Under Pressure

He shrugged, looking wholly vulnerable and adorable all at once. It was unexpected and called to the quiet place inside her that liked being needed.

“I haven’t exactly made your life easy.”

“Jesus, Ash, we snipe at each other, like siblings.”

His fingers slipped beneath the hem of her shirt, grazing the bare skin at her hip. She couldn’t stop the involuntary inhalation of surprise that whistled past her parted lips.

Asher groaned. “Not like siblings.”

What the hell was going on? Had she walked through that door and into an alternate universe?

No, this couldn’t be happening. Not now. She’d ignored her attraction to Asher for two years. Gone out of her way to subvert it.

Given her sketchy history with men, the last thing she needed was to get entangled with her brother’s business partner and best friend. Not to mention a man who was technically her boss.

Placing her hands on Asher’s chest, Kennedy pushed. For several seconds, he resisted, an immovable wall of male flesh that made her feel itchy and needy and trapped all at once. Until he stepped back and cool air flooded her lungs.

“So,” Kennedy said, forcing determination and a calm she didn’t quite feel into her voice. “What are we going to do?”

4 (#ulink_447b0a60-b127-52a1-8b05-96e660215dab)

WHAT WERE THEY going to do? They weren’t going to do anything. He was going to have to figure his way out of this one.

But the first thing he needed to do was get Kennedy out of here. He’d been in some of the most remote, desolate and hot as hell places on earth. But with her standing so close to him, Asher felt as if the air was an inch thick, clogging his lungs. That damn scent of hers clung to him, something sweet with an undercurrent of spice. A little innocent and a lot tempting.

“We aren’t going to do anything, cupcake.” He frowned, pulling his focus away from her and onto the gun sitting on the table behind her.

She’d shocked the hell out of him, putting that Beretta together so quickly.

He wasn’t the kind of man who thought women couldn’t do things like that. He’d worked with plenty of women in the service who were just as fierce and capable as their male counterparts. It had simply surprised him when Kennedy had done it.

He’d never seen her at the shooting range and didn’t realize she had the skills.

He was impressed.

And didn’t want to be.

Krista had always turned her nose up whenever he brought out his weapons. She’d complained that he spent money on them. It bothered her when he went to the range to practice. It never seemed to register with her that the skills he was honing kept him alive and brought him home to her every time he walked out the door.

The gun safe was one of the few things she’d left when she’d cleaned out their house.

Kennedy crossed her arms over her chest. This up close and personal it was difficult to ignore the way her breasts rounded higher, pressing against the tight confines of her shirt.

The erection he’d been sporting earlier roared back to life, pounding incessantly behind his zipper.

“The next time you call me cupcake, I’m going to shove one in your face. Fair warning. And if you think I’m going to just walk away from this and pretend everything’s okay, you have another think coming. This is my project, Asher. My job. Work with me here.”

She wasn’t going to leave this alone. He’d known Kennedy long enough to realize that when she sank her teeth into a problem, she didn’t let go until it was solved. Her single-minded determination was both frustrating and admirable.

Nothing stood in her way. In some ways, Kennedy reminded him of his grandmother. That woman hadn’t pulled any punches, literally. She’d been a true Southern matriarch, willing to cuff him upside the head for being disrespectful, only to follow up the deserved punishment with the warmest, biggest hug on the planet.

She’d never hesitated to put him in his place when he’d needed it, and as an angry, scared, hurting adolescent, he’d needed it often. She’d had the highest hopes for him, expecting him to do her and the memory of his father proud.

When his father was killed in action and his mother abandoned him, his grandmother had given him a safe place. So he’d wanted desperately to make her proud. His every decision growing up had been for that one purpose.

But the pressure he’d felt to live up to the glowing ideal of his father and make up for his mother dumping him on her doorstep had been huge. Difficult for a child to shoulder.

Right now, he felt the same weight as Kennedy stared up at him expectantly.

“I’ve got this,” Asher forced out.

“Obviously not, or you wouldn’t have run from that room like someone had tossed in a grenade.”

Kennedy pressed closer. Asher countered with a single step backward. He would have gone farther, but his back collided with the solid plane of the wall. Damn the small room.

She crowded him, glaring up out of those mesmerizing eyes, golden and fierce.

“You’re not going to g-give up on this, are you?”

“No.”

He stared down at her, his mind spinning and his body in turmoil—his need for her intertwining uncomfortably with the fear that surfaced each time he thought about standing in front of those damn cameras.