2007 RITA Award winner for Best Short Contemporary Romance 

Jessica Bird
Author Book List

All Alex could see was her long, thick, copper-colored hair. Pale smooth skin. Lips that were naturally tinted pink. Eyes that were green like sea grass.

He stopped himself. His best friend Reese might be dead. But in Alex's mind, Cassandra was still very much the man's wife.

Cassandra. The forbidden woman Alex had yearned for from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her six years ago. The woman who'd been married to his best friend — the friend he'd lost to the sea. The woman who was rebuilding his family's bed-and-breakfast...and who just might, in the process, be rebuilding his anguished heart.

Excerpt

Alex Moorehouse had no intention of answering the knock on the bedroom door. Flat on his back and halfway through a Harry Potter hardcover, he wasn't in the mood for company.

Not that he ever was, but at this moment he really didn't want to deal with anybody. He'd actually managed to find a position for the cast on his lower leg that relieved the pain. Or at least dulled it so he could concentrate on something else. Having a measure of peace in his body was so rare he didn't want it frayed by an intruder.

It had been almost three months since he'd felt strong, able. Himself. Three months, four surgeries, and a post-op infection that had nearly killed him. Enough hell to wipe clean most, but not all, of his transgressions.

There were at least two sins he would have to repay in the real Hades.

The knocking came again. He kept silent.

The way he figured it, the fire department wouldn't bother with formalities, so nothing was up in flames. If it was an EMT, he was pretty sure they were looking for someone else because he was breathing, so he wasn't dead. And if it was one of his sisters, they would be back.

God knew, they always came back. Those two women were in and out of the room constantly. Trying to feed him. Coaxing him to come downstairs. Riding him about going to a grief counselor.

He loved them. And he wished they'd leave him the hell alone.

The door opened a crack. Joy, the younger one, stuck her head in.

He watched her eyes go to the liquor bottle on the floor next to the bed. It was a reflex with them both. Open the door. Check the scotch level. Door open. Scotch check.

He thought about dropping a pillow to hide the single malt, but figured that little defensive maneuver would only draw more attention to the damn thing.

So he just stared at her, waiting.

This was going to be good. Joy looked like she was about to jump out of her skin.

"You, ah, you have someone who wants to see you." He had to clear his throat before he could speak.

"No, I don't." God, he sounded hoarse. That scotch was doing a number on his vocal cords, and he wondered how his liver was faring.

"Yes, you —"

"And I know this because I haven't invited anyone here." The way he saw it, one of the advantages to staying in someone else's house was that nobody could find you.

Friends, colleagues. Reporters. Hell, if you kept your yap shut, you could practically fall off the side of the earth.

Which was a trip he was dying to make.

All things considered, he should be thanking the fire that had made his family's bed-and-breakfast, White Caps, un- inhabitable. In the aftermath, Joy's fiancé, Gray, had taken all the Moorehouses in, and although Alex hated being a mooch, he was grateful for the anonymity he'd been granted.

Besides, this particular hideout was a classy one. Gray Bennett's place in the Adirondacks was a fricking palace and the guest roomAlex had been crashing in for the past six weeks was as tricked up as the rest of the mansion. Top-tier everything, from the antiques to the rugs, not that Alex could name the particulars. He was about as far away from the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy types as a man could get. Wouldn't know an Aubusson from an Audubon.

Bennett, on the other hand, had superb taste. Which explained why he wanted to marry Alex's little sister.

"Alex —"

He refocused. "There anything else?" He cocked an eyebrow.

Joy pushed a length of hair back, her ruby engagement ring flashing. "It's Cassandra."

The sound of the name brought Alex's eyelids crashing down.

In a relentless stream of flashbacks, he saw the woman he had loved from the first moment he'd met her six years ago. Her dark red hair and pale green eyes. Her flashing smile. Her incomparable elegance.

Her wedding ring.

Guilt hit him like a train, sending him deep into the nightmare.

He was back on the sailboat, back in the storm. Fighting against the wind and the horizontal rain. Holding on to his best friend's hand. Feeling that grip slip until his partner was lost to the hungry sea. He saw himself screaming into the darkness until his voice was gone. Searching the waves with a spotlight, looking for a man in the ocean.

On that horrible night, the wheel of fate had been spun and everyone had lost. Reese Cutler had died. Cassandra Cutler had become a widow. And Alex had been sealed in a coffin of self-hatred he was never going to get out of.

"Is she staying in this house through your wedding?" he asked tightly.

"Yes."

Alex pushed his palms into the mattress and hefted his upper body to the vertical. Everything hurt so he lay back down. "Then I'm leaving."

"Alex, you can't."

"Watch me." He didn't care if he had to drag himself back onto Moorehouse property. Their father's old workshop had a potbellied stove and a bathroom. Combined with a total lack of phone lines, the place was good enough for him.

"But you promised you wouldn't move into the shop until you saw the doctor —"

"I'm meeting with the orthopedist on Monday. Seventy-two hours is close enough."

Joy's eyes drifted to the floor. "Alex, I...I was hoping we could all be under the same roof for my wedding," she said softly. "You, me and Frankie. It's been so long since you've been home. And after the fire —"

Alex cursed. "Stop. Just stop."

Damn it, he had a terrible feeling his escape route was getting cut off. As much of a selfish hard-ass as he was, he wasn't about to be one more disappointment during what should have been a happy time for Joy. After all, White Caps was uninhabitable following the fire in its kitchen. Most of her stuff had been destroyed in the blaze as the family's rooms were in the old staff quarters in the back. And he had to imagine she was missing both their dead parents more than ever.

God, had it been ten years since the two of them had died out on the lake?

"Alex, please say you'll stay."

"If I do," he said roughly, "I'm not seeing that woman."

"She just wants to talk with you."

"Then tell her I'll call her later." Like in a decade. Or five.

"You could do that yourself." There was a long pause.

"She's hurting, just like you are. She needs some support."

"Not from me, she doesn't."

The last thing that widow needed was sympathy from someone who'd lusted after her for years; who'd watched her from the shadows with greed, seeing her as both a miracle and a curse; who'd lain awake wondering what her skin would feel like, what her mouth would taste like.

Hell, she deserved comfort from a man who had more honor than he did, someone who hadn't fallen in love with his best friend's wife.

And who just might have... God, he couldn't even bear the thought of what he'd done.

Alex shut his eyes. Nausea, his constant companion of late, made his empty stomach swell like a trash bag left in the heat. "Alex —"

"I've got nothing to offer her," he spat. "So tell her to stay away from me."

Joy recoiled. "How can you be so cruel?"

"Because I'm a bastard, that's how."

When the door shut, Alex slowly sat up again. His head spun and his eyes pounded. Using his good arm, he picked up his leg by its cast and moved it off the bed. Then he carefully braced his weight on one of his crutches and cantilevered himself into a standing position. He hobbled over to a mirror.

He looked scary. Bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes with bags under them. Sallow pallor. Sunken cheeks. Whiskers.

He was fading away, he thought.

But then unrelenting guilt, and enough time in an OR so he was almost a surgical resident, would do that to a guy.

He looked down at his leg. In a couple days, he'd know whether he was keeping it or having it amputated below the knee. That shiny new titanium rod they'd used to replace his tibia hadn't taken after the first implantation, and when the orthopedic surgeon operated again six weeks ago, the woman had made it clear. They'd take one more shot at it and then it was saw time.

Okay, so she hadn't been that blunt.

Not that the outcome really mattered to him. Either way, with an artificial limb or a reconstructed lower leg, his future wasn't clear. As a professional America's Cup sailor, and captain of the best crew in the sport, he needed both his body and his mind in top shape. Neither were there. Not by a long shot. And even if they fixed his leg, it wasn't as if they were doing cranial transplants.

The knocking started up again. "I told you I wasn't going to see her," he growled.

"So I heard." Through the door, Cassandra's voice was low. Alex shut his eyes. Dear Lord.

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