Try Me (Take a Chance) Read online

  Not that he’d ever tell her that again.

  “I’m not the marrying type,” he said with a chuckle that left his mouth tasting bitter. Especially when a horrible thought struck him. “Are you?”

  “No.” Her voice went flat. “I was engaged once. I’m not anymore.”

  Everything in her tone warned him not to ask. Not to push. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. Maybe the right guy will come along soon.”

  Again that flicker of brown, just past the sunglasses. He thought he saw…he didn’t know what he saw. It was there, then gone again. Something like yearning. Wistful. Sad. He knew the feeling. And he was probably projecting his feelings onto her, just like every other idiot man who didn’t know when to let go.

  “Maybe,” she said. Her voice broke, then steadied again. “Maybe not. I’m not really focused on that right now. Hard to get married when you don’t even have a boyfriend.”

  So she was single. Hope flared, then died. It didn’t matter. She wanted someone. He could tell that. She was so miserable her every word made him ache. But lonely didn’t mean desperate enough to want Jeremy.

  “I have a hard time believing you can’t find a date,” he said.

  She darted another glance at him and worried at her lower lip again. She always did that when she was nervous. “You’d be surprised.”

  “Maybe you were looking in all the wrong places.”

  She said nothing, and he cursed himself for a fool.

  He clenched his jaw and studied his hands. They were covered in dirt and blood. His knuckles were split. They hadn’t been during the first fight. Apparently he’d fought back when he’d been left in the desert to die. Good. He was a Marine, and Marines always fought back. Fought for what they believed in. Fought for what was theirs.

  He glanced at Erica from the corner of his eye. Like I’d fight for you.

  The car slowed and turned. Jeremy dragged his gaze from her and onto the curving drive leading up to a massive house. It was elegant, perfect, a terraced adobe affair with open construction and arched doorways. Stylish. Tasteful. Entirely out of his league. Big surprise.

  “Nice place,” he murmured. “I guess being a lawyer is paying off.”

  She tugged off her sunglasses and dropped them into the second cup holder. “Did old classmates tell you I’m a lawyer, too?”

  “Uh.” Shit. So much for detachment. “I. Uh. I saw it somewhere. I forgot where.”

  “Right.” She raised a brow. Her lips twitched at the corners. “Well, come on inside.”

  She slid from the car with grace and poise. Jeremy, not so much—but he managed to get out under his own power, which was more than he’d been able to manage before the water. He was walking like a ninety-year-old man, but he was walking.

  She closed the car door and looked at him. He straightened his shoulders.

  “I’m okay. I feel better already.” He grinned—and immediately regretted it when his split lower lip stung. He felt something wet and warm trickle down his chin. Genius.

  She winced. “I’ll believe that when you aren’t bleeding.”

  She led him up the walk and inside. The carved, heavy oak door opened on hardwood floors. A crystal chandelier hung from the arched ceiling of the broad foyer. Expensive paintings lined the walls. Jeremy kept far away from them. He didn’t want to risk touching anything, and dirtying or damaging it irreparably. It was bad enough he was tracking sand into the polish on her floors.

  He smoothed his shirt and tried to straighten it, then rubbed at a stain on his sleeve. Useless. If this were a restaurant, he’d be out on his ass. “Maybe I should go to my hotel after all. I’m going to leave dirt all over your house.”

  “Please. I don’t care about that.

  She rested one soft hand on his chest. Her touch tore through him like a gunshot and radiated all over his body. He swallowed.

  “If you say so.”

  She looked up at him. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. It was what made her such a good lawyer, he thought, and what drove him mad. She could be on the verge of tears, and she’d never show it. He should be grateful, he thought. At least when she’d rejected him, she’d suppressed her disgust.

  She abruptly drew back, dropped her gaze, and tossed her purse on a table just past the door. “Come on up. I’ll show you where the bathroom is.”

  “Shit. I don’t have any clothes. I’m a dumbass. Maybe we should head back to—”

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to run away.” She sighed. “I have some of Tommy’s clothes here. Stop worrying, okay? You always did worry too much.”

  She turned and walked toward the curving stairs, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor. Jeremy followed, but stopped at the foot of the stairs, curling his hand against the cool wrought-iron railing. He shouldn’t wear Tommy’s clothing. They weren’t friends anymore. Not after Tommy had believed Nicole’s lies about Jeremy seducing her. Not after Tommy had kicked his ass and spat on a bond that, to Jeremy, had been like family.

  The only real family he’d ever had, and the only reason he’d let Tommy beat him bloody without ever once fighting back. Nothing could have hurt worse than what he’d lost that night.

  He swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  “He really won’t mind.”

  “But I will.” He found his dog tags and gripped them tight, their pressure a familiar comfort against his palm. “He took her word over mine. He should have known better.”

  She stiffened. “I know you’re upset, but this isn’t about that. It’s about getting you into a shower and clean clothes. Nothing else. So suck it up.”

  “Suck it up?” He mounted the stairs until he stood at her side, looking down at her. “Did you really just tell me to suck it up?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She tossed her head and lifted her chin. “Yes. I did.”

  “You realize I’m a Marine, right?”

  “Like that means anything? You’d never hurt me. I know that. I know you.”

  “Do you?”

  Her eyes met his without wavering. “Better than you think. Even if I’ve tried to forget.”

  He stepped closer. Close enough to touch her, close enough to wrap her in his arms and kiss her until she clung to him. Everything he’d dreamed of doing for years, and more. Everything her body heat begged him to do, teasing him with her nearness.

  “Why do you want to forget me, Erica?”

  She bit her lip. That luscious lower lip, that one little tic that gave her away like a poker player’s tell no matter how steady her voice might be. “You don’t get to ask me that, Jeremy.” She turned away, her back stiff. “Come on. The bathroom’s this way.”

  She took the stairs quickly, her heels a sharp and almost accusatory staccato. With a sigh, Jeremy followed. Him and his big mouth.

  Fucking idiot.

  Chapter Two

  Erica escaped into the guest room, usually reserved for Tommy during his increasingly frequent business trips. She was probably lucky his company had put him up in a posh hotel this time, to keep him close at hand for their international clients during some marketing conference or another. If Tommy had seen Jeremy, things would have gone terribly south.

  Like they hadn’t already.

  How had she ended up in this situation? And with Jeremy, of all people? God, he looked even more gorgeous than she’d remembered, with or without the bruises and dirt. Those blue eyes, that thick black hair she just ached to run her fingers through—and when had he filled out so much? That hardened soldier’s body made her want to touch. To find out all the ways he’d changed over the years, in minute detail.

  She shook her head and yanked the closet door open. She hadn’t brought him here for…that. Or for any reason other than to help him. What were the odds that she’d be the one to find him on the side of the road?

  Was it fate, giving her a second chance?

  No. That was silly. Impractical. Sighing, she grabbed a T-shirt a
nd a pair of jeans, then headed back out into the hallway. He could go commando or wear his sweaty skivvies. She wasn’t digging into her brother’s underwear. The bratty little sister under the cultured woman she’d become still insisted Tommy’s boxers had cooties.

  And she didn’t want to think of Jeremy in the same light as her brother.

  Calm. Breathe. She closed her eyes and leaned against the bathroom door. Jeremy had brought back too many memories. Most of them sweet, but some of them just as bitter. She’d always had a thing for the dorky boy Tommy had dragged home from school one day. The way he smiled, the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners, the easy way he moved…he could make her forget how to breathe, even back then. She’d hid it as best she could. She’d been the annoying little sister; the tagalong. Unwanted. Annoying.

  Or so she’d thought, until that night.

  She refused to replay it. Not again. Not for the millionth time. That was a long time ago. Things were different, and they’d moved on. He’d said so. She wasn’t about to embarrass herself by telling him that he was the only one who’d really moved on.

  She straightened, knocked on the door, and waited. She could hear water running, but no response. She cracked the door open. “Jeremy?”

  He stumbled and grabbed for a towel, but not before she glimpsed the firm, tight muscles of his ass.

  “Oh God.” She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to chase the image away. Instead it leaped into hyper-focused clarity, along with the taut flow of his back and the broad flex of his shoulders. Damn it.

  She heard the shower curtain pull closed in a rustle of plastic and a scrape of rings against the rod. “Erica?” he called. “Were you just staring at my ass?”

  “I wasn’t staring!”

  “But you just saw me naked.”

  “No. I mean yes. I mean—” She sighed. Running away would be good right now. “Um. A little. Maybe.”

  A muffled groan was his only answer. Her cheeks were on fire.

  “Sorry,” she tried. “If it makes you feel better, you looked great? Wait! No. Um. No, you didn’t.” Shit, damn, crap, son of a— “I don’t—look, I didn’t really see anything, okay?”

  His laughter echoed against the shower tile. She peeked one eye open and peered through the crack in the door. He leaned over to watch her past the shower curtain, his eyebrow raised and his eyes crinkling with laughter in just that way she remembered. Her throat constricted.

  “Which is it?” he asked. “I look good, bad, or invisible?”

  She couldn’t answer. She could only see his shoulders beyond the curtain, but that was enough. Water tracked in slick trails over tanned sinew, each twist and pull of muscle gleaming. Her mouth tingled. She wanted to lick, to taste, to chase the cool taste of fresh water over the heat of his skin. Her fingers twitched, and she squeezed her eyes shut again.

  “I’m gonna go now.” God, she sounded like a teenager. Not someone who regularly presented summations before skeptical juries. She wedged an arm into the bathroom, dropped the clothing on the counter, and backed away. “Enjoy your—I mean—oh, fuck. I’m gone before I make even more of an idiot of myself. How about I’m the one who turns invisible?”

  “Why?” he teased. His husky voice did terrible things to her. “So you can stay and watch?”

  “Funny. Really.”

  Erica opened her eyes, shot him a dirty look, and fled. His laughter chased after her, thrilling through her body in deeply delicious waves.

  She didn’t stop until she was downstairs and curled up in a corner of the couch, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. She groaned and buried her face into the cool watered silk. Dumbass. She should have run before she’d started babbling. He probably thought she’d been peeping at him. She wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t been. God, that body. No man who looked like that should cover it up.

  It was official. She was pathetic.

  Salivating over a guy she’d grown up with? Please. So he’d told her he loved her. That was a long time ago, in a land far far away where stupid teenage girls believed anything said by handsome boys with dangerous smiles. Why had she held on to that for all these years? Especially when he so clearly resented her for how she’d handled it?

  Granted, he’d dropped that bombshell on her right after Tommy had beaten Jeremy to a pulp for sleeping with his wife. He’d shown up on her doorstep bleeding and bruised, just like tonight. Tommy had been an idiot. He’d been an idiot for marrying Nicole right out of high school, he’d been an idiot for believing her lies, and he’d been an idiot for turning on Jeremy.

  And Erica was no better.

  She hadn’t wanted to believe him, in that moment. Not when her loyalty to her brother was so strong, and not when Jeremy had been drunk. Tommy had made him swear off alcohol for life, after the drunken monster his father had turned into. If he’d break a promise like that, how could he mean it when he told Erica he loved her?

  She hadn’t understood, then. She hadn’t understood how deeply hurt he was, and how much he needed her. Hadn’t understood that he was reaching out to her. Begging her not to turn on him, too. Begging her not to judge him like the thug so many people saw him as.

  But she had anyway, and by the time she’d grown up enough to realize her mistake, they’d both moved on with their lives.

  She’d always wondered if he really meant it. Always kicked herself for ruining that chance, and for hurting him that way when even at eighteen, she’d loved him so much. No one had ever smiled at her the way Jeremy had. Not even her fiancé. Nathan had fit her perfect life in corporate law…

  …but he wasn’t Jeremy.

  Why did it matter? Seven years had passed. Any puppy love he’d felt was gone now. And if it wasn’t, it would be. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man could love. Nathan had proved that. So would Jeremy, if he knew her. Really knew her, as she was now. Of that, she was certain.

  She heard the bathroom door open upstairs. She looked up as he came down the steps. Dampness left his hair spiked, the glossy black darkened to pitch. Tommy’s shirt was far too small for Jeremy’s muscular frame, clinging to his chest and abdomen in a slicked-on layer and leaving every touchable ridge and chisel of muscle excruciatingly clear.

  She forced a smile and jerked her eyes from his chest to his face. “You look better.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. His lips tilted at the corners. Every movement teased her. He carried himself with casual ease and a certain restrained strength. Feral. That was how she’d always thought of him, even when he was younger. Feral, underneath his careful control. Waiting to break free.

  He looked at her past the fringe of long lashes that had always made her jealous. “Uh, thanks. I really appreciate the save.”

  “No problem.”

  She bit her lip and made herself look away, before she couldn’t. She couldn’t have him. Some things were better off in the past. He remembered her as young, naïve, and beautiful.

  Better that he held on to the memory, rather than knowing the reality.

  She cleared her throat. “Do you need any more water? Calamine lotion?”

  “Water would be great. Don’t think I need the lotion. I’m a little tender, but not as burned as I thought.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “If this is April in Vegas…fuck July. I’m asking to be transferred to Antarctica.”

  She laughed and led him into the kitchen to retrieve another Aquafina bottle from the fridge. When she closed the refrigerator door and turned, he was there, so close—close enough that she stumbled and tripped over her own feet. He steadied her, gripping her bare shoulders with a sure, firm grasp, his hands work-roughened and large. Her skin burned where he touched. Her stomach twisted.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Again.”

  Her ears felt like little torches burning to either side of her face. He said nothing. Nor did he let her go. With a rough sound she twisted away and smoothed her shirt, pulling it up a bit over her chest. He hadn’t seen. He couldn’t have seen.
Her tank-top wasn’t that low cut.

  “Erica.”

  She shook her head and shoved the bottle into his hands.

  “Erica, really, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I trip all the time. I’m the squad klutz.”

  She took a deep breath. She was making something out of nothing. She always had with him, took everything he said to heart. Right now she wasn’t Erica Jones, Attorney at Law. She was Tommy’s clumsy little sister, trying not to make an ass out of herself in front of her crush.

  Pull it together. She straightened her spine and pressed her lips together. “You? A klutz? Hard to believe.”

  He pointed at his face. “This?” he deadpanned. “I did this to myself. Tripped over a shoe. True story.”

  She burst into laughter and relaxed. He’d always been able to do that—defuse tense situations with humor. Any time Tommy would upset her, she’d escape to her favorite spot by the pool. Jeremy would always find her, make her laugh…and help her plot revenge against her brother. He’d been more than her crush. He’d been her best friend.

  And that was all they could be, she reminded herself. “So a shoe blacked your eye?”

  “Most of that is shoe polish.” He grinned, then grimaced and touched his lip. “Ow. No more making me smile.”

  “I’ll do my best to be dull and boring.” She scrunched up her nose. “Shouldn’t be too hard. I am a lawyer. It’s my job to bore everyone to death. They plead guilty just to shut me up.”

  His lips twitched and his eyes narrowed. “Not helping.”

  She smiled and busied herself unloading the dishwasher. Anything to keep her hands occupied, and not aching to touch him. He leaned his hip against the counter, sipped his water, and watched her, his eyes dark with curiosity.

  “So what have you been up to, besides work?”

  She hesitated. “Honestly? Not much.” She chose her words carefully. “Got engaged. Broke up. Finished school. Got a job. Bought this house, and that’s pretty much it. I work seventy hours a week on a good week. Doesn’t leave much time for anything else.”

  He studied her face, his eyes far too intense. She squirmed, ducked her head, and yanked a cup out of the dishwasher so hard she almost dropped it.