Chased by Love (Love in Bloom: The Ryders): Trish Ryder by Melissa Foster

wanted. It must be, she deduced, because she wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her again, to carry her upstairs and—
    He gathered her in his arms and gazed into her eyes, bringing her back from her fantasy.
    “Six months,” he said with a serious tone that made her wonder if she’d missed something he’d said.
    “I’m sorry. What?”
    “It’s been six months since I’ve kissed a woman.”
    Holy cow. Six months? “I…I didn’t ask.”
    “No, but you assume a lot of things about me, and I wanted you to know so you wouldn’t stay up all night thinking you’d just added your name to another one of the fictional lists you think I have.”
    She fed off of each secret he shared, like a mouse following a trail of the most delicious cheese. “You don’t have to prove anything to me. I wanted to kiss you.”
    “Yeah, I know. And what I want to do goes so far beyond kissing that I wanted you to know the truth.” He knelt to pick up the plate and silverware they’d left on the porch.
    Her mind reeled at his confession.
    He looked up at her with an unexpected smile. “I’ve got this.”
    She glanced at the sleeping kitten.
    “I’ve got him, too. You should go get some sleep. We have a lot of lines to go over tomorrow.”
    Lines? She was still stuck on going beyond kissing. She wanted to go beyond kissing, despite the red flags waving in her head. She wasn’t ready to walk inside. She moved to pick up the kitten sleeping soundly in the guitar case, and Boone touched her arm.
    “Really, go get some sleep. I’m holding on to my control by a thread. If I touch you again, I’m not going to stop.”
    She debated that for a minute. She wanted to step forward and be consumed by him.
    As if he’d read her thoughts, he said, “You’re not sure about me, and I’ve got so much shit going on in my life. I can’t make any promises.” He paused long enough for that to settle in. “Whatever this is between us, I have a feeling you could break me into a million little pieces, and I have too many people counting on me to let myself go there.”
    **
    AFTER TOO FEW hours of sleep, Boone awoke to the kitten’s tiny paws batting at his hair. He lay there thinking about the incredible kisses he and Trish had shared and reliving every touch. He’d told her things he’d never told anyone, and the strangest part of it all was that long after she’d gone to sleep, he wished she hadn’t, and not just so they could have sex. He wanted to get to know her better. To talk about her family and see what was really going on in her pretty little head. When he’d finally gone inside and up to his bedroom, he’d lain in bed for hours thinking about Trish. As usual, his thoughts had moved down his list of responsibilities: Jude, Lucky, his mother, and the movie he was supposed to be focusing on. He’d tried calling Jude again, and when his call went to voicemail he left another message. Now he was restless, and there were only three remedies to this sort of restlessness—music, sex, and cooking. He’d sworn off meaningless sex—and he knew if he landed in bed with Trish it would be far from meaningless, which meant it was still on the list. Forbidden fruit . All that was left was music and cooking.
    Trish’s door was still closed after he’d showered and dressed, with no signs of life coming from the other side, so music wasn’t an option. He headed down to the kitchen with the nameless kitten tucked under his arm and went to work scrambling out his frustrations.
    A while later, after eating breakfast and washing the dishes, he gazed out the window over the sink, watching storm clouds roll in and thinking about Trish. He tried to convince himself that what he felt for her was nothing more than lust. Lust was something he could understand and deal with. He knew how to turn lust off. Hell, he’d become a master at it, because turning it off was easier than dealing with the self-loathing that came after having sex with