this point, she could only pray she didn’t know any of the customers who’d so eagerly watched the argument. What if she walked toward the front doors and a friend stopped her for more details? “Thank you. The back door would be perfect.”

He walked her to a steel door set into the far wall, but when he opened it to let her out, he kept walking with her. She hid her look of irritation, and simply stared straight ahead. “You don’t need to keep me company.”

“I just want to be sure you’re okay.”

“I am,” she said, but it was a moot point now. They were already in the parking lot. He looked like he wanted to say more, but there was nothing else she wanted to hear. She never wanted to see any of these people again.

She beeped open the door on her car. “Thank you,” she said, then slipped inside. She started the car immediately, but when he simply stood there, she gave an impatient wave.

By the time he walked away, it was all beginning to sink in.

How had she let this happen to herself? It was as if she’d been the butt of some fraternity-boy joke. I’ll pretend to be my brother to get her into bed.

She meant to pull the car out right away, but her face was so hot she had to press her cool fingers to her cheeks. Her stomach rolled with sickness. She’d been proud of her fling before this. It had been exactly the sort of brave and selfish pleasure she’d wanted for years.

And now it was nothing. Less than nothing. It was a scar on her pride. It was humiliation. Why had he done that to her?

“It doesn’t matter,” Beth told herself. “It doesn’t.”

She didn’t believe it, but somehow the words helped her calm down. Or just the sound of her own voice, solid and strong.

Whether it mattered or not, it was done. And she’d never see Eric or Jamie Donovan again, thank God.

ERIC HEARD HIS BROTHER’S footsteps long before Jamie got to his office. And that said a lot about Jamie’s mood; these floors were solid concrete.

Pushing to his feet, Eric told himself he was ready for this, but he still ground his teeth together when the door flew open and banged a tall filing cabinet. “What the fuck?” Jamie ground out.

“I know. It looks bad.”

“It looks bad? It looks like you used my name to get a woman into bed. But you’d never do something that sleazy, would you?”

Eric swallowed and didn’t answer the question.

Jamie leaned forward and put his fists on the desk. His eyes blazed with fury. “Would you, Eric?”

“It was a mix-up,” he managed to answer, trying to control the fury rising up from his guilt.

“You fucking bastard,” Jamie growled.

“Listen, Jamie—”

“I’m not listening to shit. This is… Christ, I wouldn’t have expected this from anyone I know, much less you.”

Eric clenched his hands and pressed a fist to his forehead. He’d never been in this position before. He was the brother who did the lecturing. Who demanded answers. Who did the right thing for his family. He wasn’t the one who had to be ashamed.

Except that now he was, and Eric felt as if he’d explode from the frustration. And the regret. “It wasn’t like that,” he tried again. “She called me by the wrong name, and I didn’t correct her. And then…I’d let it go too long. It seemed like it wouldn’t hurt anything to let it stand.”

“Jesus, are you kidding me? You can’t see what it would hurt to have a woman out there who thought she’d slept with me?”

Eric answered honestly, realizing it was a mistake even as he let it happen. “I didn’t think it would make much of a difference. You’ve slept with a lot of women.”

Jamie’s hand was a blur when it shot out and grabbed Eric’s shirt. “First of all, fuck you. Second, that woman is a stranger to me, so don’t let yourself think I’m honored she thinks I did her. Third, I have a girlfriend, in case you hadn’t noticed. You could have screwed up a lot of things for me.”

“It was months ago,” Eric said.

Jamie’s sneer let him know that wasn’t quite the point. “Have you done this before?”

“No!”

Eric sat back in his chair when Jamie let him go. He watched his brother pace the short distance to the door and then back again. “Why would you do this?”

“I didn’t use your name to trick her into anything. We…we had a connection. Chemistry. But she thought I was you. A carefree, easygoing bachelor. A guy who could offer no-strings-attached fun. So I used your reputation as…permission.”

“That’s so damn ironic it hurts.” His laugh certainly sounded as if it was jagged with pain. Eric cringed.

“You’ve spent your whole life telling me I was doing the wrong things. For years, you’ve basically said I was a no-good, irresponsible jackass.”

Eric pushed to his feet. “That’s not true. I—”

“And then you turn around and use my name to fuck around?”

“Jamie…” Eric’s thoughts had scattered. He didn’t know what to say. It had seemed harmless at the time. A little white lie.

Jamie pointed his finger at Eric as if it was a weapon. “If you ever, ever throw my past in my face again, I swear to God, I’ll make you sorry.”

He already was sorry. “Jamie—” But Jamie just turned and slammed out of the office, leaving Eric standing there, his lips still parted.

Jesus Christ. He lowered himself slowly to his chair, his chest tightening until he couldn’t draw a breath.

It had been only six months since that night with Beth, but it felt like a lifetime ago. It felt as if someone else had done those things.

Eric Donovan would never slide his hand between a woman’s legs in a public place. He’d never make a woman come after only knowing her for hours. He certainly wouldn’t rent a hotel room for the express purpose of one meaningless, animal encounter.

And he would never, ever lie to make that happen.

He wasn’t that person.

He looked down at his hands. The hands that had touched Beth Cantrell. The hands that had held her hips as he’d thrust into her. That wildness had been all for him—it had had nothing to do with Jamie’s name or reputation.

But Eric had ruined that with his stupidity and now he’d be nothing to her but a mistake.

CHAPTER FOUR

SHE LEFT THE LIGHTS OF THE store turned off when she got in at eight. The shop didn’t open for another two hours, and she liked the starkness of the pale sunlight that shone through the front windows. It comforted her. She felt alone, and she needed that for a little while.

She’d tried her best not to think about Eric Donovan last night, but she’d woken at 6:00 a.m., an hour before her alarm, and she hadn’t been able to keep her hurt feelings at bay anymore.

Logically, she could tell herself that it didn’t make a difference. It was a name. Nothing more. And he was a man she’d had a brief physical connection with. She didn’t love him. She didn’t know anything about him. Even less than she’d thought, apparently.

But she felt so stupid, and she thought she’d left all that behind. Feeling stupid about sex and her body. Feeling used. She’d built a whole life designed to put her above that. And even if she hadn’t been totally successful, she sure as hell hadn’t let a man bring her shame. Not until now.

“I have nothing to be ashamed about,” she muttered, slicing open a box with a vicious slash. But she immediately regretted her anger. She couldn’t sell damaged erotic toys, and she held her breath as she opened the cardboard to inspect the damage. Thankfully, she hadn’t even sliced through the plastic packaging. She needed to calm down. She needed to let it go. He was the one who had to live with what he’d done.

So Beth made herself turn on the lights in the back room and focus on what she was doing. After all, she should be paying close attention to the toys. She might be spending a lot of time with vibrators in the near future. It was either that or arrange a date with super-smooth Davis.

Maybe that would be okay. Cairo seemed to think it was…luscious.

Beth bit back a shudder and grabbed the first packages out of the box. Personally, she wasn’t interested in a toy with a vibrating appendage shaped like a wolf’s head, but werewolves were popular right now. Whatever her personal likes were, Beth didn’t judge what got other people off. The dildos with chillable inserts were especially in demand as well, and if people wanted to fantasize about cold vampire sex, that was fine with her. “You go, girl,” she murmured as she hung the wolf toys up.

Once the box was empty, she polished the glass cases—nobody wanted to look at intimate toys through fingerprints—and straightened the displays.

By nine o’clock, she felt better. Solid and nearly okay. And then her cell phone rang. She knew without a doubt that it must be Eric Donovan. He had to get in touch, didn’t he? He had to apologize again and maybe grovel. So it had to be him.

But it wasn’t.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, trying to keep the weariness from her voice.

“Hey, sweetie. Where are you?”

“I’m at the store.”

“Oh,” her mother said, that tiny word conveying so much.

“Mom,” she said, sighing. “I wish you’d come see it sometime. It’s not what you think it is.”

“Oh, Beth, I couldn’t. I don’t want to see all those…things.”

“All those things are in the back room. The front room is all pretty lingerie and fun gifts. It’s a place for women, not some sleazy video den.”

“But you sell…” Her mom took a deep breath, and Beth heard the muffling sound of a hand cupped over the phone. “Dildos.”

“Yes, we do.” Beth glanced up at the twelve-inch-long black glass beauty they kept behind the counter. “But that’s okay, you know. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, if your father ever found out I’d gone into a place like that…”

Right. And if he ever found out that Beth ran a place like that… “I still think you should tell him.”

“No, ma’am,” her mom gasped. “He’d never forgive either of us.”

“I’m not sure what he’d blame you for.” Granted, he was conservative. Old Argentina conservative, not to mention Roman Catholic conservative. He still complained that women no longer covered their hair in church.

“He’d blame me for all of it!”

Beth rolled her eyes. “Well,” she muttered, “I hope he’s happy thinking I’m managing a women’s under-garment shop.”

“Oh, he is! He’s very proud of you.”

She had no idea what to say to that. Sometimes her mom was a little off. Or a lot. “Is anything going on? Are you both feeling good?”

“We’re wonderful, sweetie. We’re ready for some cool weather, though. It’s been so hot here.”

“Turn your air conditioner up, Mom.”

“You know your father hates it when I use it in September.”

“Tell him you’re a delicate Anglo and you can’t handle the heat. And September or not, it’s still hot as hell.”

Her mom giggled, even as she chided Beth for her language. Poor Mom. She’d probably drop dead if she heard her baby talking cock rings and anal plugs with customers. Or maybe she wouldn’t even understand what was being discussed.

“I love you, Mom.” Beth hung up with the same mix of frustration and comfort she always did. Her parents had provided her with love and a safe home and plenty of emotional support. But they couldn’t support the choices she’d made. They just couldn’t. There were lines they couldn’t cross, and she’d found that out the hard way.

But they still loved her, and that was a hell of a lot more than some of her friends had. So Beth chose to feel a little stronger as she walked into the front room and turned on all the lights.

The room blinked to life and she looked over it with pride. Fuck Eric Donovan. He was lucky she’d remembered his fake name, much less bothered to find out his real one.

She wasn’t going to let him make her back into the girl she’d once been. No chance in hell.

ERIC HAD BRIEFLY CONSIDERED calling in sick today. After all, he felt sick. He hadn’t gotten one damn hour of sleep the night before.

He’d known better than to lie, but he’d still done it, and look what he’d done to Beth. And to his newly forged relationship with Jamie.

In the spirit of punishing himself, Eric had dragged himself from bed and hauled his ass into work. Jamie had been there to greet Eric with a glare as soon as he’d walked in. Luckily, they’d spent the first half hour in separate areas of the brewery, so Jamie’s anger hadn’t yet burned a hole in Eric’s skull.

But once Eric had the mechanic settled in, he had no excuse to lurk in the bottling room and oversee the work. When he stepped back into the tank room, Wallace grabbed his elbow in one meaty paw.

“The new stout,” he said, as if that explained his tight grip on Eric’s arm.

“Yeah?”

“It’s ready.”

Oh, that was why Wallace’s eyes glinted with worry. The last batch hadn’t worked out, and Wallace had been frustrated, to say the least. Eric had thought he’d been thinking about Faron again, but maybe he was already fully recovered.

“Come on,” Wallace growled. “You and Jamie can taste it at the same time.”

Eric opened his mouth to say no, but even he couldn’t justify that kind of immature answer. He couldn’t bring himself to say yes, either, so he just waited for Wallace to grab the glass of stout, and followed him into the kitchen.

Jamie was already there, an uncharacteristic frown on his face when he glanced up from examining the pizza oven. He jerked his chin up. “Hey, Wallace.”

“It’s time,” Wallace said ominously.

“Time for what?” Jamie asked.

“The chocolate stout.”

Jamie stood and wiped his hands on the rag he’d thrown over his shoulder. “The Devil’s Cock?”

Eric shook his head. “We haven’t decided on that name yet.”

Jamie ignored him completely and nodded toward the glass in Wallace’s hand. “Let’s do it.”

Wallace gathered up three small sample glasses and poured. The dark brown brew looked solid and crisp, the head a nice cream color.

“This is the new cocoa, right? The Mexican?”

Wallace grunted as they each took a glass. “Yeah. And the chipotle peppers.” There was a reason they were considering the name Devil’s Cock. This stout was the darkest of dark, accented with chocolate and a kick of heat. It smelled black and wicked.

“Sláinte,” Eric said, and they all tipped the glasses to their lips. Richness filled his mouth, flowing with the bitter hint of dark chocolate, sweetened by the malt. At the very end, smoky pepper touched his tongue.

“Christ, that’s smooth,” Jamie said.

Wallace didn’t smile. “Yeah?”

Eric nodded. “This is it. A one-hundred-percent improvement over the last batch. It’s gorgeous.”

Wallace’s eyes tilted a bit, as if he’d finally dared a small smile. Eric couldn’t be sure past the beard.

The brewmaster took another drink and wiped the foam off his facial hair. “I was thinking end of November,” he said.

“It’ll be perfect for winter,” Jamie agreed.

Eric nodded, but he wasn’t sure. “Any chance we could do a limited rollout by mid-October? It could be a nice Halloween beer.”

“No,” Jamie said before Wallace could answer. “We’ve got the Harvest Ale, not to mention the work on rolling out the restaurant. And we haven’t even decided on a name for this one, much less started a logo. It’d never get approved by the liquor board in time.”

Wallace’s eyes darted from Jamie to Eric as if he were waiting for an argument. His anticipation wasn’t unfounded. Eric felt his neck tighten to rock. Jamie’s words sounded like thrown fists, they were so hard.

Eric wanted to throw a few hard words back. He was the one who made these decisions, not Jamie. But Jamie was shouldering his way into the decision-making process now. A good thing, Eric assured himself. “Fine. Late November.”

“And the name?” Jamie pressed.

“We’ll talk about it.”

His brother scowled. “It’s a good name. Wallace, you like it, right? It was your idea.”

Wallace shrugged one massive shoulder. “You two work it out.”

“Good work, Wallace,” Eric said as Wallace turned to retreat back to his tank room. It was his personal cave, and even though it belonged to the Donovans he growled like an ogre at anyone who entered without his permission.

Just as Wallace disappeared, the back door opened and their sister, Tessa, walked in on a shaft of morning sunlight. She was like a Disney character, bringing happiness and smiles with her. Eric used to joke about seeing bluebirds darting around her head. But after the past few months, he no longer looked for bluebirds. Little Tessa was all grown up now, and she had a man living in her house to prove it.

“What’s going on?” she asked, strolling over.

“It’s the new chocolate stout.” He dipped his head toward the glass.

Tessa poured herself a sample and tried it. “Oh, so much better! It’s perfect. I love the kick at the end.”

“We’re going to roll it out in November. I’ll need you to start the logo process. I’ll deal with the liquor board.”

“Did we decide on the name?”

Jamie smirked. “Everyone still loves Devil’s Cock, but Eric’s scared.”

“I’m not scared. I just don’t want to offend anyone.”

Tessa tilted her head. “I think it’s fine. You know, names and logos are getting more and more edgy. And the logo will be a rooster, right? With devil horns?”

Eric crossed his arms and shifted.

“Jesus Christ,” Jamie barked. “You were on board with it a few months ago.”

“I only said I’d consider it.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Jamie said, leaning toward him as if he meant to share a secret. “Why don’t you try manning up?”

Eric dropped his hands, balling them into fists. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

They were right back where they’d been for years, and Eric stepped into the old groove with ease, his decade of anger at Jamie snapping quickly back into place. “Look, little brother. I know your idea of planning is to throw anything and everything out there and hope something sticks, but that’s not the way a professional goes through life. I’m responsible for the reputation of this brewery and—”

“Oh, you’re kidding me, right? Because that is pure, hilarious irony coming from you. If you think—”

“Hey!” Tessa shouted, and Eric realized they’d both been yelling. “What is going on here? I think I missed something.”

Eric’s anger fell away like spilled water. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. Jamie, on the other hand, looked morbidly delighted.

He smiled. “Why don’t you ask Eric?”

Eric shook his head. He didn’t want to tell Tessa. She was his baby sister. He’d been her hero, once upon a time. “It’s just a fight.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I heard something about a woman coming in and starting an argument with Eric, but I assumed…” Her gaze slid to Jamie. “Everything’s okay with you and Olivia, right?”

“Olivia and I are great, but thanks for the vote of confidence. Ask Mr. Perfect here what that was about. Oh, and watch out for falling pedestals, Tessa.”

She rolled her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the higher you are, the harder you fall. Especially if you’ve been pretending to be an angel.”

“All right.” Eric sighed. “That’s enough.”

“Not by far. But I’ll let you explain to our sister. I’ve got to get to work.”

Jamie disappeared into the barroom, and the doors swung silently in his wake, but Eric winced as if a door had slammed. His brain scrambled for a way to explain it all away, but he couldn’t think. He was so damn tired. And guilty.

Tessa folded her arms. “You’re having girl trouble? Is this April Fools’ Day?”

“I wish it were.”

“Come on. Give me the dirt.” She was smiling as if it was a joke, because she couldn’t imagine that Eric would ever do something scandal-worthy. He was the responsible one. The steady one. The one who never had time for fun, and didn’t miss it for a second.

“It’s no big deal,” he lied. “Just an argument with a woman.”

“Oh, is that all?” She leaned forward. “Seriously, Eric. What woman?”

“Someone I saw a few months ago. It was just one date. Nothing serious.”

“Then why did she come in here to yell at you last night?”

Oh, that. He held his breath for a few moments, hoping that an earthquake would hit or a tornado siren would begin to sound. Anything to distract his sister from the question. But no natural disasters struck. And Tessa would find out, whether he told her or not. “What did you hear?”

“Come on,” she groaned. “Out with it.”

Eric took a deep breath, but it didn’t make him feel any better. “The woman I went out with thought I was Jamie,” he said quickly.

Tessa didn’t react with horror. She didn’t gasp and press a hand to her forehead. She just snorted. “That’s ridiculous. You two don’t look anything alike.”

“Right. But she saw Jamie’s nameplate at the business expo last spring, and she thought I was Jamie. That’s all.”

“Oh. Well, that’s weird. Why would you… Whatever. As long as you didn’t sleep with her.” That was when her amusement finally fell away. “You didn’t, did you?”

Eric wished they were in his office so he could sit down. His legs didn’t feel quite right. He paced to the glass wall that separated them from the tank room and watched Wallace as he polished one of the tanks.

“Eric? I was just joking.”

He cleared his throat and made himself turn to face her. “I didn’t correct her at first, and then it seemed too weird to bring it up. I didn’t know what to say.”

“You slept with her and never told her your real name?”

“I wasn’t planning on seeing her at all! And then we…then we agreed that it would be a no-strings-attached thing. That we’d never see each other again, so I told myself it didn’t matter.”

Now she pressed a hand to her forehead. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah.”

“She found out.”

“Yeah.”

Her green eyes widened in dismay. “Oh, Eric. That’s just…terrible.”

“I know. I tried to apologize, to explain. But she was pretty pissed.”

“Pissed?” Tessa echoed. “She probably feels awful!”

“I wish I could go back and change it, but I can’t. At the time, it didn’t seem to matter much.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why didn’t you tell her your name? You must’ve had a reason!”

Yeah, he’d had a reason, but he wasn’t going to tell Tessa about it. The first moment he’d seen Beth Cantrell, he’d wanted her. And that was before he’d realized who she was. The manager of a sex store. The curvy, gorgeous, sophisticated manager of an erotic boutique. She’d been way outside the boundary of his world. And then…she hadn’t been.

She’d liked him. She’d been interested. Part of that interest had been Jamie’s reputation as a man who was willing to play the game. And Eric had thought… Hell, Eric had thought he deserved to have the kind of fun his irresponsible brother had every day of the week.

He’d figured his brother’s reputation was so wicked that one brief encounter wouldn’t matter to anyone. But Jamie now claimed that the majority of his reputation was exaggeration, that he had hardly dated at all in the past few years.

Eric rubbed a hand over the tension in his neck. “I don’t know. Every second I waited seemed to make it more significant. Suddenly, instead of a mix-up, it was a cover-up.”

Tessa put her hands on her hips and glared. “Then you shouldn’t have slept with her.”

“Right.” But that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Beth Cantrell was a fantasy. His fantasy, anyway.

“By the way, since when do you have one-night stands?”

His face flashed to a blush. “I…”

“Is that why you never seem to date? Because you just pick up strangers all the time?”

“No! Good God, Tessa. You should go…wash your mouth out or something. No, I don’t sleep with strangers all the time. Which should explain why I screwed it up.”

“You need to go talk to her.”

“I already apologized.”

“I know, but she must feel like an idiot, Eric. Because of you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s not a good idea. We were never supposed to see each other again.”

“Well, that sounds a little over the top. Is she the daughter of your sworn enemy or something?”

Eric managed a smile. “It’s not like that. She’s nice.” Actually, he had no idea if Beth was nice. She’d seemed nice during the few times he’d spoken to her. But what they’d done together hadn’t been nice. It had been wicked.

And really, really nice. His shoulders slumped. “So I should talk to her?”

Tessa shrugged. “All I know is, I’d be feeling pretty freaked out if it were me. She probably thinks you’re a serial killer now.”

“So I should hunt her down and surprise her, huh?”

“You know what I mean. Just make her understand it had nothing to do with her. That it wasn’t a game.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

She shoved him toward the door. “Do it.”

“Tessa—”

“Do it! Or I’ll think you’re a terrible person.” She walked away and left him with those awful words. He didn’t have a choice now, did he? Tessa was a girl; if she thought Eric needed to apologize again, then he probably needed to apologize again.

But surely Beth didn’t want to see him. Hell, she hadn’t wanted to see him again even when everything had been good.

Maybe he could just call. He opened the contacts file on his phone, but it was hopeless. He’d purposefully deleted her name and number. It had been distracting to see her there, one little name that seemed to glow brighter than the others. That name had tempted him, and some nights he’d found himself staring at it, trying to convince himself that one more meeting wouldn’t hurt anything. Boy, had he been wrong about that.

He glanced up at the clock. Nine-thirty. What time did an erotic boutique open? He could drop by, see if she was there. Beth ran the place, and if she was anything like Eric, that meant she got there early and stayed late.

Shifting, he looked around, hoping some responsibility would drop out of the sky and demand his attention. But his responsibilities were dwindling by the day. Jamie had taken over some and Tessa had assumed others. They didn’t need him the way they once had.

He knew where the White Orchid was. In fact, he probably could’ve driven there with his eyes closed, despite never having set foot in the place. It wasn’t that he’d purposefully driven by, but the store was only half a mile from the brewery, and it pulsed like a beacon in his mind. It reminded him. Of Beth and the fact that she was always so near.

Tessa was right. He needed to make amends, and then maybe Beth Cantrell would get out of his head for good.

CHAPTER FIVE

BETH CAUGHT THE METAL flash of a car pulling up, but by the time she looked out the door, the car had driven past and she couldn’t see it. Kelly wasn’t supposed to be in until eleven, and they didn’t open for another twenty minutes.

She grimaced at the prospect of having to send an early customer away. The last time she’d done that, the guy had begged and pleaded, claiming to have some emergency that required massage oil right away.

That hadn’t convinced her to unlock the door and let him in.

And here was another man. Why was it always men who—?

“Oh, no,” she breathed, instinctively taking a step back. This wasn’t just a man with an early-morning erotic need. It was him. He—Eric, she reminded herself—looked like a man on a mission. Mouth set in a stern frown. Eyes narrowed against the sunlight. He took a deep breath and knocked on the glass, then shoved his hands into his pockets and waited.

Beth held her breath. She was only twenty feet away, but apparently he couldn’t see her through the slightly tinted glass. Thank God, because she had absolutely no interest in being seen.

He frowned a little harder and his head dropped, almost as if he could hear her thoughts. His nearly black hair glinted as the wind shifted it, and Beth looked away. She hated that she still found him so attractive.

His next knock startled her, and Beth jumped. The movement drew his eye, and suddenly he was looking right at her. Her heart stammered, and when he raised his hand in greeting, she shook her head.

Eric didn’t move.

“Damn it,” she whispered. She turned and faced away from him, eyeing her office as if it was sanctuary. But it wasn’t a very effective hiding place. She would have to unlock the front door in twenty minutes when the store opened, and Eric didn’t look like he was going anywhere.

She glanced down at her clothes, happy she hadn’t pulled on leggings and a sweatshirt this morning, as she’d been tempted to do. Instead she was wearing dark jeans and black patent heels. At least she could look good while she glared at him.

She took one deep breath before she turned around and strode toward the door. Eric didn’t smile or gloat. He simply watched her solemnly.

The lock slid quietly free, when she’d been hoping it would crack like a whip. “What do you want?” she asked through the small space she’d opened.

“I hoped we could talk.”

“No.”

“Please,” he pressed. “I know there’s no excuse, but I’d still like to explain. To apologize. Anything.”

He looked tired. And miserable. And still obnoxiously handsome in his cargo pants and black polo shirt. His gray-blue eyes held hers, as if he wanted her to see his sincerity.

And damn it, she could see it.

“Fine,” Beth snapped. “You can come in. But only for a minute. I’m working.” She opened the door wide to let him through and, as he passed, the faint scent of his soap hit her hard. Her knees actually went weak, as if she were leaving his bed again, her body limp with satisfaction.

She touched the door handle to ground herself in the present, then clicked the lock shut again.

She found him standing just a few feet inside, looking over the store as if it were a strange land he’d never visited. True enough, she supposed. The other brother was the one who’d come to the store with a girl.

For a moment, she just waited for him to turn around again, but as she shifted, crossing her arms and then uncrossing them, she realized she felt too vulnerable. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Didn’t know if she should look casual or tense or aggressive. So Beth walked past him and moved around the glass countertop to her normal station next to the cash register. It felt better to have two feet of counter between them.

Eric seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the back-to-school display. Admittedly, it was a little different from most. The mannequin was dressed in a white button-down shirt and a short black skirt, and she held a ruler in one hand as she peered above the tops of her black glasses. But the other hand held a whip, and her platform shoes were adorned with five-inch metal heels. Beth especially liked the shiny red apple that was perched on top of the sex-ed books at her feet. It was cute and wicked at the same time, but Eric looked only stunned.

Beth cleared her throat.

“Sorry,” he said, swinging around to her. “I mean, I’m sorry about everything. And how you found out.”

She kept as little emotion in her eyes as possible, unwilling to be vulnerable for him again.

Eric took a step forward and set his hands opposite hers on the counter. For a moment he seemed distracted by the piercing jewelry beneath the glass, or maybe it was the metal cock rings, but then he shook his head. “I can’t really explain why I didn’t tell you my real name. It doesn’t make any sense. It was wrong, and I knew it at the time.”

“But you didn’t care.”

“It didn’t feel real. I don’t mean you, of course,” he said quickly. “You felt… Yeah.”

Her lips started to tilt up, so she pressed them together.

Eric cleared his throat. “But it was all a fantasy, wasn’t it? I’m not the kind of guy who meets a beautiful woman and invites her to a hotel room. It felt like I was someone else.”

“Your brother?”

He winced. “No. Just not myself.”

She wanted to hate him. She did hate him. But she also knew what he meant. She wasn’t the type of woman who slept with a man just a few hours after meeting him. Not that she’d admit that to Eric.

“You look more like an Eric,” she said.

“Do I?”

Beth shrugged. “You can go now,” she said icily, determined not to give in to the twinge of understanding she felt for him.

Silence hung heavy for a moment, and then he nodded. “All right. But I wasn’t playing a game. I don’t want you to feel I made a fool out of you.”

She froze. “Excuse me?”

“I didn’t,” he said quickly.

“Oh, I know you didn’t. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

His eyes widened in alarm. “Of course! I didn’t mean to imply—”

“You made a fool out of yourself, Eric Donovan,” she said past a tight jaw. “I’m fine. I’m great.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I know you are.” His head bowed, but when Beth took a step back, he looked up again. The lines around his eyes looked deeper. “Thanks for letting me in. I just wanted to be sure you were okay.”

“I am.”

“Good.” He left then, unlocking the door and offering a grim wave as he slipped out. Beth just stood there as he left and told herself she was glad she’d never see him again. He was a liar and a cheat, and he didn’t deserve her attention.

Unfortunately, she knew from experience that he might still get it.

TALKING TO HER HADN’T helped.

Oh, maybe his conscience was very slightly appeased, but now Beth was in his head, stuck there like a spirit exacting its revenge.

Returning to the brewery didn’t help, either. Tessa gave him a thumbs-up and a big smile, which made him feel like a wayward kid. And Jamie ignored him completely, which made Eric want to shove him and start a fight, just so they’d be interacting.

Eric had always been the mature one. Hell, when their parents were killed, he was only twenty-four, but he’d taken on the responsibility of his teenage siblings and the brewery, and he’d done it well. There’d been no partying, no vacations and very little dating in the thirteen years since then.

He’d worked. And he’d parented. And he’d set a good example. He’d done what he needed to do, despite the fact that he’d felt inadequate and scared to death the whole damn time.

But something had gone wrong in the past couple of years. Very wrong. His skin felt as if it had started shrinking, squeezing everything too tight inside his body. And his skull felt too small as well; he wore that tension like a helmet, making it hard to think. He felt…panicked. Which made no sense.

Despite the deal with the Kendall Group falling through, not to mention the trouble that had come after, things were going great. Profits had risen six percent for each of the past four years. A nice, steady growth. Jamie had finally grown up and was taking on new responsibilities. Tessa was happier than ever. And they were all finally getting along. Everything was good. And Eric felt…lost.

He’d lost his hold, somehow. He’d lost control. The plans to expand the brewery into a restaurant were not part of Eric’s plans, but he couldn’t say no. They were partners, after all, he and Jamie and Tessa. Equal. And yet Eric wasn’t equal. Not in his mind. And maybe not in theirs, either. Because he wasn’t a Donovan. Not really. It felt like the worst sort of injustice that their dad had left him an equal part of the Donovan business, a cruel joke that Eric was the one to lead the brewery for so long.

Because, despite all the wonderful things he’d done for Eric, despite the role he’d filled, Michael Donovan hadn’t been Eric’s real father.

Eric could still remember his real dad, though only in broken bits and pieces. He’d come around on the weekends for the first few years after Eric was born. Then only on holidays. Then not at all.

Eric had his father’s hair and his eyes. He had his genes. And not a drop of Donovan blood to justify his ownership of this place or the unconditional love that Michael Donovan had shown him.

Thinking about it made Eric’s skull feel even tighter, so he rolled his neck and closed his eyes. Even his office felt too small. But he didn’t want to spend time near Jamie, so Eric decided to catch up on the bottling schedule. It’d be a bitch working the line by himself, but it would be worth it if it wore him out. At least he’d get some sleep.

Eight hours later, when Eric headed home, he was definitely exhausted, but his mind was still working as frantically as ever.

“Dinner tomorrow!” Tessa yelled just as he escaped, and Eric winced. Sunday dinner with the family was not in his comfort zone this week. But if he didn’t show, he’d look ashamed or cowed. Shit.

When he got to his condo—a simple two-bedroom that was nearly ascetic, even to his own eye—Eric made a sandwich, grabbed a beer and turned on a boxing match. Boxing was the perfect sport, in his opinion. There were rules and structure, but it was the most basic of all competitions. The most primal. Beat the other guy, literally. All other sports seemed to want to dance around that issue. “Yeah, you can physically destroy your opponent, but you have to be holding a ball while you do it.” That smacked of dishonesty to Eric, but maybe he was only feeling sensitive to the issue.

Once it became clear that both boxers in this match were hitting for points instead of a knockout, Eric turned off the TV, grabbed another beer and headed for the shower.

Ten minutes later, he was in bed and clicking on the TV in the bedroom, his body still as tense as ever.

This was his life. Work. His family. And this white-walled condo. Yet his family had grown up. Both Tessa and Jamie had significant others now. They both had homes they’d taken the time to make their own. And they’d grown into the brewery, too. Eric’s role in their lives was shrinking, and how the hell was he supposed to make up the loss?

He’d need to find a hobby. An interest. Or maybe he could take over one hundred percent of the trade show duties and spend more time on the road.

The thought wasn’t satisfying, but it felt logical. He’d run it by Jamie at dinner tomorrow. Jamie would probably be happy to avoid time away from his new girlfriend, at any rate. Up until now, the man had never made a commitment to anyone, but he seemed damned enthusiastic about his relationship with Olivia.

Maybe that was what Eric needed. A woman.

Unfortunately, Beth was the only woman who popped into his head, and she was unavailable in so many ways, starting with the fact that she hated his guts. But, God, she’d been beautiful today. More beautiful than she had been when Eric had first met her, or maybe it was just that he knew the exact shape of her breasts and shade of her nipples. Maybe it was that his fingers could still remember the way her curves had yielded to his touch.

She was gorgeous in that way ’40s pinup girls were. Soft and curved and luscious. The embodiment of sex, even though her smile always kept its distance.

Not that there’d been any smiling today. But the anger in her eyes had mimicked the fierceness of her need in that hotel room. She’d wanted it as much as he had. They’d both been desperate. She’d knelt before him and curved her hands over the top of the headboard, her knuckles white as he’d started to ease into her tight body.

Eric closed his eyes against the flickering light of the television and shoved down the sheets. He closed a hand over his thickening cock and imagined it was Beth’s hand wrapping around him. Instead of being pissed when he showed up at her store today, she was happy to see him, eager to pick up where they’d left off.

He stroked, feeling his shaft swell against his own hand, and imagined reaching for her jeans and tugging them down. Then he’d bend her over that countertop and strip down her panties. Would she let him have her like that? In the daylight, in her own store, with only a locked door between them and the rest of the world?

Her belly would be pressed to the cold glass of the counter, her ass naked and plump under his hands. And her sex would be just as wet and tight as he remembered. He’d slide in slow and careful, and she’d sigh with pleasure. Her arms would stretch out, flexing against the invasion. And then she’d beg him to fuck her harder. She’d call him by his real name and it would be perfect.

Eric stroked himself faster, his fingers growing slick with pre-come. In his fantasy, Beth cried out, her back arching. “Fuck me, Eric,” she moaned, and he felt that surge of power that came with knowing he could make a woman like her come. She’d shaken in his arms and sobbed, and it had felt like a damned miracle to make a woman like her shatter.

Even in his imagination it was a carnal miracle, and Eric took himself with a brutal grip as he remembered her sex squeezing him.

“Come,” Beth ordered inside his mind, and so he came, the heat splashing across his stomach instead of filling her up, but it still felt better than anything he’d done since that long-ago night in that anonymous hotel room.

Eric let his head fall back into the pillow and he finally felt tired. Thank God.

BETH HAD A CLASS TO TEACH on Monday, so she surveyed the store for research items when her shift was over. On Saturday night, the place was busy with couples looking for fun and groups of women who giggled over dildos before surreptitiously placing them in shopping bags. Beth had made the switch from baskets to bags to save people the self-consciousness of browsing while toting around a thirty-two-ounce bottle of lube. Some people got a little funny about that.

When she didn’t see anything particularly inspiring in the toy room, Beth went to her office to dig through the boxes there. They seemed to get a new set of factory samples every other day, and she could definitely find some inspiration in those innocuous-looking cardboard boxes.

Sure enough, she found a new model she’d never seen before and shoved the plastic box into her purse with a glance over her shoulder to see who was watching, just as if she was one of those shy customers. This self-consciousness was the bane of her existence. She could help an eighty-year-old couple pick out a set of his-and-her vibrators without blinking an eye, but she couldn’t discuss her own sex life without stammering and blushing. Luckily, Cairo wasn’t so reticent, and she was always happy to help with the classes.

Speaking of which. “Don’t forget Monday night,” she said as she waved goodbye to Cairo.

“G-spot!” Cairo called. “Got it!” Her gorgeous smile didn’t even twitch. Had she been born with that confidence? More importantly, was there a way Beth could steal it from her and make it her own?

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