A reunion to end all reunions

Since their separation years ago, Sean Maddock has imagined a lot of scenarios where he and Kristine would get back together. So finally getting served with divorce papers is a real shock. It’s not until he seeks out Kristine and feels the same hot kick of desire that he suddenly knows why—he still wants his wife!

Clearly it’s time to move on. But before Sean signs on the dotted line to end their marriage, he wants one more weekend. Just the two of them, closed up in an isolated cabin. Surely by Sunday night they will have played out all their sexy memories—maybe even made a few new ones. Then he’ll be able to walk away…or not!

“Just so you know, my plan is to seduce you....”

Sean’s words created an image Kristine forcefully ignored. “I think we’ve already established that.”

“No.” He shook his head slowly. “I mean, seduce you. By Sunday night you won’t even remember your name. I’m going to make you scream for me.” His thumb dragged across Kristine’s bottom lip. “Think you can handle that?”

No. But she had done enough ducking and running in her life. If she wanted the divorce papers signed, if she wanted closure and to move forward truly free as a mature adult, she needed to do this. For Sean, for herself.

For her undersexed girl parts.

“It’s two days. Unless there is a reason I shouldn’t trust you, I can handle roughing it.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “I don’t remember you liking it rough.”

The seduction thing was kicking in already. Kristine wished she weren’t standing so she could cross her legs and quiet the ache stirring there. “Maybe more than one thing has changed in ten years.”

Ha. She could flirt right back.

It seemed to work. He made a sound in the back of the throat and took a step toward her. Why did Kristine feel like she was being swept out onto the lake by the sheer force of Sean’s personality?

Because she was.

Dear Reader,

The characters Sean and Kristine in the second book of my From Every Angle series, Close Up, impulsively married a decade ago. But even though it was a passionate marriage, it went south quickly. Now, after encountering each other at the nude photo shoot exhibit, sparks fly all over again.

Personally, I love a reunion story. The idea of a second chance, and reigniting a relationship with your soul mate, is a story naturally filled with optimism, hope and love. And the sizzle can be so much hotter when you already know someone!

In order to get these two rediscovering their passion (not that it was hard) I had to send them off to a cabin in the woods on a lake in Minnesota. I’ve been on this island, and the lake and surrounding area are beautiful and pristine—the perfect spot to rediscover an old love.

Hope you enjoy Sean and Kristine’s sexy reunion! Visit me online at www.erinmccarthy.net.

Happy reading!

Erin McCarthy

Close Up
Erin McCarthy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA TODAY and New York Times bestselling author ERIN McCARTHY sold her first book in 2002 and has since written almost fifty novels and novellas in teen fiction, new-adult and adult romance. Erin has a special weakness for tattoos, karaoke, high-heeled boots and martinis. She lives on the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio with her family, her cat and her stylish and well-dressed Chihuahua/terrier mix.

Special thanks to David Vandevoort for introducing me to Ely Island and for building us a bonfire, and to his parents for letting us have a girls’ weekend at their cabin.

To Tina Grillot-Vandevoort, Vanda Ungureanu and McGyver, it was an awesome weekend, let’s do it again soon!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

1

“IF THE GOOD Lord intended us to be naked, clothes wouldn’t have been invented.”

Kristine Zimmerman felt the urge to laugh, but restrained herself, shifting her phone from her right ear to her left as she surveyed the tables being set up for that Friday night’s art exhibit at Collective, the gallery that had just hired her as their events coordinator. “Mom, there are plenty of valid occasions for human beings to be naked.” She could think of at least three without even trying.

Her mother wasn’t sold. “Even Adam and Eve wore fig leaves. Why don’t they wear fig leaves in those pictures? Or better yet, those girls should have some boy shorts on. Boy shorts are cute.”

Given that her mother couldn’t see her, Kristine felt free to give a generous eye roll. It would be a bit counterproductive for the world-renowned mass nude photographer, Ian Bainbridge, to cover his volunteer models in undies. “The photographer is not doing an Adam and Eve exhibit. The nudity is intentional to make a statement about the lack of humanity in corporations.”

“It’s objectifying women,” was her mother’s firm opinion. “You need to quit this job.”

Kristine was no longer amused. “No. I am not quitting this job.” She nodded as the caterer, who was setting up the tables with three staff members, held up white tablecloths for her approval. Normally setup wouldn’t occur three days in advance, but Kristine wanted everything perfect. She wanted the opportunity to see the gallery ready for the event, and make adjustments without the pressure of guests arriving in a matter of hours. This event was her probation period with this job. If it went well, her boss would know she had hired the right person, despite Kristine’s less than remarkable résumé.

At twenty-nine years old, Kristine had virtually nothing to show for the past decade of her life. No money, no retirement fund, no significant other, no highly sought-after skills or talents, and a boatload of student loan debt for a degree she’d never finished. This job was her chance to settle down into a routine, to prove she was a grown-up, finally. Her days of wandering aimlessly from one bad choice to another were behind her, and she was determined to move forward with her life.

Which was why she had also finally shelled out her last bit of savings to draw up divorce papers for Sean, the man she had impulsively married at the age of nineteen and shared a passionate and volatile six months with, before their relationship had imploded. They had parted in anger, but had never filed for divorce. Initially, she had been too upset to deal with the paperwork, and then as the years slid by, it had always seemed that she had something better to spend her hard-earned money on. It had also just been easier to let cobwebs collect on those emotions than disturb them. Apparently, Sean had felt the same way, because he had never contacted her for a divorce, either, even though Kristine knew for a fact he was now a highly successful businessman and money was not an object.

It wasn’t until a few months ago, when Kristine had started dating George, a guy she’d thought she could really grow to care for, only to be dumped unceremoniously when a month into seeing each other he had found out she was still legally married. He had considered it dishonest and revealing that she hadn’t severed those ties, and he had washed his hands of her. Given that a divorce could be obtained on the internet for a few hundred bucks had made her consider the fact that George had a valid point or two.

She was still holding on to Sean, consciously or not. He had been the first stable force in her life, and the last, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she had been treating him as a safety net.

Which was ridiculous. Why would Sean want anything to do with her now, ten years down the road?

The realization that she needed to move forward with her life and truly stand on her own two feet had hit her full force. She had packed up and moved back to her hometown of Minneapolis from Las Vegas to deal with her past before she could proceed with her future.

That past unfortunately included her mother, Ebbe Zimmerman, who was, and always had been, an eccentric. Over the years, Ebbe had worked to save the whales, put warning labels on rap records, become vegetarian, then vegan, then carnivorous again, had tried her hand at raising alpacas and baking cakes—on the same farm—and had fought for a variety of worthy causes for women’s rights. But whereas in her younger years her feminist lean had been toward equal pay for women, she was now hell-bent on shutting down every strip club, burlesque show and art exhibit featuring nudity she came across. Kristine figured her mother had a right to protest whatever she wanted, and most of the time she sympathized with her causes.

But not when it involved tasteful photography that in itself was a protest of corporate greed, something else her mother despised.

And especially not when her mother’s actions potentially threatened her job, given that Ebbe was known for stating her opinions with a lot of pomp and circumstance. And spray paint.

“Well, I can’t be silent about this,” her mother said firmly. “I’m going to stage a protest this weekend at the opening.”

Damn it. Kristine strode quickly in her heels to the back storeroom, where the caterers couldn’t overhear her. “Mother, don’t you dare. I am begging you, if you love me, do not make a scene. This is my place of employment!”

“So you would have me compromise my principles so you can rake in some greenbacks from porn distributors?”

That was a leap of epic proportions. Art with consenting adult models did not equate to porn. There was literally no reasoning with the woman, and Kristine did not have time for this. “I need this job or I will be forced to move in with you, and God knows, neither of us wants that. So save the protests for social media, okay? Because if you show up here Friday and destroy this opening night, I will lose my job and I will never speak to you ever again, even while I’m sharing your apartment.”

Hardball was the only way to play the game with Ebbe. Otherwise, she would do exactly what she wanted, with no thought to the consequences for those around her.

“What kind of daughter threatens her own mother?” Ebbe sniffed on the other end of the phone.

“One whose mother threatens to get her fired. Now I will talk to you later. Love you.” Despite knowing she would pay for it, Kristine ended the call without saying goodbye.

Tossing her phone onto the desk, she grabbed the sign, which was going to be placed on an easel at the front of the gallery, and pushed her way back into the main room. She was about to speak to the caterer when she realized there were people by the front door. Two men, in suits.

One looked familiar. Very familiar. Ten years hadn’t eradicated the knowledge of his muscular body, his narrow face and dark hair, despite the power suit. She knew every single inch of this man, every expression, every gesture, the touch of his hands, his lips, his tongue. Among other things.

He strode toward her and her mouth heated. Her breath caught. Her knees wobbled.

It was Sean, the only man she had ever been in love with.

Her husband.

* * *

SEAN MADDOCK HADN’T been confronted with this many naked bodies at once since a tequila-fueled skinny-dipping party in college. Unlike then, he was stone-cold sober this time around, but fortunately, or unfortunately, however you chose to feel about it, these were not flesh and blood partygoers, but nude photographs. A lot of them. In enormous proportions. With dozens and dozens of people in each shot, so that everywhere Sean turned, he caught a breast or a backside or an eyeful of man junk.

Damn. It was a lot to take in at two in the afternoon.

His latest intern, Michigan, was an ambitious recent U of Chicago graduate, who had apparently broken his parents’ hearts by choosing not to attend their alma mater, which had been his namesake. Instead, he’d worked his ass off at Chicago, and Sean suspected he’d never seen this much skin at any point during his undergrad years.

The poor kid made a strangled sound in the back of his throat as they stood in the lobby of the art gallery, Collective. “Interesting,” Michigan managed.

“You could call it that.” Sean shook his head. Maybe he wasn’t deep enough to comprehend the bigger meaning, but having two hundred people naked together in one photograph, looking like a herd of sheared sheep, did not project any sort of message to him other than awkward. “But it’s highly commercially successful, so the artist knows what he is doing. As does the gallery.”

Under other circumstances, he might have found it amusing. There was nothing he loved more than seeing a quirky idea take off on the open market. Not to mention he had no objections to nudity, though he preferred his naked encounters to be one-on-one. But today he was distracted by the papers that had arrived unexpectedly in the morning, jarring him out of an ordinary day’s work and straight backward to the previous decade.

Back to Kristine.

“How many people are attending this event?” Michigan asked.

“Two hundred.” Sean glanced around the neat and upscale gallery, noting there were multiple exits, one presumably to a back storeroom, and two directly to the exterior. The front of the gallery was all glass, which was, of course, problematic for security, but generally speaking, he didn’t think Maddock Security would have any issues securing the opening night of the Ian Bainbridge exhibit and charity fund-raiser.

He didn’t need to be here, frankly. His team had already done their research on the event and the facility, and had put a plan in place for the party Friday evening, but Sean hadn’t been able to resist stopping in himself for a look when he saw the name of the event coordinator who had hired the firm. Kristine. His former wife, who wasn’t technically his former wife, since they had never legally filed for divorce, despite it being ten years since their impetuous and short-lived marriage had ended. They had parted ways after a rip-roaring fight, two headstrong personalities barely out of their teens, and as far as he knew, Kristine had been living in Vegas since their split, heading west on impulse. That was Kristine—action first, thought second.

It was one of the things about her that had made him fall in love with her initially—that she was so much the opposite of him. He was methodical, pragmatic, a self-made millionaire who had been accused of being coldhearted a time or two. Though, back when they had been together, he had been broke, with nothing more than a vision and a determination to work hard. He hadn’t been as cynical, as remote as he was now, and there had been nothing cold about him when it came to Kristine. She had made him hot with passion, and warm with the most intense emotion he’d ever known. He didn’t fall in love easily. In fact, it was safe to say he had not been in love since, which was why he’d never bothered to pursue tracking her down and obtaining a legal divorce. The technicality didn’t matter, because he hadn’t been serious about another woman in the following years, maybe because, at the tender age of twenty-one, he had learned there was something to the adage about fools and love. He had fallen hard and gotten his heart ripped out of his chest and stomped on.

Not to mention, somewhere in the back of his mind, Sean had always assumed Kristine would come back and they would resume their relationship because he hadn’t done anything wrong. She hadn’t done anything wrong. They’d had essentially a juvenile fight that had exploded beyond all comprehension, and surely that couldn’t be the end of their relationship.

Yet, ten years had managed to slide by, one day at a time while he had been building his business from the ground up and pretending he wasn’t lonely. He had no idea what Kristine had been doing.

Sean hadn’t known she was back in town until divorce papers had arrived at his office three hours ago, and it had given him a hell of a jolt. Most days, the past was relegated to the past, and he didn’t give much thought to Kristine, so to have her suddenly thrust into his day had been very distracting. It surprised him that she had the callousness to serve him papers without at least a phone call. So much time had passed—she couldn’t possibly think he was still angry over the way their relationship had ended. They had just been kids. Then again, maybe it was so long ago, she didn’t think it was important enough to let him know she was finally requesting a divorce, which, frankly, should have happened years ago.

Maybe it was just something on her To Do list that she’d finally gotten around to. Divorce Sean Finally. Check.

While he had been mulling over all of that, and the fact her address listed on the divorce papers was one in Minneapolis, not that far from his own condo, he had seen her name on the contract for the gallery event as he’d gone through the paperwork with Michigan.

Those three pieces of information had created more awareness of Kristine than he’d had in years, and before he’d given much thought to it, he’d decided he wanted to—no, had to—see her.

So here he was, agitated and not entirely sure why, his tie feeling too tight, hand in his pocket to hide the way his thumb drummed on his thigh. He didn’t like feeling out of control. At all. And the way he dealt with feeling out of control was to wrest it back by throwing other people off their guard. It was how he had built a successful business. It was what he was doing here now, watching catering professionals in the back of the gallery bustle about setting up tables, with crisp white linens and champagne flutes turned upside down on their rims.

But he was determined not to let Kristine see how unnerved he was. That was the rule in business. You kept your hand close to your chest and you charmed, with a casual attitude, as if the outcome of the deal didn’t matter to you one bit.

He wasn’t even sure why this outcome did matter. But before he signed those divorce papers, he wanted to look Kristine in the eye, see the woman she had become. Call him nostalgic. Call him a masochist. Call him simply curious.

Michigan was scrolling through his phone. “I’ll go ask the staff where the event coordinator is so you can speak to her. What’s her name again?”

For a second Sean didn’t answer, because the door to the back room had opened and Kristine had emerged from it, a sign in her hand almost as big as she was, shielding her beautiful and curvaceous body from his view. But he could see her face, and it punched him in the gut to see the harried smile she gave a staff member, her fiery-red hair piled on her head, tendrils falling down the back of her neck as she turned and pointed to something on the table.

She looked more mature, her style more refined, the angles of her face sharper, her narrow skirt emphasizing her hourglass figure. It was hard to believe, but she was even more beautiful now than at nineteen.

It didn’t surprise him that, in addition to the powerful wave of confusion he felt, there was an instant desire for her, making his mouth hot and his dick hard. Even from across the room, his body responded to her, and he flashed back to all those nights where she had snuggled up against him in bed in their lousy studio apartment, her bright smile taking the edge off whatever dilemmas had come his way during the day. Kristine was not pencil-thin, but sported some serious curves, which, when she turned sideways for a minute, were perfectly displayed for him. Curves that she seemed to have learned to show to advantage in the tight knee-length skirt she wore and the floral button-up sweater. There were hips and breasts and a whole lot of mouthwatering backside.

She had been a pretty and sparkling young woman when he had married her, but damn, she had grown into an absolute bombshell. Sean itched to touch her. Everywhere.

“Her name is Kristine Zimmerman Maddock,” he told Michigan. “My wife.”

“Excuse me?” Michigan asked, sounding very confused. “You’re married?”

Yes. And no.

But Sean didn’t answer him, because at that moment, Kristine glanced toward the front of the gallery and spotted him. Even from twenty feet away, he saw her start, her hands slipping on the sign and almost dropping it. A man in the black-and-white waiter uniform moved to help her, but she waved him off, her eyes still on Sean.

He smiled and raised his eyebrows and nodded to her in acknowledgment. “Michigan, you can go back to the office. I’ll be there in a bit.”

“You want me to leave?” Michigan sounded nervous.

Sean didn’t need to look at him to know he would be pushing his glasses up on his nose. It was a nervous tic he had when he wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Normally, Sean was patient with him, and encouraging, because he thought Michigan showed a lot of potential as a businessman, but right now, he couldn’t be bothered. All he could think about was Kristine. Standing in front of him for the first time in ten years.

Without responding, Sean strode forward.

Kristine darted a glance left and right, as if she was looking for an exit route. Her cheeks were flushed pink. For a second, he was distracted by the sign, which announced the exhibit with a photograph of a group of people naked in a tree. The woman straddling that tree trunk did not look comfortable at all. But Sean shoved that thought aside as he approached the woman he had loved, and promptly invaded her personal space.

“Hello, Kristine.”

2

THAT VOICE.

Kristine felt a shiver rush through her, further flustering her. That voice was exactly the same as she remembered it, whiskey smooth, confident, sexy as hell. The voice she had heard in her dreams night after night for the first year after she had been stupid enough to run scared away from him during their big blowout fight. One of her trademark impulsive moves.

She couldn’t believe Sean was right in front of her. Standing, frankly, too close for any sort of appropriate public behavior.

Her heart was racing. Her palms were sweating, the Plexiglas-covered sign in her hands slipping. Her cheeks were burning. Her nipples were hard. And she was speechless, which for her was a rare event, occurring only once a decade during a full moon. Or the season finale of The Bachelor.

Oh, God. Speak, she commanded herself. Say something, you total idiot.

“Sean,” she said. Only it wasn’t a confident and professional-sounding statement. It was a breathy, sexy, “lay me down in the tall grass and make me forget your name and mine” kind of whisper.

His nostrils flared. His eyes darkened.

Her arms wobbled and she blamed it on the weight of the sign. But the truth was it was Sean.

He was just as gorgeous as she remembered, though he looked older, obviously, and more put together. His jaw sterner, his hair, once unruly, now short and controlled. He looked as if he had filled out, his arms more muscular, shoulders broader, more commanding. When they had been together, he had favored jeans, expression T-shirts and Converse sneakers, but now he wore a designer suit in black, his dress shirt a blue pinstripe, the tie a rich dark blue. It didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t chosen a red tie—he would probably think it a cliché. He looked better in blue anyway. It made his pale blue eyes that much more arresting in contrast to his dark hair.

So much so that she glanced away, unable to hold his gaze. It made her feel way too vulnerable, way too confused in a way she wouldn’t have expected. So much time had passed, she hadn’t expected to feel much of an emotional reaction to him, despite the fact she had been madly in love with him once upon a time. Maybe it was just the sheer unexpected appearance that had her off-kilter.

What the hell was he doing here anyway? This event was small, a tiny drop in the ginormous bucket of his business ventures. When she had been hired by the gallery as their events coordinator two weeks ago, the previous employee had already set up the bulk of the Bainbridge event, including security, given the photographer’s notoriety for attracting protestors. Because of her history with Sean, she had felt a bit voyeuristic to see Maddock Security in the paperwork, but even when she had to re-sign an addendum to the original contract, she hadn’t expected that Sean would ever be made aware of her hand in the party.

Wrong. She had been oh-so clearly wrong.

The urge to drop the sign and run into the back room was overwhelming, and clearly Sean knew it.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in a charming smile. He took another step toward her.

Instinctively, Kristine shifted back, panicking at the thought of him getting close enough to touch her, close enough that she might smell his masculine scent.

“I have work to do. In the back.”

“That’s not much of a greeting after ten years, Kristine. At least say hello.”

God, why was she panicking? She was a grown woman, damn it, and Sean wasn’t going to bite her. She didn’t think. But it was a knee-jerk reaction she always had, to run away from an uncomfortable situation. It was her specialty, a family trait passed down from her father and her father’s father. The Zimmerman motto was definitely when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Right out of the room. Or state. Or country.

It was something she was working very hard to no longer do, so she swallowed and collected herself. The shock of seeing Sean was wearing off, replaced by pure embarrassment. And an ache that sprang out of nowhere, which she refused to acknowledge. “Hello, Sean. How are you doing?”

The sign slipped in her hand again and Sean took it from her. She resisted for a second, but he tugged hard and relieved her of its weight. Then held it up to study it. His eyebrows rose. Kristine knew exactly what he was looking at—a dozen people covered in soot perched in a tree. Naked. Personally, she found Ian Bainbridge’s work intriguing, but she knew a man like Sean, who saw things in black and white, would find it bizarre.

But he didn’t say anything about the photo. He just propped it against the nearest wall and turned back to her. “I’m fine. You look well, Kristy.” He reached out and brushed a stray hair off her cheek.

Kristine felt herself heat under his scrutiny, goose bumps rising on her flesh from his simple touch. He touched her the way he had all those years ago, naturally, as if he had the right to, with a tenderness she hadn’t been expecting, and it made her feel myriad emotions. Surprise, appreciation, melancholy and even arousal, as if her body remembered, despite the gap in time how it should respond to him.

“Thank you, I am,” she managed to say, forcing her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “You, too. So what brings you by the gallery?”

He didn’t answer the question immediately. Instead, he lifted his arms and put his hands firmly on her shoulders. “It’s good to see you.”

Then he leaned forward and brushed his lips over her cheek. Oh, God, he was kissing her cheek. He was so close, so familiar, yet...not. She was opening her arms to hug him in return when suddenly he was gone. The warmth on his face disappeared and was replaced by a neutral expression.

“Tim will be in charge of the security team,” he said. “He’ll be here by seven on Friday to station my men. You have a lot of entry points to the gallery so that is my only concern. I suggest you lock the front door whenever you’re working in here alone the rest of the week and Friday until you’re ready for the guests to arrive.”

Blinking, Kristine stared at him for a second, trying to process the sudden change from personal to business. Not that he had said anything truly personal, really. But he had looked at her in an intimate way. Disappointed, then annoyed with herself for the feeling, she nodded. “Sure.”

Who gave a shit about security?

She certainly didn’t. Not at the moment. Well, actually she did give a huge shit, considering this was a super important event for the gallery, and if she screwed this up, she would be fired, and then she would be destitute and living on the street. But at the moment, that didn’t matter. All she could think about was that Sean’s dimple seemed to have disappeared. Was that possible? Could a dimple simply fill itself in?

It just seemed to her that after ten years, the small talk might extend beyond an obligatory query into her health and a generic compliment before skipping straight to business.

“Will the caterers be here again tomorrow?”

Apparently, he didn’t feel the same way.

Focus. On work, not Sean’s serious sexiness. She could do this. Moving forward, that was her, and he obviously felt the same way. He didn’t appear to have any interest in an extended stroll down memory lane. He didn’t even seem to want to jog it, let alone stroll.

“No,” she said. “They’re only setting up. They’ll be back around six on Friday with the food.” She strove for a breezy and casual tone, studying him from beneath her eyelashes. It was bizarre to see the man he had morphed into, to realize they had once been intimately connected, physically and emotionally. It felt surreal to finally see him face-to-face. She had been back in Minnesota for only three weeks, and she had been wondering how to go about contacting Sean. Even though it had been a decade, she wanted to be courteous and give him a heads-up about the divorce papers he would be served, but she hadn’t been sure what to say. Whether to be matter-of-fact, funny or friendly.

It didn’t feel necessary to tell him her exact reasons for suddenly filing. That she had realized in order to grow and become the success she knew she could be, she had to let him go. Walk away from the security he had been and still represented to her. Mostly, she had rehearsed phrases like “moving on,” “wanting to allow you the freedom you deserve,” and “long overdue.”

In all her considered and discarded thoughts on approaching him, though, never once had she visualized she would be in an art gallery surrounded by a mass-nudity exhibit while they discussed the catering access to the event. It was so surreal, she couldn’t be entirely sure she wasn’t dreaming. She glanced down to make sure she wasn’t standing there in her underwear.

Which suddenly and inappropriately reminded her of just how smoking hot the chemistry between the two of them had been during their relationship. Sean had been an excellent lover, and he’d been only twenty-one at the time. She briefly imagined all the bedroom skills he might have improved on over the years and shivered at the goose bumps that rose on her skin.

Not a good way of thinking. Moving forward, that’s what she was doing.

The divorce papers were supposed to be served to him tomorrow, which made this a perfect opportunity to broach the subject with him. Truthfully, she should be glad he had been put in her path. Now she didn’t have to call him to discuss it. She could tell him in person, which was better anyway. You didn’t marry someone then dissolve that union without at least looking each other in the eye as you discussed it, no matter how much time had passed. Once they were done with the business details, she would ask him to go for a cup of coffee so they could talk.

That was the right thing to do, and it reflected her new determination to face tough choices head-on, instead of hiding or running away.

Sean stopped eyeing the gallery and slid his hand into his pocket, the picture of casual confidence.

“Do you have a list of the employees the caterers are sending?” he asked.

“No.”

“You should.”

She supposed that made sense. But frankly, it hadn’t occurred to her. She had been too worried about all the other nine thousand little details that came with planning a party of this size. The security issue seemed like something that, well, the security firm should handle. Her mind just didn’t work in those ways. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how her mind worked. That was half the problem. She had been a flaky kid raised by a flaky mother, and now she was a flaky adult.

It wasn’t that she meant to be flaky. It’s just that she wasn’t very organized. She liked to think her talents were more in creative ventures and in making people happy. Since she was little, everyone had always commented she made them smile, that she was a ray of sunshine.

“Okay,” she said when she realized the pause had stretched too long and his relaxed posture had tensed. Sean was smiling at her, but Sean was also smoldering. Whether it was anger or desire, she wasn’t sure, though she couldn’t imagine he was actually still angry with her after all this time. Maybe it was just his efficiency face. She wasn’t as well versed with him as a businessman.

Whatever he felt, it bubbled under the surface of control he had such mastery of. She had always envied him that, but now she wished if he were frustrated or angry, he would just explode at her, so they could get this awkwardness over between them. On the other hand, maybe it was naive to think there wouldn’t be a significant amount of discomfort, given the huge passage of time.

Maybe the discomfort was purely on her part. Maybe Sean was just doing his job and was annoyed that she clearly didn’t know how to handle the event security.

“Congratulations on all your business success,” she told him, sincerely. At random intervals over the years, she had heard from friends, or seen on social media, what he was doing, and she had felt a spark of pride for all his accomplishments. He was a prime example of a man who had started with nothing, and through hard work, now ran a multimillion-dollar corporation. Pride at the man he’d become had been paired with the realization that the demise of their relationship had probably been the best thing for him, as she was monstrously unsuited to be a corporate wife.

“Thanks,” he said, his expression inscrutable. “So how did you end up an events coordinator? And what brings you back from Sin City?”

“It’s the only thing I’m qualified to do,” she told him, truthfully. “I can plan a party—that’s about it.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “That’s not true.”

“Hey, I plan a damn good party,” she said, with a smile, even though she knew that wasn’t what he meant. Of course, she wasn’t sure specifically what he meant as her potential talents, come to think of it. She didn’t think it was a sexual innuendo, because honestly, she’d just been enthusiastic in that arena, not skilled or experienced. But at nineteen, she hadn’t been bursting with various practical talents.

Sean laughed. “Funny. No, I mean I’m sure you could do whatever you set your mind to. That was always your setback—you didn’t believe in yourself enough.”

It was difficult to explain to Mr. Moneybags that while he was good at virtually every business venture he touched, she had always lacked the focus required to stick with something. But she wasn’t looking for sympathy. It was what it was, and she was trying hard to change, to stick around long enough to make something work.

And she didn’t need him psychoanalyzing her.

“I think it’s safe to say I’m not as insecure as I was at nineteen when you knew me, thank God.” She still hated her ass, because it was the consistency of flan, but otherwise she had grown accepting of who she was, as flawed and imperfect as she may be. She was also kind, generous and quick to laugh, so there.

Sean didn’t respond. He simply stared at her, because that was what Sean did. He waited. He bent people to his will. He commanded. He used charm and confidence to get exactly what he wanted, which at one time had been her. The question was, what did he want today? His expression was too enigmatic for her to read.

With no sign to hold any longer, Kristine felt self-conscious, her hands fluttering in front of her chest. She wore a black pencil skirt and a purple floral sweater set with a respectable amount of cleavage on display. Sean’s eyes followed her fingers.

She couldn’t stand the silence anymore and started to babble. “You’re right. I’ll get the name of all the staff. I suppose I should know better. This isn’t my first rodeo, so to speak.”

“I don’t remember you that way,” he said.

“What?” Kristine was confused. Did he mean as a rodeo rider? “What way?”

“Insecure.” He shook his head to emphasize the point. “You always knew who you were. I admired that. Being insecure is different from doubting yourself.”

His words warmed her more than she would have expected. “Thanks. But don’t make me sound more mature than I was.” Unsticking her tongue from the roof of her mouth, she said, “Look, Sean, before you leave I want to discuss something with you—

But he cut her off. “Show me the back room,” he said with a casual smile. “Just to make sure there are no issues for Friday.”

Hmm. Did he want this to be strictly business? Yet he had brought up the past. Though it had been a casual enough comment. Maybe it was better if they concentrated on the matter at hand for the moment. “Sure,” she said, forcing herself to sound breezy, and strode away. He followed her and she made a point to pause and speak to the catering manager. “Allison, I’ll need a list of the servers who will be here opening night. What time do you think you’ll be finished setting up?”

Allison nodded with a smile. “Sure, no problem. Actually, we’ll be done in about ten minutes.”

“You can go out the back then, and I’ll call you tomorrow if I want any changes done. Thanks.” There, that sounded professional. Like she knew what she was doing. Which she did, in theory.

Once in the storage area, she turned and gestured with both hands. “Here it is. Just the one exit.”

His shuttered gaze took in the small room. There were art pieces from the previous exhibit under drop cloths, a desk for the curator and a small coffee-break area with a bistro table and a mini fridge. There was also an employee restroom, metal shelving for lighting and mounting hardware and leftover paint remnants. The gallery’s staff was small, and Kristine had been hired to do essentially whatever was needed on a weekly basis, including PR and ordering supplies.

“What’s in there?” he asked, pointing to a door.

“It’s a closet.”

He started toward it.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked. “The gallery has done these types of events monthly for years without any issues.”

“Ian Bainbridge has a morality organization threatening to disrupt the party. They’ve been known to deface art they find offensive and attack the artist himself. Plus, he has a documented stalker. This is my job, Kristine. Nothing is going to happen while my team is here. That is a guarantee I provide.”

Except that the morality organization was run by Kristine’s own mother, and she was pretty sure it was a committee of one. Sean obviously didn’t know that, and she was not about to enlighten him.

No one needed to know that, least of all her ex.

Kristine opened the door to the closet, which was a walk-in and served as a secondary storage area for things like mops and paper towels. Stepping in, she turned. “It’s—

Sean was literally inches away from her and she forgot what she was going to say, sucking her breath sharply. “Oh, hello!”

He was moving forward still, forcing her to back up until she was against the far wall under an exterior window, trying to keep a few feet of space between them. She laughed, meaning to sound cavalier, but it came out as nervous as she felt. She was far too aware of Sean and how close his mouth was to hers. He gave a sly smile, as if her nervousness amused him. With one hand, he reached behind him and closed the closet door.

Not good. A closed space, an old lover... She couldn’t remain professional under those circumstances. Unless it was a professional whimperer. “Sean. We should talk, but I don’t think this is the time or the place. Let’s finish up here and go for coffee.” In a public place. With a table between them.

“I don’t want to talk.” His voice was slow and sensual, and she saw the burn of desire in his eyes as he ate up the space between them.

“No?” Damn it. She knew that look. He was going to kiss her.

Sean touched a stray strand of her hair trailing down her neck, and she shivered, the urge to close her eyes and sink into his embrace overwhelming. He smelled different than she remembered, but the sensation of being close to him was familiar, tantalizing.

Then he tugged her hair, playful, yet bordering on harder than necessary. “You darkened your hair color.”

“I was having a dark moment,” she whispered.

“I like it. Much more than those divorce papers you sent me.” He turned back to the doorknob, twisted it and pushed the door. “Did you hear that? It sounded like the door was just locked.”

Nothing happened. To the door, that is.

But Kristine saw spots in front of her eyes. “What divorce papers?”

“What the hell?” He shoved the door harder, ramming his shoulder against it in irritation. “Does this door stick?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of.” And she hadn’t heard anything over the sound of her own mortification. But if she was locked in this room with Sean it was going to be the definition of awkward, because she was pretty sure he was saying he had received divorce papers from her, which was not supposed to happen. Not until she’d had a chance to talk to him first. “What divorce papers?”

“The ones that dropped on my desk this morning.”

Oops. Why did that not surprise her? Nothing ever went the way she intended.

Sean rattled the door again. He shoved. He kicked. Turning, he gave her a seductive and somewhat angry smile. “We’re locked in.”

Locked in? Alone with Sean?

Kristine could have sworn she felt an egg drop down her fallopian tube in excited feminine anticipation.

It occurred to her that perhaps she wasn’t as over Sean as she had thought.

3

“HOW CAN IT BE LOCKED?” Kristine brushed him aside to check the knob herself.

Sean shrugged, wondering why he wasn’t more concerned. He had a meeting in an hour, a million emails to answer, and yet he wasn’t panicking. In fact, he was rather enjoying the thought of spending time with Kristine. A few moments to study the woman she had become before they both went on with the rest of their lives. “It’s locked. The dead bolt has been thrown on the other side. I can see it.”

“What? How could that happen?” She turned and looked at him, licking her lips and shifting to the left.

“My assumption would be that unless the building has a precocious ghost, someone shot the door bolt closed.”

“But why?” Kristine stuck her face to the door, trying to peer through the sliver between the frame and the door.

Her actions caused her backside to rise enticingly toward him, black fabric stretched tight over her perky ass. He tried not to get distracted, and failed. The chemistry between them had been off the charts when they’d been married, with many a weekend lost to satisfying sex. So it didn’t surprise him that he immediately had a hard-on. But he managed to focus on the problem at hand. They were trapped. Right. “I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question. So, what is the caterer’s name again?”

“Allison.”

“Why don’t you call for her? Maybe she’s still here. She said she was going to be around for another ten minutes.” Sean stuck his hands in his pockets to prevent himself from reaching out and sliding them across her ass. It was strange to be this close to her for the first time since their split. His body, his head, all wanted to pick up where they had left off, yet nothing was the same after so much life had happened to both of them. He had no right to touch her.

He was angry. Frustrated with himself. Why was he immediately having this reaction to Kristine, when for years, he had found himself merely going through the motions with women he dated?

It was completely illogical, and he had a hard time accepting it. He wanted answers, and ironically, this might be the perfect way to get them. What was it about Kristine that drew him on such a cellular level? Why had he never been able to forget her?

Maybe because their ending had been so abrupt, so seemingly unnecessary. Marriage interruptus.

“Allison! Allison, are you still out there?”

Kristine yelled for the caterer in a voice so booming, it made Sean grin. He hadn’t ever heard her use that particular tone. She was clearly desperate.

Kristine put her hands on her hips in distress. “I don’t even have my phone with me.”

“The gallery sounds quiet. They obviously all left.”

“Do you have your phone?”

He reached into his jacket pocket. “Yes.”

“What am I saying? Of course you do,” she said. “You did everything but shower with your phone when we were together, and that was even before internet access on cell phones.”

What was that supposed to mean? Sean frowned at her. “I don’t know if my phone will work,” he said, just because her sweeping assessment irritated him. “These concrete buildings are hell on reception.”

“This is a nightmare,” she declared. Then she glanced at his phone in his hand. “Do you remember when I bedazzled your phone as a surprise? God, you were so pissed off at me.”

Oh, he remembered. He remembered not having time to pick the jewels off it before he went to his business internship, and his boss had seen it. “I seem to remember little jeweled skull stickers, yes. I also remember you going through my phone.” That had been the cause of their last monumental fight. Her unwarranted suspicions that he had been cheating on her. The hurt he had felt had been overwhelming, the anger loud and immediate.

Kristine leaned against the door, blowing out a huff of breath so that her bangs rose slightly. “Well, yeah, there was that. But you were so territorial about your phone, and you started working out five days a week. It was a logical conclusion for a nineteen-year-old.”

“I hid my phone because I didn’t want you bedazzling it again,” he said drily. “But I don’t imagine you want to dredge up all that ancient history. It’s time to move on, right?”

Contrition crossed her face. “Look, Sean, you weren’t supposed to get those papers until tomorrow. I was planning to call you today and ask you to meet me for coffee so I could tell you myself. There is no way I wanted you to be served impersonal papers like that.”

Sean studied her face. He believed her. She looked sincere. Kristine was a lot of things—impulsive, silly, generous, sweet, afraid of commitment. But she was not a liar. He firmly believed that. “You don’t owe me anything at this point, Kristine. But I admit, it caught me off guard.”

“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “For a lot of things.”

He had thought he wanted her to apologize, but for some reason, hearing the words annoyed him. Their breakup had been ridiculous, the result of their immaturity, and he ached for what could have been. He didn’t want to go there. Couldn’t go there. So he gave her a sardonic smile. “You can make it up to me, you know. We might as well do something while we’re stuck in here.”

“I don’t have a deck of cards with me,” she said, even though she clearly knew what he was suggesting. Her eyebrows rose and she gave him a smile.

“I was thinking of something a little more hands-on. For old times’ sake?”

But Kristine just laughed. “Seriously? Here I just thought we could chat over coffee. Nothing about your suggestion is a good idea, if you weren’t joking, which I’m pretty sure you were.”

Actually, he wasn’t. But she was right. It would be a terrible idea to go there again. It might be amazing, and then he would be further ruined for other women; or it might be awkward, and then they really wouldn’t be able to look each other in the eye. Because the truth was, he would enjoy establishing some sort of adult friendship with Kristine.

“Well, you do know me. Full of jokes 24/7.” They both knew that was the furthest thing from the truth. Lots of adjectives could be used to describe him, but funny was not one of them. “I’m sure I could find better uses for my tongue than cracking jokes, though.” It wasn’t appropriate, but hell. There were no guidelines for proper behavior when locked in a storeroom with your ex.

Her eyes widened. “As much as I appreciate your wit, we’re trapped in here, and I’m starting to freak out because I don’t think the air quality is great.”

The air quality? He was picturing his mouth on her breast and she was preoccupied with stale air? Okay, so fooling around wasn’t going to happen. It had been a long shot. He shouldn’t even want to have sex with her, but there was no denying he did. He wanted to take her against that door hard and fast, then do it all over again, nice and slow the second time, driving her to the brink over and over until she whimpered with need and pleasure.

But she was wrong if she thought he was using sex as a distraction from discussing their impending divorce. The two had nothing to do with each other. He could still crave her physically even though their relationship was long over. The truth was, he was starting to think he wouldn’t be able to move on with his life until he purged the sexual memory of her from his head and from his cock.

If he ever wanted to move on and have a quality relationship with another woman, he needed to relegate Kristine and her body firmly to the past.

And he could think of only one way to do that.

But he needed to figure out how to convince her of that fact without sending her running for the hills again. Even trapped in this room, if he spooked her, she’d likely crawl up the metal shelving to escape him. No, it wasn’t going to happen here, in this room. But he had every intention of taking her up on that cup of coffee to discuss their divorce, and he had every intention of that meeting ending up with them in bed.

Unless she was dating someone, which was why she suddenly wanted the divorce. There was an unpleasant thought.

“No panicking. You’re not going to suffocate. There’s a decent-size window. This is no big deal. I’ll call my assistant and we can wait for him to get here. Or I’ll just lift you up and you can crawl through the window if you’re feeling impatient.”

“What? Are you insane?” Kristine eyed the window and snorted. “As you are well aware, I am not a tiny woman. My hips will never fit through that opening.”

He was definitely acquainted with all of her delicious curves, and he was positive her hips would fit. “Of course they will. Come on, you got this, no problem.”

“Call your assistant.”

He was already hitting Michigan’s name on his phone. “Hey, yes, can you return to Collective? The event coordinator and I somehow got locked in the storage room. I’m assuming the door can be opened from the other side, but just in case, maybe you should call a locksmith on your way over because I’m not even sure how the door got locked in the first place.”

“You’re locked in a storage room? With your wife?” Michigan sounded very nervous.

Kristine was eyeing the window suspiciously.

“Yes. Where are you? How soon do you think you can get here?”

“It’s rush hour. I’m in some heavy traffic. I have to get off the highway and turn around...probably twenty minutes. Minimum.”

“No problem, thanks. Call me when you’re here.”

He hung up the phone. “Twenty minutes at least. He has to turn around and traffic is heavy this time of day.”

“I guess that’s the simplest thing to do. Calling the police would probably be a waste of law enforcement resources, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

“Definitely. This is a nonemergency.”

Kristine had perched her bum on the very edge of the metal shelf. She looked uncomfortable and unbelievably sexy, her tenuous position causing her breasts to spill forward out of her sweater. “So why now?” he asked her.

“Why now, what?” She looked at him blankly.

“Why a divorce now? Are you engaged to be married to someone else?”

She wobbled on the shelf and grabbed it for better balance. “No. Not at all.”

“Then why?” There had to be a catalyst. She didn’t just wake up one day and think she needed a divorce. He certainly never had. Initially, he had been too raw to even consider it, then he had felt stubbornly that it was her responsibility since she was the one who had technically walked out. Eventually, it had just seemed unnecessary, and a task that fell by the wayside when he had seven thousand other things to do on a weekly basis.

If he were brutally honest with himself, he had assumed Kristine would seek him out when she got into a scrape. She had always needed him to bail her out of one disaster after another, and he had thought it was his ace in the hole. She would need him.

But she hadn’t.

Kristine pursed her lips. “It was pointed out to me that not everyone is okay with dating a woman who is technically married.”

Ah, so that was it. “A stickler, huh?” Sean didn’t blame the guy. It was a little weird, but damn, it had been ten years. It was a marriage in the courthouse records only. “We haven’t even seen each other in a decade.”

“I know. I explained that, but he thought it was too revealing that we haven’t divorced.”

“Or more likely lazy,” he said. Then, because he was curious, nothing more, he asked, “Did you love him?”

She shrugged. “No. There wasn’t time to love him. A month into dating, and he ditched me when he found out my legal status.”

“Why didn’t you tell him right away?” Sean asked, a little astonished. “I tell women on the first date. No one ever cares.”

Kristine snorted. “Of course they don’t. You’re wealthy and hot.”

His jaw dropped. “So you think the women I date are shallow?”

Kristine wrinkled her nose. “How should I know?”

Annoyed, he stripped off his jacket, folded it and draped it over a metal chair, then he walked to the window and turned the latch to shove it open. He was insulted and not entirely sure why.

“I’m not crawling through that window,” Kristine said, sounding mulish. “I won’t fit and there is a four-foot drop to the alley. Why don’t you crawl through it?”

“I definitely won’t fit. My shoulders are too wide.”

“Your shoulders are smaller than my hips. I have hippo hips.”

That was it. He’d been keeping the lid on his control, but his emotion boiled over without warning and he rounded on her. “Stop making it sound like you’re three thousand pounds,” he said, irritated, and suddenly understanding what she was saying about stale air. It did feel stuffy in the room, but maybe that was just tension. “I hate it when you do that. You’re a goddamn beautiful woman with a body that stops traffic, so enough already. Not every woman is built like a twelve-year-old boy, and some of us are damn grateful for that.”

Kristine blinked at him, her eyes wide. “Oh.”

Sean immediately felt guilty for raising his voice. She looked so stricken. “Kristy,” he said, falling into her familiar nickname. “If you weren’t so gorgeous I wouldn’t right now be wishing I had you naked beneath me.”

She sucked in her breath. Sean stepped toward her, blood rushing south, his cock aching painfully. He wanted to taste her, take her mouth with his and push his tongue between her soft lips.

“This is a bad idea,” she said, in an uncertain whisper.

“That never stopped us before.” He took another step, stalking her like a predator.

But she suddenly started, scooting around him.

“Okay, lift me up. I’ll try the window.”

Sean was disappointed, but he still grinned. Clearly, being alone with him even for twenty minutes was such a temptation she was willing to tackle the window. It would totally suck if she were unaffected, but she obviously was not. This he could work with. She still had some feelings for him, even if they were simply sexual. He could fan the flames of her desire, coax her into his bed, and say goodbye to their marriage and Kristine properly and on a positive note.

He had enjoyed their marriage, and frankly, he didn’t want it to end in bitterness. If she was determined to divorce him, then he wanted to go out with a bang. Literally.

So he squatted on his haunches and cupped his hands together to make a perch for her. Kristine kicked off her heels, and while she gave his hands a dubious look, she took a deep breath and put a foot into his hold. Her skin was warm, and her knee bumped his chest. She squawked as her balance failed and her foot fell onto the floor.

“You have to hold on to my shoulders.”

Kristine gave him a look, as if she was convinced this was a ploy to get into her panties. Which he supposed it was, though he’d had absolutely nothing to do with the door being locked. He wasn’t taking the blame for that.

Now that he thought about it, why was the door locked? It didn’t seem like something a caterer who didn’t normally work in the building would do. He’d been so distracted by seeing Kristine that the obvious had bypassed his attention. “So this Allison, have you worked with her before?” he asked Kristine as she stepped into his foot again, fingers lightly perched on his shoulders.

“No. I’ve had this job for only two weeks. I just got back to Minneapolis.”

Well, at least she hadn’t been fifteen minutes away from him for months without communicating. That would have been something of a kick in the nuts to hear. “Has the gallery used this caterer before?”

“I think this is the caterer they always use, yes.”

Huh. So was it really just an accident? He supposed it must be, unless the caterer was an international art thief clearing out the gallery as they spoke. For a second, he wondered if they should call the cops, but the gallery sounded dead silent and Kristine distracted him from his thought processes. She wasn’t doing anything. One foot was still on the floor, and her waist was still tantalizingly close to his face. His mouth.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. What am I supposed to do?”

He grinned. “You have to reach for the ledge. You pull and I’ll lift you up.”

“This is not going to work. Forget it.”

His phone rang. It was Michigan. “Excuse me, Kristy, this is my assistant.” He tapped at his phone to answer it. “Hello?”

“There’s been an accident and I’m sitting here completely stopped. Looks like a semi rolled and three lanes are blocked. So, um, it may be a little longer than twenty minutes. I’d guesstimate an hour.”

Sean should be more annoyed than he was. “Okay, thanks. Sorry.”

He hung up and said to Kristine, “There’s an accident on the highway and Michigan is in the thick of it. He estimates an hour before he gets back here.”

“Oh, geez.” She eyed the window. “That’s a long time without air.”

He wanted to laugh. “There is plenty of air. It’s fine.”

“I’m a little claustrophobic. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. I’ll try the window.” She took a deep breath and went for it, reaching for the ledge and attempting to haul herself up while he gave her a boost.

Sean waited until she had a grip on the window before he let go of her foot and stood so he could grip her waist for stability and to give her an extra lift. But Kristine panicked and started slipping, her feet flailing.

“Ack!” she screamed.

“Damn it,” he muttered with a grimace as her heel connected with his groin.

“Sorry,” she said, breathless, scrambling for a purchase on the ledge. But it was a lost cause. Kristine dropped to the floor, stumbling backward into him.

“Okay, we need to rethink our strategy,” he said, readjusting his throbbing cock.

She shot him a dubious look. “Did we have one to start with?”

Sean laughed. “No. Probably not.”

She smiled at him fully and without inhibition for the first time since he had walked into the gallery, and damn, but it was a thing of beauty. Kristine possessed the kind of smile that could make even the surliest old man’s blood quicken a little bit. Kids and old people adored her, and Sean had, too. He’d fallen for that smile, and the reappearance of it made him more determined than ever to take her to bed. To get closure. He needed that.

“This would be a lot easier if I wasn’t wearing a skirt,” she added.

“So take it off,” he suggested.

Hey, if you didn’t ask...

“Yeah, great idea. Then I’ll scrape the heck out of my legs on the window. Then when I drop down to the street, I’ll be in my underwear. No, thank you.”

“You’re going to have to hike your skirt up to your waist anyway to swing your leg over, so you’ll still be flashing. I could give you my pants.”

Her eyebrows shot straight up. “What? So then you will be pants-less?”

The idea made sense to him. “Yes. You put on my pants, which will protect your skin and your modesty, then you come around to the front door, and unlock this door to let me out and I put my pants back on.”

“Won’t your pants get ruined? They look expensive.”

Sean shrugged. “Pants can be replaced.” Other things could not.

Pulling his shirt out of his pants, Sean undid his belt and smiled. “Take your skirt off, gorgeous.”

* * *

UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES, Kristine would have loved that type of command. But this was just...weird. The whole situation was so not what she had expected out of this day, and she was having a hard time keeping up. Sean was daring her—it was obvious. He didn’t think she would do it. Or maybe he did think she would. After all, he knew her fairly well, or he had once upon a time, and she was nothing if not impulsive, and always up for proving she had a certain amount of nerve.

The logic was sound. Wearing his pants would keep her from getting scratched up. They were trapped in this room for at least another sixty minutes or so if she didn’t crawl out the window, and she wasn’t lying: enclosed spaces made her nervous. It wasn’t an elevator, that was true, but the idea of being trapped made her heart beat faster and her palms sweat. Not to mention the front door was unlocked, leaving a very expensive exhibit unmonitored. There was tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of photography out there, and for all she knew, it was being stolen right now while she debated whether or not she could handle taking off her skirt in front of her ex—or almost ex—husband.

If she were playing with fire by stripping to her panties in front of him, well, so be it. Her ass was on the line here, quite literally, and she couldn’t afford to lose this job.

So she reached behind to unzip her skirt. “Close your eyes.”

Sean snorted. “Are you joking?”

It was stupid, but she felt self-conscious. She hadn’t been to the gym lately. Okay, ever. Plus she was wearing granny panties. If she were ever to be in the presence of Sean again in her underwear, and she had pictured it on occasion, she had not imagined it would be in a dusty storage room while she wore cotton panties that basically came up to her armpits. She had also imagined herself younger. “No, I’m not.”

“I’m not closing my eyes, so forget it.” Sean unzipped his pants and shoved them down, before stepping out of them. “Here you go. Take ’em or leave ’em.”

Kristine cleared her throat. Maybe he wasn’t actually the one who needed to close his eyes, because she found herself staring quite steadily as Sean stripped to his boxer briefs. His thighs were rock solid, definitely more substantial than they had been at twenty-one, and while the dress socks looked just a tiny bit silly, what those black briefs contained did not make her laugh. That was an erection, and she was fighting the urge to drool. Afraid of what she would sound like if she spoke, she grabbed the pants out of his hands and stepped into them.

She hauled them over her hips, thank God. Buttoning them, she then unzipped her skirt and tried to shimmy it over the pants. It required a lot of skirt tugging and holding the pants in place with a death grip, but in the end, she managed to get the skirt off while keeping the pants on. Glancing down at herself, she had to smile. The pants were too long, tight in the hips, and saggy in the waist. Her midriff was showing between her sweater set and the pants. “Well, this is quite the look.”

“I have you beat,” Sean said. “I’m wearing a dress shirt, tie and cuff links, but no pants.” He turned sideways and took a Roman pose. “GQ will be calling, I have no doubt.”

For a second, Kristine’s heart squeezed, and she allowed herself to remember what it felt like when she and Sean were together, and the casual fun and intimacy marriage had allowed. That had been the plus side of commitment. She knew every gesture he made, every inch of his body, right down to the scar on his chin, which he’d gotten jumping off his parents’ bed as a toddler.

Yet there was still so much she didn’t know about him, not the least of which was why he had been attracted to her, of all women.

“Rawr,” she said in reaction to his pose, then immediately regretted it. That sounded too personal, too familiar.

But Sean didn’t react like he thought it was strange. He just told her, “Thanks. Now climb that wall and liberate us.”

He didn’t bother to squat this time. He just came up behind her and gripped her around the waist.

“Sean!” Good grief, that was a whole lot of Sean all up in her business. Thighs, hands, pecs and another part that started with p were getting very close and personal with her.

She jerked forward so far she almost smacked her nose on the wall when his penis snuggled up into her backside.

“What? I’m lifting you up. Stop wiggling.”

“You can’t lift me—”

He lifted her.

Okay, she stood corrected. Dangling in the air, Kristine grabbed for the ledge, and pulled herself up onto it. She got her upper half where it needed to be, but then her efforts came to a grinding halt. Uh-oh. Thanks, puberty. “Sean, my boobs are stuck.”

He gave a crack of laughter. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, they’re caught beneath me. I need you to lift me up so I can spring them. I can’t go forward until they’re free.” At that moment, she was actually grateful it was Sean she was trapped with, because she didn’t think she could say those words out loud to any other man. A woman? Sure. Her own gender understood the complications of cleavage, but men didn’t understand that what they considered to be their personal playground came with its own setbacks.

“I’m not exactly sure I know what that means, but wrap your legs around my head so you can get a better angle.”

Wrap her legs around his head. Now that brought a pleasant memory or two to mind. “Um...”

“Like this.”

Suddenly, Sean’s head and shoulders nudged their way between her legs. She gripped the ledge harder, palms sweaty from stress and arousal. How could he sound so normal and unaffected? She was splayed across a window ledge, breasts being squeezed against the ledge, booty back in the air, Sean between her legs. It was like performance art or yoga for perverts, and she was enjoying it far too much.

He stood up again, so that she rested on his shoulders, his head bent forward. “Okay, sit up before you snap my neck.”

Kristine sat up, freeing her chest, and clamping her thighs onto the sides of his head to give her a sense of stability. “Is this doomed to failure?” she asked, eyeing the window and doubting her ability to haul herself through it without injury or death. It was possibly the only thing that could distract her from the fact she perched on Sean’s shoulders with his hair tickling her bare midriff.

“Don’t be so quick to throw in the towel,” he said, turning them both sideways so she could access the ledge without him in the way.

Something about his tone made her realize he was not just talking about the window. It made her determined to show Sean she wasn’t a quitter, that for once she could follow up and do something right, that she wasn’t like her mother, with a new project to back and then abandon every other week.

So she got a better grip and hauled herself the rest of the way up onto the ledge, the window frame cutting into her gut. When her head was completely out of the window and she was staring down at concrete, she let out a squawk. “I’m going to fall!”

Sean’s hands firmly gripped her thighs. “Pull your head back! You have to get your leg over the ledge. You can’t go headfirst.”

Good point. She pulled herself back and tried to sit up. This was a lot of work and she didn’t have the core strength to do it. Maybe she should start Pilates. Then again, why would she ever need to climb through a window again? She had a record of not setting foot in a gym in five years; it would be a shame to break that impressive streak.

But with Sean shoving and her hauling, she managed to get her leg up and over the frame so she was straddling the ledge, one leg inside, one outside. Good thing the window was full sized or this would have never worked. Even so, she was hunched over, and her perch wasn’t exactly comfortable. She rocked back and forth. “I think I’m breaking vital parts.”

“Well, we definitely don’t want that.” Without warning, Sean’s hand slid between her legs and under her booty, while his thumb rested quite comfortably on her clitoris.

Kristine screamed and almost fell out the window.

4

SEAN WASN’T ABOUT to let Kristine get hurt trying to crawl out of the window. Or injure any particularly soft spots on her body. So while maybe he didn’t need to grip her precisely where he was, he had her best interests in mind.

And he was nothing if not an opportunist.

“Whoa,” he told her, moving right up against the wall so he could ensure that, if necessary, he could yank her back toward him. He didn’t want her spilling out the window.

“I think I’m okay,” she said, but her voice was shaky. She glanced down at him with limpid eyes. “Though I’m afraid if I shift I might have an orgasm. Could you move your thumb, please?”

Sean laughed. Leave it to Kristine to tell it like it was. “I don’t want you to fall.”

“Your thumb isn’t holding me up. And you’re not playing fair.”

That gave him immense satisfaction. “I wasn’t aware we were playing. I thought we were trying to get out of this room so this photography event can happen and we can get divorced.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re definitely playing a game. Only I don’t know what it is. You know I suck at strategizing. I would be the first person off Survivor because I don’t understand scheming.”

“I’m not scheming.” Not much, anyway. “I am legitimately trying to keep you from falling. And I am legitimately using it as a reason to touch your body.” He stroked his thumb up and down, slowly. “It doesn’t seem like you mind.”

“Just because my body responds to you in some sort of sexual recognition doesn’t mean it makes sense for us to do this. We should talk.”

They could talk. And then he could make love to her. Worked for him. “Right now? My hand is going numb and I imagine your ass is doing the same.”

Kristine frowned, but she shook her head. “This isn’t over.”

He’d never thought it was. What should have been a fight and reconciliation had just ended with the fight, and he’d spent years wondering why. Did she even realize how loaded that sounded? “Agreed.” Slowly, he withdrew his hand. “Now just swing your other leg over and ease down. Don’t let go of the window until you’ve slid as far down the wall as you can, okay?”

“Got it, coach.” She drew up her other leg. “I would say this is inspiration for me starting an exercise regime, but that would be a total lie. I hate working out and that is never going to change.”

Frankly, Sean couldn’t imagine what hard-core athletic ventures would do to Kristine’s body. It would take away all those curves he loved so much, tone away the soft angles and make it not nearly as much fun to touch her. “You certainly get a workout talking,” he teased her. “You could have jumped out this window three times by now.”

She made a face at him. Then she slid down the wall, making tiny little exclamations of distress the whole time. Sean jumped up to grab the ledge so he could watch her and make sure she was okay. She landed on her feet and turned around and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Awesome job,” he told her sincerely. “I knew you could do it.”

She adjusted his pants on her hips and grinned up at him. “You know, it occurs to me that I am in a power position here. I’m free, but you’re still locked up. What if I just walk away?”

He snorted. He didn’t believe for one minute she would leave him there. “Bullshit, Kristy. You wouldn’t do that and you know it.”

But then he realized she had actually done that very thing. She had left town and changed her number. For the first year, he’d had no idea where she was or what she’d been doing until he had hounded her mother to tell him. But he hadn’t done anything with that information because, at that point, what was there to say? His frustration resurfaced and without another word, he dropped back down onto the floor.

What the hell had he been expecting? That he would show up at the gallery and somehow the past would all make sense?

Sean paced around and around the storeroom, checking his phone. No word from Michigan. He suddenly felt trapped. Which was stupid, given that Kristine was already out of the storeroom and he had gone to the gallery on his own initiative. He was simply on edge. The day’s events had been out of his control and he was never comfortable with that. He’d built a life around being in charge and he did not like how off-kilter he felt.

It didn’t help when the door was suddenly thrown open and Kristine appeared looking absolutely frantic. “Sean, oh, my God, someone vandalized the exhibit!”

She unzipped his pants and shoved them down with no concern for modesty whatsoever. “This is awful,” she moaned, bouncing around in her underwear trying to remove his pants from her ankles.

What was awful? Oh, right, vandals. Because from where he was standing, nothing looked awful at all. In fact, the view was downright mouthwatering. He was unable to think or take action.

Sean couldn’t even speak until his own pants hit him in the face. Then he forced himself to focus. “What do you mean, vandalized?” he asked as he dragged his pants down off his face into a ball.

“Get dressed.” She rushed to grab her skirt from the floor. “This is a nightmare. I’m going to be fired!”

The situation sounded like something requiring urgent attention, and the businessman in his brain rang alarm bells indicating he needed to take action. But Sean the man, the husband, was unable to really focus on anything other than Kristine in her underwear, bending over. Her panties had ridden up on her cheeks, exposing the curve of her bottom on both sides, along with her little cupcake tattoo. Many a night he had taken a bite of that sweet treat, sometimes in playful pretend, sometimes as a heady erotic nip.

But then she wiggled into her skirt and Sean forced his thoughts off sex with Kristine and onto what she had said. “Why would you be fired?”

She hopped up and down as she pulled her heels back on. “They defaced the photographs! Who could have done that? And do you think they actually locked us in on purpose so they could do this?”

His brain returned to its normal state of reason as he realized that either the caterer was actually a protestor or that someone had been watching the gallery waiting for an opportune moment to cause trouble. “I think that is absolutely what happened. It would be the mother of all coincidences if they didn’t.” Sean shook out his pants to pull them back on. “Did they leave political messages? What do you mean by defacing?”

Kristine bit her lip, and for a second he could have sworn she knew more than she was saying. “It looks juvenile, actually—”

But then she stopped talking as she caught sight of the huge erection he sported. “Sean! Put your pants on. Geez...”

“What? I can’t help it. You bent over. I’m a simple man, babe.”

But Kristine just rolled her eyes. “I will never understand how men can think about sex in times of crisis.”

Overdramatic much? Sean pulled his pants on. “This isn’t a tsunami. We are not being hunted by a crazed killer. Someone threw chairs around and stole the champagne glasses. It’s not a crisis—it’s an irritation.”

“They didn’t steal the glasses. They spray painted underwear on some of the models in the photos.”

Sean blinked. Then he started laughing. He couldn’t help it. “That’s just dumb.”

“It’s not funny!”

“It kind of is, you have to admit. They put underwear on the models?” He shook his head. “Some people have too much damn time on their hands.”

“It might be funny if it wasn’t happening to me.” She strode past him. “What am I going to do? The exhibit is supposed to open in two days! Friday is a charity fund-raiser for breast cancer research. This is just so bad. I’m going to lose my job and I’m going to starve.”

He was tempted to offer for her to eat him, not in sarcasm, but as an innuendo, but one thing he knew was that Kristine couldn’t be teased out of hysteria. She needed a solution to the problem, however large or small, and she needed one offered quickly before her panic escalated. “Let’s take a look at the damage before you file for unemployment.”

“I can’t imagine this will look good for your security firm, either,” she said, rushing anxiously across the backroom.

Oh, hell, no, he wasn’t going to let this fall on Maddock Security. “Our contract states we start at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, an hour before the guests arrive. This is not my fault. I was here because of the divorce papers, not because of work.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Really? You came here just because of me?”

“Of course. It was totally out of the blue, Kristine. I wanted to talk to you. I was curious why the sudden action. But never mind. Let’s see what happened here and figure out how to solve it. No one is getting fired, I promise.”

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