Miranda stood in the candlelit bedroom
Clearly the room was set for seduction. Disbelief—and excitement—coursed through Colin. Was this the same Miranda he’d had snowball fights and pizza parties with when they were kids?
“Shh—no talking…” she said.
She approached him and he felt his groin tighten. The sheer gown she wore hid next to nothing, and he knew he’d have a hard time resisting her.
“Miranda…”
She stepped up close, her breasts grazing his chest as she unbuttoned his shirt. One hand slipped inside the garment and rubbed lightly over his chest. She had to feel the slamming of his heart against his ribs. “Maybe we should slow down….”
She smiled. “Well, we do have all night….”
Her breathing was shallow, and Colin knew she was as aroused as he was. His head was spinning as she peeled off the nightgown. He tried to speak, but the words came out as a groan.
Standing before him in only a silky thong, Miranda met his gaze with such desire, such openness…such passion. Yet he knew with painful clarity that if he let this happen they would regret it later.
He had to end this. Now.
Dear Reader,
It’s true that the best romantic relationships rest on a solid foundation of friendship, but what about when friendship becomes the biggest obstacle to romance? That’s the difficult situation Miranda Carter finds herself in, and her solution to the problem is unique, to say the least.
This book was a lot of fun to write. Writing about friendship and romance gave me opportunity to explore how the two can be a wonderful yet messy combination. Miranda has to figure out how far she is willing to go to get something—or someone—she wants. Who hasn’t made an impulsive decision and then had to dig themselves out of the resulting mess? And when the mess means you are having the relationship of your life with the guy you’ve loved forever, who wants out?
Miranda finds herself in over her head while involved in a fun and sexy romance with Colin, and she learns a lot about herself along the way. I hope you enjoy her journey as much as I did. Stop by my Web site at www.samanthahunter.com and drop me a note letting me know what you think of About Last Night….
Sincerely,
Samantha Hunter
About Last Night…
Samantha Hunter
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
1
“SO WHEN ARE YOU GOING to jump Colin?”
Her friend Penny’s voice was loud, and the women sitting nearby in the beauty salon had ears like bats. Miranda Carter cringed, praying that Penny’s voice had been drowned out by the sound of the blow dryers and the salon’s Muzak. Otherwise, word would be out all over the small seaside city of Portland, Maine, that she was after Colin Jacobs even before her gold highlights took.
“Shh! Like that’s going to happen anytime soon. Or at all.”
“You can do anything you set your mind to. I have faith in you.”
Before Miranda could reply, Penny had pushed her whole head up under the dryer, so she wouldn’t be able to hear Miranda’s objections anyway.
Oh, well. It still felt good to be able to spend time with her friend and pamper herself. The highlighting was expensive, but she deserved a treat. It had been a tough year: she’d kicked it off by almost dying, and now she was opening her own business. Not to mention she was living back in Portland again after being gone for almost ten years. Sure, she’d come back for holidays and the occasional birthday, but she hadn’t lived here since she’d left for college. It was kind of weird. Nice, but she was still getting used to the idea.
She flexed her leg, stretching it as best she could in the chair. Penny’s head popped out again, her usually impish eyes concerned. “Leg hurt?”
Miranda nodded and rubbed it, gesturing to Penny to get back under the dryer. She was fine, the pain was just a residual effect of a compound fracture that was mostly healed but would take much more time to mend completely.
Six months ago she’d been in Denver, where she’d lived since graduating from Colorado State. She’d thought she knew the lower trails by Gray’s Peak well enough to risk a weekend hike by herself. A violent autumn thunderstorm had sent her sliding down a slippery slope, proving how wrong she was with a vengeance.
The accident had shaken her badly. The two days of struggling in the cold and rain were thankfully a painful blur. She’d dragged herself over the dirt and rock, searching for her cell phone to call for help, unaware of the extent of her injuries. Apparently she had passed out while trying to call 911, but the signal, though weak, had led an emergency rescue team to her.
When she’d awakened in the hospital her parents had been there, worried to death. When she was out of critical condition, she’d been transported back to Maine, where her folks had helped her to recuperate. At first she’d planned to return to Denver, but she discovered she’d missed Portland more than she’d thought.
Besides, there was nothing really keeping her in Denver. She’d ended a romance that was going nowhere a year before her accident, so there wasn’t anyone there waiting for her. But there was someone here in Maine, and that had influenced her decision to stay, though she wasn’t ready to admit it, not even to Penny.
Looking out the window at the fading snows of early April, she found it hard to believe her life had changed so much so quickly. She was almost completely healed and happy to be alive, period, but a near-death experience changed the way you looked at things, corny as it sounded. She deeply appreciated simple joys, like getting her hair done with her best friend, in a way she never had prior to the accident.
Her thoughts about things like falling in love felt more urgent. Though she’d always been one to try new things and believed in living life to the fullest, her accident had somehow unleashed a passion for living. That passion was particularly powerful when she thought about Colin Jacobs, and she wanted to do something about it—something that she’d failed to do such a long time ago.
The tumble down the side of the mountain had also shaken more than her romantic sensibilities. She’d been drifting through life, working odd jobs since college, not really knowing what she wanted to do. While in the hospital she’d had a lot of time to think about it, and she knew she wanted to make a difference. The sight of the big brown eyes that were the first thing she’d seen when the rescue team found her—the dogs had reached her first—had inspired her to open her own dog-training school.
It was surprising she hadn’t thought of it before. For years she’d been volunteering at animal shelters and with dog trainers, helping to train abandoned pooches to behave better so that they could