She sighed. “He loves football.”

He moved in closer, picked up a strand of her hair, twirling the curling end between his fingers. “Invite me over for dinner. We’ll have pizza.”

“You don’t strike me as the pizza type.”

“Then there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

No doubt. “That’s not a good idea.”

He leaned in closer. God, he smelled good. Her hormones noticed.

“Invite me over for pizza.”

“Would you like to come over for dinner tonight, Mick?” Damn hormones.

His smile could melt a woman straight into the floorboards.

“I’d love to. Give me your address.”

She jerked a piece of paper from the pad on the table and wrote her address.

“Might as well add your cell phone number, too.”

She did, then handed him the paper. “Six thirty okay?”

“Perfect.”

He leaned in and brushed his lips across hers, and her stomach did flip-flops. Her utterly girlie stomach. Dammit.

“See you then.”

He walked out. Tara stupidly stood at the window watching him walk across the street, his stride eating up the asphalt. He looked damn hot in a pair of cargo pants and a white T-shirt that stretched tightly over his mighty fine muscles.

Maggie’s sigh over her shoulder jolted her back to reality. She whipped around to face Maggie, Ellen, and Karie.

“What?”

“You’re dating the captain of the football team,” Karie said with a dreamy sigh.

Tara rolled her eyes. “Go back to work. All of you. This isn’t high school.”

“No, but it’s every girl’s dream from high school,” Ellen said with a laugh.

TARA HAD A HALF HOUR BEFORE MICK WAS DUE TO arrive, and she was a total wreck. One would think the queen was arriving instead of just a guy coming over to sit on her couch and have pizza.

Her house was a disaster, the scourge of having an unsupervised teenager running amok during the day. Empty soda cans littered the tables in the living room, the sink was filled with dishes, and said culprit had already taken off for his friend’s house for the night.

The kid was going to be toast. She’d have him on housecleaning duty the rest of the week.

She picked up, ran the vacuum, tossed the dishes into the dishwasher, then dashed upstairs to change clothes, deciding Mick was either going to have to deal with her life and the state of her house or he’d leave, preferring the jet-set lifestyle of caviar, maid service, and supermodels.

Tara was neither caviar nor supermodelish, and she sure as hell didn’t have maid service. She was pizza on a Friday night, and the way she looked now, which was tank top, blue jeans, and flip-flops, with her hair wound into a messy ponytail thingy. He was going to have to take it or leave it.

She let out a low shriek when the doorbell rang, then hurried downstairs toward the door, shooting a glance at the clock as she took the stairs two at a time.

She was out of breath by the time she flung the door open, and Mick frowned.

“Asthma attack?”

“More like a panic attack. I was picking up the house and trying to make myself presentable.”

He walked in with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. “You look pretty presentable to me. These are for you.”

Wildflowers. Not a dozen roses, but daisies and bellflowers and lilies and freesia and baby’s breath. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

He followed her into the kitchen. “You didn’t strike me as a roses kind of woman.”

“I’m not a roses kind of woman. I love these.” She grabbed a vase and filled it with water, then arranged the flowers in it and put it on her dining room table.

“Where’s Nathan?”

“Not home.” She wasn’t about to tell him that Nathan was spending Friday night at a friend’s house. She wasn’t ready for Mick to meet him yet. It was too soon, and she wasn’t sure where she and Mick were headed. Hell, she wasn’t sure about anything. No way was she going to involve her son.

“I see.” He grabbed her around he waist and jerked her against him, then planted his lips on hers, giving her one seriously hot kiss that melted her feet to her kitchen floor. Tara sank into the kiss, forgetting all about where she was until Mick pulled away.

“Wow.”

He grinned. “Figured we wouldn’t get any alone time for that tonight, so wanted to get it in now.”

She blinked to clear her head. “Okay then.”

He looked around. “So show me your house.”

“It’s just a condo, Mick. Nothing fancy.”

He turned to her. “I live in a condo. Nothing fancy, either. So show me yours, and when you come to my place I’ll show you mine.”

His words evoked images of you show me yours and I’ll show you mine that had nothing to do with living space. She tried to suppress the tingle that rolled down her spine, but as she led him from room to room, she felt his eyes on her and wondered if he was really looking at her place or at her.

“You have a nice place, Tara.”

She shrugged. “I try to make a home for Nathan. And he’s a slob, so if you find stinky tennis shoes anywhere, blame him.”

He laughed. “You forget who you’re talking to. And I’m glad we’re not at my condo right now, because you probably would find smelly tennis shoes somewhere. So relax. The fact you have a teenage boy and he actually lives here isn’t going to send me running out the door. I was a teenage boy once. I get how they live.”

“Fine. I’ll try not to panic.” She took him through the living room and dining room.

“I don’t think you want to see the upstairs.”

“Sure I do. I want to see your whole house.”

She sighed. “Fine.”

They took the stairs, and again she felt his gaze on her. It wasn’t making her uncomfortable, exactly, just aware that she was alone in her house with a man. When was she ever alone in her house with a man?

Uh ... never? She never brought guys over, never wanted to parade a stream of men in and out of Nathan’s life. She figured if she’d ever thought about having a permanent relationship with a guy, she’d let him meet Nathan.

So why had she invited Mick over? They weren’t even really dating.

“There are three bedrooms up here. Nathan’s room, my room, and the third I use for an office. I should probably warn you about Nathan’s room ...”

“You can skip it. That’s his private domain, and I don’t want to violate it.”

She stood outside her bedroom door. “Oh, but you’d be fine with violating my private domain?”

He leaned over her and turned the door handle. “Honey, I’ve already violated your domain.”

There went that flutter again, her sex and her ni**les all too aware they were entering her bedroom.

She stood back and let him look, figuring he’d take a cursory glance and they’d be on their way back downstairs.

“It looks like you.”

She stared at her bedroom, at the cream and brown comforter, the pictures on the walls, the photos of Nathan. She turned to Mick “Really? How?”

“Colorful. The art on the walls isn’t just some mishmash of crap. The textures of the two pictures over the bed bring out the colors in the bedspread. I like Mondine’s art, by the way. She’s trendy, but doesn’t paint that weird shit where you can’t figure out what the hell it is. The black-and-white photos of your son seem to capture his personality. He looks like he’s trying damn hard to be serious as hell and all grown-up, but he’s just a big goof and probably feels dorky a lot of the time. Curse of being almost fifteen. Cute kid, by the way.”

“Thank you.” Her voice caught because he’d so perfectly described her son’s early awkward teenage years.

“I can tell you put thought into each piece. Same thing with the knickknacks that you have spread throughout the house. It’s not overkill, just subtle touches. It’s not fussy; it’s simple. I don’t feel like I have to watch where I walk or where I would set a glass down. And I imagine your son is comfortable living here. Your place looks lived-in. It’s inviting.”

She stared at him for the longest time, until he laughed.

“What?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Huh?”

“No football player knows art and décor. And you know who Mondine is.”

“Oh. Well, blame Liz for that.”

“Liz?”

“My agent. She makes me go to gallery openings and museums and charity events for the arts—the kinds of things no football player should have to endure. You soak enough of it up, some of it sticks. Like this sculpture here,” he said, picking up the entwined lovers. “It says something about who you are as well as the artist.”

“What does it say about me?”

“That you know good art. I saw this at a gallery opening a few months back. It also says you’re a romantic.”

She sat on the end of her bed and looked at him. “There are sides to you that boggle me, Mick Riley.”

He sat next to her. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

She rubbed her temple. “I haven’t decided yet.” She knew he’d wowed her because he was way more complex than she’d given him credit for.

He pulled her onto his lap. “When you decide, let me know. In the meantime, I want to tell you how much I missed you this week.”

Just being close to him set her nerve endings firing, waking up all the female parts of her that had missed him, that craved his touch. The logical part of her, on the other hand, just knew this was a bad idea, especially since they were sitting on her bed. But she couldn’t get her damn body to listen to the signals from her brain that told her to get up. Instead, she wound her arms around his neck and snaked her fingers into the thick softness of his hair. “You missed me?”

“Yeah. If I’d had your number, I’d have called you.”

“I’m glad I gave you my number, then.”

“I missed being able to talk to you.”

“I like talking to you, too.” That was the truth. He made her laugh. He was smart and wicked funny. He was interested in her, in who she was as a person, not just as someone to have sex with. Men like him were so rare.

He rolled her onto the bed. “I thought a lot about kissing you.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right.” He pressed his lips to hers, his tongue diving inside and taking her breath away, making her forget everything except his taste, his scent, the feel of his hard body next to hers. She slung her leg around his hip and brought him closer, already wet and needy as a hey-I-missed-you kind of kiss became something deeper, more passionate. She pulled his shirt out of his pants and slid her hand inside, pressing her palm against his hot abdomen, needing to touch his skin, to feel his pulse beating against her hand.

Mick rolled her over onto her back, his body on top of hers as he moved his lips from her mouth to her jaw, his tongue sliding to her neck. She shivered as he applied suction there.

“That makes my ni**les hard.”

He pulled her tank top up. “Does it? Let’s see.”

He jerked her bra up over her breasts, smiled up at her, and covered one nipple with his mouth. She arched against the wet heat and the way he gently sucked her nipples.

Yeah, she’d missed him a lot. And now that he was here, she had a sudden quaking need to feel him inside her.

“Mick, please. Fuck me.”

Instead, he popped the button of her jeans and unzipped them, then kissed his way down her belly.

Tara gripped the comforter with both hands, her entire body taut with tension and need as he dragged her jeans and panties down her legs. He spread her legs and crawled between them, draping them over his shoulders and planting his mouth over her sex.

“Did you touch yourself this week?” he asked, looking up at her.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Too busy.”

“You should never be too busy to come, Tara.”

“I need to come now.” She reached down and slid her fingers into the softness of his hair.

“I like that you haven’t come since you were with me.” He kissed her thigh, then put his mouth on her.

“Ohhhh” was all she could manage as he licked the length of her sex, his tongue and lips finding her clit. She was so ready for an orgasm she arched against him, leaning forward to touch him, to watch as he licked her, sucked her, slid his tongue inside her, and did every possible thing he could to take her right over the edge. He swirled his tongue over the most sensitive spot, relentless in taking her right there only to ease off until she was panting and begging to come.

And when she tugged at his hair, he fit his mouth around her and rolled his tongue flat and gave her just what she needed.

“Yes. I’m coming.” She pushed her pu**y against his face and he held her h*ps while she came in hot, sweet waves that rolled over and over, stopping her breath. And when she fell to the mattress he was right there, climbing up her body to kiss her, to let her taste the sweetness of her own pleasure. She wrapped her arms around him and licked his lips and chin, taking one hand down his body to palm his cock.

“Now f**k me. Hurry.”

He pulled a condom out and flipped her over the edge of the bed onto her stomach. He entered her hard and fast, and she gasped, chills breaking out on her skin.

She rose up, and Mick smoothed his hands down her back as he eased out and thrust inside her again. He leaned over and swept her hair to the side, pressing his lips to the nape of her neck.