her brush your teeth, chase away the monsters and eat your vegetables dad. Now he had to assume—please God, only temporarily—the responsibility of this precious little person and he felt utterly out of his depth. And soul deep scared.
What the hell did he know about raising a girl? Precisely nothing.
Damn, he wanted life to roll back eight months, to be the man he was before that New Year’s Eve ball when life was relatively simple and not the complicated crap storm it was at the moment.
Whining and wishing isn’t going to get this done, Phillips. Neither is it going to change a damn thing. And you’ve survived life’s crappy upheavals before...
Slamming the heavy car door, his long legs ate up the distance between his vehicle and Kasey’s front door. At the entrance he hesitated, his fist hovering as he was slapped, again, by the images of his assistant, naked and sprawled across his bed, her amber eyes foggy with desire.
With her reddish-brown hair spread across his pillow, and her slim legs trembling with need—for him—she’d looked at him like he was the fulfillment of every fantasy she’d ever had. Then she’d whimpered and moaned, screamed his name, completely caught up in the throes of pleasure. They’d spent most of the night together and Kasey had been a full-fledged participant who gave as good as she got.
When he woke the next day, the start of a new year, she was gone, leaving nothing behind but her lingering scent in the air. Ten days later she’d walked back into his life as his executive assistant and neither of them ever made the smallest reference to that wonderful, crazy, sensation-soaked evening.
Didn’t mean he didn’t think about it. Often.
Aaron rested his forehead on the ridiculously pink door. He couldn’t think about that night now, shouldn’t be thinking about it all. He had a favor to ask of Kasey, and remembering her lusciously scented, velvety-soft skin and made-for-sin mouth was not helping matters.
Aaron ordered his junk to stand down, quickly adjusted himself and gave himself ten seconds to regain control. When he thought he was winning that battle, he rapped his fist against the door.
A minute passed and then another. Aaron glanced at his high-tech watch, his gift to himself for his thirty-third birthday, and frowned. It was after 9:00 a.m. Kasey should be up. His Saturday morning had already been jam-packed: he’d met with his lawyer, gathered the documentation to prove he was Savannah’s legal guardian and filled Megan in on the big news.
It had been a brutal morning but, hell, that wasn’t anything new. The past few months had been more of the same. It had started with the note Jason sent to Megan—accompanied by the urn containing Will’s ashes—saying that he’d been with Will during the airplane crash and he needed time to grieve Will’s death before returning home, something neither of them understood. Jason would never put his friend’s death between him and his daughter, no matter how gutted he might be. Then Jason had stayed away, supposedly on business trips, and had failed time and time again to FaceTime with Savannah. As his frequent, albeit odd, emails had trickled to a stop, Aaron’s and Megan’s concern had mushroomed into genuine fear that something was horribly wrong.
Since Jason’s disappearance—it had been too long to call it anything else—Savannah had been splitting her time between Aaron’s and Megan’s places. But they both agreed, with school starting soon, that Savannah needed permanence in her life. Megan was going through her own special type of hell—the man she’d married, and buried, was not actually the person she had thought he was. So until Jason came back, Savvie’s place was with Aaron. If Jason came back...
His brother had to come back. He loved and adored his niece but Aaron wasn’t ready to be a father to an almost-six-year-old girl who’d experienced more upheaval than any child should.
Jay, where the hell are you?
The front door opened and Aaron looked down into Kasey’s heart-shaped, makeup-free face and, for an instant, he forgot how to breathe. She was dressed in a tank top, through which he could see the faint outline of her nipples, and the smallest pair of sleep shorts that skimmed the top of her thighs. His gaze drifted back up, drinking in those high cheekbones, that array of messy hair just grazing her shoulders, and those stunningly beautiful whiskey eyes groggy with sleep.
God, he wanted her. Still. Eight months of working with her hadn’t cured him of that little affliction. He hadn’t been so attracted to—obsessed with—a woman since Kate. And look how well that had turned out. His infatuation with Kate had had enormous consequences and was, in a roundabout way, responsible for his parents’ death. His lack of a college degree, inability to trust and his emotional unavailability could also be traced back to that woman.
And here he was falling down that rabbit hole again, desperate to make Kasey his.
Your brother is in trouble. Your sister is heartbroken and confused. Your niece is a basket case and your world is falling apart. Is sex really what you should be thinking about, Phillips?
“Aaron...hi. Uh, what are you doing here?” Kasey asked, rubbing her fist in her eye.
Going slowly mad, Aaron silently answered. He looked over her head, easy to do since he was nearly a foot taller than her, into her sunny, colorful abode. “I need to talk to you.”
Kasey pushed her fingers through her hair and Aaron noticed the way her breasts rose and fell with the movement. And a part of him rose...sheesh.
“Can it wait until Monday?”
“I wouldn’t be here at nine on a Saturday morning if it could,” Aaron retorted.
Kasey narrowed her eyes at his bark and he recognized her play-nice expression. Kasey was tough and strong-willed, and never hesitated to put him in his place if she felt he was being too pushy. He disliked doormats and her unwillingness to take crap from a work-obsessed, demanding boss was one of the things he liked best about her.
Sighing, he softened his tone. “Let me in, Kasey. Please.”
She stepped back, and Aaron walked into her bright, airy cottage. After closing the front door behind him, he jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. Her furniture looked used but comfortable, covered in checks and stripes in shades of the sea. Yellow and orange cushions and vibrant vases of flowers created splashes of color in the sunny room.
“Kitchen’s that way.” Kasey’s bare arm brushed his as she pointed to a door behind him. “Make coffee, will you?”
“Where are you going?”
Kasey glanced down and Aaron noticed her flushed face. She gestured to her clothing. “Not exactly the outfit I need my boss to see me in.”
Aaron started to remind her that he’d seen her in much less but at the last minute pulled the words back. For eight months they’d pretended that night had never happened and mentioning it now, when she was halfway to naked, wasn’t appropriate.
His brother was missing and his niece needed him. He was also one of the few people who knew that the man he’d thought was his old friend and brother-in-law was an impostor. Plus, he was trying to support his sister, whose life was even more of a tangled mess than his.
Which meant sex with Kasey should be the last thing on his mind.
Aaron swore and scrubbed his hands over his face. When he opened them again, Kasey was walking away from him. He ordered himself not to follow her—but, hot damn, those shorts did not cover her butt cheeks.
Coffee, Aaron thought. Coffee was the only thing that made sense right now. He slipped into Kasey’s tiny kitchen, thinking he was far too big for this dollhouse. His house was huge—eight thousand square feet and seven bedrooms—but as he’d told Jason, who’d sarcastically called his house “the Shack,” at six-three he was a big guy and he liked a lot of space.
A few minutes later Aaron saw Kasey standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of knee-length, cut-off denim shorts