“I haven’t been with another girl in a little while,” Ellen was saying, “but I’m sure I haven’t forgotten what to do.” She turned her attention from Chase to Chloe. “Nice to meet you, Chloe, even if this is a teensy bit unexpected. I’m Ellen, by the way.” She barely paused to take a breath. “You’re very pretty. I don’t think this will be at all difficult to get into.”

Chloe looked utterly bemused by the way Ellen was looking at her, clearly sizing up her future performance in bed. “Thanks, I guess,” she said, “but I don’t think I’m up for any threesomes tonight.”

The easy way she said it had Chase’s brain spinning off in all sorts of crazy directions. Had she done a ménage before?

Just the thought of a guy and girl both touching her together had him seeing red. He couldn’t let himself think about two guys or he’d split a vein.

He’d never gone looking for serious, had been perfectly happy with one-night stands for the past thirty-two years. On the road as much as he was, keeping things clean and simple fit his life best. He’d never envied his colleagues who had a wife and kids at home waiting for them.

But from the first moment he’d seen Chloe, he’d wanted to protect her…and more.

“Oh my God,” Ellen said suddenly when she finally saw Chloe’s nasty bruise. “What happened to your face?”

Chase hated to see every bit of laughter leave Chloe’s face.

“I’ll find another bedroom myself. Good night.”

He wanted to go after her, but he had to deal with Ellen first.

“Is she okay?” Ellen asked after Chloe had closed the door behind her.

He ran a hand through his wet hair. “She’ll be okay.” He’d make sure of it. “Look, tonight’s not going to happen anymore.”

“Because of her?”

Chase nodded. “Because of her.”

Fortunately, although Ellen looked disappointed, she simply shrugged rather than throwing a tantrum. “She really is very pretty.” She smiled up at him in a hopeful way. “I was serious about the three-way if you want to try to convince her.”

“No.” He didn’t want to be an ass, but he didn’t want to lead Ellen on, either. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Maybe another time, then,” she said as she walked naked across the room to her clothes, which he now saw were draped over a sofa chair in the corner.

Like hell. He was never, ever going to share Chloe with anyone. Not a woman and definitely not a man.

Once he convinced her to give him a chance, that is.

Problem was, he thought as he turned his back to let Ellen put on her clothes, he had a feeling convincing Chloe to trust him enough to give him a chance with her wasn’t going to be an easy task in the least.

Chapter Three

Chloe wanted nothing more than to drop her bag on the bedroom floor, throw herself on the bed, and curl up into a tight ball. But the wood floor looked really expensive and she’d already dripped on it enough.

Heading for the bathroom, she put her bag down on the tiled floor, then stripped off her wet, dirty clothes and put them in the sink. She would have loved to throw them away, but she didn’t have much with her and knew that she’d need them again in the near future. The best she could do for the time being was to wash them out and hang them up to dry. Of course, she knew the house must have a washer and dryer, but spending the night in a stranger’s house—not even the stranger who’d brought her here, but a brother she’d never met—was more than enough charity.

When she was finally naked, she moved to the shower and was reaching in to turn on the water when she noticed the huge whirlpool tub. She almost moaned aloud at the thought of lying in the warm water with jets massaging her legs and spine and feet.

Chloe looked back almost guiltily at the bathroom door before realizing she was being silly. It was locked and she was finally alone. Since Chase was insisting she stay here tonight, what was wrong with availing herself of the facilities? At least those attached to her bedroom.

She hadn’t been in a tub like this since she’d left—

No. She wouldn’t let herself think of that tonight. Chloe knew she didn’t have the luxury of pretending everything was okay—not by a long shot—but deep inside she felt safe. For one night, in this beautiful house, surrounded by grapevines.

She supposed, a few seconds later, that it was precisely that glorious sense of safety—and the memory of how nice it had been to feel so warm and protected in Chase’s arms—that had her body acting so off-kilter when she stepped into the hot water.

Her skin felt extra sensitive as she slowly submerged her hips and then legs and back into the large tub. Sighing with pleasure, she laid her head on the curved rim of the tub and looked up through a skylight that was pinging with the rain from outside. A heavy, heated throbbing pulsed at the tips of her breasts, which felt even fuller than normal. And between her thighs…she was burning up down there. Heck, she’d been on fire from the moment Chase had held the ice pack against her cheek in his brother’s kitchen.

Both she and the girl in his bed had the same taste, it seemed.

Thinking of the naked stranger—Ellen, she’d said her name was—and her crazy offer to get it on three-way style had Chloe unexpectedly grinning as she scooted down in the tub and tilted her neck backward to get her hair wet in the hot water.

Mmmm, that felt good. She reached for the fancy bottle of shampoo by the side and began massaging the sweet-smelling liquid into her hair.

Chase had clearly been surprised by the naked woman—and by the fact that she wasn’t at all fazed by the idea of more than one person in her bed.

Chloe’s grin shifted into a semi-frown. Not just because she hadn’t thought people actually did that, but because she couldn’t understand Ellen’s thinking.

If Chase had been hers, she wouldn’t share him with anyone.

The shocking train of thought stopped Chloe cold. Soap dripped into her eyelashes and she dunked herself under the water, hoping to wash her unwelcome thoughts away, too, while she was at it.

What was wrong with her? Was she really that blockheaded? That full of fantasies and foolish dreams?

The only person she should be trusting, for a very long time, was herself.

And yet, hadn’t she been doing some verbal sparring with Chase out in the living room and kitchen? Borderline flirting, when she should have been wary. And then, when they’d found the naked woman waiting for him on the bed, she hadn’t been able to hold in her laughter. Finally laughing again had felt too good. She'd had to let it out. Amazingly, for a few moments, she’d almost felt like her old self.

Once upon a time Chloe had been a sensual woman. She hadn’t been one of those girls who was afraid of her own body. She’d loved being kissed. Caressed. She’d loved other things, too. Things her ex-husband had told her were bad. Dirty. Things she was supposed to be ashamed of. Just because she’d done a crummy job of picking a husband didn’t mean those urges, those desires, had ever really gone away.

They’d just gone into hiding.

And Chase was, quite obviously—and unfortunately—a master of hide-and-seek.

Chloe couldn’t believe her body had decided to leap to life now. Tonight of all nights, she should be focusing on getting sleep and food and figuring out what to do next.

Instead, she was lying in the bath thinking about Mr. Hotstuff with his green eyes and wicked grin. Not to mention the ridiculously great body—tall, broad-shouldered, muscular—that those eyes and grin came on.

Frustration ate at her. She had a bad feeling that if she got up out of this glorious tub, instead of sinking into what was sure to be a fantastically luxurious bed, she was going to be tossing and turning with unrequited lust all night.

No, damn it. When she'd left her now ex-husband, she’d vowed to take care of herself. At the time she’d believed that simply meant money and jobs and housing. Evidently, she thought with a slightly rueful shake of her head, it also seemed to mean that if she was feeling unaccountably horny, she was going to have to take care of that, too.

She shifted in the tub at the somewhat shocking thought and as the warm water floated over her curves, she tried to figure out how long it had been since she’d enjoyed sex. Since she’d been able to explore her body and give in to its natural needs. How long had she been ashamed of her sexual appetite?

If only the answers weren’t all so painful.

No. She wouldn’t go there tonight. Not after what she’d already been through.

Tomorrow would come soon enough. But tonight…well, maybe tonight was her chance to start taking some much needed strides to reclaim a part of herself that she’d been forced to deny for too long.

Closing her eyes, forcing herself to relax deeper into the warm tub, Chloe put her hands just above her breasts and held them there, feeling the quickening beat of her heart. Slowly, she ran her hands down her chest, over her full breasts, and she sucked in a breath at the surprisingly pleasurable sensations that shot through her.

She used to love having her breasts played with, feeling a tongue lave them, a man’s lips suckling and tasting. When she’d been younger she could almost make herself come just from playing with her breasts while fantasizing about a gorgeous man making love to her.

She hadn’t conjured up those fantasies in a long time, but tonight it was only her and her hands and a tub full of steaming water. No one was here to tell her she was a whore for liking what she liked.

Drawing on long-buried sensual memories, she let her mind drift to a scene where she was in a man’s arms and his head was bent down over her breasts. And then he lifted his head and she gasped as a flush of arousal hit her right between her thighs.

Because the man looked just like Chase.

Chloe should have stopped touching herself right then. She knew she should have had the self-control to get up out of the tub, to go get the sleep she so desperately needed.

But she’d gone without for so long. Far too long. She was thirty years old and heading straight toward her sexual prime, wasn’t she? It was one more reason to be angry.

This was one more part of her life to reclaim.

She was safe here. Tonight she had a chance to feel normal again. And she was going to take it.

Even if the gorgeous face of a man she’d just met—and was impossibly tempted by even though every last brain cell she had knew better—was the very man who was about to have her crying out with ecstasy in a few minutes.

Keeping one hand on her breasts, she let the other slide down over her rib cage, then her stomach, until she reached the thatch of soft curls between her thighs. It was instinct to let her legs fall open in the water, to probe the throbbing mass of nerves between her thighs with her fingertips.

Her breath quickened as she slid her fingers down lower. Even in the water she could feel how slick she was, how ready she’d been since practically the first moment Chase had touched her.

She didn’t have the first clue how she could have reacted like that to a complete stranger. Given what had just happened to her, the bruise still throbbing on her cheek, shouldn’t she have been flinching and hating the feel of his hands on her?

But she hadn’t been anywhere near hating Chase’s touch. Far from it, considering she’d been far more tempted to rub herself against him than shove him away.

As her fingers swirled against the hard nub, her mind flitted back to that moment when she’d looked down at the thick bulge in his pants. Sex had been good once, good enough that she could still imagine the kind of pleasure a man like Chase could give a woman.

Sinking so deep into the water that her nose and mouth and eyes were barely above the surface, her feet slid out further when she accidentally kicked something in the tub and the jets kicked into overdrive.