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“I’ll drive you home.”

“I followed you here in my car, remember?”

Of course she had. What now? What more could he say or do? He’d treated her badly. Hell, he’d treated a lot of women badly lately. It hadn’t been deliberate. It was just that he couldn’t fuck any of them when Annie was in his head.

And she was there, all the time.

The blonde yanked open the front door and strode across the porch to the steps.

“Lucy?”

She spun towards him. “What?”

“I need you to know…” Dec swallowed hard. “The thing is, it isn’t you. It’s me.”

She laughed. Laughed! He knew his face must have gone even redder.

“That line’s so old it has whiskers, Lieutenant. Why not try for the truth? You just can’t get it up when it’s time for action.”

“No! It isn’t that. I mean—”

Too late. She was inside her car, foot to the pedal, burning rubber as she made a U-turn and headed for the road.

Dammit.

She hadn’t waited to hear him out—but what would he have said? I can get a hard-on okay. I just can’t imagine following through with you.

Oh yeah. That would have been perfect. Just what a woman wanted to hear. Something to cap off the evening.

Man, he was a mess.

Dec sank down on the top porch step, leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his long legs.

The quiet of the night enveloped him.

He loved it here. Not so much the cottage, though it was handsome. What he loved was the endless beach. The infinite sea. Damn if he didn’t sound like some half-baked poet, but it was the truth. He’d grown up in New Mexico. On a patch of land in the middle of nowhere. Desert. Scrub. And, in the distance, jagged mountain peaks against a pure blue sky.

It had been a long journey from that part of his life to where he was today.

He got to his feet and began walking, kicking the gravel as he made his way slowly across the parking lot.

He’d made an ass of himself with the blonde.

But he’d been a bigger f

ool with Annie Stanton.

Annie, studying for her Master’s in Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. Or so she’d claimed.

Annie, of the soft voice and hazel eyes. Annie, whose taste he would never forget. Annie, the woman he had never, not even once, made love to.

Forget making love.

What he’d never done was fuck her. A man didn’t make love to a scheming, lying, cock-teaser. He fucked her—except, gullible idiot that he was, he hadn’t.

They’d come close.

His hands under her T-shirt. Her breasts, small and perfect against his palms. Her nipples, sweet as honey, against his tongue…