Aussie Rules

by Jill Shalvis

  “I’ll do it myself, thanks.” She’d been trying for days.

  “I’m standing right here, and I’ve got better leverage than you.” He cocked his head and gave her that smile, which she was sure had charmed the panties off too many women to count. “You’re afraid to let me help you.”

  “I’m afraid of what you’ll want in return.”

  “Just a tiny little thing, really.”

  She crossed her arms. “I told you, I don’t know where Sally is.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Old news. I figure one of these days you’ll either cave or she’ll show.”

  Her gut tightened. “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  He sounded…confident. As if he knew something, which of course, he didn’t.

  Did he? “Why would you hang around?” she pressed. “Why don’t you just go home and I’ll call you—”

  “Ah, but will you?” He smiled, a challenging light in his eyes. “Nah, I think I’m better off sticking around, thanks. Plus there’s the added bonus, of course.”

  More than her gut tightened now. “What’s that?”

  “Bothering you.”

  “You don’t get to me.”

  “Is that right?” He took a step toward her, bringing them entirely too close, so close that she could see those mesmerizing flecks of gold dancing in the green of his eyes. So close that she could smell him, that complicated, glorious scent of a far-too-sexy man. So close she could do nothing but soak him up. “Yeah, I get to you plenty,” he said.

  She waited until she could be sure her voice would be even. “You really think you can get that bolt off?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is it going to cost me?”

  He just looked at her, eyes hot.

  Her belly quivered. Her everything quivered. To hide it, she laughed. “Men.” She whirled back to the plane. “I’ll fix it myself.”

  “Suit yourself.” With another shrug, he went back to holding up the hull with his butt and back, all casual and laid-back as he watched her from eyes at half-mast.

  Sort of the way a sleeping lion might watch its prey.

  Mel decided to put him out of her mind as she dove into her toolbox. She got a bigger wrench and went back for the bolt, wielding the tool as hard as she could—until her fingers slipped, scraping yet another knuckle. “Damn it.”

  “Need me to kiss that one, too?”

  Yes, begged her body. “No!” She wiped the blood off on her coveralls. “It’s just a little nick.”

  He agreed with a low laugh. “Yeah, and you’ve had more than your fair share of knocks.”

  “It’s called shit happens.”

  “Yeah.” His smile faded. “Neither of us have lived a walk in the park, have we?”

  Her eyes met his, saw the understanding there, and sighed. “Ah, hell, Bo. Do we really want to do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Talk.”

  He smiled. “Afraid of a little chitchat? No worries. Charlene and Al already told me all about you.”

  “They did not.”

  “Oh, yes they did. I sang along to a Twisted Sister song on the radio and Char melted on the spot. She was worried you broke my heart. I told her I’d recovered.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” She put her head back in the engine compartment. Recovered, her ass. They both know only one of them would get hurt here. Damn, if only she really could get that bolt off by herself…

  “Oh, and I might have mentioned…” He arched a brow. “That I intended to get you back.”

  At this, she dropped the wrench. It landed right on her toe. Hopping up and down, she glared at him. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  She gritted past the throbbing radiating up her leg. “Get me back. Ha! And why aren’t you taken, anyway?”

  He choked out a laugh. “A personal question, Mel?”

  She actually felt herself blush. “Forget it.”

  “No, you’re curious.” He smiled. “It’s cute.”

  “Maybe I just wanted to see how hard up you are.”

  “Pretty damn hard up.”

  Her gaze flew to his, wondering if he meant the words as hot and erotic as he’d said them.

  His eyes were burning up.

  Oh, God.

  “You going to offer to help me get un-hard-up?” he asked.

  “No! And this isn’t funny,” she said when he laughed.

  “Well, actually, it is a little.”

  She wouldn’t look at him as she looked down at her feet, because her toe hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

  Again he pushed away from the plane and came close, too close. “Char thinks I’m still carrying a torch for you.”

  “She has a heart of gold and you took advantage of her to get information.”

  “She does have a heart of gold,” he agreed, not denying the charge. “But I have a feeling you’re the real heart bleeder here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve seen you; working late, working your ass off and your knuckles to the bone. Literally.” He smiled when she rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen you mother Kellan and Ritchie, and listen to Ernest give you yet another reason why he can’t clean that damn closet you want him to clean. You help Charlene when she gets busy, you get Al photography work with a customer…face it. You love these guys, all of them, and you treat them like family because your own failed you so badly.”

  “Leave my past out of this.” At least he hadn’t figured out that her bleeding-heart syndrome didn’t extend to her social life, and that she hadn’t had sex in—

  “I would, but then Char told me how you don’t date much.” He tipped her chin. “You hard up, too, Mel?”

  She pointed her wrench at him, put it to his chest to make sure he kept his distance. “Not that hard up.”

  “I don’t know, you nearly went off like a rocket when I kissed you—”

  “Hey, there were two of us going off like rockets, thank you very much!”

  He grinned. “Me thinks the lady protest too much.”

  “You are impossible!”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” As she spun to limp away, he caught her, pulling her back around. “What do you suppose it says about me that your snarling attitude turns me on?” He put his other hand on her arm, holding her. “Stand still, darlin’, I want to look at you.”

  “You are one sick man.”

  “I meant your toe.” Crouching down, he lifted up the pants leg on her coveralls.

  Oh, God, had she shaved in the past week? “I’m fine,” she said, trying to pull away.

  He looked up, his hair falling across his forehead, his eyes now level with her belly. An undeniably erotic position. “Yeah, you are,” he said softly.

  She stepped back, putting some space between them, turning away while he straightened.

  “This place,” he said to her back. “It really means a lot to you.”

  She closed her eyes, struggled to keep her voice even. “You shouldn’t believe everything Charlene says. She’s working with cooking sherry.”

  “Are you denying you care deeply about North Beach, that you put everything of yourself into it?”

  To this, she said nothing. She couldn’t, or she’d give herself away.

  “Odd that you’d do so much for just a job,” he continued, and she could feel him watching her. “Why, when Sally knew this place wasn’t hers.”

  “I don’t know that.” Not yet.

  “Why would I lie?”

  She turned back to him. “After what your father did to Sally…?

  In a blink, all hints of heat and amusement vanished, leaving in their place a cold, tough, impenetrable hostility.

  “I just don’t see how Sally could be the bad guy,” she murmured, willing him to try to understand. “You’re holding the deed. If Sally swindled your father, as you say, then where’s the money? The plane?”

  “Where’s Sally?” he
countered.

  They stared at each other, at an impasse. Finally, Mel conceded, and buried her head back in the engine compartment, going back to the only sure thing in her life: work.

  Chapter 11

  Bo watched Mel busy herself in the plane again, and decided she had the sweetest ass he’d ever seen in a set of grungy brown coveralls.

  But as he stood there watching her work on the Hawker, he was filled with so much frustration he didn’t know what to do with himself.

  She didn’t believe him.

  No one believed him that Sally had stolen from his father, that his father had been a good, kind man who couldn’t have conned a fly—much less a woman.

  Putting his fist through a wall sounded good. So did dragging Mel down to the floor and stripping off those coveralls to find the soft, warm woman he knew hid in there somewhere. Oh, yeah, getting her to whimper and pant his name in hungry desperate need would go a long way toward dissolving his temper, that was for damn sure.

  But chances were she wouldn’t go easy. She’d probably fight and claw and bite, and though that might be fun another time, he wasn’t in the mood for that kind of thing at the moment. At the moment, he wanted a soft, warm, willing woman, one who’d wrap him in her arms and offer to kiss his hurt away.

  As if she’d ever do that. Because it turned out she was holding a grudge against him for his father’s sins.

  Sins his father hadn’t even committed.

  Damn, he was tired. Tired of the battle. He’d come here with some half-baked idea of getting his justice, of selling out from beneath Sally’s feet. But now he was thinking of something else entirely.

  This woman, the most troublesome, annoying, frustrating woman he’d ever met. “Mel.”

  She didn’t bother to answer. She still had her head buried in the Hawker. She was filthy, smelled like fuel and oil, and God he must have hit his head at some point this morning because she still revved his engine.

  “Shit on a stick,” she muttered.

  He stuck his head in next to hers, surveyed both the situation and the spot of grease on Mel’s nose—wisely not mentioning the latter—and said, “I can get the bolt off.”

  She turned her head and leveled those icy eyes on him. “Yeah, but it’ll cost me.”

  He wished he understood the female mind better because he had no idea what she was thinking other than wishing he was far, far away, preferably dead.

  “Ratchet, please.” She jerked her head toward the toolbox.

  Willing to play along, he backed out of the engine and peered into the toolbox. “Not here.”

  “Try the parts closet, there’s a box of tools there on the floor.”

  He turned toward the closet, opened the door.

  “Sorry, there are no blondes in there,” Mel called out.

  “What?”

  “You don’t remember the second time I ever saw you?” she asked. “Right there in that closet, banging some blonde?”

  He looked at the shelves. He didn’t often think about the past. It was filled with memories best forgotten. His mother’s cold voice and colder heart. Eddie’s plane habit, which caused frequent moves from one small airport to another…

  Then, Sally, the woman Eddie had lost his head and then his heart to, despite the fact she didn’t possess one.

  A heart, that is. Brains, Sally had in spades, and it hadn’t taken her long to sink her hungry claws into the love-struck Eddie, or his bank account.

  Buh-bye savings account.

  Buh-bye hopes and dreams.

  And then, finally, buh-bye Eddie.

  Bo’s jaw tightened as he looked inside the closet. Hell, yeah, he remembered being here, missing home, worrying about his dad, burying all that stress into the one thing a male teenager couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Sex.

  It hadn’t been too difficult, not when American girls had flocked to him, drawn by his accent and, as he’d discovered, his earthy nature and athletic body. Yeah, he’d gotten quite the education here in the States. “I had a good time in this very closet several times, if I remember correctly.”

  Mel had pulled her head out of the engine and was watching him with her own memories all over her face. “I only found you in there the once.”

  “You stood right there,” he said. “Mouth hanging open, soaking up the sights.”

  She bristled. “I couldn’t help but see the sights! You didn’t bother to try to hide a thing!”

  Ah, he was getting an interesting vibe here. “Admit it. You wanted the same thing the blonde was getting.”

  “Did not,” she said hotly. Too hotly.

  “Liar.”

  Oh, yeah, there was that steam coming out her ears again. Damn, she was something all riled up, but a part of him wanted to see the other Mel; the soft, sweet Mel she showed everyone else. But never him. “I can’t believe you’re going to be so stubborn about me helping you fix that plane.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  Odd how, given everything he’d been through, it was that that hurt him. “It’s a fucking bolt, Mel.”

  “Fine.” She tossed down her wrench. “What do you want in return?”

  He’d have settled for one of her smiles instead of the frown he seemed to generate at every turn, but that seemed too revealing a request, and besides which, made him feel stupid. “It won’t be painful, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Tell me.”

  “A kiss,” he said, and shocked the hell out of the both of them.

  She looked at him for a long beat, then went back to studying the engine.

  And that got him. Had he ever done anything to her? No. Had he ever, in any way, hurt her? Bothered her? Got in her way? No. He’d been pretty balls-out patient if you asked him. Now he could help her, and she didn’t even want to accept that help.

  Or another kiss.

  Since he knew damn well she’d nearly gotten off on their last kiss alone, it wasn’t a lack of wanting on her part. Which meant it must be fear. Fear of it going too far, of her letting it. Wanting it.

  Which in turn meant she must like him a helluva lot more than she’d let on, because he’d bet she didn’t lose control often.

  If ever.

  “I can do this myself,” she said stubbornly, and bashed yet a third knuckle against the casing. “Shit.” She sucked on the offended finger, straightened, and bumped her head. “Shit shit!” She had a knuckle in her mouth, her other hand on the top of her head as she backed off the ladder, tripped on a wrench on the floor, and staggered backward.

  Before he could nab her, she’d fallen butt first into the large tub behind her filled with cleaning fluid and various parts—industrial-strength cleaner that he knew if he dropped a penny inside, it’d clean it down to shiny copper in two seconds. It would skin her alive. “Jesus, Mel.” He reached for her, knowing she had to strip in a hurry. Yanking her out of the tub, he reached for the zipper of her drenched coveralls, one mission in mind: save her skin.

  “Hey.” She slapped his hands away.

  “Mel, that stuff is going to eat your flesh—”

  “No kidding!” She was hopping up and down as she kicked off her athletic shoes. “Ouch, ouch…” More hopping as she shrugged the coveralls off her shoulders, revealing a white satin bra.

  His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but the pained sound she made galvanized him. Tugging the coveralls off her hips, revealing white satin panties, which matched her bra.

  Don’t look. Don’t look. But her skin was already going pink.

  “The hose,” she gasped, pointing to the hose coiled against the wall, used for washing down the concrete floors. He ran while she shoved the coveralls past her knees and kicked them off.

  Yanking the hose from its holder, he cranked it on, trying not to notice how the scraps of silk covered her. Or didn’t cover her.

  “Hurry!”

  Adjusting the spray, he nailed her with the water, telling himself he was a pervert for
noticing her underwear.

  Mel let out a short gasp at the shock of the icy shower, but not another sound as he ran the water from her shoulders to torso to belly to legs and back up again while she slid her hands over herself, hurrying the process along, skimming her arms over her slightly rounded belly—his favorite spot on a woman—her breasts, making his own breath back up in his throat.

  Don’t think about it.

  Yeah, right. Her bra and panties were good and sheer now, her nipples pressing hard against the thin material on top, and on the bottom…She was waxed or shaved or something, so the wet satin clung to every fold, every dip, every gorgeous inch, and melted brain cells at an alarming rate.

  God. It was like every wet T-shirt contest he’d ever witnessed, only better. More like every hot fantasy he’d ever had. Only better.

  Waaaaaay better.

  Then she turned, presenting him with her back, her ass, and the hose jerked. So did a singular part of his anatomy. He stood there, running the water over her, watching it race in little rivulets down her body, and he wanted to lap it all up with his tongue. He felt like a voyeur, he felt like a jerk, and he’d never been hotter in his life.

  Finally she stepped free of the water, crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him as if this was all his fault. Tossing the hose aside, he stepped toward her as he unbuttoned his own shirt.

  “What are you doing?” Taking a step back, she came up against the hull of the plane.

  He shrugged out of the shirt.

  Gaping at him, she unfolded her arms and put her hand in the middle of his chest to hold him back. “You just stay dressed, Bo Black—”

  Cutting her off in midsentence, he lifted her arm and shoved it into the arm of his shirt.

  “Oh,” she said, and Bo watched humility war with pride as she put her other arm in and hugged the shirt to her. It came to midthigh on her, and she stood there, arms wrapped around herself, staring at his now bare chest. She bit her lower lip, and said nothing.

  Was the woman actually tongue-tied? Tongue-tied while looking at his body? Again her gaze flicked over him, lingered.

  She was. And he was just male enough to find that incredibly fascinating. “The word is thanks.”

  She sighed. “Thanks.”

  She said this so begrudgingly, he had to laugh. “Yeah, don’t hurt yourself.” Turning to the plane he grabbed the fallen wrench and worked on the bolt himself. It took him a moment, but he did get it, and dropped the thing into her hand.