Unforgiven by Anne Calhoun Page A

not in the mood to be your unannounced booty call,” she said. She’d never quite settled on a reason for having sex with him twenty minutes after he walked into Brookhaven, but his reason came to her in the middle of a sleepless night. There was no love lost between Walkers and Brooks, and while Delaney would never stoop so low as to feud with Marissa, Adam would know that sleeping with Marissa could hurt Delaney.
    God knew his sleeping with Delaney hurt Marissa.
    It was the only reason she could come up with for him to finally say yes, after he’d refused time and again that summer twelve years ago. If that was his reason, once was enough.
    Except he said it had nothing to do with Delaney.
    His expression didn’t change. “What’s with the tweezers?”
    “I have a splinter,” she said, because she didn’t want him in her living space, her
bedroom
, seeing things he shouldn’t see. “No big deal. Go home.”
    He stuck his foot between the closing door and the jamb. She banged the door against the thick lug sole.
    “Goddammit, Ris,” he said, turning his shoulder into the closing door. Her stocking feet skidded on the wood floor, so without warning she stepped back. Resistance gone, he lurched into the kitchen, sending the door sharply against the kitchen wall. Her father’s favorite old photographs of Brookhaven in vintage frames jumped on the nails. She flashed back to that summer, to the water fight along the creek, the way she’d attack him just to feel his body against hers, feel him restrain her and kiss her until she was helpless and pleading with sound and body.
    Based on the look on his face, he was remembering the same thing. It was the first flash of real emotion she’d seen on his face in twelve years.
    “Just like old times,” she said. He was wet, she was wet, and the sudden sexual charge in the air heated the room to summer temperatures.
    He closed the door. “Let me help.”
    She folded her arms and glared at him. “I don’t need your help.”
    In response he held out a hand and glanced at the tweezers.
    “It’s a splinter, not a compound fracture.”
    He made a small beckoning motion, sheer size and presence giving the gesture a hint of imperiousness that sparked heat low in her belly.
    “I’m fine.”
    It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “It’ll get infected if you don’t get it out.”
    “I’ve been removing my own splinters since Chris died,” she snapped. Adam’s abrupt departure for boot camp hadn’t ended her longing for guys going nowhere at a hundred miles an hour. She’d met, fallen for, and married Chris Larson within six months of graduating from high school, a bad decision that only got worse when married life didn’t end his drinking and driving. He’d died shortly after her twenty-second birthday. The tragedy didn’t end her taste for adrenaline junkies, but she had stopped falling in love with them. Improvement, of a sort.
    The reminder of her husband made him blink, and some of the edge softened from his jaw. “But tonight you don’t have to remove your own splinter,” he said more softly, making the give-it-up gesture again.
    “You promise you’ll leave after?” she asked.
    “If that’s what you want,” he said.
    She slapped the tweezers into his palm, turned, and strode through the darkened bedroom into the bathroom to turn off the water. The huge, old-fashioned white tub dominated the room. A book holder crafted out of scrap oak, stained the same gleaming shade as the floors and sealed with two coats of clear, leaned in the corner by the shelving unit holding towels and toiletries. She shoved her current choice in reading material behind the towels, then glanced around the room for anything else that might give him ideas.
    The room’s details distracted him from his courtly quest to fix her ailment. “Mom said you did her bathroom earlier this year. You’re really good,” he said, eyeing the pale gray subway tiles covering the lower