“Jay,” she whispered, his name floating on the evening breeze.

“Right here, love,” he assured her as his fingers found her zipper and it opened with a hiss. She sucked in her abdomen as her shorts were pulled over her hips and she was suddenly naked, aside from the scrap of lace between her legs.

“You are beautiful,” he said, kissing her belly button, his breath and tongue tantalizingly close to the apex of her thighs. “So beautiful.” Lowering himself, he pulled on her panties with his teeth, deftly removing them before inching back up her legs with his mouth.

Her throat was as dry as a desert, her blood on fire. She arched as he discovered her most intimate recesses and caught her buttocks in his hands.

“Jay, oh, Jay,” she moaned, her eyes closed, her body glistening with perspiration.

Somehow he kicked off his jeans and parted her legs with his knees. “Stop me now,” he said through gritted teeth and she shook her head.

“Don’t ever stop.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, but lost control. Arms surrounding her, he thrust deep, fusing his body with hers only to retract and push forward again. Tiffany moved with him, her body catching his rhythm, her mind closed to all thoughts but the powerful pulsing need that he alone could fill.

She dug her fingers into the muscles of his upper arms, pressed her heels into his calves. Hot desire swirled through her. Her breath was suddenly far too shallow, her lungs too tight. The world tilted on its axis and somewhere in the heavens a star burst into a billion sparks of light.

He cried out with a sound as primitive as the night, and Tiffany lost herself, body and soul, in J.D. Santini—the one man who had no right to her heart.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

“So who’s the new renter?” Katie asked as she dunked a french fry in her tiny cup of catsup and bit off the end. The three half-sisters were seated at an outside table in the garden of the restaurant, a large umbrella offering shade from the summer heat, flower boxes spilling blooms in profusion.

“You don’t miss much, do you?” Tiffany asked, not entirely comfortable with Bliss and Katie, who seemed to have hit it off already.

“I’m a reporter, remember?” Katie grinned and dabbed at her lips. Perspiration dotted her smooth forehead.

“His name is Luke Gates. He’s from a small town in west Texas. Other than that, I don’t know much about him. He pretty much keeps to himself.”

Katie wrinkled her nose as if she smelled a story. “I wonder what he’s doing here.”

“You’re always looking for a mystery,” Bliss said.