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HE HAD BEEN WAITING forever to kiss this woman. Nate took the taste of her he wanted, suspecting it would be the only chance he got. Once she pushed him away, he’d probably never get to touch her again. Not with all the history between them.
She tasted like heat. Fire. Temptation.
No surprise at that.
He wanted to kiss her for longer—forever—but at the sound of light footsteps in the hall, he pulled back. “Pan is coming.”
She gasped and jerked away, her eyes wide.
He stepped away from the bed deliberately. “We’ll...talk later. Good night, Persephone. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Nate passed his youngest sister-in-law in the hallway. She held pajamas in her hands and a toothbrush. No doubt they were going to talk for a while. All of the Tyler sisters were extremely close. It wasn’t the first time Perci had stayed the night at his home. After she’d been released from the hospital when she’d been injured by Jay Gunderson, she and Pip had stayed where Nate and her sisters could keep an eye on both of them. For a time, they’d had all four sisters under this roof. Phoebe and Joel had been married, Pan had been their housekeeper until she’d married Levi, and Pip had barely left Matt’s room until they were both healed.
But Perci had left as soon as she could. Almost ran to get away.
It had pissed him off for three days. He’d told himself it was because he hadn’t felt that she was physically healed enough to return home, but that had just been his excuse.
He’d wanted Perci in his home. He wanted her on the same schedule as he was at the hospital—she’d gone back to work the week before she’d left his home—and in his home.
It hadn’t helped that half of her intended medical leave had been spent working on that damned movie of Rowland Bowles’s. The director had used body doubles when needed, due to Perci’s cast. A lot of the filming had taken place either on his family ranch—or hers.
Nate had been a front-row spectator for a lot of it.
She’d made a beautiful fairy princess, perfect and fiery.
And every day he’d gone to his own bed to dream about her.
His brothers knew. They’d known from the moment they had first met Perci. And they’d understood.
His brothers had been just as susceptible to her sisters. Only they had caved in. And now his idiot brothers were beyond happy.
It was just him who wasn’t.
Nate had known that from the moment Levi and Pan had said ‘I do.’
The movie crew was back in Hollywood, working on post-production tasks that Nate didn’t care about. But the fairy princess was still around. Still driving him crazy.
Making him dream. Making him want.
He had yet to decide what he was going to do about her.
He had to do something. He couldn’t go on like this. Seeing her, wanting her, not touching her. She was going to be around for a damned long time, thanks to their siblings. Either he left Masterson, and everything he loved, behind.
Or he faced up to the inevitable.
And found a way to get exactly what he wanted from her. Somehow.
***
“YOUR LIPS ARE ALL RED.”
Pandora—Pan, for short—was staring at her like she was a bug. Pan—whose own lips were swollen. No doubt from kissing that husband of hers. They’d only been married a little over three weeks, but Pan was acting like she knew everything there was to know about men. Sex.
Pan had been a virgin until Levi. What could her sister really know?
Of course, if Levi kissed anything like his older brother Nate, Pan had probably caught up pretty quickly. Perci resisted touching her mouth.
She could still taste him.
“So? Did he kiss you?”
Her sister was pretty shrewd. Pan was the most diabolical—and probably smartest—of her siblings. Perci knew better than to even think about lying. Pan would see right through it. Besides, she didn’t lie to her sisters if she could help it. She kept no secrets—except one.
They’d had almost absolute trust between them for years. Since Pip had been attacked at nineteen, since their mother had died shortly after leaving their family so deeply in debt they’d nearly drowned, and since the Masterson brothers had entered their world.
The Mastersons had brought nightmares—with Phoebe almost drowning in a flooded river, Pip and Perci almost burning to death in the barn, and Pan almost being killed by a madwoman—but the brothers had made her sisters beyond happy.
Perci adored every one of her new brothers-in-law for how they loved her sisters.
But through them, she’d gotten Nate. She still didn’t know how she felt about that.
“He kissed me.”
Pan smirked. “Of course he did.”
“Shut up. I’m not going to get involved with Nate, Pan. I’m not. No matter what the rest of the family—or this town thinks. It’s just not going to happen, so quit looking at me that way.”