Read Double trouble for Free Online

from the floor. She haphazardly pulled them on, her ears attuned to the loud rushing of water in the bathroom. Though she badly wanted a shower, it was a luxury she would have to postpone until she arrived back at Kristina's apartment. She had to get out of here before Matt emerged from the bathroom! She simply couldn't face the cold rejection she knew she would see in his eyes.
    The water was still running when she slipped from the room. Kayla bypassed the elevators and ran into the stairwell, racing down the steps two at a time. Last night's fantasy of exciting, everlasting love had turned into a chilling phantasm. In the grim light of day Kayla forced herself to face the painful fact—last night's idyll hadn't been about love at all, just lust. What was it that Penny, her stepmother, had often said? Something about love not being a risk, but a genuine hazard? Once again, it seemed that Penny's sense of doomed pessimism had been proven right.
    Kayla felt as though her heart were breaking.
    Back in the room. Matt emerged from the bathroom, aware that his skin was a ghastly shade of green, that he was cold and clammy and felt sicker than he'd ever felt in his life.

    He had turned on the taps in both the shower and the sink to drown out the ignominious sounds of himself wretching. Bad enough that he'd insulted poor Kristina, though he certainly hadn't intended to. For her to know that he'd been dreadfully, helplessly sick would be the ultimate humiliation.
    He was definitely not a cool, smooth operator with a lifestyle to match. Matt acknowledged with a moan. Undoubtedly, there were guys who woke up in bed with a woman of only a few hours' acquaintance, men who suavely called room service to order breakfast for two, but Matthew Min-teer knew he could not be numbered among them. Breakfast! Even the thought of it was almost enough to send him back into the bathroom.
    No, he was not cut out to be one of those cool bachelors. He wanted to be married, to a nice loving woman who would share his Hfe and his career, who would raise a family with him.
    Was that too much to ask? he sometimes wondered. His mother had been that and done that for his dad. But Debra Wheeler had rebelled and the few other relationships he'd had, hadn't worked out, either.
    Which brought him to today, and waking up with Kristina McClure in his bed after an astounding night of the most spectacular sex he'd ever had. No, he amended. What he and Kristina had shared had been more than sex. The intensity, the depth of their responses, the total and perfect culmination of their desires. It had to have been much more than a casual, recreational romp.
    ''Kristina," he called her name softly, determined to talk things over, to overcome the awkwardness that had soured their awakening. He turned to the bed.
    And saw it was empty. Kjristina was not in the bed! A swift glance around confirmed that she was nowhere in the room. Nor were her clothes. Only his littered the floor.

    It was all too obvious. She had dressed and sneaked out while he was being sick in the bathroom! Matt sank down on the bed, fighting a volatile mixture of rage and gloom. She was gone. Could she have possibly made it any plainer that she considered their interlude last night exactly that, an interlude? A very temporary one. A one-night stand that was over. She hadn't even waited to say goodbye. She'd just left.
    Just when he thought that it couldn't get any worse, that he couldn't feel any worse, a knock sounded at the door, a sound so loud that he covered his throbbing ears to mute the thundering echoes in his head.
    "Matt, open up, I know you're in there!" his brother Luke's authoritative voice called through the door.
    Matt scowled. What an abominably unlucky day this was turning out to be. Kristina had fled and now he'd been tracked down by his younger brother, the quintessential cool bachelor himself, who knew all the right moves and all the right words. Had Luke Minteer awakened to find