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Jack’s eyes, and saw the hunger shimmering in them. She felt that hunger just as palpably, but took another step backward, stumbling a little when the iPod earbud yanked free of her ear, and then another step—until she was out of his reach. “I thought you’d never heard of me.”
    Jack sighed. “I lied.”
    “ Why? ”
    “Good question,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t really know, to tell you the truth.”
    “You don’t know ?” she repeated angrily. “I thought I was safe with you!”
    That seemed to surprise him. “You are safe with me. I would never do anything you didn’t want—”
    “I don’t want this!” she snapped, and started walking almost blindly as a rush of shame and indignation and desire filled her.
    “Audrey, wait— hey! Let me drive you back!”
    “No thanks!” she shouted. Her mind swam with confusion; her body still pulsed from his touch. She’d made a terrible mistake, a stupid, horrible mistake.
    “Are you okay?” he called after her.
    She didn’t answer, just walked as fast as she could to her ATV.
    She cranked it up and turned it onto the larger path leading to the other side of the island. There was a space of about twenty feet where the trees and palms opened and she could see the beach clearly. He was standing right where she’d left him, his hands on his hips, a dark swath of hair across his brow, watching her. She sped up, hitting a bump in the road so hard that she bit her lip.
    “Dammit!” she spat, and drove on into the night.
    When she returned to her room in the cottage—skirting around the pool area, where the party was, apparently, still going strong—she’d hardly fit her key in the door before it was pulled open.
    Lucas was standing on the other side in his boxers. “Where have you been?” he asked, his brown eyes widening at the cut on her lip. “What happened to you?”
    The flush of shame bled into her cheeks and she looked down, sweeping past him. “Nothing,” she said. She’d never been unfaithful. Even though there was a lack of intimacy and other problems between her and Lucas, she had never been unfaithful, and it galled her that she’d come so close.
    But Lucas stopped her with his hand on her arm—a hand that was surprisingly much smaller than Jack’s—and made her look up.
    He frowned and brushed his thumb across her bottom lip, wiping the blood away. “What happened to you?” he asked again.
    “ Nothing ,” she said, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and pulling his hand from her face. “I just bit my lip. That’s all.”
    He nodded, glanced at her lip again, then turned away and pushed a hand through his mouse brown hair. “Are you tired?”
    Audrey dragged the back of her hand across her mouth where he’d touched her as she walked into the bathroom. “Yes,” she said. “It’s been a long weekend.”
    “Okay. We can talk tomorrow when you’re rested.”
    Talk . Audrey sighed and braced herself with both arms against the sink. “Talk about what?” she called from the bathroom.
    “About the play list for the next album,” he said. “I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’d like to include the ballad I wrote.”
    In the safety of the bathroom walls, Audrey closed her eyes and let her head drop between her arms in frustration. “It’s not really a ballad-y sort of album, do you think, Lucas?”
    “No, not really . . . but I was thinking we can change my piece up a little. You know, give it a little juice. It would be a nice tie-in to my album.”
    But you don’t have an album! she raged in her head. Yet she said, “Sure,” and picked up a washcloth, wetting it. God, she was so tired. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep. But when she did crawl into bed a few minutes later—leaving Lucas to pore over his sheet music—all she could seem to think of was Jack Price, the way his body had felt against hers, the way he’d kissed her with such demanding