a stern bun. Sleek, sure, but tamed to within an inch of its life. It bothered him.
Or maybe what bothered him was the hunger that was restless in his body. As if his cells had been starved and were now being offered a feast. Which was, he supposed, not untrue. For two years, his eyes had been starved of the beauty of her face. He couldn’t blame them for wanting to sate their hunger, despite the anger; despite the hurt.
So he allowed them to sweep over the oval slope of her brown eyes; the curve of her cheekbones; the dusting of freckles on the skin of her cheeks. He let them check whether the slight scar at her temple was still there, and if her lips were still pink and full and perfect for kissing.
He stopped himself then, because thinking about kissing and Summer at the same time was taking it too far. The prickling of his body told him so, as did the way those pink, full lips of hers parted. Which made him realise his eyes had dropped to her lips and had stayed there. That he was now showing her his hunger; revealing to her his feasting.
Though he warned himself not to, his eyes lifted to hers, and their gazes locked. A stampede could have passed them, the animals hurling themselves off the edge of the cliff, and he wouldn’t have noticed. He would have just kept looking into Summer’s eyes. He would have kept trying to see if his tainted past had been worth sacrificing that pull between them, especially when it still seemed to be alive and kicking.
He stepped back at the unexpected thought. When he realised it took him closer to the cliff, he took a step to the side. In his current state, being close to anything that might put him at risk of falling wasn’t a good idea.
So run away from Summer, then, a voice in his head told him.
He swallowed.
SUMMER’S LEGS HAD gone unsteady under her. She desperately wanted to walk away from Wyatt; she couldn’t. Because she was worried her legs wouldn’t carry her away, yes, but also because it was more than just her legs that were unsteady.
It was her mind. It was offering her memories of that short period when they’d been happy together. When his snark had attracted her almost as much as it had annoyed her. When she’d been able to enjoy the breadth of his shoulders, the short curls of his hair, his unreasonably handsome face.
Her heart was unsteady, too. It was complaining about being put under this much pressure, torn between being happy to see him and aching at what seeing him reminded her of.
Heartache. Loss. Failure.
Loneliness.
She resented the feelings almost as much as she resented Wyatt’s admiration for her father. She still didn’t know how he could admire the man who’d broken his family with his infidelity. Who’d broken her heart by telling her to keep it a secret from her sister and mother…
Because Wyatt doesn’t know.
Oh, yes. That was how.
‘I should get back,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Me, too.’
They both turned, and their shoulders touched. Her head turned so sharply for her to glare at the offending part of her body she was afraid she’d damaged her neck. But she didn’t spend much time thinking about it. She was too busy looking at her traitorous shoulder.
How had they got so close they could touch like this anyway?
Not liking that she hadn’t noticed it, she took a deliberate step to the side at the same time he did. Her head lifted from her shoulder to his face; she narrowed her eyes. It was fine that she didn’t want to touch him, but how dared he not want to touch her? It didn’t matter what his reasons were—and she refused to think about her own—it was offensive.
‘You can’t kill me with a glare,’ he told her calmly, as if he were completely unaware of what had happened.
‘Doesn’t mean I can’t try,’ she replied sweetly, walking ahead of him before he could respond.
Except that the move wasn’t quite as impactful as she’d hoped it would be. Her heels sank into the grass. Because she’d been storming off—quite appropriately—she hadn’t been prepared to get stuck. Momentum pushed her forward and for the longest seconds of her life, Summer thought she was going to fall on her face. In front of her ex-husband. And a bunch of her parents’ wealthy friends she didn’t think much of.
Which didn’t mean she wanted them to see her fall.
Instead of falling, though, she was pulled back up against a hard body. Her mind needed a moment to recover, so it took longer than she would have liked to realise the body was behind her, not in front. It took even longer to realise that she recognised the feel of that body against her.
No, no, no, no, no.
Wyatt had not saved her from falling. He was not standing behind her, his hard, delicious body pressed against hers, his arm around her.
She was not remembering how many times he’d seduced her from this very position. Sliding an arm around her waist, pulling her against him, dipping his head to the nape of her neck, brushing his lips over the sensitive spot he knew was there.
She was not thinking about how she would lean her head back to give him better access. Or how she’d let out a sound that had been somewhere between a purr and a moan when he obliged her. When he’d started seducing her more earnestly, his hand would move from her waist over her breast, linger there while teasing the sensitive spot in her neck. She’d push back onto his—
Two seconds later she’d stepped out of her shoes and was facing him.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her face burning. She couldn’t command the embarrassment back now, though a part of her tried. She hoped he’d think it was because of her almost-fall rather than her overactive imagination.
He studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable, before bending down and removing her shoes from the ground. He placed them in front of her, looking up at her expectantly. She blinked. Then realised he wanted her to step back into them and felt the faint call of hysteria.
That was what this intense desire to laugh was, wasn’t it? And did he really think she wanted to touch him again after what her mind had put her through minutes before?
Oh, wait, she thought. He didn’t know what she was thinking. She also couldn’t keep acting like a lovestruck teenager. She was feeling attraction. She was attracted to him. Had been the moment she’d seen him at her father’s Christmas party three years before; would still be now, two years after their divorce. Attraction didn’t simply go away because they were no longer together. In fact, it had probably grown because she knew what it was like to be with him.
Yes, that was the perfectly logical explanation for why she was so overwhelmed by how sexy he was. Simple, biological attraction.
She took a breath and slid one foot into her shoe. When she was unable to think of a way to avoid it, she rested her hand on his shoulder and stepped into her other shoe. He waited to see if she was steady, then rose. Slowly, languidly, as if giving her a chance to grow accustomed to his new position.
He was still much taller than her; his shoulders broad, his torso and hips narrow, held up by powerful legs.
And suddenly simple biological attraction didn’t seem like the truth.
He lowered his head, meeting her eyes lazily.
‘Put your weight on the balls of your feet,’ he told her, before walking away.
She didn’t walk after him. Instead, she took a moment to regroup. She had known this would be hard. She had known seeing him would be hard.
Seeing him at a celebration for an occasion she didn’t quite believe in? Hard. Seeing