Falling for Love (Excerpt Only; The McCarthys of Gansett Island Book 4)

This whole thing was Janey’s fault. If she hadn’t gotten married, Grant wouldn’t have had to watch his woman, wearing a slinky, sexy bridesmaid gown, prance around at the wedding with her new fiancé hanging all over her. If it hadn’t been for Janey and her stupid wedding, Grant wouldn’t have felt the need to make Abby jealous by dancing with Stephanie from the marina.

Too bad it hadn’t ended there. No, he’d had to make sure Abby was truly jealous by leaving with Stephanie. And now, as the hammer in his head reminded him of how much alcohol it had taken to get through the nuptials, the warm body sleeping next to him was an even bigger reminder of what a disaster last night had been.

Damn Janey and her damned wedding.

Grant was trying frantically to remember just how far things had gone with Stephanie. He was pretty sure there’d been some kissing in the cab on the way to his now-married sister’s place. Janey had traded him the use of her house in exchange for pet-sitting duties while she and Joe were on their honeymoon. Since their mother had been driving him crazy with questions about the mess he’d made of his life, it had seemed like a good deal at the time because it would get him out of his parents’ house. But now he was mad with his sister for getting married in the first place, and the sweet deal didn’t seem so sweet anymore.

He wished he could escape, but he couldn’t exactly leave his one-night stand in his sister’s bed. What to do?

Then the warm body stirred.

Grant stayed perfectly still, hoping she wouldn’t look at him or, God forbid, try to talk to him. He’d been with Abby so long he’d never had the chance to indulge in one-night stands. He had no idea what the etiquette was, and with a thousand hammers at work in his head, he had no desire to figure it out.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Stephanie—oh Jesus, she was totally naked—slide from the bed and get busy rounding up her clothes. Still pretending to be asleep, he caught glimpses of small breasts and pretty pink nipples that quickly had the attention of a part of him that didn’t know enough to fake sleep. As his cock rubbed against the sheet, he realized he was naked, too.

He was desperately trying to remember how he’d ended up naked in bed with Stephanie, but he couldn’t recall a single thing after being in the cab. Not that being naked with Stephanie hadn’t crossed his mind far too often in the last few weeks. . . He’d even bought condoms, just in case his horny body won the war with his better judgment. But he’d never expected to actually go through with it. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe nothing actually happened. That was possible, right? Naked didn’t automatically mean sex, did it?

Shit, shit, shit! If Abby heard about this, he’d never get her back, not to mention what his father, who’d taken a special interest in Stephanie since she came to work for them, would have to say about it.

Stephanie turned her back to the bed to put on the formfitting black dress she’d worn to the wedding. Her pale skin was creamy white, and his eyes traveled from her shoulders to the two dimples at the bottom of her spine, above her firmly rounded ass. When he first met her, he’d thought she lacked curves. Boyish was the word he’d used to describe her. But now that he’d seen her naked, it was clear that her clothes had hidden small but rather interesting curves.

Not that he was interested in her curves. No, the only curves he craved were Abby’s, and somehow he had to figure out a way to get her back. First and foremost, he had to stop drinking. Booze—and Janey’s damned wedding—had landed him in bed with the wrong woman, and he couldn’t let that happen again. If he had any prayer of winning back Abby, he couldn’t get caught with another woman. Making Abby jealous was one thing, but his plan had clearly gone awry in a big way.