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That was all it took.
“Excuse me a minute, will ya?” Hoping to preserve what little dignity he still possessed, Ethan forced himself to walk to the bathroom, slam the door and lock it. He needed privacy for the next fifteen minutes while he worshiped the porcelain god, praying it was a dream, hoping against hope that when he emerged everyone would be gone—especially Rosie—and his brain could stop pulsing long enough to let him catch his breath.
He was hanging on to the toilet, his head spinning, when he heard footsteps outside the door.
“Ethan?”
He sat back on the cold ceramic-tiled floor and propped himself against the side of the tub, eyes closed. Breathing was a chore, thinking more so. He did not want to talk. “Go away, Rosie.”
He expected a sharp comeback, a refusal. Hell, he half expected her to knock the door down. Through the years he’d known her, Rosie had shown a knack for doing just as she damn well pleased without unnecessary consideration for what anyone else thought. She was headstrong, opinionated, independent—and she’d been in his bed.
After a few expectant moments when nothing happened, Ethan tensed with new foreboding. His eyes opened and he stared at the locked door. Rosie hadn’t done anything. Had she actually left when he’d asked her to? Or rather, when he’d rudely ordered her to? Had he hurt her feelings?
Had he had sex with her?
His stomach more unsettled than ever, Ethan pushed himself upright and stuck his head out the bathroom door. He didn’t hear a single sound. “Riley?”
Ten seconds passed, then, “What?” Riley leaned around the hallway, looked Ethan over, and made a disgusted face.
“Did Rosie leave?”
“She’s making breakfast.”
“Oh.” That figured. If he wasn’t so hungover, he’d have remembered that Rosie wasn’t a sensitive girly-girl. In fact, she was pretty damn tough…for a female. So of course he hadn’t hurt her feelings.
He hadn’t slept with her, either.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Ethan mumbled to Riley, who continued to look at him as if he was lower than a worm. “Get your mind out of the gutter, will ya?”
Riley crossed his arms over his chest and flattened his mouth. “She said for you to shower and join us.”
And Rosie being Rosie, she fully expected to be obeyed. “Yeah, all right.”
“She said you have ten minutes.”
Annoyed, Ethan slammed the door. He’d take as long as he damn well pleased, and that was that. Hell, the woman didn’t own him. Just because she’d awakened in his bed didn’t mean she could start thinking about bossing him around.
Course, she always bossed him around. And most of the time he let her. Though she was four years younger, they’d been friends forever, through high school and college. They’d remained close friends through the death of her parents, through his long engagement.
They’d even stayed friends after her brother had run off with his fiancée, leaving him literally stranded at the altar nineteen months ago.
Naked, Ethan stepped beneath a stinging spray of hot water and clenched his teeth against the surge of discomfort that radiated to his limbs. He braced his hands on the tiled wall, dropped his head forward and closed his eyes.
God, if he’d had sex with her, he didn’t know if they could remain friends. Rosie was a marrying kind of woman, not a one-night stand. And he would never consider marriage again.
What the hell had he done?
* * *
“HOW MANY EGGS do you guys want?”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Rosie,” Riley said with a long, exaggerated sigh, “what’s going on?”
Rosie Carrington glanced over her shoulder at Riley. He was a big man, so she cracked three eggs for him, same as Harris. “I’m just making breakfast, Riley. No big deal.”
“Yeah, right. Just making breakfast—at Ethan’s, dressed in his shirt, probably on the proverbial morning after.”
“You’re too smart to make assumptions, Riley.”
Harris and Buck looked at each other, then snorted. Oh, they’d made plenty of assumptions, all right. Not that she blamed them. It was a rather damning situation.
Riley paid them no mind. “Okay, so what are you doing here? Last I saw Ethan at the party, he was flirting with that sexy redhead and you were fuming mad at him for, as you put it, acting like an ass again.”
Rosie concentrated on not overcooking the eggs. Last night…well, she had been fuming mad. Come to that, she was still a little peeved. Most of the time Ethan was the best man around, easy to respect, easier to love. He was hardworking, levelheaded, conscientious. A firefighter with a moral code bone-deep. True, he’d become something of a hound dog, but a good-natured one nonetheless.
Yet whenever people brought up his ex-fiancée, he went from being a great guy to a shallow, chauvinistic jerk who grabbed the first available woman. Rosie assumed he did that to prove to everyone that he was over his fiancée, that he’d recovered. The opposite was true. It showed that he was still hurting—and that hurt her.
It had been over a year and a half, for crying out loud. She’d had enough. It was time to take matters into her own hands.
Rosie knew the men were uncomfortable to have found her here. If all went as she planned, they’d just have to get used to it. Besides, she was now decently covered—sort of—in a ratty old housecoat that she’d located in Ethan’s closet.
“You’re being evasive, Rosie.”
“Gee, Riley, I’m twenty-six years old. I thought that meant I didn’t have to answer to anyone for my personal life.”
Harris scratched his head, making his black hair more disheveled than ever. “You and Ethan have a personal life?”
She ignored him as she poked a fork at the pound of sizzling bacon in the cast-iron skillet. Four men, all of them big bruisers, needed a lot of food to maintain their energy levels. “You know, I’m amazed you guys planned to go fishing all day without breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day. You shouldn’t skip it.”
The men smirked at that ludicrous comment. As firefighters, Ethan and Harris kept in the peak of health. Their jobs allowed nothing less. Buck owned a lumberyard and physical labor was part of his daily work week. He had muscles on his muscles.
And Riley—Rosie peered at him again. Riley was an evidence technician for the police department. A former member of the SWAT team, he now owned a self-defense studio where he taught sparring, grappling, Jeet Kune Do and Silat knife fighting.
Next to Ethan, Riley was the most intriguing, appealing man she knew. He could break a person in two without effort. But more often than not, he was as gentle as a lamb—especially where women were concerned.
There wasn’t much call for a SWAT team in the small city of Chester, Ohio, thank God, but Riley had only lived here about five years. Before that, he’d evidently suffered some bad times, not that he ever spoke of it much. He tended to be a very quiet man.
Except for now, when he chose to badger Rosie.
“I think we’ll all survive fishing on an empty stomach.” Riley’s voice was dry, teasing.
“Now you won’t have to.”
Harris leaned forward, sniffing the eggs. “This’ll be better than the pork rinds Buck packed.”
Buck shoved him in the shoulder. “I’ll just eat them all myself then.”
“Hey.” Harris acted wounded by Buck’s selfishness. “You know I was just placating Rosie.”
After wrinkling her nose at the lot of them, Rosie began toasting bread. She had half a loaf out and hoped that’d be enough. Ethan wasn’t much on domesticity and therefore didn’t have an abundance of groceries. His apartment was a pigsty, his kitchen a disaster and his cabinets all but empty.
She glanced at the clock. She’d give the big coward two more minutes tops, then she’d drag him out of the shower whether he wanted to face them all or not. If he was still naked and wet—well, she wouldn’t cavil. In fact, the idea appealed to her.
Dragging him out proved unnecessary when not five seconds later Ethan appeared in the doorway. His mellow brown eyes were bloodshot, his blond hair still wet and only finger-combed, his feet bare. He’d pulled on clean jeans and a gray T-shirt, and to Rosie, he looked better than breakfast.
Her heart felt full to bursting. “You okay?”
He sent her a cautious sneer, hooked a chair, yanked it out from the table and dropped heavily into it. “I’ll live, if that’s what you mean.” His mean, red-eyed look moved around the room to encompass each of his friends. “I’m not going fishing today.”
“Of course not.”
“We understand.”
“You’re an ass, Ethan.”
That last was from Riley, of course. He seemed to love provoking Ethan. Rosie shook her head. They’d all known each other forever—with the exception of Riley who was late to the group, but had quickly become a good friend. They lived to give each other a hard time, so presumably, they were letting Ethan off the hook this time because of her. Since she and Ethan needed to talk, she didn’t object.
Without a word, she set a cup of strong black coffee in front of Ethan. He drank half of it, cursed when he burned his tongue, then glared at her. “You’re not my housekeeper or my cook.”
“With the way you live, you couldn’t pay me enough to be either.”
Harris snickered. Buck held his breath.
Riley said, “You are a damn slob. When was the last time you cleaned?”
“What’s it to you, Mom?” He drank the rest of the coffee and Rosie silently refilled his cup. He muttered his grudging thanks.
Riley lounged back in his seat. Because his censure was so obvious, his silence was more annoying than chatter would have been.
Rosie served the men. When she started to take her own seat, Riley stood to pull out her chair. Ethan growled at him, and Riley growled back.
Men. They could be so unaccountably strange. “Dig in, fellas.”
The next few minutes were filled with sounds of appreciation as the men practically inhaled the enormous amount of food she’d set on the table.
In all the time she’d known Ethan, she’d seen him drunk twice—this being the second time.
It amazed her that Ethan could eat such a hardy meal after a hangover. Other than his bloodshot eyes and listlessness, you wouldn’t know he’d been so miserable just half an hour before.
Harris finished first. “Damn, that was good, Rosie.” He patted his flat stomach. “If I come back tonight, will you cook dinner, too?”
Ethan pierced her with a direct stare. Rosie smiled. “Sure, Harris. Come on by my house around six. I planned on making stew today.”
His brows shot up. “Really? I mean, I was kidding, but hell, I’m always up for your stew.”
Buck pushed back his empty plate. “If that sorry sack is invited, then naturally I’m coming, too.”
“I’ll make plenty.” Rosie loved to hang out with the guys. Because she’d had a tendency to tail her older brother wherever he went, she’d grown very close to the lot of them. She had very few female friends, thus the guys had become the sum total of her social circle.
Riley shook his head. “You’re both mooches. But what would one more matter? Count me in.”
Ethan’s chair scraped back across the floor. He snatched up his empty plate, caused an awful clatter as he roughly stacked the rest of the empty dishes, then moved to the sink. He kept his back to them all as he scraped the plates before nearly throwing them in the dishwasher.
The men looked at each other, shrugged, then prepared to leave. One by one they gave Rosie a hug and a hardy thank-you, with Riley choosing to go last.
He tipped up her chin. “I’ll be back by three. You want to come by the gym? Maybe work off some tension?” He gave a meaningful nod of his head toward Ethan’s rigid back.
“I suppose that’d be better than killing anyone, huh?”
Riley laughed. “You’re getting good, sugar, but not that good. Not yet.”
Ethan jerked around. “Just what the hell does that mean?”
Harris and Buck hunkered out, muttering to Riley that they’d meet him in the truck.
Riley crossed his arms over his chest and faced Ethan. “She’s taking lessons.”
With an expression of incredulous disbelief, Ethan looked from Rosie to Riley and back again. “What kind of lessons would those be?”
His tone was so suspicious that Rosie laughed. “Self-defense, mixed with some knife fighting.” She took a stance and chopped the air with a fist. “I’m going to be lethal.”
Rather than appeased, Ethan appeared more livid. “What the hell are you doing that for? Has someone been bothering you?”
She resisted the urge to say you and shook her head. “I just like staying in shape and knowing I can take care of myself. I’m single, remember?”
Ethan’s face turned red and he strangled on his reply.
Pulling the tiger’s tail, Riley said, “Don’t worry, Ethan. I’m real gentle with her.”
Rosie thought Ethan’s eyes might cross. Instead he fumed in silence for nearly a full thirty seconds before stalking out of the room.
“Oh, boy,” Riley rumbled under his breath. He gestured for Rosie to precede him as he headed to the front door. Ethan waited for them there, holding it open, his impatience to be alone with Rosie plain.
Riley walked out into the hallway. “Be good, kids.”
“You know I’m always good. But I can’t make any promises for Ethan.”
He winked at her. “You’ll keep him in line.”
Ethan snapped the door shut, then turned both locks with a dreadful sense of finality. When he faced Rosie, she decided a strategic retreat was in order; he did not look like a happy man.
In fact, he looked very unhappy. Or maybe “riled” was the word. Yeah, he looked downright riled. She supposed Riley’s teasing flirtation hadn’t helped matters.
Ethan was used to Harris and Buck razzing her. After all, they’d all grown up in the same neighborhood. The three of them had been best buds with her brother—until her brother had slipped off with Ethan’s fiancée.
