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PROLOGUE

Hopeful, Texas

Texas summers melted all the good sense a man possessed. That was the only explanation for why Sam McKnight had taken Georgeanne Hayes and driven up toward Hopeful Lake. He hadn’t intended to do it at all, but since he’d gotten back home on leave from the Army three days ago, he’d noticed one thing in this town that had changed dramatically: Georgie Hayes.

“You home for long?” Georgie asked.

He turned the car — an old truck he’d borrowed from his mother—onto the dirt track that ran around the south side of the lake. It was nearly dark now, the sun a glimmer of a memory on the horizon.

“Just a few days.”

“I’ve missed you, Sam.”

He shot her a grin. “I missed you too. Your whole family,” he added. The Hayes family had always been more of a family to him than his own. Her brother was his best friend in the world — which meant he should not be thinking of Georgie as anything more than the annoying little kid she’d always been. She used to follow him around whenever he was at her house, her barely concealed crush almost embarrassing to witness. He’d ignored it, which hadn’t been difficult to do when she’d been twelve and he fifteen.

But now she was eighteen — and impossible to ignore.

He could feel her pouting in the silence that followed. God, she’d changed. In ways he still couldn’t wrap his head around.

“I was hoping maybe you’d missed me the most,” she said softly.

“If I’d known you’d turn out like this, I might have.” Shut up, Sam.

Because he knew, as sure as he knew his own name, that he was not what Richard Hayes Sr. had in mind for his little princess. Georgie was going to the University of Texas where she’d study something suitably refined — interior design, perhaps — and marry the star quarterback.

He was just a soldier home on leave—and he had nothing to offer besides a healthy libido and a few stolen nights of passion.

“It was inevitable. Mama was Miss Dallas, you know.”

Yeah, he knew. But that didn’t mean he’d ever thought of Georgie as anything more than Rick’s little sister. Yet here she was with curves in all the right places, an impressive rack, and the most gorgeous chocolate-brown hair that tumbled in waves over her shoulders and fell all the way to her ass.

He found a place to park and turned off the engine. His heart pounded in his chest as he turned to look at her. What the hell was he doing again? He needed to drive straight back to town and forget every dirty thought he’d been thinking about her since she’d walked into the bowling alley an hour ago.

She gazed at him with eyes that he felt like he could drown in. Green eyes, like springtime in the country.

“I’m eighteen now.”

“I know.”

She slicked her tongue over pretty pink lips. “Then maybe you’ll finally kiss me.”

He could only stare at her for a long moment, his brain warring with his dick. She was still his best friend’s baby sister, and he had a duty to protect her just the same as Rick would if he were here. Sam had driven her out here, but only because she’d asked him to.

Dumbass. You know exactly why she asked, and you also know why you did it.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea, Georgie.”

She unclipped her seatbelt and moved toward him. “I am. I want to kiss you, Sam. Hell, I want you. I’ve wanted you since I was thirteen.”

He swallowed hard. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse. “You don’t mean that.”

She slid up close and put her arms around his neck. “Like hell I don’t. Oh, I didn’t know what I wanted at thirteen. But I do now. I want you, Sam. I want you to fuck me.”

“Christ, Georgie, don’t talk like that.” His hands spanned her ribcage. He intended to set her away from him, but somehow he wasn’t managing it.

And Georgie knew it.

“Why not? Does it turn you on?”

Did it turn him on? Shit, he was harder than an ice cube in Siberia. “I’m not here to stay. You know that, right? I gotta leave in two days and go back to the Army.”

“I know.”

“You asked me if I was home for long.”

She sighed. “Small talk, Sam. I know you aren’t staying. But I want you anyway.”

He shouldn’t do it. He knew he shouldn’t. He should start the truck and drive back toward town. But he wasn’t going to. He was weak and, from the moment she’d walked up to him looking like this, he was lost.

With a groan, Sam lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her…