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cupping one of her breasts.
    His warmth was so inviting and delicious she couldn’t help cuddling closer. Emotions warred within her. What had happened? Oh, she knew what had happened, her body still held evidence of it. But the why, and what it meant, was lost on her. Confusion dizzied her.
    The only thing about what had happened that didn’t confuse her was her own part in it. She knew very clearly why she was here—she wanted to be. Fantasies of lying in Jake’s arms and making wild, passionate love with him had dominated her thoughts for so long that the moment he’d kissed her, she’d been powerless to resist. The little voice in her head that warned of the perils of having sex with a friend, especially with her best friend in the world, double-especially with Jake "love’em-and-leave’em" McAllister, was easy to ignore. The thud of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears had drowned it out.
    What she couldn’t wrap her mind around was why Jake was here. Jeez, who was she kidding? She knew exactly why Jake was here. Seduction was as natural to him as breathing, and you don’t have to be in love to breathe. She should have seen it coming. She was probably the only single woman in Oak Hollow over twenty-one Jake hadn’t nailed.
    Until now, she reminded herself.
    Ellie guessed she should be proud of his restraint; he’d resisted for fifteen years. He had never treated her in a sexual way. She’d just never thought she was the type of woman Jake would want to sleep with. There was her mistake. Every woman was the type of woman Jake would sleep with. Not that Jake was a male whore. He just loved women. And women loved Jake. He just had a way about him that caused females of all ages develop a case of the giggles and googley eyes.
    Depression threatened to settle over Ellie, but she shooed it away. It really didn’t matter that Jake had a weakness for sex and women, especially when they were combined. It really didn’t matter what his motives were when he’d kissed her—she really couldn’t say he’d seduced her, because one kiss was all it had taken to melt her defenses. It really didn’t matter that in the morning she would just be another notch on his bedpost and their friendship would be irrevocably changed, if not destroyed.
    Bottom line was, she was here, he was here, and they’d had sex. It was what she had wanted for so long. Admittedly she would have preferred a relationship to go along with it, but beggars shouldn’t be choosy. She could either lie awake all night worrying herself to death about what it all meant and what was going to happen in the morning, or she could cherish these few precious hours in the arms of the man she loved. She chose the latter.
     
     
Chapter Seven
     
    Ellie lay there quietly a few more minutes. She was intensely aware of the man sleeping beside her. She watched him sleep. His chest rose and fell rhythmically with each breath. His hair was tousled about his face, giving him the look of an innocent boy. Her fingers ached to reach out and touch the smooth muscles of his chest, to tease his nipples into hard little buds.
    She held back the desire that had heat pooling in her belly. He looked so peaceful and relaxed; she didn’t want to wake him up. She wanted to prolong the time until he would wake up and they would have to discuss what their making love had meant. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to hear him say it hadn’t meant anything.
    Then, moaning softly in his sleep, Jake shifted and turned over so that he was lying on his back. The sheet covering his naked body slipped, revealing a large expanse of smooth, taut skin covering hard planes of muscle along his hip and thigh. Ellie’s mouth went dry. In her mind, the sexiest part of a man’s body was the juncture where the hip and leg meet. There was something innately sensual about the way the bones and muscles curved. The sheet that draped loosely over his manhood, hiding it from