Triple Threat

“Are you sure about that?”

Actually, she wasn’t altogether certain—but she was darn sure going to try. For some crazy, totally frightening reason, all of her self-control seemed to desert her whenever she was close to his dark-haired, dark-eyed, chiseled-lipped, breathtakingly broad-shouldered, hard-bodied six-foot-two self.

Willpower? Gone.

Common decency? Out the window.

She remembered every inch, every nuance of him in excruciating, maddening detail even though it had been two years. The way his fingers had curled through hers when he held her hands above her head, against the smooth cotton sheets…the low, guttural sound he made in the back of his throat when she traced her finger along the muscled ridge bisecting his hip.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Tara said.

“You do realize that if Eli wasn’t a problem for you, you wouldn’t have had to turn to Anthony as a stand-in date? You’d have a real date.”

Now Lisa was just getting ridiculous. As if Eli Murdoch had any bearing on her love life or immediate lack thereof. “Please. I’ve dated guys. I just happen to be in between.”

She’d had two lovers since the last time she’d slept with Eli. One guy a year didn’t seem excessive. They’d been competent, and one would think that one man’s warm breath against her neck would feel the same as another’s, that the rasp of male stubble against her bare skin shouldn’t vary much from man to man. But it did. Neither of her subsequent lovers had come close to measuring up to Eli—literally or figuratively.

Unfortunately, Eli was the wrong man for her. She’d always known it–from the very first moment she’d laid eyes on him when she’d transferred to Jackson Flats High School as a sophomore. Her breath caught in her throat as she recalled the very instant she’d seen him, a senior, decked out in his ROTC uniform, so commanding with his broad shoulders and height, so compelling with his piercing dark eyes, so handsome, it was as if everything inside her melted.