Shiver

He sounded as surprised as she felt. He gathered her close, rocked her against him, smoothed her hair, patted her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and wept. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Talk to me.”
    But she had nothing to say. At least, nothing that she wanted to say. Bursting out with I love you and please say this isn’t the end would be humiliating. Worse, it wouldn’t change a thing. So she shook her head, and did her best to suck it up, and then when he got done kissing her damp cheeks and moved on to kissing her mouth she kissed him back.
    This time, when he made love to her, it was slower, more deliberate, but no less thrilling.
    When it was over, she fell asleep in his arms almost at once.
    Only to wake up to the sound of Tyler calling for her. “Mom?”
    Struggling out of the warm male embrace that had her trapped, she kicked aside the blanket that had found its way over them at some point and scrambled off the bed. The roomwas dark. Trey—God, calling him that felt funny—had obviously turned off the lamp after she had fallen asleep.
    “Sam?” He stirred as she frantically searched the floor around the bed for her robe. “What’s up?”
    She couldn’t help it. She had to turn on the lamp. Her robe was nowhere to be found. The sudden brightness made her blink. He propped himself up on an elbow, and despite everything that they had done together knowing that he was looking at her while she was just standing there naked made her self-conscious.
    “Tyler,” she said, as if that explained everything, which for her it did. She was slightly surprised Tyler hadn’t called for her again. Had she imagined it? Because unless he had a nightmare, he didn’t usually call for her in the night. But it didn’t matter: she had needed to get up and get out of Marco’s bed anyway. Their sexy little interlude was over. Time for reality to bite.
    “Want me to check on him?” He was blinking at her a little owlishly, obviously still half asleep. With his black hair mussed and his broad shoulders and wide chest bare above the striped blanket, he looked good enough to eat. A thunderclap of knowledge— this is probably the last time I’ll ever see him like this —caused a shaft of pain to pierce her heart.
    No matter what, she wasn’t going to cry. Not over him, not over any man, not ever again.
    “No thanks, I’ll handle it,” she told him, giving up on the robe to yank on the first items she found—sweatpants and a T-shirt that had been laid out on the chair in the corner. His clothes for tomorrow? Probably. He could find more.
    Dressed, tightening the drawstring on the pants so they wouldn’t just drop to her ankles as they’d shown an alarming tendency to do, she took the few steps necessary to reach the lamp, and in the process found her robe, which had ended up almost under the bed. Too late, she thought, making a face at it as she clicked off the lamp. The last thing she wanted was a bright swath of light bursting out into the hall to pinpoint her location when she emerged from Marco’s room.
    “Hey.” He caught her hand. A solid shape in the darkness, he was sitting up on the edge of the bed now. He drew her toward him, slid a hand in her hair, pulled her face down to his, and kissed her, a quick hard kiss that did screwy things to her insides.
    “I have to go.” Freeing her hand, she turned her back on him and headed for the door.
    “Sam,” he said as she opened it, and she shook her head before she realized that he probably couldn’t see the gesture. So she said, “Shh,” over her shoulder at him and “Good night,” then walked out of his room with her head held high and her heart breaking, knowing that her first real, all-grown-up, God-I’m-crazy-about-him love affair had just officially ended.
    She should have known better. She should have stayed more on guard. But, oh, God, she had forgotten just how very much falling in love with the wrong man could hurt.
    The pain lasted until she walked into Tyler’s room and saw that he wasn’t there. Hurriedly she checked the second bathroom, and her bedroom and bathroom, calling him softly, turning the lights on in each room to make sure, then off again asshe left so as not to draw Abramowitz to the second floor with a blaze of lights and commotion. Tyler wasn’t in any of them. Had he gone downstairs?
    Padding quickly down the once-again dark hall, Sam had almost made it to the top of the stairs when she saw her son. He was