She Drives Me Crazy

by Leslie Kelly

  She imagined prison guards were more helpful and friendly.

  To make things even worse, her search for employment hadn’t been any more successful. By the time she got back to the house on Friday afternoon, she was tired and annoyed. Frustrated. And still jobless.

  “I can’t believe nobody in this town is hiring,” she muttered aloud as she kicked off her sandals to pad around in bare feet. The smooth, polished oak floor felt cool against her toes, a relief after yet another stifling hot June day.

  Since she wasn’t sure she’d be able to afford to pay the electric bill next month, she’d been getting by without using the window air conditioners Grandma Emmajean had had installed sometime in the past ten years. Today, however, she couldn’t stand it. She walked over to the one sticking into the room from the front window and jerked the switch on. Rewarded by a blast of cold air, she closed her eyes and reveled in it, letting it cool off her overheated skin. And her temper.

  Emma certainly hadn’t expected to land in a permanent job, one suited to her qualifications. There weren’t any brokerage houses in Joyful, as far as she knew. But jeez, she couldn’t even get work as a bagger at the Joyful Grocery Store!

  Of course, she hadn’t actually applied there. The memory of the faces of those girls at the checkout counters the day she’d hit town had made her pass by the store. Still, she’d sure tried a number of other places, and had gotten the same odd reactions: either gawking shock, laughter or rudeness.

  Apparently everybody in Joyful still thought of her as the rich outsider. Maybe they considered her job hunt a joke. The woman who ran the Let Your Hair Down salon certainly seemed to think so, since she and her clients had laughed uproariously when Emma had tried to apply for the wash-girl position.

  With the exception of last year when she was bald, she’d been washing her own hair for a long time. How much skill did it take? Apparently, according to the salon owner, more than Emma possessed. Though, she had laughingly said that if Emma showed up bearing one of her grandma’s pecan pies, she might reconsider the matter.

  Speaking of which…Emma still hadn’t found the recipes. Not that she had time to start baking—or the money to buy the ingredients.

  Glancing at the answering machine, she sent up a quick, silent prayer for messages. The red light wasn’t blinking…but maybe the bulb was out. Half holding her breath, she punched the play button.

  Nothing. Not a single, “We got your application and will let you know when we have an opening.” Not even a “Hey, heard you were back in town and look forward to seeing you at the reunion.”

  Nobody had come knocking on her door bearing muffins or anything else. No calls all week, except for two from Claire. No word from Jimbo Boyd, in spite of her numerous messages.

  Emma was beginning to wonder if she’d turned into the invisible woman.

  She knew better than to even try turning on her laptop to see if she had any e-mails responding to the résumés she’d sent out. Until the SEC investigation was over with, she and all her former co-workers were on the outs in the financial world. She’d known sending out the résumés had been nothing more than flinging hopeful coins in the World Wide Web fountain, praying her wish would come true.

  She had to admit the worst part, what had really been bugging her: no Johnny. She hadn’t seen or heard from him since Wednesday when she’d given in to some sadomasochistic impulse and kissed him.

  Kissing Johnny always got her into trouble. This time it’d left her shaking, empty and confused for forty-eight hours.

  She might not have seen him, but she’d sure heard about him. The women in this town seemed to enjoy talking about their hunky D.A., particularly when Emma was within earshot. She’d overheard two tellers at the bank gossiping about him. The waitresses at the diner, the women at the beauty parlor, they’d all somehow managed to bring up his name whenever Emma was around. It was a wonder nobody came right out and asked if the sex had been any good on prom night.

  Uh, yeah, that’d be a big 10–4.

  It was her own fault. She figured a bunch of people had to have seen—and gossiped about—the kiss she’d laid on him in the town square.

  Laid. Hmm…

  No.

  Smothering a sigh, she went into the kitchen and got down Grandma Emmajean’s coffee can. The pile of bills was still sizeable, mainly because Emma had been downright thrifty this week, living primarily on lettuce and coffee.

  Which was why she was about to lose her mind with a craving.

  Chocolate. She needed it. Needed it bad. Needed it now. Sex might have done as an alternative, but she couldn’t guarantee it.

  Unfortunately, there was no sex to be had, Johnny Walker get out of my head, and no chocolate, either. Nothing. No stale candy bars, no dried out Kisses floating around in the bottom of the candy jar. Not a sticky fudge pop in the freezer or a bottle of Hershey’s syrup in the fridge that she could squirt straight into her mouth.

  It seemed utterly pathetic to get in her car and drive back downtown for a Baby Ruth bar, but she was seriously considering it. Then she spied the chocolate baking squares up next to the baking powder and vanilla up on a shelf in the pantry.

  It’d do.

  Grabbing the box, she tore it open and eyed the waxy hunk of black stuff inside. “Chocolate chips,” she muttered. “It’ll taste like chocolate chips.”

  Only, it didn’t, which she realized after she took one tentative nibble on a corner. Unsweetened. “Blech.”

  Grandma Emmajean had had some sugar left in her pantry when she arrived, but one of the first things Emma had done was to make a pitcher of sweet tea. It’d been pure heaven after drinking the stuff Manhattan called iced tea for ten years. But she’d used up all the sugar. Inside the pantry, however, was a box of sweetener packets. Desperate times…

  “What the heck?”

  She went to work, and soon discovered that chocolate baking squares coated in sprinkled-on sugar-substitute weren’t going to kill her. They definitely weren’t orgasmic. They weren’t even entirely palatable. But they were cheap, and at hand. And they contained cocoa.

  After she finished as much as she could stand of one, though, she still felt…hungry. Ravenous. In need of—craving—something. Lousy chocolate hadn’t even come close to making her feel better. She wasn’t sure Godiva would have, either.

  “It’s the heat,” she whispered. This heat was making her itchy and restless and tense. That’s all, she just needed to cool off. More sugar wouldn’t hurt, either.

  She grabbed the pitcher of tea out of the fridge and poured a big cup, filled to the top with ice. The coldness of the glass provided sweet relief to her fingertips, so she lifted it to her face. When the condensation touched her temples it brought instant delight.

  Sipping her tea, she returned to the front room, toward the air conditioner. Lord, it was hot. New York City could be stifling in the summer, particularly with millions of tourists everywhere. But Georgia was downright wicked.

  That had to explain why she was feeling this way. Hot and uncomfortable.

  “And wicked?” she mused aloud.

  Maybe. Just a little.

  Before she could prevent it, an image of Johnny’s face flashed through her mind. She sipped from her glass again, remembering that moment right here in her living room the other day, when he’d driven her home. She knew what he’d been thinking…because she was thinking the same thing.

  About their kiss. The insane way they’d lost themselves in each other on her kitchen table. At the gazebo. In the square Wednesday when she’d threatened to bite him.

  Anywhere. Everywhere.

  “Stop thinking about him,” she muttered, knowing it was simply heat and frustration and, yes, loneliness making her so jumpy and restless. What a pathetic picture she made. All alone, devouring pseudo-chocolate and sugar, and sidling up to an air conditioner to give herself some satisfaction on a lonely Friday evening.

  She stepped closer to the vent, turning the uni
t up to full-blast and letting cold air stream onto her neck. If she was going to get some relief, she might as well go all out to enjoy it. Reaching up, she unfastened the top few buttons of her scoop-neck dress. It fell open and the frigid air touched the curves of her breasts.

  “Mmm.” She sighed as she brought her glass to her lips and sipped again.

  But she still wasn’t cool enough. She wanted to strip off her clothes, to dive into a pool of icy water. Or to go out to the lake at a nearby state park and swim naked, like she and Claire had done once or twice in high school.

  She wanted raw physical pleasure.

  Joyful, however, had seen enough of her naked for one lifetime. Her skinny-dipping days were over. She had no pool, and the sprinkler was a poor substitute. So the A.C. and the icy glass would have to do.

  Reaching down, she pulled the bottom of her short dress higher, until her legs were bared all the way up to her tiny pink panties. Grandma Emmajean had probably never envisioned her A.C. being used like this when she’d had it installed at hip-level in her front window. But to Emma, it was pure heaven.

  Her thighs were damp with sweat, and her skin instantly loosened in relief. Lifting one foot, she placed it on the closest chair, and dropped her head back, letting all that coldness touch her where she was so very hot.

  Her face. Her chest. Her throat. Her thighs. Between them.

  That brought his image back to her mind and she grew even hotter. Moister.

  It was Johnny’s fault she was in this state. Because thinking of him moments ago had flooded her with the kind of want no air conditioner was going to relieve. Even when he was nowhere around he left her hungry and needing.

  She lifted her glass again, touching it to her cheek and her throat, letting one drop of condensation fall to her chest, where it trailed away between her breasts. And she finally began to cool off, to relax, to loosen up and enjoy the sensation.

  God, it was glorious. Decadent, almost. So delightful she simply had to close her eyes and revel in it, focused purely on the pleasure of the coldness on her skin, the whoosh of the air and the hum of the A.C. unit drowning out every other sound.

  Which was why she didn’t hear anything other than the pounding of her own pulse surging through her veins.

  Not until she opened her eyes and saw Johnny Walker standing inside her house.

  JOHNNY HAD NEVER imagined when he decided to swing by Emma Jean’s place to talk to her about her grandmother’s property Friday evening that he’d be walking into his own private version of heaven. Or hell. He hadn’t yet decided which.

  It kinda depended on what happened in the next ninety seconds.

  He couldn’t tear his hungry gaze off Emma, hot and glistening and almost purring in satisfaction as she cooled herself in front of the air conditioner. She was toying with the moisture on her glass, rubbing it between her fingertips, then touching her pulse points—her throat, her wrists, behind her ears—as if applying a heady perfume.

  Not that she needed it. Emma’d always smelled sweet. He knew if he stepped closer and inhaled, his head would fill with all that sweetness. Not to mention the intoxicating, musky scent of aroused woman.

  Because she was aroused. From the way she rubbed the wetness against her skin, to those sultry lips parted to allow a moan of pleasure, she was the very picture of a woman in heat.

  The moment was intensely personal. Sexual, though she was alone. He had the feeling if he stood here long enough, she was soon going to touch herself the way he’d been wanting to touch her since she’d walked back into his life a week ago.

  Intimately. Erotically. Thoroughly.

  He should have walked away a few minutes ago. Should have turned around and stepped off the porch when she didn’t answer the bell or his knock. But he’d caught a glimpse of her through the small window in the door, and had grown worried when she didn’t answer.

  So he’d had to play her frigging hero once more.

  He’d opened the door, just to check on her. And had stumbled onto one of the most erotic moments he’d ever witnessed. Lord have mercy he had never seen a more sensual sight.

  Remaining frozen in place, he watched her, knowing she was unaware of his presence. Emma’s hair was wildly tangled around her face, the short curls dancing at her temples and blowing across her pinkened cheeks. Her head was thrown back, a look of pure satisfaction on her face. Her parted lips glistened as she moistened them with her little pink tongue.

  Another iron band of his control snapped.

  Emma’s eyes remained closed. Looking at the tempting sheen of sweat on her throat, his mouth went dry. He wanted to taste that spot, to indulge in the salty flavor of her body.

  There. And everywhere else.

  When he finally managed to tear his eyes off her lips, her throat and her neck, his whole body grew taut with anticipation.

  He looked lower.

  Torture. God, this was torture.

  She was clothed, but only barely. Her dress was unbuttoned. Given how much it revealed, she might as well not have been wearing it at all. One side of the flowered fabric fell away low enough to reveal the lacy edge of a pink bra which barely covered the curve of her breast.

  The other side had fallen even lower, into downright sinful territory. His hands clenched at his sides with the need to cup her, touch her, hold her. One dark, puckered nipple pressed against the pink lace in sweet invitation and his lips parted as he imagined encircling it. Tasting it. Sucking her until she wrapped her fingers in his hair and begged him never to stop. Like she had that night.

  When she lifted a hand, he knew what she was going to do. Silently, he watched her trail her hand over her body, from hip to neck, grazing her breast with the tips of her fingers. A light touch. A brief caress. But so utterly, heart-stoppingly seductive he nearly echoed her deep, throaty moan of pleasure.

  Johnny’s mouth, which had gone dry, suddenly grew wet with hunger. Ravenous, insatiable hunger. But it was when he finally dropped his gaze to really look at the rest of her that he truly lost his mind.

  Even from a few feet away, he could see every bit of her legs, from the tips of her pink-tinted toenails, all the way up the endless length of her thighs. He groaned softly when he saw how the pale skin there had risen into goose bumps under the chilled flow from the vent.

  Then he looked higher. God almighty, higher. To the pale pink panties which did absolutely nothing to shield her soft curls from his stare. To that place where he’d found heaven on earth for a few hours ten years ago.

  One leg was bent, raised, exposing her secrets. She looked pagan. Open. Willing. Damp. Taking pleasure any way she could get it, from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. And every luscious inch in between.

  Right now, he wanted her more than he wanted to live to see another day.

  “Johnny?”

  He didn’t realize she’d opened her eyes until she spoke. Pulling his attention back up to her face, he let his expression speak for him.

  She understood. She didn’t say another word, she merely stared at him. Not moving. Not smiling. Just watching with a heavy-lidded intensity that told him she was every bit as aware of what could happen here in the next few seconds.

  Her lips remained parted as she sucked in deeper breaths, her chest heaving. But she made no effort whatsoever to cover herself.

  She was wanton. Open eyes. Open dress. Open legs.

  And issuing one hell of a silent invitation.

  “Do I go or do I stay?” he asked, his voice nearly a growl.

  If she told him to go, he would, but not without one taste, one hot, sweet taste of her.

  If she told him to stay, he’d be tasting her all weekend.

  “Stay.”

  STAY.

  Emma knew what she was really saying with that one little word, knew full well what kind of bridge she was crossing here, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  She wasn’t asking him to merely remain in her house. She was ordering
him to satisfy her craving. Give her what she needed. To take her. Hot and hard and fast and now.

  Right now.

  Johnny dropped the papers he’d been holding. The pages rode the current of air to the floor, landing beneath the coffee table. He ate up the distance between them in two large steps, and had her in his arms in the time it took her to take one deep breath. His hungry mouth devoured hers, his ravenous kiss telling her just how thin the last thread of his restraint had been.

  Hers had snapped completely when she’d opened her eyes to see him watching her with pure, undiluted want. She’d never seen such a look on a man’s face. A look that said he’d rather lose an arm than wait one more second to touch her. A frenzied expression saying his mind had completely given over control of his actions to his body.

  That body. Lord have mercy….

  That it was this man—the one she wanted beyond all reason and against her own better judgment—made it even more potent.

  She wanted so much. Everything. As much as he could give her as many times as she could get it.

  One of his hands was twined in her hair and he cupped her head while ravaging her mouth with his own. Their tongues met and danced and gave and took as their bodies melded together to form one fluid shape.

  Here, here was what she’d been hungry for, what her body had been crying out for when she’d foolishly tried to sate her appetite with chocolate, sugar and cold air. She didn’t want sweet, she wanted dangerously spicy. Didn’t want cold. She wanted sizzling hot. Frenzied. God help her, if he was the least bit kind or tender, she might have to bite him as she’d threatened to the other day.

  He seemed to know, because he wasn’t gentle and careful as he’d been so many years ago. His groans were guttural, his mouth, his lips, oh, lord, his tongue, were unrelenting, demanding, holding nothing back. His kisses were strong and wet and deep as if he wanted to eat her up. Gobble her down. Take her inside him.

  But that was her prerogative.

  “Touch me,” she ordered, against his open mouth, almost whimpering with her need for more.