Dare to Love by Carly Phillips

perceptive. “Alex wouldn’t share your contact information with me. To get it, I had to ask my father. He had…conditions.”
    She tilted her head. “Go on.”
    “In exchange for your address and phone number, I agreed to reach out to my half siblings.”
    She blinked, her gaze softening. “You did that for me?”
    “I wanted to apologize for not returning your call. I needed to know what Alex meant when he said it was too late for me to help you.”
    She exhaled slowly, pursing her lips together as she blew out a long stream of air.
    He’d been deliberately slow and methodical with her, taking his time. But he wanted nothing more than to taste those lips and plumb the depths of her warm, wet mouth. Throughout the week, he’d been hard most of the time, thinking about her in the same building, dying for a taste. At home, alone, he’d taken himself in hand. If he wanted her in bed, he had to keep to the plan and stop pushing her around, but it wasn’t easy. He was who he was, and there was only so much he could temper. From the sudden warmth in her expression, he’d begun making headway.
    “Look, you obviously know things between Alex’s side of the family and mine are strained. I hoped you’d come on Sunday to ease the tension. You’re friends with Alex and now you’re—” Tread lightly, he warned himself.
    “I’m what?” she asked, a smile lifting her lips.
    “You’re involved with me.” Blunt but not so aggressive she’d bolt. All in all, he figured he’d handled that well.
    She laughed, the sound brightening his evening. “Is that what you think? A couple of dinners and we’re involved?”
    “By Sunday when they all show up, we will be.”
    *     *     *
    After a week of him wining and dining her, keeping a respectful distance while luring her in with his domineering personality and erotic kisses, Riley decided Ian Dare was too much. He epitomized danger wrapped in a too-appealing package.
    She eyed him in the quiet that fell during coffee, using the time to compare him to past relationships, none of which were all that recent. Nobody piqued her interest the way he had. Probably because Riley’s usual taste in men ran to the predictable and safe. Being raised by a bully determined to have his own way with no regard to the emotional destruction left in his wake, Riley made no apologies for choosing carefully. She was immune to hardened, take-charge men.
    So she ought to be immune to Ian and his charm.
    She wasn’t.
    She did, however, wonder just how charismatic her father had been toward her stepmother before she married him and, too late, had seen his other side. Riley mentally pursued that possibility and immediately discounted the notion that Douglas Taylor had ever come close to Ian Dare in charm. Though her father had clearly known how to hide his darker self, never in his lifetime had he been endearing. Her stepmother, Melissa, admitted she’d been drawn to his neediness during his hospitalization, a weakness in herself she’d made certain she got over after the divorce. She might have been seduced by his good looks, but his charm? Not so much.
    To even think about putting Ian and her father in the same category was insulting, and Ian didn’t deserve it. But that didn’t mean he was safe .
    No matter how strong her heart beat when he was near, no matter how wet her panties when he turned his focus solely her way, no matter… what , she thought, desperately trying to remind herself why she needed to keep her distance. Alex had already pointed out Ian’s penchant for jumping from woman to woman. Wasn’t that warning enough for her to stay away? It should have been, but when it came to this man, she feared she was fighting a losing battle.
    “What’s going on in that active mind of yours?” Ian asked over dessert.
    “I’m thinking about you,” she admitted, deciding straightforward was the way to go.
    He raised a brow, obviously surprised at her honest