She's No Angel

by Leslie Kelly

  It was an intimate place. A secluded, mysterious one that delighted every one of her senses. And when the water touched her, she knew her sensual delight would be complete.

  So she kept walking. Right to the water’s edge…and into it. “Ohh,” she moaned, tilting her head back and closing her eyes as liquid comfort surrounded her.

  “Good?”

  “So good. Silky smooth and deliciously cold.” She wanted to arch and writhe in it, but settled for moving deeper until her calves were wet…then her knees.

  God, what she wouldn’t give to take off her clothes, toss them to the shore and dive in. She opened her eyes, seriously considering just diving under anyway, her clothes be damned, when she saw Mike’s big, hard chest—his big, hard, bare chest—right next to her, a few inches from her shoulder.

  “I couldn’t resist,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.

  Oh. My. God.

  He was naked. This dark and dangerous man she’d been fantasizing about since yesterday had stripped off his clothes and followed her into the lake at this secluded park where he could do anything to her and nobody would hear a thing. Not a yell, not a scream…of pleasure, she had no doubt.

  Then she looked down. Damn. He was wearing jeans.

  But she still felt like howling in pure joy at just the sight of him. She lifted her gaze, slowly, marveling at his amazing shape. His flat, rippled stomach and trim waist were emphasized by the low-riding, unbelted jeans. The weight of the water was tugging them down and she could easily make out the strip of lighter, untanned skin, below his hips. Where the sun usually didn’t reach.

  She gulped. Then kept looking.

  Layers of muscle across his middle said the man worked out, and his chest was broader than her kitchen table. The shoulders looked too wide to fit through a doorway, much less into any standard men’s clothing.

  He was all tan and hard and utterly, mouth-wateringly delicious. Jen clenched her fingers into fists, willing them to behave, not to lift of their own volition and tangle in the dark, curling thatch of hair on his chest.

  Unable to resist, she followed that spiky, wiry hair with her gaze, going back down for another hungry examination. She breathed heavier, noting the way it traipsed down his body, over his stomach, and disappeared below his jeans in the middle of that same wickedly tempting line of pale skin just south of his hips.

  A line that grew even wider as his wet jeans grew heavier.

  There must have been an earthquake because she would lay money that she felt the bottom of the lake moving beneath her. Was she still standing? Was she even breathing? Was she drooling down her chin? She honestly didn’t know, she just kept looking.

  And she suddenly wondered if he’d kept his jeans on because he didn’t have anything on underneath them.

  Her heart did an outright cartwheel in her chest at that thought, and her thighs shook, almost causing her to fall right on her butt in the lake.

  “You okay?” he asked, grabbing her elbow, as if realizing she’d suddenly gone all female and weak-kneed like one of the women she warned women not to be in her books.

  “Fine,” she said, then had to clear her throat and repeat herself. Because the word had had about as much sincerity as a politician’s campaign promises.

  He didn’t let her go, keeping his grip tight as he stepped in closer. Close enough that she could see the ridges of his skin, and the individual strands of dark hair swirling around his flat nipples. Even the pucker of an old scar on his shoulder.

  “Jen? Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Oh, God, no I’m not all right, you’re killing me,” she finally said, wondering if she sounded as helpless as she felt.

  Before he could even ask what she was talking about, she gave up all efforts to be good. To be sane. Instead, she lifted a hand to his chest, stroking the tips of her fingers across that hot skin, following a long, thick ridge of muscle, sliding past the scar. She savored the touch as she lifted her other hand to his head to tangle her fingers in his hair and tug him down. “Taste me,” she whispered. “Please.”

  His eyes flared a tiny bit, but he didn’t resist her. His mouth came down on hers, open and hot and hungry. Jen licked at his tongue, needing to sample every bit of him. She arched and he shifted; she tilted her head and he lifted her up.

  All without allowing as much as a breath of air to come between their starving lips.

  Soon she was completely under his control, her hips in his big, strong hands, the V of her thighs pressed against a rock-hard erection straining against his jeans. At the feel of his response, she started to shake, suspecting she would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her.

  They kissed as if they needed each other’s mouths to keep their hearts beating: sucking, licking, giving and taking. He tasted sweet and hot and so delicious Jen wanted to cry at how good it felt. When he moved one hand up to cup the bottom of her breast, flicking his fingers over her taut, aching nipple, she didn’t want to cry, she wanted to yell at the pleasure of it. Yell and howl and moan and beg.

  She settled for arching harder into him, silently demanding that he intensify the touch. Swirling her tongue around his in a dance of hot desire, she moaned in satisfaction when he finally tugged her cotton shirt down to reveal her breast. Her lacy bra provided almost no coverage at all, and the feel of his fingertips scraping across her barely concealed nipple—tweaking it, plucking it—nearly sent her out of her mind.

  She wanted to go out of her mind, to go crazy and wild, and pull him down until he covered her throbbing nipple with that hot mouth and sucked. Hard.

  But in a moment, she lost the chance. Because without warning, without any indication that he didn’t want to roar forward into sensual bliss, he ended it. He slowly let go of her hip and disentangled his hand from her shirt. Pulled his mouth away. Took a step back.

  “No. That’s enough.” He said the words as if they were drawn out of him by barbed wire. But his stiff form told her he meant it.

  He’d kissed her, tasted her, touched her…and wanted to stop. How damned pathetic was that?

  Only one thing kept her from sinking into the bottom of the lake and drowning herself out of embarrassment. Despite having pulled away, he was feeling every bit as affected as she. She knew it.

  Though his eyes said no, that they were finished, and he kept shifting away, he was obviously still reeling. Because without another word, he turned and dove completely into the water. He swam out several yards with long, even strokes, as if a big-toothed sea creature were after him.

  She wasn’t a big-toothed sea creature, but for a moment, Jen was tempted to chase after him. But she wouldn’t. He’d said enough. He’d meant it. They were done.

  Done…but not finished. Not by a long shot. Even now she was so on fire, so exploding with hunger that she didn’t know how she was going to stand it. She wanted to claw at her own skin to stop the burning and the maddening want. There seemed to be no way to end the frustration.

  Suddenly his idea didn’t seem so bad. Get drenched and swim off the intensity. So without another thought, Jen dove beneath the surface, still in all her clothes, and did exactly that.

  IVY FRETTED ALL MORNING, wondering what the girl would do when she got back. Ida Mae had insisted that this time she’d have learned her lesson and would get out of town. But Ida Mae had been wrong yesterday, hadn’t she? And she could be again.

  Things had been going so well, too. They’d been having a nice breakfast and there’d been all those lovely boys. Then Jennifer had had to start carping on that ridiculous idea of hers that they should move, and Ida Mae had seen red.

  Ivy wasn’t so mad about it anymore. Oh, she’d never leave here, certainly, but she had taken a peek at those brochures Jennifer had forced on them. At least their niece wasn’t trying to dump them in a rat-infested, pee-scented insane asylum. Judging by the dollar figure mentioned on it, the girl had some money to spend, too, and was willing to spend it on them.

 
; That had made her feel better, though, not good enough to want to see Jennifer yet. She hadn’t quite gotten over the desire to box the child’s ears for thinking she could tell her elders what to do. But the price tag had, at least, dampened Ivy’s urge to kill her. For the time being.

  Whether she came back or not, Ivy’s knees couldn’t take another day in the cellar, so she sat in her kitchen, sipping tea, peeking out the front window every so often to see if the girl had returned. Perhaps she was again prowling around the house, thinking about breaking a window, but slyly tricking them into believing she’d left just so she could sneak back and use a secret key, as she had yesterday evening.

  “My, she does have spunk,” Ivy whispered, talking only to herself. Her cat, Holly—who’d originally been named Buddy, until Ivy had found out she was a girl—meandered in, so Ivy turned her attention to her closest companion. “Right, dearie? Spunk and will and wit.” Much like Ivy. Which was, perhaps, the reason Ivy had developed a reluctant fondness for the child when she’d been fond of very few other people throughout her life.

  Despite how much Ivy had tried to shake her off, the stubborn little thing had stuck close over the years, until there were times when Ivy almost forgot she didn’t like her. She’d found herself singing with the child, or dancing around the living room. Or even, on one occasion, baking cookies…at least until Ida Mae had come in, seen the jar of special powder in Ivy’s hand and put a stop to it.

  “The girl wouldn’t have told anyone,” Ivy muttered as she bent to stroke the cat. “Even if she’d known, she would have found a way to protect us, like a true Feeney woman.”

  Just as she had in her book, when she’d included some of Ivy’s own history.

  At first, when her niece had asked if she could include the story of Ivy’s tumultuous marriage and Leo’s murder, Ivy had been horrified. But once she’d thought about it, acknowledging that Jennifer could be discreet and was a talented writer, she’d cooperated. That cooperation had included one of the greatest acts of trust in Ivy’s whole life: she’d given over her treasured knitting box full of secrets.

  When she’d read the final product, before it was turned in to the publisher, Ivy had scoured for a single incriminating comment and found nothing. Her worries had faded and she’d honestly felt flattered. To think, Jennifer had immortalized her in an international bestseller, even if neither Ivy nor Leo had ever been mentioned by name.

  The child had been careful to not only keep Ivy’s identity secret, she’d made it clear that, despite the provocation of a wretched husband, the woman in the story hadn’t actually killed anyone. It was an example story Jennifer had used to show why some men just deserved to be put down like the dogs they were. The book made it seem as if Leo’s own villainy toward others—not his wife—had brought about his destruction.

  “Well, maybe she doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does,” Ivy whispered in a singsong voice. “Still, she’s a strong one, isn’t she? Like me. We almost like her, don’t we?”

  Guts. Jennifer had guts—almost enough to deserve the Feeney name, even if she wasn’t a true Feeney by blood. And though Ida Mae wouldn’t admit it, Ivy knew one thing: Mama would have adored the child. Just as she’d adored Jen’s father…Ivan.

  They all had. And still did.

  “Our darling baby boy,” she crooned, watching Holly overcome her aging bones to jump up onto the table. The animal dipped her face into the teacup and lapped at the rapidly cooling liquid.

  “Sweet little Ivan…do you ever suspect the truth?”

  Even if he had sometimes wondered, surely no one else had. They’d all played their parts. Ida Mae and Ivy had acted the typical teenagers, embarrassed that their parents had delivered a new baby at such an advanced age. When in truth, all they’d ever done behind closed doors and shuttered windows was rock him, fuss over him and kiss him to bits.

  He’d been their source of joy, right up until Ivy had moved away to marry Leo. She knew now that it was for the best. But at the time it had felt as though her heart was being ripped out of her chest at leaving Mama, Ida Mae and that boy.

  But there’d been no other choice. Papa had died; Mama had been under suspicion, the whole town knowing she’d threatened to kill him if he was bad again. If anybody had started looking too closely at the Feeney women—and the baby who’d entered their lives when Ida Mae and Ivy had been in high school—they might have learned too much. Such as how the child had been conceived. And what had happened to his father. How he’d really died, for instance. “Ida Mae, Ida Mae,” she whispered.

  A sharp pain stabbed through her brain, making her fingers clench in Holly’s fur. “Leave me alone,” she mumbled, talking to the pictures in her head that would never be still. She lifted her hands to her face, pressing her fingers against her skull, rubbing away the pressure. So much pressure. So many memories. So much…How could she stand it anymore?

  Why couldn’t she make all the dark thoughts go away? Could it be because of the ghostly voices she sometimes heard on the phone, calling to accuse her, either in heavy, prolonged silences or in a few spiteful words? Or the feeling she sometimes had that she was being watched by an invisible presence? “Leave me alone,” she repeated.

  “Are you all right?” a voice asked from behind her.

  She looked up, certain she’d see Ida Mae, though the voice had sounded deeper. How her sister could have entered the house and gotten past without being seen, she didn’t know…. Ida Mae was a tricky one, all right.

  “Fine, fine,” she insisted, peering across the room at the figure standing in the shadowy recesses of the hallway.

  “You need to stop thinking about it, Ivy. Rest.”

  That voice…not Ida Mae’s. A man’s voice. “Leo? Daddy…”

  “Take care, Ivy. Take care.”

  No. Not her horrid husband. Not Daddy. Her heart started fluttering as if it would burst through the finely veined skin of her chest as the truth dawned. He’d come again.

  “Eddie?” she whispered.

  But there was no response. No more words. No more shadow. Nothing. Maybe there never had been.

  As usual when the ghosts of her past came to call, Ivy just couldn’t be sure.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Why is it that when a woman gets ready for a special date with her spouse, she buys a new dress, new teddy, sexy hose and does the thorough going-to-the-gynecologist shave…and he swaps one Mets jersey for the other and maybe puts on a clean baseball cap?

  —I Love You, I Want You, Get Out, by Jennifer Feeney

  JEN DIDN’T KNOW WHICH FELT more uncomfortable during the nearly silent ride home—her wet clothes or her bruised ego.

  Her jean skirt clung to her thighs and grew a size smaller as it dried, almost cutting off her circulation. Her panties had climbed between her cheeks and stayed there. Plus her wet shirt was dripping rivulets of pink-tinged water down her arms as the dye let go. She imagined her chest and stomach looked as if she’d fallen asleep in a tanning booth. Her formerly white bra, every lacy bit of which was revealed under the clinging cotton fabric of her shirt, would now have to be worn only under dark colors unless she bleached the heck out of it.

  But somehow, none of that was as uncomfortable as the realization that she’d just thrown herself into this man’s arms, and he’d thrown her back out.

  Big. Strong. Bare arms.

  He hadn’t bothered putting his shirt on and it was all she could do to keep her eyes looking forward as he drove. She wasn’t very successful. Sister Martha, her third-grade teacher, would have looked at the rippling, flexing muscles on this guy. How could the ex–Single in the City girl be expected not to?

  “Here we are,” he said, his voice low and gruff as he turned into Ida Mae’s driveway. They were the first words either of them had spoken since they’d picked their way out of the water and, by silent agreement, immediately gotten into his Jeep. “Are you going to be able to get in?”

  “Oh. Sure.” Frankly, Jen h
ad been so flustered by the kiss she and Mike had shared that she hadn’t even remembered her predicament until now. Funny how an amazing kiss from an incredibly hot guy could drive matters like having her car and wallet stolen by a pair of conniving thieves out of her mind.

  Get real. Being kissed by Mike Taylor could probably have driven an impending tsunami out of Jen’s mind.

  She somehow managed to avoid answering his question with a “Why, no, I have nowhere else to go, why don’t you take me to the nearest hotel.” He had silently turned her down a half hour ago; why would now be any different? Besides, if she ever tried again to get this man into bed, it would be when she was dressed to kill, not dressed like a rat that had fallen down a sewer drain. “I’m sure they’ve calmed down.”

  “Have you?”

  “That I’m not so sure of. Although our drive certainly did…distract me.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, me, too. Look, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea…”

  “What, that you suffered through a kiss from a woman you barely know so you could let her down easy?”

  With a snort of disbelief, he shifted to face her. It was then she noticed the heat in his eyes. He raked a thorough look at her from the top of her wet head to the bottoms of her pinkish legs. “Don’t think I didn’t want to finish what you started.”

  Yeah. He had. His expression said it all. “Why didn’t you?”

  His eyes widened, as if he couldn’t believe she was being so honest. Well, that was the way Jen had always been. She couldn’t change who she was at this late date.

  “Do you always say what you think like that?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. Then I’ll say what I think, too.” He reached over and ran the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, which didn’t soften her up, but instead made her tense with hunger. She wanted to bite his finger, and keep on biting and nibbling at him, all the way up that arm. “I wanted to lift your skirt and take you right there in the water.”