For Love and Family by Victoria Pade

she’d felt pressured. “It’s information I should have, even if it doesn’t ever become relevant.”
    They’d reached the cabin and she opened the door and turned on the overhead light, stepping just inside and turning to find him leaning one broad shoulder against the jamb the same way he had the night before, his hands hidden in the pockets of his low-slung jeans.
    â€œWhy wouldn’t it become relevant?” he asked. “Don’t you want kids of your own?”
    â€œI’d love to have kids of my own. But I doubt I’ll ever have the chance.”
    Hunter frowned in confusion. “Why not?”
    That wasn’t a subject she wanted to get into right then so she merely shrugged. “It’s complicated. But I just don’t think marriage and family are in the cards for me.”
    â€œThis isn’t more of that ‘lesser twin’ thing, is it?”
    Terese repeated the shrug. “And some prior experience,” she said more to herself than to him.
    Hunter was studying her again and he shook his head. “I don’t know where this is all coming from but you’re so damn wrong…”
    His eyes were delving deeply into hers and for no reason Terese understood she felt mesmerized by their gold-streaked intensity. So mesmerized that words escaped her and the only thing she could think about was the same thing she’d thought about at the end of the last two evenings—what it might be like to have him kiss her.
    But theirs wasn’t that kind of relationship, she told herself.
    Still, she was looking up into that ruggedly beautiful male face, into those topaz-colored eyes that seemed to be bathing her in a warm glow, and she couldn’t escape the sense that him kissing her was what should be happening at that moment.
    And then, suddenly, it was.
    Suddenly he was leaning forward. She was tilting her chin up. And their mouths just somehow met as her eyes drifted shut.
    He was kissing her.
    His lips were over hers, parted just slightly, sweet and sexy at the same time.
    And she was kissing him back.
    She was letting her own lips relax and open just slightly. She was letting her head move just a little in answer to his movements.
    Even as her mind spun with the pure amazement that this was happening, her senses were registering the feel of that kiss, the smell of his aftershave, the heat of his breath against her skin….
    Oh, what a kiss it was!
    A great kiss. A kiss that she willed to last and last.
    To last long enough for him to put his arms around her. Long enough for him to pull her against him. Long enough for him to press his hands to her back and give her the excuse to press hers to the muscles of his. To have her breasts against the hard wall of his chest and the rest of her body running the length of his…
    But the kiss didn’t last long enough for any of that.
    Instead, Hunter eased into ending it, slowly straightening up again and returning to just peering down into her eyes.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said then. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
    â€œYes, you should have,” she blurted out before she realized she was going to say anything at all.
    She could feel her face suffuse with color again, but the comment and the blush only made Hunter smile.
    â€œI should have?” he asked.
    â€œI just meant it was okay,” she said, making a desperate effort to regroup.
    His smile grew even bigger. “Only okay? ” he teased as if she’d given him a rating.
    â€œWell, maybe a little better than okay,” she allowed, finally getting hold of herself enough to play along.
    Hunter chuckled, maintaining his search of her eyes for a moment longer as a number of emotions seemed to war in his expression, leaving Terese thinking that he’d surprised himself as much as he’d surprised her with that kiss.
    Then, as if those warring emotions had settled or resigned themselves, he said,