A car alarm sounded from somewhere in the neighborhood behind them, and Jane glanced over her shoulder. Luke ducked behind a tree, and after a few moments of no sounds except the car alarm, he heard her footsteps crunching on the path again.
He waited, then began jogging again, deciding it was time to make his presence a little more detectable. If she couldn’t catch him being stealthy, maybe she could pick up on his presence if he were bumbling along like a really inept criminal.
Luke picked up his pace, purposely let his foot fall on a few twigs, and pretty soon he was within easy hearing range of her. After a few minutes, Jane veered off on another trail through an even more secluded area, and he lost sight of her. By the time he made it to that trail, he couldn’t see or hear her up ahead, so he slowed to a stop and listened.
The sounds of birds in the trees overhead were all he could hear, but his senses were on alert. He had a hunch she was no longer jogging ahead of him, but had possibly ducked into the trees to hide.
Luke walked along the path, looking for any place she might have chosen to hide. He spotted a dense clump of trees and undergrowth off to the left and stopped. If Jane was in there, he’d scare the hell out of her by flushing her out, but she deserved a good scare for running alone in the woods.
He waded into the brush, found a little clearing, and bent down to see if he could spot her. Sure enough, a telltale swatch of blue fabric could be seen through a little opening in the brush. Luke grabbed a long stick that was lying on the ground next to his foot, and poked it through the undergrowth until it made contact with Jane’s thigh.
She screeched, and the next thing he heard was her scrambling to get out of her hiding spot. Luke hopped out onto the trail, stopping her dead in her tracks. Jane’s expression went from horrified to surprised to afraid to angry in two seconds.
“If I were a bad guy, you’d be in serious trouble right now,” he said.
“You jerk! You scared the hell out of me!”
“Jogging alone in the woods? I think that qualifies you for the Too Stupid To Live Awards.”
Jane narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve got pepper spray on my key chain, and I would have used it on you if you’d gotten close enough. Maybe I will anyway.” She held up the key chain and aimed it at his face.
Luke took a quick step forward and swiped her forearm with his own, wrapped his hand around her wrist, and squeezed until she let go of the key chain.
“Now what?”
“Is this your way of teaching me about security? You’re fired.”
“Honey, if you haven’t figured out from this little demonstration that you need me, then you deserve whatever harassment you get.” He let go of her wrist, and when she bent to pick up her keys, he kicked them into the brush.
Jane’s eyes shot fire at him. She asked in a barely controlled voice, “Why did you do that?”
“To show you how useless your pepper spray is with a reasonably competent psycho.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page about your mental state,” she muttered as she bent down to fish her keys out of the weeds.
If Luke had taken a few moments to think out his next move, he probably would have nixed it, but she had just called him a psycho….
He took another step toward her and kicked her foot out from under her, then flipped her onto her back and pinned her to the ground.
“You are so, so fired.”
Okay, maybe he’d gone a little too far. “You have absolutely no common sense about being in the woods alone with a man. How do you know I’m not a psycho?”
“I know you are a psycho! That’s why you’re fired. Now let me up!”
Not just yet. Even if she was spitting mad, having Jane pinned to the ground beneath him was a pretty nice situation to be in. He adjusted his grip on her wrists to make sure she was comfortable, then settled in to give her a good talking-to.
“You, Jane Langston, are a celebrity now. And not just any celebrity—a notorious one. You’ve got mentally unbalanced men writing you letters, calling you on the phone, harassing you on radio shows, but does this make you think twice about jogging alone in the woods? No, you just trot yourself right out here, completely oblivious to the fact that I followed you, until I wanted you to know it.”
“Look, I try to be safe. I’ve jogged in this park a thousand times, and nothing has ever happened. This is where I go when I need to think about my book. If I get stuck, coming out here never fails to get my writing back on track.”
Luke made a concerted effort not to enjoy the feel of her body too much, not to notice that her breasts were so close and so tempting, that her mouth looked so delicate and ripe for exploration.
A crazy, dizzying physical attraction surged in him, and he wanted her like no woman he’d ever wanted before.
“You’ve got to find some other way to cure writer’s block. If I catch you out here again—”
“You don’t have to worry about it, because you’re fired. Now let me up!”
Reluctantly, Luke released Jane’s wrists and started to stand up, when her left heel made contact with his chest. She kicked him backward, and he fell on his back with a thud into the dirt. In a matter of seconds she was on top of him with the pepper spray aimed at his eyes.
“Give me one good reason not to use this.”
3
Your mother might have spouted some cliché about cows and free milk, but trite and unpopular as the notion may be, the wisdom holds true—giving it up too soon will only make him start shopping for a different cow.
—Jane Langston, from her work-in-progress, Sex and Sensibility
JANE SHIFTED HER WEIGHT on top of Luke and tried not to think about how her legs were tangled with his, how his too-large, overly muscled body was at her mercy. And she definitely tried to ignore how delicious it felt.
“If you incapacitate me and a real psycho comes along, you won’t have me around to protect you.”
She took a deep breath and tried to keep her hand from shaking. She didn’t really want to spray Luke’s eyes, but her trigger finger was feeling itchy. And he didn’t need to know that her “pepper spray” wasn’t really pepper spray at all, but a makeshift imitation—a bottle of Binaca attached to her key chain with a rubber band.
He did have a point about psychos in the woods. She’d developed a false sense of security after having jogged here so many times without anything happening. And after Luke’s little stunt, she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel the same about coming here—or even if she ever would come here again.
“I’ll let you up after you apologize.”
“Why should I apologize if you’re going to fire me anyway? I was just doing my job.”
Now that she’d had a few moments to calm down, and now that she felt a little more in control, she didn’t want to fire Luke. His demonstration, ill-advised as it had been, made it clear to her how vulnerable she was.
“I won’t fire you if you’ll swear to me you’ll never, ever do anything like this again.”
The truth was, a perverse little part of her wanted to drag out their power play. But she was also high on adrenaline from the terror she’d felt at being stalked in the woods, which surely was affecting her judgment.
“I’m not making any promises until you lose the pepper spray.”
Jane settled in, adjusted her left leg so that it nestled more deeply between Luke’s legs. Geez, how long had it been since she’d been in a position like this with a guy?
No sooner did the thought “too long” form in her head than she banished it. The guru of sexual restraint absolutely should not have been having such thoughts. Must be the adrenaline talking again.
She felt a tickle on the back of her left calf, and then a sharp sting. “Aaaah!”
The shock of the pain must have triggered her index finger, because the next thing Jane knew, she was on her back, her calf stinging, and Luke was yelling and rubbing at his eyes.
While he groaned and cursed, Ja
ne peeked at her calf. A red bump had formed there, and a fire ant was strolling toward her ankle. She flicked it off.
“Oh my gosh, Luke, I’m so sorry. What can I do to help?” She stood up and went to him.
“You did that on purpose,” he growled as he continued to rub his eyes.
“No, I swear I didn’t! A fire ant bit my leg.”
“What the hell is that stuff? It’s not pepper spray—my eyes feel…minty.”
“Um, it’s Binaca.”
He uncovered his eyes and glared at her. “You were out here jogging alone in the woods with a bottle of breath freshener as your only protection?”
He made it sound so stupid when he said it like that. “It worked, didn’t it? I also have a deadly tube of lip balm in my pocket that I would have used as a last resort.”
“If I were a real attacker, that would have incapacitated me for all of three seconds.”
“I keep forgetting to buy pepper spray.”
Luke lay back on the ground and covered his eyes with one arm. “I’ll just stay here. You go on home before I strangle you.”
“I’m not leaving you incapacitated in the woods.” She knelt beside him. “Or are you even hurt? I mean, how bad could a little spray of breath freshener be?”
Luke uncovered his eyes again and glared at her. They were bloodshot and watering. She doubted a tough guy like him would produce tears just for the sake of drama.
“Okay, you’re not faking. Sorry.”
Jane let her gaze fall to his legs, sprinkled with dark hair, muscled like a soccer player’s.
Yow.
He was one fine specimen of a male. And she was overloaded with misguided sexual urges brought on by the adrenaline rush. That was the only way to explain why she was getting hot and bothered over a guy who was not at all her type—she preferred thoughtful and sensitive, not forceful and intense.
Luke sat up and exhaled noisily. “Let’s get out here before I go blind. I need to flush my eyes out with water.”
He stood up and Jane took him by the elbow.
“I’m really, really sorry. Just tell me what I can do to make this up to you.”
He peered down at her hand curled around his bicep and then up at her. “I’m not blind yet.”
Jane jerked away, embarrassed. “I just thought you might be a little unsteady on your feet.”
He started walking back the way they’d come. “Okay, here’s what you can do to make it up to me. When I ask you to do something that has to do with your personal safety, do it—no questions asked.”
“I can’t just behave like an automaton,” she said, hurrying to keep up with him.
“Then I can’t work for you.”
Here was her chance to get rid of Luke. Even if he was a hunk with a decent sense of humor, he’d already proven to be unnerving, unpredictable and unmanageable. If she was smart, she’d tell him to get lost. But he was supposed to be the best….
And she’d really been looking forward to seeing the looks on the faces of her family when she showed up at the shower tonight with Luke as her date. They’d never believe without witnessing it that she could bag such a hottie.
“Okay, I’ll try to do as you ask.”
Luke glared over his shoulder at her, then turned his attention back to navigating out of the woods. She took that as his acceptance of their new agreement.
They made it out of the woods, and Luke asked her to drive his SUV back to her house. She was climbing into the driver’s seat when she spotted his copy of The Sex Factor. She noticed Luke saw it at the same time, as he opened the passenger-side door. He looked up at her and flashed a sheepish grin.
“You have excellent taste in reading material.”
“Just doing a little research.”
She started the car, flattered that he would even bother. “Trying to figure out how you’re going to prove me wrong?”
“Something like that.”
She pulled away from the curb. “Good luck.”
“It’s not going to be very difficult. You don’t know a thing about men.”
She glanced over at Luke, who was still rubbing his left eye. “I know enough. The book is written to help women understand what they want from men.”
“Uh-huh.”
He was just trying to rile her up, so she backed off. In a matter of seconds they were in her driveway.
She took him inside and led him into the kitchen where she found a water bottle and filled it with warm water. After digging a towel out of a drawer, she took it and the water bottle to Luke, who was sitting at the table.
“You can rinse your eyes out yourself, or I can help.”
Luke squinted at her and then the water bottle. “I’m probably going to regret this, but you’d better help.”
He leaned his head back, and she stood behind him so that he could rest it on her torso. The intimate contact put her body on alert, and she tried not to think about the fact that her nipples were standing at attention. She aimed at the more irritated eye with the water bottle and squirted a stream of it in, then caught the runoff with the towel pressed against his temple. Once she’d rinsed out each eye several times, she stopped.
“Feel better yet?”
He closed his eyes. “Mmm-hmm.”
Jane got the distinct feeling he wasn’t talking about his eyes. “If you’re enjoying yourself just because you’re two inches from my breasts, you’re not doing a very good job of proving wrong my theories about men.”
A half smile played on his lips. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Jane gave the water bottle a good squeeze, aimed at Luke’s crotch, and emptied the contents of the bottle onto his shorts. He looked from his lap to Jane, and back again.
Okay, she’d acted rashly. She’d let her emotions control the moment, and a perfectly good pair of gym shorts was wet now. Jane covered her mouth to keep from laughing.
After several moments of each of them frozen in place, waiting for the other to react, Luke expelled a disbelieving laugh. “I’m not safe around you.”
“Yeah, I’m deadly with spray liquids.”
He stood up from his chair and peered down at the sizeable wet spot on the front of his shorts. “I don’t suppose you have a pair of size thirty-four men’s pants lying around.”
“I’ve got some stretchy women’s shorts that might fit.”
He leveled a look at her that ended the conversation. “I’ll just borrow your dryer,” he said, and started removing his shorts right there in the middle of her kitchen.
She made a pointed effort not to look at his white Jockeys.
The shorts dropped to his ankles, and he bent down and took them off. When he stood back up, his eyes were daring her to look down.
“I’ll, um, get you a towel to wear.” She started to leave the room, but his next comment froze her in her tracks.
“Whoops, feels like my underwear got wet too.”
Jane debated whether to turn and watch the show or run from the room. The devil on her left shoulder begged her to stay, while the annoying schoolmarm on her right shoulder reminded her that she wasn’t thinking at all like the author of The Sex Factor.
She turned around slowly and caught him with his arms crossed over his chest, not making a move to remove the Jockeys. Then the devil won the argument.
“Better take those off then. Wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.” She stood rooted in place, daring him to get naked in front of her.
Apparently he didn’t possess the modesty of a normal human being, because without further ado, he took off his underwear and stood bottomless in her kitchen, wearing only his T-shirt and sneakers, lacking even the decency to be embarrassed.
“So where’s your clothes dryer?”
Yep, she’d just looked down at his schlong for a split second, and now she understood why he didn’t have any cause to be modest.
The burning sensation on her face clued her in to the fact that she was blushing furiously, but she figur
ed she’d come this far, no sense in backing down now. “The dryer is in the hallway closet.” She stepped aside and motioned for him to go first. “Be my guest.”
Her gaze involuntarily dropped to his crotch for a split second again. This time, she caught movement. Definite movement. He was actually getting an erection right there in her kitchen.
He shrugged. “You’ll have to excuse him. He likes to perform for an audience.”
If she’d been blushing before, she must be absolutely scarlet now.
Luke tossed her a vaguely amused look and grabbed his wet clothes off the floor, then proceeded past her into the hall.
Jane figured if she’d seen what he had to offer from the front, she might as well check out the backside too, so she watched his muscular cheeks flex as he walked down the hallway. But she hadn’t bargained for the sight of male perfection having such an effect on her blood flow.
It seemed all the blood from her brain shot straight to her groin, leaving her dizzy as a Southern belle at a July picnic. She gripped the door frame to keep her balance.
Luke found the laundry closet and loaded his wet clothes into the dryer. When he’d gotten it started, Jane remembered she was supposed to be retrieving a towel.
“Enjoying the view?”
She forced herself to let her gaze linger below his waist for a few moments, just to prove a point. “Wow, you just fulfilled every woman’s fantasy—cute naked guy doing the laundry. Wash my dishes and I just might have an orgasm.”
WHEN JANE AND LUKE WALKED into Heather and Michael’s wedding shower at her parents’ house, a hush fell over the room full of family members and pretty people. Jane could think of cages at the zoo she’d rather clean than spend an evening with her sister’s crowd—or listening to her mother’s comments about how Jane would need to drop a few pounds for the wedding—but if she had to be here, it sure was fun to show up with a hunk on her arm. Heather stood up from her seat and walked over to them, smiling a quizzical greeting. The other two triplets, Jennifer and Lacey, looked on from across the room, wearing similar quizzical expressions.
What A Girl Wants (Harlequin Blaze) Page 4