A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father: A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father

“Tess…you don’t—”

Her fingers clamped around his arms, stopping him, her expression gone from postorgasmic mellow to oh-no-you-don’t in two seconds flat. “Yes. I do.” Her eyes glittered. “Burn this feeling out of me, Eli. Please.”

Despite himself, his heart flipped over at the agony in those shiny eyes, at the soul-deep ache she had no idea how to ease. For some people—like his brother, like Tess—the end of a marriage was every bit as devastating as an actual death. But when he shifted to stroke his thumbs along her temples, she struck his hands away.

“No. I don’t want you to make love to me.”

His hands flat on either side of her head, Eli frowned at her. “You just want sex?”

“I just want sex.”

“You just want me to make you feel good, is that right?’

“You got a problem with that?” she said, brows arched.

“Fine,” he said, not sure why he was still pissed. “There any ground rules I should know about?”

Her pupils darkened. “None. I trust you.”

“And why in the hell would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, tearing up once more. Damn. An instant later, Mad Tess was back. “But just for a moment, you made me…forget.” Her hands clamped around his face, she pushed against him, a tight smile pulling at her mouth when he responded. “Make me forget again.”

Eli reached for another condom, thinking tonight was giving a whole ’nother dimension to that Good Samaritan thing.

Nothing, Tess thought as she jerked awake the next morning, starts a girl’s day out right like waking up to a Freddy Krueger scalp massage.

Swearing, she detached Maybelline—who hissed back—and bolted upright, immediately realizing that precipitous changes in altitude were to be avoided at all costs for the foreseeable future. And that she was naked in Eli Garrett’s bed.

And nope, there was no “Did we…?” about this. Because they had. Oh, yes, indeedy, they had. Several times, in fact, before her anger was spent and many, many moons’ worth of sexual frustration exorcised.

Groaning, Tess yanked the top blanket out from underneath the cat, stomped to the bathroom and did her thing, only to scream when she returned to the bedroom to find Eli standing there, dimples at a hundred percent, her sports bra dangling from one hand.

Growling, she snatched it out of his hand, scanning the room for the rest of her clothes. “That blanket sure looks better on you than it does on me,” she heard behind her. As she irritably pondered how many times he’d undoubtedly used that line, he added, “Sleep well?”

She had, actually. Like the dead. “Guess I dozed off,” she muttered, mincing past him to look on the other side of the bed.

“Honey, you passed out.”

“I did not!” she said, twisting around, the velvety blanket’s rasping across her nipples instantly hardening them. Or maybe that was Eli’s knowing smirk.

“Like you would’ve voluntarily spent the night in my bed?”

Okay, there was that, she thought, clumsily dropping to her knees to look under the bed. Her head rebelled. As did her stomach. Especially when the damn cat decided to go after her bare toes. Yelping, Tess again jerked upright, catching her head in one palm before it rolled off her neck. Although the cat would probably love it. A new toy to bat around the room, yay.

Still cradling her head, she carefully hauled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed, wishing Eli would take pity on her and leave her to wallow in her mortification alone. But no.

Her stomach boinged when she felt the mattress shift. “Touch me and die.”

And of course, that brought a warm, gentle palm to the top of her head. “Your head hurt?” Eli said softly, and many unkind thoughts leaped to her brain, mostly along the lines of how desperately she wanted Eli to not be kind. Or warm. Or gentle. Not now, at least. Last night had been another story. Last night had been—

“Oh, they haven’t invented a word for how my head feels right now,” she muttered. Just like there was no word for women who finagle their high school exes into pity sex. No, wait—actually, there were several. None of them flattering.

Her cell phone rang.

From her jacket pocket.

In, apparently, the living room.

She glared at Eli. Who kept on grinning. “Would you like me to get that for you?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

And during the approximately nine seconds he was gone, Tess found and put on the rest of her clothes, scattered willy-nilly about the room though they were. Eli returned and handed her the phone. And her jacket. Tess’s heart nearly stopped when she saw Enrique’s cell number.

“Everything okay?” she barked when he answered.

“Just what I was gonna ask you. Since you’re not here.”

Tess paused. “‘Here’ being…?”

“The house. Where the hell are you? When you didn’t answer your phone I called your aunt. She’s probably on her way over already.”

Was there an award for Worst Morning After Ever? ’Cause Tess was at least a shoo-in for the finals. “You’re supposed to have the kids until tonight—”

“Julia was up half the night, I think she missed you. So I figured I may as well bring ’em back since they were so miserable.”

“They?”

“Okay, Micky, maybe not so much. But I’m not gonna drive up there and back twice in one day, am I?”

“For God’s sake, Enrique—you only see them one weekend a month as it is—”

“Yeah, I know, I’m disappointed, too. So where are you?”

“At…a friend’s. Since I thought I had the day to myself.”

Turning, Tess caught Eli’s frown. “I’ll be home soon,” she muttered, dialing Thea Griego’s number when Eli stomped off.

And it’s a beautiful day in Bozoland, she thought as Thea picked up, her “Tess? What’s wrong?” delivered in the groggy voice of the mother of a one-year-old still not entirely down with the concept of sleeping through the night.

“Please tell me I didn’t just wake you up.”

“For you to do that, I’d’ve had to have been—” Thea yawned “—asleep.” In the background, little Jonny happily squawked. “And you’re calling when the sun’s not even up yet, why?”

“Omigod, it isn’t, is it?” Tess said, realizing that until that very moment, she hadn’t thought her embarrassment level could spike any higher. She’d been wrong. “I have a huge favor to ask,” she whispered. “First off, I need you to swear to anyone who might ask that I was at your place last night.”

Silence. “Why? You kill somebody?”