“Here. Tonight. What we were doing before you said you couldn’t—were you taking advantage of me?”

“No.” He almost looked offended that she would even ask. “Of course not.”

“Then I don’t understand why you feel we have to stop.”

He ran a hand over his hair, which only made him look sexier. “I’m trying to respect your father’s wishes.”

“What about my wishes?” Her words were loud over the sound of the surf. “What about what I want?”

But she already knew the answer. Drew had made a promise to her father, and he was the kind of person who stood by his promises. She didn’t want to hurt her father either, but she’d already chosen him over her mother, had already chosen a steady, measured life over the much more exciting one her mother wanted to give her. And she’d never been tempted by anyone to step outside that comfort zone before.

Only, now that she’d finally met a gorgeous guy who tempted her like crazy—and who, miraculously, was just as tempted—nothing could come of it.

Because her father had made Drew promise to never, ever touch her.

“Ash—”

She put her hand up before he could say anything else. She was too upset now to listen anyway, miles away from the rational person she’d always been before. “I know you’re in a bad position. Let’s just forget it.”

He looked as frustrated as she felt. “I don’t know if I can.”

She knew she wouldn’t. But unless she wanted her heart to be even more flattened than it already was tonight, she’d have to take her best shot at forgetting her feelings for Drew. Starting right this second.

She pulled out her cell phone to text Max to ask him to come pick them up.

Chapter Twelve

Phoenix, Arizona

The moment Ashley’s lips met Drew’s had been the best of his life. There wasn’t anything else that had ever come close.

Her mouth had been so soft. So sweet.

Perfect.

By last night, his need for her had already grown to such a fever pitch that before he could stop it from happening, their kiss had gone from gentle to desperate. He couldn’t stop tasting, couldn’t stop touching, couldn’t stop taking.

He’d known kissing her, touching her, would be good—but he’d never known hunger like this before. Never known pleasure so raw. So all-encompassing.

And while they’d been kissing, he’d forgotten everything but how good she felt, smelled, tasted. Right and wrong had been lost to him as he’d completely lost sight of his promise to her father to keep her safe. But then, when something had startled her and she’d pulled back to tell him how shocked she was at how deep their attraction really went, Drew’s promise to her father had slammed back down on him like a two-by-four crashing into his chest.

Of all the women in the world, she was the one he couldn’t have. So he’d forced himself to stop them from taking the next step. From stripping each other’s clothes off and making love on the deserted beach. Even though there was nothing—not one single thing—he’d wanted more than that.

God, he’d hated seeing the hurt in her eyes, and hadn’t wanted to let her think for one second that he was keeping his distance because she wasn’t beautiful or desirable. She was. So beautiful, so desirable that being close to her in his bus all night as they’d driven to Phoenix, and then all day as she shadowed his interviews, had been hell. Pure, unadulterated hell.

But even worse than knowing he could never kiss Ashley again or hear her incredibly seductive sighs of pleasure as his mouth roamed down over her skin, was the fact that since that moment when she’d told him just to forget it, she’d shut down on him. She was still friendly. And he could see that she still loved his music. But the closeness that they’d been building—the friendship he’d quickly come to count on—had come to a stop.

While they’d waited for Max in the parking lot, her body language had spoken volumes about how she felt—with her shoulders and face turned as far away from him. And when Max had come to pick them up from the beach in the bus, she’d immediately gone into her bunk and closed the curtain to block him out. Drew had wanted to say something, anything, to make things better. To go back to the way they’d been before he completely screwed things up by trying to do the right thing. But he’d been afraid of making things worse, and had told himself that, hopefully, by the following morning things would be better and they could at least go back to being friends again.

But when morning came in Phoenix, though Ashley had still made breakfast for both of them, by the time he’d thrown on clothes to come out and eat with her, the curtain on her bunk was drawn and he’d heard the clicking of her fingertips on her computer keyboard. She hadn’t come out until James boarded to grab them for interviews.