by Lori Wilde
She sized him up. “Like you could drive me home with a broken ankle?”
“We could walk. It’s only a quarter of a mile.”
“You’re on crutches.”
“I have tough underarms.”
“It’s downhill.”
“I’m willing to risk it if you are.”
“Hang out a little longer,” Evie said. “We’ll drop you off in a bit.”
“You stay,” she told Tuck. “Let Rid and Evie bring you home. I’ll see you back at the house.”
“You’re not walking alone.”
“What? Someone in Salvation is gonna mug me? You people don’t even lock your doors.”
“It’s October. There still might be bears wandering about looking for some last-minute snacks before hibernating. I’d hate for you to be an appetizer.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Okay, you can come.” She retrieved her jacket from the coat rack, shrugged into it, then turned and headed for the door, her ass swaying seductively as she walked away.
Tuck hitched his crutches underneath his arms. If she really is a jinx, he thought, I’m about to find out for sure.
Chapter Twelve
All Jillian could figure out was that the house Chardonnay at the Rusty Nail had more kick to it than her usual label. She had no other excuse why her head was spinning sweetly and she was dumbly ambling down the road toward the lake house in the dark of night guided only by a sky filled with stars and Tucker Manning limping along beside her on crutches.
She’d had only two glasses. Why did she feel so unsteady?
Maybe it had nothing to do with the wine and everything to do with the delicious hunk of man beside you.
The air was crisp and clean, and she felt a little breathless. High altitude, she told herself, but whenever she sneaked a glance over at Tuck’s profile, her pulse rate spiked. A shiver shot down her spine at the same time a moist heat rolled between her inner thighs.
Quick! Think about something else.
But her dumb, numb brain refused to cooperate. His scent hung in the air. Some kind of spicy cologne tinged with the yeasty aroma of beer and the musky fragrance of outdoor man. He was a far cry from the men she normally dated—smooth, polished, overly groomed men like Alex or the muscle-bound, pretty-boy himbos who looked good in a Speedo but didn’t think too much.
Tuck was a guy’s guy. Good-looking for sure, but in a rugged, tousled way. He didn’t shave half the time, his hair was just a tad past the point of needing a trim, and she’d never seen him in anything other than flannel and denim.
Oh wait, there was that time when she’d walked in and found him on the couch in only his underwear.
Anyway, she’d never been with a guy like this. Unabashedly blue collar to the bone. Sure, he’d had his Magic Man phase. She’d seen the article on him in Architectural Digest, gussied up in a tuxedo. He could give Alex Fredericks a run for his money. But that had just been a lark for him. This Tuck, this guy here with the broken ankle and wind-blown hair and whiskey-colored eyes, he was the real deal. He could hunt and fish and start a fire with his bare hands. No wonder he’d settled in Salvation. No matter where he’d been born and raised, he was Colorado to the bone.
And without even trying, he turned her on like no man ever had.
“Here we are.” Tuck stopped walking at the top of Enchantment Lane. The streetlamps ended at this point. They both stood looking to where the road dipped before it disappeared in the darkness.
“I think we should have taken that ride from Evie and Ridley,” she said.
“They’re still at the Rusty Nail. They play in the trivia tournament at eight on Thursday nights.”
“Ah,” she said.
“So, you and Lexi. Friends?”
“I’m new in town. I was looking for someone to hang out with.”
“You’ve got me,” he said. “I’ll hang with you.”
“Yeah, here’s the deal. I’m thinking you wouldn’t be so good at the girl talk.”
“You never know; I might surprise you. I grew up with sisters.”
“But what if you’re the one I want to talk about?” She slapped a hand over her mouth. Why had she said that? Damnable Chardonnay.
“You want to talk about me to Lexi Kilgore?”
She made a derisive noise. “Noo … it was just an example of a topic we couldn’t talk about. Should we do this thing now before we slowly start dying of exposure?” Jillian asked, vigorously rubbing her upper arms to stay warm.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” To descend the hill, he bravely thrust his crutches out in front of him, anchored them on the asphalt, and swung his body through. He used his good foot to hold a new spot while Jillian followed behind him.
“This is a piece of German chocolate,” he said.
She held her breath, just waiting for him to fall on his ass. What had they been thinking coming out here alone in the dark?
Tuck tried the maneuver again, succeeding a second time. “Look, ma, no leg.”
“Don’t get cocky, buster.”
“We’ll be just fine unless we run into a bear.”
“Tell me you’re making this whole bear thing up just to make me nervous.”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Bears are very real, and they can get really cranky if you come between them and a hearty meal.”
“I’ll make a mental note to avoid that.”
“Sound’s like a plan.”
Up ahead she could see the lake house, and relief pushed through her. “We’re almost there.”
“With the steepest part of the landscape to traverse,” Tuck observed.
“Here, I’ll lead the way.” Jillian marched off in front of him.
“Jillian,” he called.
“Yeah?” She swiveled her head as she stepped over a cross-tie timber that lined the lake property from the curvaceous Enchantment Lane.
“Watch out for—”
But she didn’t hear the rest of the warning. The heel of her boot caught on something in the dark, and she found herself stumbling headlong toward the ground.
She put out her palms to catch herself. Her knees kissed the cool damp earth at the same moment she heard the clatter of Tuck’s crutches as they tumbled to the dirt; then she felt his strong arm slide around her waist. “What are you doing? You’re gonna fall if—”
Too late.
He was already slipping and taking her all the way down with him.
Somehow, Tuck ended up flat on his back in the pine needles with Jillian stretched out across the length of him, his arm still locked securely around her waist. His chest was so broad and firm. His eyes so dark. His breath so warm against her skin.
“Brilliant move, Einstein,” she muttered.
“How do you know this move wasn’t highly planned and calculated?” he asked.
“Too graceless. Then again, you’re a guy …” She hitched in her breath. “Was it planned?”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? I couldn’t do that on purpose if I tried. Besides, pratfalls just aren’t my style. Face it, you weren’t the only one imbibing tonight.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, and Jillian suspected he knew as well as she did that the situation they were in had nothing to do with alcohol. She scrambled off of him before she did something wholly inappropriate and exceedingly stupid. She turned toward the house, blood pounding in her ears.
“Hey,” Tuck called out. “You just going to leave me here?”
“Huh?” Jillian blinked. She’d been so focused on getting away from the hard heat of his body that she’d forgotten he was lying there like a turtle, unable to hop up or flip over on his own. “Oh yeah. Sorry.”
She hurried back to him, knelt beside him, and helped lever him off the ground. She reached for his crutches. Thrust them at him.
Wind rustled through the pine trees and sent a shiver over her skin. She didn’t want him thinking she was shivering because she was so close to him, eve
n though she was. “It’s cold out here,” she said. “Let’s get inside.”
“Let’s,” he echoed.
In the darkness, she could barely see the porch.
“Next time we go out drinking,” she said, “we should remember to put the porch light on.”
“Good idea. Next time.”
They rounded the side of the house, their boots making hollow noises as soon as their feet hit the redwood deck. The moon, which had been playing peep-eye with the clouds, burst forth from its hiding place in that moment, bathing the dock in a silvery glow.
It was a beautiful shot of an autumn lake in moonlight. She heard the sounds of the wind-blown water gently lapping the shore, a hoot of an owl from a nearby tree, a dog barking in the distance. She caught the scent of wood smoke in the air, along with the cool, crisp, languid odor of mountain water.
She stopped to suck in an awed breath. “This view is stunning.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “It is.”
Jillian didn’t have to turn her head to know Tuck was looking at her and not the water. “It’s romantic.”
“That too.”
“Did you and Aimee make love out here often?”
“A time or two,” he surprised her by admitting. “But only in the summer. Aimee didn’t like the cold much.” His tone took on a wistful note.
“And yet she loved Colorado.”
“In the summer mostly.”
“You’re lucky,” she said.
“Lucky?” His voice sounded gravelly.
She swept her arm at his vista. “To have all this.”
“What are you talking about? I have nothing. Not legally. Not until that deed turns up and I lost the most precious—” He broke off and maneuvered himself away from her.
She knew he was talking about his wife. She didn’t mean to make him think about her, but she supposed when you love someone that much and lose them so young and tragically, you never really stop thinking about them. Jillian wondered what it would feel like to be so loved.
Jealousy bit into her, and she hated herself for being jealous of a dead woman. How pathetic was that?
“You’ve got a lot more than you think you do. You’ve got a great sister and brother-in-law who love you. You’ll soon have a little niece or nephew on the way. You’re doing a job you love. You’re young and strong and gorgeous, and you have your whole life ahead of you if you could just let go of the past.”
“Hey!” Tuck snapped. “You’ve got no right telling me what to do with my life.”
Jillian held up her palms. Her heart was breaking for him and everything he’d lost, but the man was desperately in need of some tough love. “You did everything that was humanly possible to save her.”
“Yes, I did.” His tone was vicious.
“So let yourself off the hook. You’re not the one who’s dead, Tuck.”
“It’s so damned easy for you to say. You have no idea what it’s like. You’ve never even been in love.”
His accusation hurt, but it was true. “You’re right. I’m the interloper, the stranger, the misfit. Story of my life. No one wants to hear what I have to say. I don’t belong.”
He drew an audible breath. “That’s not what I meant.”
She turned away from him, hugged herself in the cold, and walked out onto the dock. He was the damned Magic Man, and he didn’t even realize it. Yeah, so life had taken his wife, kicked him hard in the balls, but he’d had something Jillian had never had.
Love.
A lump formed in her throat. No one had ever told Jillian that she was loved. At least not that she could remember. Not her mother, not her father, certainly not her stepmother, and there’d been no grandparents. No man had ever said the words to her. She told herself she didn’t care, that it didn’t matter, that she didn’t need that kind of messy emotion in her life, but it was a lie. She wanted love more than anything. Wanted it so much that she kept putting herself in situations where she’d never get it, stacking the deck against herself in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Suck it up. Get over it.
“Hey,” he said.
Jillian did not turn around, but she heard him clopping across the wooden deck with his three-legged crutch walk. “Yeah?”
“Let’s go inside. I’m freezing my ass off.”
The petulant part of her wanted to tell him to go inside, that she didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody. But she hadn’t become a great prosecutor by holding on to resentment. The sensible part of her that knew how to make a plea bargain, the part of her that was shivering her ass off replied, “Okay.”
They went inside together.
But once they were in the cottage with the door locked and the moonlight safely hidden behind the curtains, Jillian didn’t know what to say or do next.
Tuck propped his crutches in the corner of the foyer and shrugged out of his coat. It was still early, Jillian realized as the Bavarian cuckoo clock mounted near the fireplace struck nine.
They looked at each other. The smell of wind and lake and pine trees flared in the short distance between them. She was looking at his lips and he was looking at hers and …
“You are not going to kiss me,” she said.
“No.” He leaned closer.
“It would be stupid.”
“Agreed.” Tuck was so close now that their lips were almost touching.
“We’re strangers.”
“But roommates.”
“Strange roommates,” she murmured.
“Very strange.” He ran the back of his hand over her cheek.
“We’re both in bad places in our lives.”
“Terrible.”
“We’re embroiled in a property dispute.” Jillian leaned toward him, closing the miniscule gap. “Kissing would be disastrous.”
“Catastrophic.” Tuck curled a lock of her hair around his index finger.
“I mean, where would we go from there?”
“Right.”
“We’re certainly not going to sleep together.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Never mind the sexual chemistry.”
“Yeah, forget all about that.” His palm was at the nape of her neck now, his fingers splayed through her hair.
Jillian kept telling herself, No, no, no, but all she could think about was that damned sex dream where Tuck had a starring role and how they’d been so ripe and hungry for each other.
God, it was hot in here. Like the frickin’ Sahara Desert.
They were nose to nose. Her body was on fire, her blood boiling. Tuck’s cheeks were flushed. Jillian suspected her own were as well.
“I’m going to step away from you right now,” she said.
“Me too.”
She didn’t move.
Neither did he.
Their chests were pressed together. She felt her nipples harden beneath the lace of her bra. Damn her anyway. “I thought you were stepping off.”
“I am.”
“I’m waiting.”
“I’m going.” He didn’t move.
Her breath was chugging through her lungs as if she was a ten-pack-a-day smoker. “Good-bye.”
“See ya.”
Then he snatched her into his arms and kissed her so hard her head spun. He speared his tongue past her lips, and she just let him. Not only let him, but parted her teeth and encouraged him to continue.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
His flavor filled her mouth, enveloped her, flooded her.
Unbelievably, impossibly, he tasted exactly the way he had in her dream. Through his taste alone, she could have identified him blindfolded in a room filled with a hundred men. His fingers fisted in her hair, and he held her to him so tightly she couldn’t move—didn’t want to move.
Tuck plastered his other hand to her fanny, pulling her up flush against him and grinding his hips against hers, giving her full appreciation of his rock-hard erection.
Desire shot thro
ugh her, stronger than before.
Break it off. Pull away. Stop this before it’s too late.
Ah, but his kiss was drowning out that prudent voice, dissolving any last shred of resolve she might have. She nipped his bottom lip between her teeth.
He moaned low in his throat and maneuvered her against the wall, probably to keep himself from being thrown off balance. She wished she had something more than a wall to stabilize her.
Tuck pressed his body into hers. Excitement shot blood through her veins at an alarming rate, and she hissed in her breath as he branded her neck with his dangerously hot tongue.
The kiss was hard. Savage. Every muscle in her body twitched in response. Jillian was so sure it would be gentle, tender. She didn’t mind that the kiss wasn’t what she expected. In fact, she liked the surprise.
His frantic tongue increased her desire for him. She cupped his face with both hands and kissed him back just as fiercely as he kissed her.
Tuck grunted, running his hand up underneath her shirt, his palm skimming her belly.
If Mutt hadn’t picked that moment to come bounding in through the kitchen, a fast-food wrapper in his mouth, Jillian couldn’t say what would have happened next.
But Mutt did come in and with his oversized tail wagging, wedged himself between Jillian and Tuck, breaking them apart.
“Someone’s jealous,” Tuck panted.
“Looks like that same someone’s been rummaging in the trash,” Jillian said breathlessly, her lips still tingling.
They stared at each other, and suddenly it all felt so wrong when seconds ago it had felt so right. She thought of all the reasons they couldn’t be together, the least of which the fact that he was still hung up on his dead wife.
Tuck shoved a hand through his hair, looking sheepish. “About what just happened …”
“Big mistake.” She rushed in to say it before he did.
“Huge.”
“Gigantic.”
“Monumental.”
“Enormous.”
“Epic.”
Jillian stepped away from him, tugged down the hem of her sweater. “This can’t happen again.”
“Gotcha.”
“I mean it.”
He raised his palms. “Completely hands off.”
She knelt to scratch Mutt’s ears and willed her heart to stop pounding. She felt rather than saw Tuck hobble away.