She wasn’t blind. It was just that he was Tyler. And normally, when she saw women leaving him, she only saw the women looking starry-eyed. She’d never seen an actual action scene before.

The kiss went on and on. Tyler's hand, which Lexi had never noticed was so big or quite so strong looking, was on the woman’s ass, holding her in the perfect place for him to—

But surely that was breaking the bonds of friendship. Surely she shouldn’t imagine what he was doing with that part of his body. Particularly not what was making them both make those sounds. And Lexi felt as if she’d been cast in stone and made into a statue of foolish astonishment, right there outside his house. Because she couldn’t move. She couldn’t pick up her bag and slink off in shame to hide off around the corner, at the very least, until this ended. One way or another.

The embarrassment was so great that she felt her entire body heat up, and a melting sort of sensation sink through the center of her, seeming to pool down low.

She told herself it had to be shame. Because what else could make her cheeks so hot?

He murmured something into the woman’s ear that Lexi couldn’t hear. It made the woman sigh a little, then nod. The leg she had hooked over his hip slid to the ground, and Lexi watched as Tyler kept a hand on her body, steadying her.

“All right, then?” he asked.

“All right,” the woman said softly, then smiled in a way that made something curl around and around inside Lexi. All that heat and the melting, too, until she wasn’t sure she could breathe.

Then they both turned, and of course, Lexi was still standing right there. Her cheeks so crisp and bright they hurt.

But that didn’t hold her attention. What did was the way Tyler was looking at her.

Because for a moment, she didn’t recognize him. There was something in that green gaze of his that she had never seen before. Something fierce. Hot and dark and dangerous, when Tyler was the least dangerous man she’d ever met. His face changed, too. He seemed bigger, harder, wilder— And as long as that kiss had gone on, this moment stretched out even longer.

Lexi had the strangest notion that she had lost something. That something had shifted, permanently. It was that seismic. It was that terrifying. Nothing will ever be the same, a voice in her whispered. But he blinked. Then he smiled, and was Tyler again.

“Christ, Lexi,” he said, his voice filled with laughter and charm and above all, safety. The way it usually was. “What the bloody hell are you doing in Olkfield?”

__________

Tyler Connelly was used to this dream.

He’d had it enough, though usually when he dreamed of Lexi appearing before him she was wearing a whole lot less.

“I should have told you I was coming,” she was saying, and that was another clue that he wasn’t dreaming this.

Because his fantasies weren’t about Lexi sounding apologetic. Or tired. They were far more energetic. Athletic, even.

And Tyler was only dimly aware of the woman he’d been kissing moments before. The eager Rose, who had woken him up with her mouth on his cock, and who, if he was completely honest, he’d closed his eyes and imagined was Lexi at several points last night. Because that was how fucked-up he was. He’d been telling himself he was at a place of peace with how twisted he was, but that had been more convincing when the real Lexi wasn’t…right here.

He shot Rose a smile, turning while he did it so he could help usher her out of his door, because he’d never been a gentleman, had he?

“You really do have a queue, don’t you?” Rose asked.

But she sounded good-natured, not jealous or upset. Tyler did pride himself on that. He liked them to leave happy, satisfied and under no illusions about the possibility of any feelings cropping up.

“Oh, I’m not in any queue,” Lexi said, in that posh voice of hers that had haunted him for years now. Though it sounded a bit more frantic than usual. “To be clear. We’re just friends. Old friends, that’s all.”

“Steady, love,” Rose murmured, with a bawdy little laugh. She gave Tyler a wink, then stepped around Lexi and started down the street on the astonishingly high heels they’d made use of last night, in a variety of ways.

Tyler forgot her in the next breath.

Because Lexi was here. Here. And that probably meant something bad was happening to her or around her, but he would care about that in a minute. Right now, there was the fact of her outside his door. Lexi in the winter light, with a breeze blowing in from the sea. You’re pathetic, he told himself, but that wasn’t a shock.

“I really am sorry to bust up your morning,” Lexi was saying, worriedly, with that little frown between her eyes that Tyler had dedicated whole years of his life to erasing.

“No worries at all,” he told her, which had the benefit of being true. “She was leaving anyway. There was nothing to bust up.”

He reached over and wrapped her in a hug. And nothing ever changed. There was always that kick in him, deep and hard. His chest tight, his cock so hard it ached and that same old reaction to her he always had like a full-on wildfire, sweeping over him. But if it was only that, he would have done something about it years ago and moved on. It was the other part that got to him even more. The sense that the world snapped back into place when he held her. Holding Lexi was like coming home, that was the curse of it.

If Tyler knew anything in this life, it was that getting what you wanted was unlikely at best, and if it came to you, it was never in the form you wanted it. His friendship with Lexi was a prime example of that principle and he didn’t care, because there was this.

Lexi snuck her arms around his waist, let out that little sound of contentment the way she always did and squeezed him back, hard. And there it was, that moment that had haunted him almost from the moment he’d met her, and led to so many of his twisted, fucked-up nights with other women that were never her.

That indescribable moment Lexi was in his arms and everything was as it should be. When she buried her head against his chest with perfect trust and he could pretend he was the man she thought he was. Better yet, just for that moment, he could pretend that she was his.

Tyler took a breath and stepped back, because he had to let go first. That was part of the bargain he’d made with himself a long time ago to control his little addiction to this woman.

“You didn’t answer my question.” He grinned down at her in the morning light. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Lexi said, and laughed.

That same laugh had done his head in—ruined him, if he was honest— the first week of his first year at the University. He could remember it so vividly. He’d come out of his room, overwhelmed that he’d made it out of his shit neighborhood and to this storied place, and there she was. She’d been talking to someone else whose face he never recalled. He’d only seen Lexi.

That laugh had gotten inside him then, and there was no getting it out. “Better come in then,” he told her.

He took her bag from her and indulged himself when she moved ahead of him, allowing his fingers to graze the small of her back. Tyler loved sex. His appetite was intense, and his preferences more so. He loved women. He loved the journey of it, the breathless distance between a flirtatious look and shaking, screaming woman clamped down hard on his cock while she came for the third time.

He loved every step along the way, from a naughty striptease to a sudden shock of intimacy that could change a bit of fun into a real moment in an instant—then change back. But nothing got to him as much as Lexi Graham, and in case he kidded himself into imagining that might change, there were moments like this. Where the brush of his fingertips against the back of her jacket wiped out all memory of the night he just spent making another woman come and cry all over him, again and again and again.

Tyler came from a long line of addicts, and all things considered, he preferred Lexi to heroine. A junkie is a junkie, he told himself sharply. Not that it helped.

He took her inside, leading her up the stairs to the main part of his house.

It was all arranged to take in the sweeping views of the coast, so he sat her down on his deck, wrapped her in a blanket to keep off the winter chill and then sorted out cups of tea. Then he dropped down in the chair opposite and let himself look at her.

Lexi. In his house. At last.

She smiled at him for a moment, then lifted her mug of tea, and that ring she wore caught the light. That fucking ring.

“You must think I’m mad,” she said after she took a slug of her tea.

She kept the mug in her hands, her legs curled up beneath her in the chair, and it turned out the Olkfield sun loved her as much as the Nemford rain always had. It brought out the hints of gold in her hair, the prettiest brown he’d ever seen. It was longer now, and she’d piled it up on top of her head in a manner he knew most women spent hours to achieve. But not Lexi. Everything about her was elegant and effortless, from that delicate collarbone he could see beneath the collar of her shirt, to those cheekbones that seemed to make her dark eyes brighter. And that mouth that had made him hungry as long as he’d known her.

“I do think you’re mad,” he agreed, lazily. “But then, I always have. So you turning up at my door on a random Saturday doesn’t change a thing.” She was flushed, he noticed, and it almost seemed as if she was having trouble meeting his eyes. “Are you embarrassed about something?”

“It’s a bit cold, don’t you think?” she asked, after a moment. And then, to his astonishment, fluttered her hand in his direction, as if to encompass his whole body. “Shouldn’t you…put that away?”

If it was any other woman, he would have taken great pleasure in the notion that his nakedness made her…flutter. But Tyler had the distinction of being Lexi's friend. Her best friend, she often said, an honor he shared with only one other person on this earth.

And he’d always liked crazy, reckless Lily Mckay well enough, but he knew full well there was no possible way she loved Lexi as much as he did. Because nobody could. And the consistent theme in their friendship was that Lexi resolutely refused to see him as a man. He was going to remember the fluttering. And that flush.

“I’m not cold,” he told her.

Which was true enough. The slap of the breeze was a good thing. It helped remind him that this wasn’t one of those fantasies he’d had so many times. That whatever reason Lexi had for being here, it was not to fling off her clothes and climb on top of him at last. His body needed to calm the fuck down.

“This really is a lovely house,” she was saying, like she was at a tea party. “The pictures you sent years back really didn’t do it justice. I love how it sort of flows, doesn’t it, from room to room, and then of course the view must really—”

“Fucking hell, Lexi.”

She blew out a breath. “I needed to get away. I need to…think about some things.”

He nodded toward the gigantic rock weighing down her left hand. The symbol of what he’d known would come, sooner or later. Lexi was always going to get married, and he’d accepted that, too, hadn’t he? He’d always been a realist. But accepting it in the abstract was a lot easier than the ring in his face. And her here.

“Marriage is a big step,” was all he said.

“Yes,” she agreed, too quickly. “But Victor is a good choice. Really. Some of the men my father sent me out on dates with were awful.”

“Do you love him?”

He shouldn’t have asked that. Because he really didn’t want to know the answer.

And he didn’t need to see her look of astonishment.

“Love him? Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Certainly not.” She considered her tea for a moment, then brightened. “But maybe someday I will. They say that arranged marriages—”

“Stability isn’t the same thing as love,” Tyler interrupted her. He should know. It was a challenge to remain relaxed in his chair, but he did it. “And I think you’ll find that friendship, however intense, is no substitute for passion.”

Interestingly, that flush seemed to deepen. She busied herself with her mug of tea, once again seeming…flustered.

“You would be the expert on that,” she said softly. But distinctly.

Tyler hadn’t touched his tea. He thought longingly of the bottle of whiskey he had inside, aged to perfection, but he knew nothing took the edge off the Lexi effect. Nothing ever had, nothing ever would.

“You know me.” He forced the easy grin that would make most of the people who knew him do a double take. Because Tyler Connelly was edgy, not easy. But Lexi didn’t know that Tyler. “As long as they leave happy.”

“She seemed very happy.” Lexi nodded in the vague direction of the street. “The one downstairs.”

“Mission accomplished, then.”

“What exactly is it that you do?” she asked, and her gaze was direct. “To her. To them. In general.”

He kept the grin going. “Do you want me to draw you a manual?”

“In all the years I’ve known you,” she said, as if she was carefully sounding out her words, “no matter how many women you sleep with or if they overlap, they always leave delighted. And thanking you. Why?”

“That’s a bit hurtful.” He lifted a brow. “Surely even you can appreciate what a piece of eye candy I am, Lexi.”

A shameless attempt to get her to ogle him, he was well aware. But Lexi didn’t take the bait. She kept her gaze on his, which was both disappointing and arousing, a sensation he was all too used to.

“There are a lot of good-looking men, Tyler. But with you it’s something different.”

“Charm?”

“There are a lot of charmers, too.”

Tyler had been studying Lexi for years. Today she had shadows beneath her eyes, which he blamed on the long flight. She looked tired, but it was more than that. More than travel, clearly. It was the way she was holding her head, deliberately, as if fighting back some kind of strong emotion. She seemed more fragile than usual.

Tyler had once been called a grinning bloody shark by a business associate—and it hadn’t been meant as an insult—because he could smile nicely while eviscerating his opponents. Because he’d been raised up in a bleak, hard place and it was in him, too, that bleakness. That hardness. It was what made him rich. And he liked his sex the way he liked his many business deals and everything else in this life he’d built entirely with his own hands—completely under his control.

There had only ever been one shred of softness in him. Her. And she had no clue. It was almost funny, really.

“Did you really fly all the way to Olkfield to quiz me about my sex life?” he asked.

“I’m getting married,” she said, and he didn’t make a face or roll his eyes at the unnecessary obviousness of that statement, because she was looking at him so intently. “And I know that many women in my position don’t intend to keep their wedding vows, but I do. Or I don’t see the point of being married.”

He was long past the point where mentions of her boyfriends, or dates or various other relationships with lesser men got to him—but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit around and talk about her marital vows. Though he would.

“Is he planning to extend you the same courtesy?”

“He said he would.” Lexi shrugged. It was a sharp, almost bitter sort of movement. “But I think we both know that’s easier said than done. For him, I mean.”

“A promise is a promise, Lexi.”

“I don’t think he cares,” she said, then, and not as if it hurt her. As if it was a simple, small truth. “You’re the only one I can say this to. But Victor is a very cold man. I think if he decides to shut himself off, he will, and that’s that.”

“He sounds grand.”

The look she sent him then was reproving, but that was an improvement, to his mind. “Part of me thinks that this is the best it can be, given the situation.” She propped her tea mug on her curled-up legs. “Most people with our sort of arrangement wouldn’t dream of expecting fidelity. It’s a lovely bonus.”

Tyler rubbed a hand over his face. “If you say so.”

“I wouldn’t want to be embarrassed.” She frowned down at her mug. “And you know Lily. I think that’s as much embarrassment as Victor ever wanted. I don’t think he would cause a scandal.”

“Are you trying to tell me that your man doesn’t satisfy you?” Tyler asked, possibly with more edge in his voice than was needed. “Because there are books you could read, or you could have rung up, Lexi. No need to go to such lengths.”

“Oh, I don’t know if he… I mean, we’ve never…” She scowled at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“You’re going to marry a man who you’ve never had sex with.” He shook his head, though it kicked at him. Or maybe that was his heart, trying to crack his ribs wide open. “I’ll be honest, there’s a lot I don’t understand about you. But this might take the bloody cake.”

“It wasn’t as if the dates we went on were romantic,” she protested. “And then he proposed, very quickly, which would be strange and off-putting if things were romantic—but this was never about that. So why not go along quickly? And what’s the point of trying it out ahead of time? It isn’t going to make a difference. Good or bad, we’re stuck with it either way.”

He wanted to break something. “For fuck’s sake.”

“I didn’t come all this way to debate whether or not I should marry Victor. I’ve already agreed to do it. It’s a done deal.”

“You do know what year it is? Fathers don’t get to go around selling off daughters. You have a say.”

“Of course I have a say.”

Tyler beat down his temper enough to notice she didn’t look upset. She looked annoyed. At him.

“If I didn’t want to get married, I wouldn’t. It’s not as if my father would force me down the aisle with a gun to my back. You’ve met him. You know he’s not like that.”