Taylor's Temptation

“Colleen, come on. He’s my best friend. He’s worried about you.”

“And you don’t think I worry about him? Or you?” she countered hotly. “Do I come out to California to try to talk you out of risking your lives? Do I ever say, don’t be a SEAL? No! Because I respect you. I respect the choices and decisions you make.”

Father Timothy and Shantel emerged from the church kitchen with a huge thermos of lemonade and a stack of cups.

“Everything all right?” Father T. asked, eyeing Bobby apprehensively.

Bobby held out his hand. “I’m Bobby Taylor, a friend of Colleen’s,” he introduced himself.

“A friend of my brother, Wes’s,” she corrected him as the two men shook hands. “He’s here as a surrogate brother. Father, plug your ears. I’m about to be extremely rude to him.”

Timothy laughed. “I’ll see if the other children want lemonade.”

“Go away,” Colleen told Bobby. “Go home. I don’t want another big brother. I don’t need one. I’ve got plenty already.”

Bobby shook his head. “Wes asked me to—”

Damn Wes. “He probably also asked you to sift through my dresser drawers, too,” she countered, lowering her voice. “Although I’m not sure what you’re going to tell him when you find my collection of whips and chains, my black leather bustier and matching crotchless panties.”

Bobby looked at her, something unrecognizable on his face.

And as Colleen looked back at him, for a moment she spun out, losing herself in the outer-space darkness of his eyes. She’d never imagined outer space could be so very warm.

He looked away, clearly embarrassed, and she realized suddenly that her brother wasn’t here.

Wes wasn’t here.

Bobby was in town without Wes. And without Wes, if she played it right, the rules of this game they’d been playing for the past decade could change.

Radically.

Oh, my goodness.

“Look.” She cleared her throat. “You’re here, so…let’s make the best of this. When’s your return flight?”

He smiled ruefully. “I figured I’d need the full week to talk you out of going.”

He was here for a whole week. Thank you, Lord. “You’re not going to talk me out of anything, but you cling to that thought if it helps you,” she told him.

“I will.” He laughed. “It’s good to see you, Colleen.”

“It’s good to see you, too. Look, as long as there’s only one of you, I can probably make room in my apartment—”

He laughed again. “Thanks, but I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

“Why waste good money on a hotel room?” she asked. “After all, you’re practically my brother.”

“No,” Bobby said emphatically. “I’m not.”

There was something in his tone that made her bold. Colleen looked at him then in a way she’d never dared let herself look at him before. She let her gaze move down his broad chest, taking in the outline of his muscles, admiring the trim line of his waist and hips. She looked all the way down his long legs and then all the way back up again. She lingered a moment on his beautiful mouth, on his full, gracefully shaped lips, before gazing back into his eyes.

She’d shocked him with that obvious once-over. Well, good. It was the Skelly family motto: everyone needs a good shocking every now and then.

She gave him a decidedly nonsisterly smile. “Glad we got that established. About time, huh?”

He laughed, clearly nervous. “Um…”

“Grab a sponge,” she told him. “We’ve got some cars to wash.”

Chapter 2

Wes would kill him if he found out.

No doubt about it.

If Wes knew even half the thoughts that were steamrolling through Bobby’s head about his sister, Colleen, Bobby would be a dead man.

Lord have mercy on his soul, the woman was hot. She was also funny and smart. Smart enough to have figured out the ultimate way to get back at him for showing up here as her brother’s mouthpiece.

If she were planning to go anywhere besides Tulgeria, Bobby would have turned around. He would have headed for the airport and caught the next flight out of Boston.

Because Colleen was right. He and Wes had absolutely no business telling her what she should and shouldn’t do. She was twenty-three years old—old enough to make her own decisions.

Except both Bobby and Wes had been to Tulgeria, and Colleen hadn’t. No doubt she’d heard stories about the warring factions of terrorists that roamed the dirt-poor countryside. But she hadn’t heard Bobby and Wes’s stories. She didn’t know what they’d seen, with their own eyes.

At least not yet.

But she would before the week was out.

And he’d take the opportunity to find out what that run-in with the local chapter of the KKK had been about, too.

Apparently, like her brother, Wes, trouble followed Colleen Skelly around. And no doubt, also like Wes, when it didn’t follow her, she went out and flagged it down.

But as for right now, Bobby desperately needed to regroup. He had to go to his hotel and take an icy-cold shower. He had to lock himself in his room and away—far away—from Colleen.

Lord save him, somehow he’d given himself away. Somehow she’d figured out that the last thing that came to mind when he looked at her was brotherly love.

He could hear her laughter, rich and thick, from the far end of the parking lot, where she stood talking to a woman in a beat-up station wagon, who’d come to pick up the last of the junior-size car washers.

The late-afternoon sunlight made Colleen’s hair gleam. With the work done, she’d changed into a summer dress and taken down her ponytail, and her hair hung in shimmering red-gold waves around her face.

She was almost unbearably beautiful.

Some people might not agree. And taken individually, most of the features of her face were far from perfect. Her mouth was too wide, her cheeks too full, her nose too small, her face too round, her skin too freckled and prone to sunburn.

Put it all together, though, and the effect was amazing.

And add those heartstoppingly gorgeous eyes…