Page 49 of Fourth and Long

“And if you make it?”

“Then you’re a hero and you’ve got a chance to win.”

The next morning, my eyes pop open. A sigh of utter contentment slips out.

I spent the night. The whole night. It was…

“Oh no. This is bad.” The words fall from my lips as if I’m in a bad melodrama.

Slater opens his drowsy eyes to my horror-filled ones. I’m sitting upright in his bed, the sheet pooling around my hips. His gaze drops to my pebbled nipples, but I barely notice.

“What’s bad?” he asks.

“This.” I gesture between the two of us.

“This” —he copies my movement, his eyes finally returning to my face— “was not even close to bad.”

“Ha.” I almost smile. The sex was superb, I can’t deny that. “I wasn’t supposed to spend the night. Kelsey is never going to stop setting us up if she knows we had sex.” The gloating is going to be endless.

And if she keeps bringing it up, I’m never going to forget him. I bury that worry. It’s not the right time to dwell on the fact that the greatest sex of my life was with a man I might not see ever again.

He drags his hand through the scruff on his chin. “At the risk of sounding stupid, why does she care?”

“She’s really happy with Cam. And she worries that…” I trail off. There is no way I’m admitting that she thinks our parents broke my faith in love.

He moves closer, and I can feel the heat from his body. “Don’t tell her you slept over.”

I wrinkle my nose. “She probably already knows.” Although, if she knew, wouldn’t she have called me? I look around for my phone.

“How?” He sits up and looks around, too, as if he expects Kelsey to suddenly appear.

I drop forward, hiding my face in embarrassment. “You know that app, Find Your Friends?”

“Isn’t that app designed to keep track of rebellious teenagers?”

“Probably.” I heave a sigh. “In this case, it’s to keep track of errant sisters.”

In his defense, he doesn’t laugh. “And you think Kelsey happened to check where you were sometime during the night?”

The subtext is clear: Why was my sister checking up on me?

I turn my head so I’m looking at him. “Remember the night of the snowstorm? She called me the next morning and was totally giddy.” I groan. She’s going to be delighted, and I’m never going to hear the end of it.

“I guess you could tell her you slept in the guest room again.”

I shake my head. “That would be lying.”

“I might see her in New York. I can tell her that it was just a one-night thing.”

“Umm…no,” I say, unwilling to consider how much I hate it when he says one-night. It isn’t like he has to keep reminding me.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asks with a surprising amount of sincerity.

“What are you going to tell Cam?” I counter, because apparently I enjoy making things weird.

“Cam and I don’t share the particulars of our sex lives.”

I roll my eyes. “I wasn’t suggesting that. It’s just…sex complicates things. I’m his sister-in-law and you’re his client, and he connected us, whether he was aware of Kelsey’s motives or not.”