by Thea Devine
Okay. Truck would come. He would do his thing with the pipes, then the bill would arrive and she would pay it somehow and this business with the pipes—and Truck—would be over, done, finished.
It sounded perfectly normal, like the chores she’d done yesterday after she’d returned the van; she’d shopped for groceries, put away clothes and cleaned the house one more time again.
For herself. Not for Truck McKelvey.
Last night, after switching the mattress with the one in her old room, she had slept in her mother’s bed and awakened to a lush view of woods and water, the sparkle of the sun on lapping waves.
This morning, she’d had her breakfast at the kitchen counter, and watched boats skimming across the lake.
Then she had gotten down to business. She’d wired the phone into the den and into her computer, gotten a new access number, and she had spent the morning answering E-mail and printing out job postings.
She’d showered in spite of the sputtering pipes, and now it was all of two o’clock and she was feeling jittery because the afternoon was young and she had nowhere to go and nothing urgent to do.
In her old life, she would probably have still been out to lunch with a client, in strategy meetings or racing around to put the finishing touches on a presentation. God, she missed it. She missed the rush of meeting problems head-on and solving them, and the pulse and beat of a business environment She missed her colleagues, her friends, the little neighborhood restaurants, the germination of an idea on a napkin over a drink after dinner.
She didn’t know what she was going to do with herself in Paradise. Jeannie was right. She really couldn’t be away from the city for more than ten minutes. Or two days.
She was going to have to learn to cook. No more quick dashes down the block for a last-minute dinner-to-go at the salad bar. She was going to have to plan ahead. No more racing back and forth to do Saturday chores. She’d have to remember to group everything together in the same direction when she was going to town. She was going to have to clean the house once a week. Dear God, she was going to have to revamp her whole life.
What if she wound up staying in Paradise, and working from home? Winters in Maine with the snow up to the windows and the lake a sheet of sheer ice and power lines down? She’d be ready for the asylum. She had to be out of there by then.
Restlessly, Carrie moved to the table. While she was in the midst of sorting through the papers piled there, she heard the unmistakable hum of an engine in the distance. Going over to the window she saw Truck pull the van into the clearing, jump out and stride purposefully toward the house. Lord, he looked good. Too good. He was wearing jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt, and he was lean and tall, and his hair was black as a crow’s wing in the sun. He looked young, sexy, potent. Her breath caught, and as she wheeled away from the window she almost collided with him. Truck reached out to steady her, and she felt his hands, his large capable clever hands, burning her skin through her silk-sleeved arms.
“Thanks. Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” He was mesmerized by the sight of Carrie. Silk the color of whipped vanilla was draped over her upper torso and buttoned up to the enticing vee between her breasts. No jewelry. No makeup. Her hair tumbling from an untidy topknot. Her lower lip moist and tender, as if she had been licking it. She was as sexy as hell. A man had to have a will of iron to remove his hands from her.
“So—you’re...ready to start,” Carrie said and there was a curious tension in her voice.
“I’m ready to start,” Truck said, very reluctantly relinquishing his grip. “I just have to get underneath.”
“Not a lot of wiggle room down there,” she teased.
“Oh, I’ll get in,” he murmured. “I’m familiar with it.”
“How nice you’re such an expert.”
“I just knew you’d appreciate that.”
“I do. I like a man who’s good with his hands.” Oh, Lord, why had she said that?
She was being too coy by half. What the hell did she think she was doing?
“We don’t have to play games, Carrie.”
Oh, there was a note in his voice that made her very wary.
“I don’t play games.”
He sent her a skeptical look. Her expression was guarded, the warrior princess girding for battle because she had already given too much to the enemy. He wanted to breach her defenses and make her cry for mercy. Some knight he was. All he had to win her was a lock wrench for a lance and copper pipe for a sword, and they were damn puny weapons against the powerful memories of the past. There were other subtler ways to captivate a warrior princess and he had time on his side. He could spend a year repairing her plumbing. He savored the thought.
“I don’t play games either, Carrie. So shall I stay or go?”
He’d thrown the gauntlet just to see what she would do. Carrie knew she was asking for trouble no matter what she said.
“I’m paying you to do a job,” she said coolly
“Exactly.” He got it “I’m going to work on the showerhead today, maybe insert a new riser. Want to watch?”
Carrie knew when she was licked. She didn’t like that wicked gleam in his eyes. It really was time to retreat, if she were serious, if she wasn’t going to let Truck get to her.
She was never going to admit he already had.
THE METALLIC SOUND of the clanking pipes finally drove her out of the house, as well as the heat in the little den where she was working. It was busy work anyway. Carrie didn’t try to convince herself otherwise, or deny that the attraction of sitting in that suffocating little room was mainly that she knew Truck was so close by.
He was installing the pipes bottom to top, and it couldn’t be easy working with his arms extended and all the piping above him. Nor was there much room beneath the house, maybe three or four feet. And it must be hotter than an oven down there.
She shook herself. It was crazy to have sympathy for him. She needed to change her clothes, which were sticking to her, and concentrate on getting a job... getting a life.
After donning a tank top and shorts, she wandered out onto the porch. It wasn’t much cooler there, nor was there any breeze coming off the pond. Nevertheless, she made her way down to the water’s edge and levered herself onto one of two flat rocks that had been set on either side of the path specifically for dangling feet in the low lapping water.
Carrie...don’t go near the water...
Carrie...a storm’s about to blow...
Stay close, Carrie. Don’t go far.
She could hear her mother’s voice as plain as day, carrying across the pond a clear three miles away to the edge of the boys’ summer camp.
What’s the profit in talking to those boys, Carrie? They’re here six weeks and gone, and you’ll never see them again.
The very risk had been the whole point, and the very act of sneaking into the camp to talk to those exotic creatures. She had lived for the summers when the boys came. They had brought with them the heady scent of the world from away and lives vastly different than the one she knew.
Then one summer the camp had closed down, so the shorefront remained exactly as it always had been: a clean white sanded beach guarded by a row of yawning boathouses.
“They recently rented the camp to a production company that was looking for a pristine location to film a teen scream flick,” Truck said behind her. “You know the kind of thing—horror island summer camp. They made about twenty years’ worth of profit just on that deal.”
Carrie sighed. Small towns. Everybody knows everything, even the bottom line. How was she going to do this coming from a place where no one knew anybody’s business?
Keep it neutral.
She shaded her eyes as she turned to look at him. He’d removed his T-shirt, and his torso was slick with perspiration and grease. It was the body of a man, muscular, defined, rough with hair—and she felt as though she had tumbled back back fifteen years because it was also the body of the boy she had know
n. She averted her eyes as he slipped down opposite her and began shucking his boots and socks. “It’s like a blast furnace under that house. I won’t even talk about the webs and the bugs...” He slanted a look at her as he dragged his feet in the water. “No sympathy, huh?”
“I can’t afford it on top of the price of the plumbing.”
Carrie caught his rueful smile out of the corner of her eye, that self-deprecating smile that turned a woman’s knees to jelly and aroused every nurturing instinct. Even she wasn’t immune to it, but that didn’t mean she would just melt at the sight of it. Far from it—she was a woman with purpose and she wasn’t going to let anything distract her.
She barely noticed that he had eased himself into the water and was walking out to a depth into which he could dive. He was treading water now, and washing his upper torso with a small cake of soap he had extracted from his jeans pocket. She was transfixed by the utterly male movement of his hands gliding over his arms, his chest, his belly...Dear God, lead me not into temptation—it would be so easy...too easy... Then he immersed himself to rinse off and dived in once again to swim vigorously back to shore.
He emerged like some primal god, glistening in the sun as the water poured off him, and he came slowly toward her, his sodden jeans clinging to his hips. It was a moment when a woman could fall in love. There was nothing like the boyish sight of a man drenched to the core and barely able to keep his pants on wading through the water to bow at her feet.
Carrie bit her lip. It couldn’t be deliberate, she thought. They’d all swum in the pond since they could walk. It had to be this man, this day, and their history. He was as appealing as a seventeen-year-old and a hundred times more formidable as he stood there looking up at her, his hands planted on those narrow male hips. Oh, Lord, those hips...
Truck was too beguiling, too hot, and he was watching her too carefully. That intense awareness was there, sparking across the water, lifting her toward him to a place where she could crash and burn. It was time to end this. She couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. Carrie scrambled to her feet. “Need a hand?”
Again that smile, that knowing devastating smile. “I’ll take what I can get,” he murmured, grasping her outstretched fingers and levering himself up onto the path.
Truck grabbed his boots and shoved his feet into them, then followed her up the path, admiring her long legs, the movement of her bottom in what were a pair of very conservative shorts, the tumble of her hair coming loose from her topknot, and her very no-nonsense attitude.
“There’s soda, lemonade and tea in the fridge,” Carrie said as they came up on the porch. “Help yourself.”
Truck returned with two tall frosty glasses of lemonade and handed her one, and then nudged his hip against the railing, angling his body so he could look out over the pond.
“I could put in the dock if you want,” he said.
“The wood’s all rotten. I’m going to have to replace it, I guess someday. It’s not a high priority right now,” Carrie said.
“And you can always launch from Jeannie’s dock if you want. Or mine.”
“Right.” Neighbors. Always there, always lending that helping hand. Carrie felt uncomfortable, as if even this offer came with strings. Or maybe it was just that Truck was offering, and it was too much already that he was working in her house at a neighborly consideration of her finances.
“So what’s the real story, Carrie?”
She cringed. She had expected the question, though maybe not this soon, but it had been in the air from the moment she said she couldn’t afford the repairs. She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want to tell him, especially after that moment of connection at the pond. It would be so much easier to spin a juicy little lie and retain that high-powered image. Since there was nothing to say she wouldn’t be in Paradise for the next ten years, let alone the next ten weeks, it was time to stop hiding.
She swallowed the lump in her throat along with the last gulp of lemonade. “I lost an account and I lost my job.” She said it slowly and deliberately, as much to hear herself say the words—again—as to give him the explanation.
It still felt unreal as if she were on vacation and there was a definite end to this exile from her professional life. After all didn’t she still have the fantasy that someone from the agency would call and say it had all been a mistake, that Elliott had confessed to his chicanery and given her the credit for the...?
“Tough,” Truck said, pinning her with a dark unfathomable gaze.
Carrie pulled herself out of her reverie. “Brutal.”
“So there’s really no money.”
“A severance package and some profit-sharing. My motorcycle and the clothes on my back,” she said succinctly, as if enumerating her minuscule assets would reinforce the reality.
“And the house,” Truck said gently. “You do have the house.”
“And the house,” Carrie agreed.
“And your friends,” he added, noting the defiant spark in her eyes as he said it. He’d deliberately goaded her. Carrie hated any inference that she couldn’t fend for herself. She had always been a fiercely independent girl who had never depended on anyone, and now she was a woman who had to depend on everyone.
Especially him. Truck found he liked that thought—a lot. It meant he had a chance; she wasn’t going anywhere—yet.
“And my friends,” she repeated softly.
“That’s the way it is in Paradise,” he murmured, setting aside his glass and reaching for his T-shirt. “I left my stuff under the house.” He wrapped the shirt around his neck. “Finished?” He took her glass and his back into the kitchen.
Carrie jumped up and followed him, then wished she hadn’t. In the small square kitchen, he loomed like danger, his bare chest radiating heat, his gaze glimmering with something she did not want to define. This was crazy. She didn’t know why she hadn’t stayed on the porch. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know where to put the glasses. He’d set them right in the sink and even put the lemonade pitcher in the fridge. A man who knew his way around the kitchen. She should like that. She just didn’t want it to be her kitchen, her space. She wanted to tell him unequivocally to leave. Now.
The air thickened. The space was so small. She found herself backed against the hard edge of the counter with nowhere to move. And Truck knew it. There was this light in his eyes that made her want to chew pineboard. Truck knew exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it, and he was enjoying every moment of her vexation.
“I guess I’ll see you soon,” he said, making no move to leave.
“Soon...?” she echoed, her voice sounding suffocated.
“The dance.”
“Oh” Right, she should have her head examined for promising Jeannie she’d come. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
“I know.” Gorgeous independent Carrie Spencer doing the Texas twine down the center of the Grange Hall—it was a sight he couldn’t wait to see. Not that she looked as if she was raring to go. Rather, she looked as if she expected him to kiss her. Truck relished the thought as he watched her squirm. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
Carrie wanted everything and she wanted nothing. Especially from him. Except maybe a kiss. Maybe...a soft touch of his lips. Maybe...the feeling of his skin touching hers. Maybe...a deeper thrust, a subtle invitation—it was in her eyes, in her provocative antagonistic stance.
Carrie was wearing the most sexless short and tank set, she smelled of a light teasing lemon scent, and she looked as desirable as hell. She looked as though she would take whatever he gave her and swear that she hated it. A man couldn’t resist challenge like that. Not with a woman whose kisses were a burning memory in his soul
He moved in on her then, slowly, slowly, slowly, letting the tension simmer as he deliberately fit his chest against her breasts and his hips against hers.
Carrie swallowed the sound she made at the back of her throat at the feel of his erection pressing against her. At that moment, more than life
, Carrie wanted his kiss. Not because she wanted Truck; no, she wanted to prove to herself she needed no one.
She tilted her head. He slanted his mouth over hers. “Still time to say no,” Truck whispered, faintly amused that she was girding for battle. This was most definitely war, with the spoils nothing less than the admission that Carrie wanted him.
He’d seen the look in her eyes. Carrie was not immune to the old feelings. “Hold still,” he murmured, cupping her chin, and ever so gently, he settled his mouth on hers. Just like that. Just the softest pressure, the longest sigh.
Her body twinged. Carrie felt the sensation spiraling downward, helplessly, between her legs. No...yes—I don’t care...
He flicked her lips with his tongue, and she slowly opened her mouth to him. Slowly he entered, savoring the feel of her, the taste of her, the rhythm of her kiss. Devastating. He could barely keep himself in check. What was his problem? He wasn’t a hormonally hysterical teenager anymore. Then why did he feel like one? And that he’d finally come home?
“Carrie...?” Barely above a breath, his lips hovering just above hers. “Tell me what you want”
She moistened her throbbing lips. His glimmering gaze followed every movement. “I want you to go away.”
He followed the line of her tongue with his own. “Which way, Carrie? This way?” He pushed tighter against the cradle of her hips. “Or this way?” He slipped his tongue between her lips, sneaking behind her defenses once again.
She caved against him. How did you fight such provocative kisses? Why did she want to? But she knew: because she would be leaving. Someday soon, she would go, so why start any kind of relationship with Truck? She’d only have to leave him behind.
Right. Time for a reality check. “Truck...”
“Right here.”
“Um, I understand this kind of thing could be seen to have some peripheral relationship to plumbing, but—”
“Only if you don’t talk.” He delved into her mouth again.
Carrie wriggled against him, terribly aware of all that muscle and sinew, and the fact she was making things worse. How had she gotten into this situation? “I think it’s safer to talk.”