by Jill Shalvis
“You are a big softie. What else?”
“I listen to rock. Loud.”
“Okay, we’ll have to disagree there. How do you feel about Italian food?”
“I love Italian food. I love all food. You?”
“Not fond of anything fishy,” she admitted, and he nodded his head in agreement.
“How about cars—” She broke off when he put his finger to her lips. “No more questions?” she said around his finger as he slowly shook his head.
“Then…?” Her eyes were huge. “What?”
“Then…” He ran his thumb over her lower lip, nearly groaned again when her tongue darted out and licked him. “This. Just this.”
And he lowered his head.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANNIE WAS DYING OF PLEASURE. Ian kissed as he did just about everything else, with his entire being. Breathing him in, she felt light-headed and dizzy, just from his touch.
She hadn’t come here for this, she’d come to apologize and that was it, but now, effortlessly, he changed her mind. She wanted to drown in him, she wanted to forget her troubles, if only for a little while. But the truth was, she’d never been able to separate mind and body, and sex with Ian would involve her mind as well as her body.
Could she handle it?
“Ian,” she said against his mouth, bringing her hands to his lean, tough jaw, trying to get a grip of her quickly slipping control. “Ian…”
He pulled back a fraction, breath ragged, his sexy, sleepy eyes eating her up. “Stop?”
“No. Yes.” She covered her face and let out a nervous laugh. “I’m not sure.”
“You said you wanted to jump my bones,” he pointed out a little hoarsely.
“Yeah.” In direct opposition to those words, she took a step back, and a bigger mental one. “I do. I really, really do.”
“So why are you wa-a-ay over there?”
How to explain that while she wanted him more than her next breath, she also wanted things she suspected would send him running, screaming into the night? “I—” She broke off with a disparaging sigh when the beeper against her hip vibrated.
She glanced down at it, then back at Ian. “I have to go.”
“Is everything all right?”
“It’s Aunt Gerdie. She’s probably just wondering where I am.” She backed up a few more steps, offered him an apologetic smile, and whirled off into the woods.
* * *
SHE HADN’T BEEN IN HER house two seconds when the phone rang.
“Damn it, don’t do that,” Ian growled in her ear.
“Don’t…kiss you?”
“You can kiss me anytime, anywhere, but goddammit, don’t run off. Not until my leg—I can’t catch you,” he said, and now she could hear the fear, the worry in his rough tone. “I can’t keep up to make sure you get home okay.”
“Oh, Ian.” She sighed, and sank to a chair. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. No bogeyman tonight.”
“Are you having that package traced?”
“Yes.”
“Call me when you hear,” he demanded, and she, a woman not used to demands from anyone but herself, found a smile on her face.
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean it.”
“I’ll call you,” she promised, and when she hung up, she still had the idiotic smile on her face.
“You’ve kissed him, then.”
Annie turned as Aunt Gerdie came into the living room.
“Oh, it’s all over your face,” Aunt Gerdie assured her, and sank to the couch with a lusty sigh. “You know, I used to be able to stand all day long. I’m sorry if I interrupted anything special, I just couldn’t find you, and there was no note.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” What would really scare her was knowing the truth, hearing about the note, the tires…but Annie wouldn’t do that to her. “Aunt Gerdie…I’d really like it if you’d stick around home for a while, that if you need to go anywhere, you let me take you. Is that okay?”
“Of course. But you worry far too much. I’ll be okay, Annie, so will you. Now, about that kiss…”
“Aunt Gerdie!”
She grinned. “I remember those days, where you can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do anything but think of how it feels when his arms are around you and he’s kissing you silly. Oh, yes, I remember them well. And just so you know, each time it happens you just sink deeper. You always do when it’s the real thing.”
Unbelievably, Annie felt a blush creep over her cheeks. “I never said anything about this being the real thing.”
“You didn’t have to,” Aunt Gerdie said gently. “As I said, it’s plastered all over your face.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY ANNIE WORKED in the workshop, facing the large window as she fiddled at her workbench with her fall colors. She’d been in there for several hours with the only interruption being a few phone calls she’d let the machine pick up. That was the beauty of being in Cooper’s Corner. Here she had some peace and quiet, both of which were so important to her.
In the late afternoon, a police car pulled up into her driveway, shattering that peace and quiet. With the sun reflecting off the windshield, she couldn’t get a good look. A long, jeans-clad leg emerged from the passenger door, followed by a face with mirrored Oakley’s, a grim set to the mouth, and a head of hair containing every hue of brown, red and gold under the sun.
Ian stood, most of his weight on his good leg, his gaze skimming the landscape and unerringly settling on her through the window.
With a knee-jerk response, she stepped back. Remembering that kiss from yesterday destroyed any concentration, any ability to maintain her cool, but even so, it was hard to regret something so… deliciously perfect.
Unable to resist, she took a quick peek.
He was still there, broad shouldered and tall.
Her tummy tingled. So did every erogenous zone in her body, of which there seemed to be more than she’d known about.
Ian shoved his sunglasses on top of his head and seemed to look right at her. Into her. All from eyes the color of a perfect shot of expensive whiskey. Good Lord, the man was a walking, talking specimen of blatant, earthy sexuality, and he didn’t even know it.
Or maybe he did. He certainly knew how to kiss.
Fanning her face, laughing a little at herself, she moved to the door of her studio and opened it. She looked at State Trooper Scott Hunter first, because she wasn’t prepared to let Ian see how potent he was. “You have news,” she said.
“UPS traced the package,” Scott said. “Unfortunately, the packing slip was shoddily filled out.”
“On purpose,” Ian said.
“On purpose,” Scott agreed. “And was left at a drop-off box only two blocks from the Annie’s Garden office.”
Ian lifted a brow, signifying what he thought of that.
“Has anything else happened?” Scott asked her, and when she shook her head, she’d have sworn Ian let out a long breath of relief.
It was odd how that alone made her feel better. No matter how badly they bungled things, or how much he confused her, she wasn’t entirely alone in this.
He wouldn’t let her be.
After promising to be in touch, Scott left them alone.
Ian limped up the steps to the doorway where she stood, his cane nowhere in sight.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi.” He took the last step, and stood toe to toe with her now, his hands braced on the doorway on either side of her so that it felt as if he was surrounding her with his body.
And yet not an inch of them touched.
Odd then, how it affected her breathing. “Where’s your cane?”
“I told you, I’m getting better.”
“Better from what?”
He let out a slow smile that unexpectedly made her nipples harden. “This is about you today, not me.”
“If you came to act all protective and he-man on me, you can just turn around righ
t now. That’s not what I need.”
“Actually, I came to take you out for dinner.”
She was all set for temper, so his words threw her. “Dinner? Like…a date?”
“Like, yes.”
She was not going to smile.
“That is, if you don’t mind something called Tubb’s Café,” he said. “Because apparently that’s the only place to go eat around here.”
“You’re still missing New York, I take it. Don’t worry, I know the Tubbs. Burt and Lori are excellent in the kitchen.”
“So you’ll go?”
“Is that what we’re doing, Ian? Going out?”
“That’s the very least of what we’re doing.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Then his big, warm hand let loose of his grip on the doorway and settled over her jaw and throat. “You hanging in there?”
“I’m hanging in.”
He looked behind her, took in her comfortable mess at the worktables, at the small desk with the blinking answering machine. “You’re not answering your phone?”
“I’m into avoidance today.”
“Annie,” he chided gently, and with his hands on her hips, guided her backward into the workshop. “We’re trying to catch them, not dig your head into the sand.” He brought her to the message machine and looked at her expectantly.
Just two messages. She’d convinced herself she needed the peace and quiet, but her palms were damp now, and she knew the truth. She’d avoided the phone out of fear.
And suddenly that pissed her off. With the comfort and strength of Ian standing right there, his hands on her, she punched the play button.
Message one was a hang up, and made Ian frown. “Who was that?”
“Maybe someone who didn’t want to talk?”
“This isn’t funny.”
No. No, it wasn’t funny.
Message two. Quinn. “Returning your call from last night,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t in….” His voice lowered. “You sounded…not okay. What’s the matter? You want to just toss away the next months of waiting and get married right here, right now?”
As Quinn had intended, she laughed.
“Who the hell is that?” Ian demanded, and Annie nearly laughed again at the expression on his face.
“A friend,” she said. “And yes, before you ask, there really are men out there who think they can be friends with a woman.”
“Yeah, and then marry her?”
Annie considered making another glib reply, but Ian was looking at her with those see-through eyes of his, with a look in them that demanded a real answer. “It’s a long, boring story. Really.”
“Well, then you should probably start before I fall asleep.”
“Okay, but you’re going to laugh.” She waited, but he didn’t lose an ounce of his intensity. “You already know I did my graduate work at Harvard. There were six of us, but three of us spent a fair amount of time together—Quinn, Chance and I. As friends.”
“Friends?”
“Well…Quinn and I kissed once…” She laughed.
“It was funny?”
“Extremely. Good friends really shouldn’t kiss.”
He relaxed marginally, but not that much, and she smiled again. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Just finish.”
“By the first year, we’d all made a pact to run a Fortune 500 company, to get there by the time we were forty. Bonus points for starting the company ourselves.”
“That’s pretty ambitious. Where does the marriage come in?”
“Quinn and I decided we liked each other enough to get married, if no one else came along by the time he hit thirty-five.”
Now he looked horrified. “You’re going to marry him because you like him? Even though his kiss made you laugh?”
“I’m not going to marry him.” She leaned in close enough to give him a quick kiss on his hard, frowning lips. “Because it’s not his birthday yet.” She laughed again when he reached for her, but the laugh backed up in her throat when he hauled her close.
And turned into a moan when he put his mouth to hers.
* * *
“DID YOU TALK TO ANNIE?”
Jenny turned from her desk and sighed. “She’s not home, and no, I didn’t feel right leaving a message.”
“This is becoming a problem.”
Jenny’s heart twisted. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad, not at you. Never at you.”
“I’m trying to tell her.” She struggled not to cough on the cigar smoke blown in her face. “Um…this is still a no-smoking building.”
“Oops.” The cigar was extinguished in the sunflower plant on Jenny’s desk. “I forgot. Anyway, don’t worry. You’ll work this out with her.”
“Yeah.” Jenny waited until her office door shut before she waved at the lingering cigar smoke, the no-smoking sign on her desk mocking her and everything she’d done.
* * *
THE NIGHT AFTER IAN HAD taken Annie to Tubb’s for dinner, he stared out into the dark sky and felt…restless.
He knew a way to fix that. He dragged Thomas outside.
“You really up for a ride?” his brother asked uneasily. “I just paid this baby off, you know.”
Ian swung his leg over and mounted. Grinned at the thrill that shivered through him. “Are you kidding? I was born to ride.”
Thomas sighed. “Just remember who that thing belongs to.”
“I will.” Ian patted the Harley-Davidson and sighed with pure pleasure when the beast purred to life.
“It’s winter,” Thomas said. “It’s cold and dangerous.”
“Yeah, it’s cold, so what? There’s no snow in the forecast, and the roads are perfectly clear, no ice, nothing.”
“Just be careful.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“I’m not worried about you, it’s the bike.”
Ian laughed. “I’ll take good care of your baby.”
When Thomas didn’t relax, Ian sighed. “Don’t worry, I have no intention of being stupid. I repeat, the ice has all melted and there’s no snow in the forecast. Look at those stars, man, not a single cloud around.”
“How’s your leg?”
Ian started to shrug, but his brother put his arm on his shoulder. “Truth, Ian.”
“It’s better. Really,” he added when Thomas looked doubtful. “I’ve been without my cane for two days.”
“And you’re limping worse than ever.”
“Time. That’s all I need.” Ian revved the engine and his heart began to race with the need for speed. He’d been in the country for ten days now and he needed hard, hot, fast action. He was about to get it…if Thomas would stop yakking. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Thomas lifted his hands and stepped clear.
Ian sped off down the driveway, for the first time since being shot twenty-four days ago, feeling in control, feeling wild and free, feeling like himself.
Actually, he decided as the wind hit his face, as the country roads whipped by him at a dizzying speed…to be truthful, this was not the first time he’d felt wild and free and like himself since the shooting.
He’d felt that way…here. In the wide-open spaces and quiet countryside that had so bothered him in the beginning.
He’d also felt that way with Annie. Each time he saw her it was more so, culminating in last night’s quiet dinner date in town, just the two of them, kissing, talking, laughing… God, she made him laugh.
He still marveled at that.
And Tubb’s Café had actually served good food, just as Annie had promised. An even bigger shock…he’d enjoyed meeting Burt and Lori Tubb, both in their sixties, both short and round and extremely open and friendly.
As just about everyone in Cooper’s Corner had been, he had to admit. From Philo and Phyllis Cooper, to the Tubb’s, to Scott Hunter… It was like Mayberry. Or Cheers, where everyone knew everyone’s name.
Only this wasn’t te
levision, it was real life, and damn if the hills didn’t gleam by moonlight as he rode, the snow white and pure and cold and appealing. The wide-open space had never appealed to him, never, and yet he lingered, almost…enjoying it.
Somehow life seemed…bigger out here.
And somehow, when he wasn’t looking, he’d stopped being spooked by it all.
Eventually he wound his way back through town, which had rolled up the sidewalks and closed up tighter than a drum. In New York, that would have annoyed him, having no place to go.
Here, now, he felt oddly comforted. For reasons utterly unknown, he turned the bike up Annie’s driveway instead of Thomas’s.
The big house was dark, so he went around and was rewarded by lights in her workshop. The shades weren’t down, and he could see her in there, in her apron with her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head, falling in tendrils around her face. She was either talking to herself or singing to some music he couldn’t hear, but either way it made him grin.
Or maybe that was just her. She lightened his heart in a way he couldn’t have imagined. He swung his leg over the bike and winced as he stood. For a moment there he’d nearly forgotten the shooting, the chronic pain. Limping more than he’d like, filled with far more longing than he’d ever admit to, he headed toward her door.
He wasn’t happy with how out in the open she was when she worked. In fact, he’d have to tell her he didn’t want her in her studio past dark anymore, it was like being in a fishbowl. The windows were large, and the open planter beneath it a perfect place for someone to stand and—
His entire body tightened. Because there, at his feet, were a set of large footprints, leading through the planter to the base of her window.
Fresh.
Which meant someone else had stood watching Annie, recently.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ANNIE WORKED UNTIL FAR PAST dark. Ever since the UPS delivery, she hadn’t been able to look at her treasure chest again, and wanted to design a new one. She’d talked to Jenny twice, both times pure business, though it was clear something was on Jenny’s mind.
Annie had asked her about it, if there was a problem, a money problem, but Jenny had brushed the questions off. The strain between them was new. And horrible.