It was now or never, she’d thought.
“I’ll miss you, too, Yas,” he’d said, drawing nearer. He placed his hand on top of her head as though to ruffle her hair. For some reason that was the impetus she needed to show him she wasn’t a kid anymore.
At that moment, she’d grabbed him, pulled him inside her bedroom and kissed him with all the passion and longing she’d had building up for him for six years.
At first he’d been still as a statue, but a moment before he broke free, she felt his lips soften and a hint of a response. He’d wrapped his arm around her waist and dug deeply into the skin, the thin, flimsy nightshirt she wore riding up enough that the heat from his palm scorched the skin on her back. The kiss lasted little longer than a few seconds before he’d broken free, a deep frown settling over his handsome, chiseled features.
Yasmine had been so embarrassed she’d wanted to crawl up into a hole somewhere and die. She didn’t need him to say a word—the look on his face, a mixture of anger and pity, said it all.
She stumbled away and spun around, hoping to God he’d just leave and not say anything to her. Just leave. She felt a hand on her shoulder and swallowed down the melon-ball lump that had gathered in her gut and turned to face him.
“Yasmine, I—”
She held up a hand, stopping him before he could continue, and forced a trembling smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Holt, I don’t know what came over me … Can we just forget that I did that? Please?” The last word was barely above a whisper. She was so choked up with embarrassment she simply wanted him to go away.
His eyes searched hers, concern darkening his blue eyes to a smoky gray. With a nod he patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and left her room.
As soon as he did, Yasmine, in true teenage-girl form, full-on angst, cried herself to sleep.
The next day, Jed packed up the truck and he and Holt headed off to get him settled into the dorms.
That was the last time Yasmine was ever alone with Holt.
Since then, on the occasions she came to visit her aunt, she made sure that Holt was nowhere around. Anything else would have been too mortifying.
Yasmine settled back in the seat, and unable to resist, again cast Holt a sideways glance.
When he’d taken her bags at the airport, she’d caught the way his glance had stolen over her and had barely refrained from patting her hair and checking her makeup. Tall, he stood at least a foot taller than she. Thankfully she’d opted to wear heels traveling, giving her the added inches so she at least didn’t have to crane her neck to see his face.
He hadn’t removed his Stetson when he greeted her, and glancing up at him, her breath had caught at the back of her throat, as he was a living, breathing poster boy for raw, masculine cowboy if she ever saw one.
Lord, the man was fine, she thought, expelling a long breath while mentally reciting over and over that she was an adult and no longer an adolescent with a schoolgirl’s crush.
When he’d turned toward her after placing her luggage in the back, her self-affirming mantra reminding her of her sophistication flew right on out the window, and she felt like the shy, adolescent she had once been all over again.
The fact that he had been checking her out just as much as she had him hadn’t escaped her attention. That had been just enough to boost her confidence and make her realize that she was the one in control.
But in no way was she going to delude herself into thinking anything more of his casual appraisal than what it was. She was well aware of her attributes, without conceit. Although not as beautiful as the women he dated, she felt confident in the way she looked. She knew she’d changed some in both looks and attitude, grown up a lot, since the last time he had seen her, and the change no doubt was one he noticed. But that’s all it was.
She inched closer to the door.
And he was in for a big surprise if he thought she still held on to that silly schoolgirl crush.
Chapter 4
“Do you like what you see?” Holt asked Yasmine, as she’d been staring out of the truck’s passenger window for several moments.
Immediately he felt like an idiot, trying to come up with some lame attempt at conversation. In his desire to find something clever to say, to keep their conversation going, his mind had gone blank, the only thing surfacing being about the weather.
If his brothers could see him now, the self-proclaimed love doctor fumbling trying to come up with conversation, they’d break their necks falling out laughing at him.
“The weather, I mean,” he clarified, clearing his throat when she lifted one brow in question.
A small smile tilted the corners of her generous mouth upward before she nodded. His eyes trained on the small dimple that flashed when she smiled. “I do. It’s beautiful out. Nothing like the weather-channel prediction I got before I headed out this morning.”
“Yeah, I think I saw that. Uh, on the weather channel, that is. About the forecast and it being a cold day,” he said and promptly clamped his mouth shut when he saw the humor lighting her dark brown eyes.
Real smooth, Wilde, he thought, inwardly kicking him self in the ass. He didn’t know the last time, if ever, a woman had reduced him to a stumbling boy. He quickly turned his attention back to the road.
“Has it been nice like this for long? I remember how cold it can get sometimes this time of year.”
“We’ve had a good winter. Nothing like New York, though, I bet,” he’d said and when she lifted another brow, he hastily turned his attention back to the road. “That is where you’re living these days, right? I, uh, think I remember Lilly mentioning that you had moved from Chicago to New York a few months ago.”
In fact, he’d known exactly where Yasmine had been living, from the time she graduated from culinary school in Chicago and moved to study in Paris before settling back in Chicago. He’d followed her rise in the culinary world, read everything Lilly would so proudly show off to him and his brothers about Yasmine. He’d always chosen to ignore the fact that he’d always been aware of what she was doing, where she was living and the reason for it.
Holt knew it was a bad idea when his brother had asked—scratch that—told him he had to pick Yasmine up from the airport. He also knew it was a bad idea the minute he saw her standing on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up.
But he had no idea how much he’d underestimated what a bad idea it was until he had her in his pickup, her luggage stored in the back and the two of them in his cab, her unique scent reaching out and grabbing him, pulling him up short.
He didn’t remember her skin looking so soft, so clear and beautiful. Nor had he remembered the tendency she had to pull the full, lush bottom rim of her lips into her mouth, her thick brows coming together in a frown as she contemplated whatever it was she was thinking of.
There was something … different about her. To say she was pretty was too mild a description.
She’d lost the baby fat she’d carried as a younger woman, her face and body now slimmer, yet she’d held on to the curves. As he’d opened the door and helped her inside the cab of the truck, Holt’s gaze had zeroed in like a torpedo to her backside. And damn, what a backside she had.
Although she was small in stature, the top of her head barely reaching him at chest level, she wore high heels that drew even more attention to her long legs. Her faded, ripped-up jeans cupped her firm buttocks with deadly, sexy precision, making his mouth go dry.
She’d removed her jacket and beneath it wore a simple button-up blouse, but there was nothing