Tangled Up in You

by Rachel Gibson

  His gaze slid to her mouth and lower, down her chin and throat, and got hung up on her breasts. It was past nine, so of course she was cold. “Honey, your body isn’t made for celibacy.” Her hard nipples made two sharp points in the front of her dress. “It’s made for sex.” He raised his gaze to hers. “Lots of rough, sweaty sex that lasts all night long and into the next morning.”

  Normally she might have been tempted to Mace a guy for saying that, but when Mick said it, she felt hot little tugs in her stomach and her body urged her to raise her hand to volunteer for sweaty sex duty. “Celibacy is a state of mind.”

  “Which explains why you’ve gone insane.”

  “Now who’s the tool?” She adjusted her purse to keep it from falling off her shoulder, but her fingers barely touched the bag before Mick pinned her wrists to the door beside her head.

  She looked up into his face an inch above hers. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not going to just stand here and let you shoot my ass with fifty thousand volts.”

  She tried not to smile and failed. “I was adjusting my bag on my shoulder.”

  “Call me paranoid, but I don’t believe you.”

  “You really thought I was going to zap you?” Zapping him had been the furthest thing from her mind.

  “You weren’t?”

  She chuckled. “No. You’re too pretty to get shot with fifty thousand volts.”

  “I’m not pretty.” He let out a breath and it touched the side of her face and neck. “You smell like strawberries.”

  “It’s my lotion.”

  “You smelled like strawberries that day in Handy Man Hardware.” He buried his nose in her hair and she was so shocked, she felt like she’d been zapped. “You always smell so good. It’s been driving me crazy.” He pressed the length of his body into hers. “When I saw you across the bar, I wanted to do this.” He lowered his face to the side of her throat.

  “I thought you wanted to toss me out on my ass.” How had it suddenly gotten so hot? A few minutes ago, she’d been cold. Now she felt hot little tingles rushing across her skin.

  “I’ll get to that. Later.” He let go of her hands, but his hips held hers against the door. He’d definitely dressed left. He was long and hard and a dull ache settled between her thighs. Harriet had been right. The Hennessy men were blessed. “First I wanted to smell you right here.” He pushed her sweater away and kissed her bare shoulder. “Where you’re soft and taste good.”

  “I like soft skin.” She took a shallow breath and closed her eyes. She wanted him to taste a little lower. “I’m kind of a hedonist that way.”

  “How can you be a hedonist and celibate?” he asked against her neck.

  “It’s not easy.” And becoming more difficult by the second. If she wasn’t careful, her hedonist side would rule her celibate side, and she would go down in a blaze of orgasmic glory. Which didn’t sound so horrible. Just not with him. She lifted her hand to the side of his face and brushed her thumb across the slight stubble of his cheek. “Especially when you’re around.”

  He chuckled. A low masculine sound that came from the center of his chest. He raised his face and his gaze had gone all half-mast with lust and his lashes looked very long. Desire shone bright in his eyes and his hands moved to her waist.

  “You’re the last man on the planet I can have.” She raised her mouth to his and he lifted his weight. “And the one I want most.”

  “Ain’t life a bitch,” he whispered against her lips.

  She nodded and rose to the balls of her feet. Her hand slid to the back of his head and she pressed her mouth to his. His hands on her waist tightened, and for several agonizing heartbeats,

  he remained perfectly still, his warm palms glued to her waist, his mouth against hers. Then a deep groan sounded low in his throat, and he slid one hand to the small of her back and the other between her shoulders on the outside of her sweater. He brought her against his chest and he kissed her. Soft, sweet. His lips created a delicious suction and he drew her tongue into his mouth, his cheeks sucking lightly.

  Maddie’s purse fell to the floor and she moved her free hand up the hard muscles of his arm and shoulder. Heat radiated from him and warmed her breasts where she was pressed against his chest. Maddie had never been a passive lover, and while he sweetly made love to her mouth, her fingers combed through his hair and her free palm roamed the hard contours of his chest and back. If he wasn’t Mick Hennessy, she would have pulled his shirt from his Levi’s and felt his bare skin.

  Mick slid his mouth to the side of her throat. “You’re the last woman I should want,” he said between short gasps. “The only woman I can’t stop thinking about.” His hands moved to cup her behind and her hips cradled his erection. “What is it about you that drives me so crazy?” Pressed against her lower belly, he was enormous and so hard the pressure against her pelvis almost hurt.

  Almost. She rocked against him as he pushed her sweater down her arms. He tossed the red angora somewhere behind him, but she didn’t need it. She was too hot. Her fingers curled in the front of his shirt and her mouth moved to his neck. He tasted good beneath her tongue. Like warm flesh and aroused man, and she sucked his skin. She grasped handfuls of shirt and swayed against his stiff penis. It had been four years since she’d felt anything so delectable, and she’d missed it. She’d missed the touch of a man’s hands, his hot mouth, and the sounds of arousal deep in his throat.

  His fingers found the bow at the back of her neck and he tugged until her halter came untied in his hands. He pulled down the white straps as his lips once again sought hers. This time there was nothing soft or sweet in his kiss. It was all carnal and feeding, with hungry mouths and tongues, and she ate it up. She could have stopped him. She didn’t want him to stop. Not yet. Not when she wanted more. The top of her dress slid to her waist and Mick’s hands cupped her breast through the white strapless bustier. Underwires and metal corseting kept her double-Ds front and center, and his thumbs brushed her nipples through the stiff cotton. She pressed her belly against him, touching the aching places, and he groaned into her mouth. She was so hot, dizzy. Her skin tingled, her breasts felt heavy and her nipples painfully tight. It had been so long since she’d felt such delicious pleasure, and she slid her hand down his chest, over the waistband of his jeans, and pressed her palm against his turgid erection.

  “Touch me,” he groaned into her mouth. And she did. While his fingers brushed her nipples through her corset, she slid her hand up and down the length of him, from the bottom of his zipper up the long rock-hard length to the swollen tip. The man had heft, and the wet ache between her thighs urged her to take one of his hands and slide it between her legs, to cup her crotch, and touch her through her panties and…She dropped her hands. “Stop!”

  He raised his head. “In a minute.”

  In a minute she’d be in the throes of orgasm. “No.” She took a step back and his hands fell to his sides. “You know we can’t do this. We can’t ever have sex.” She kept her gaze on his as she tied her dress behind her neck. “Not together.”

  He shook his head and his eyes looked a little wild. “I’ve been rethinking that.”

  “There’s nothing to rethink.” He was Mick Hennessy and she was Maddie Jones. “Believe me, you’re the last man on earth I can have sex with, and I’m the last woman you should have sex with.”

  “Right now I can’t remember why.”

  She should tell him. All of it. Who she really was and who he was to her. “Because…” She licked her lips and swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. Sexual tension pulled between them, an almost irresistible hot pulsing force. His neck was red from where she’d marked him, and he looked at her through blue eyes all shiny with lust. The last thing she wanted was to see all that fiery need replaced with disgust. Not now. Later. “Because I’m writing a book about your parents and Alice Jones, and making love to you won’t change that. It will only make it worse.”

  He took a few step
s back and sat on the edge of his desk. He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. “I forgot about that.” His hands fell to his sides. “For a few minutes, I forgot you’re in town to dig up the past and make my life hell.”

  Maddie bent down and picked up her purse. “I’m sorry.” And she was, but being sorry didn’t change anything. She almost wished it did.

  “Not sorry enough to stop.”

  “No,” she said and reached for the door handle behind her. “Not that sorry.”

  “How long, Maddie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “How long are you going to be in town messing with my life?”

  Good question. “I don’t know. Next spring, maybe.”

  He looked down at his feet. “Shit.”

  She slid her purse on her shoulder and looked across at him, sitting there with his dark hair sticking out from being finger-combed. She resisted the urge to smooth his hair.

  He lifted his gaze. “Obviously, we can’t be within ten feet of each other without tearing at each other’s clothes. And since telling you to stay out of my bars is like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, I’m going to ask you to stay the hell out of my bars.”

  Her chest did some sort of constrict-and-expand thing, which was not only impossible, but alarming. “You won’t see me in here again,” she assured him and opened the door. She stepped out into the bar, with its loud country music and beer smells, and wove her way toward Adele. When she’d first entered Mort’s she’d wondered if Mick would throw her out on her ass as he’d threatened.

  Now she wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if he had.

  Mick shut the door to his office and leaned back against it. He closed his eyes and pressed a palm against his aching erection. If Maddie hadn’t stopped him, he would have slid his hand up her thigh. He would have pulled off her panties and had sex with her right there, against the door. He would like to think he’d have had the presence of mind to lock the door first, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

  He dropped his hand and circled his desk. Her red sweater was thrown on the floor and he picked it up before sitting in his chair to stare at the safe across the office from him. Earlier, looking across his bar and seeing Maddie sitting at a table, sipping a martini as if he hadn’t told her to stay out of his bars, had shocked the hell right out of him. Shocked him like that Taser she carried in her purse. On the heels of all that shock came a big dose of anger and an urge to smell the side of her neck.

  Seeing her chatting it up with the Aussie, he’d felt something else too. Something a little uncomfortable. Something that felt a bit like he wanted to rip the man’s head off. Which was absolutely ridiculous. Mick didn’t have anything against the Aussie, and he certainly didn’t have any sort of relationship with Maddie Dupree. He didn’t feel anything for her. Well, except anger. And raging lust. A burning desire to bury his nose in the side of her neck while he buried himself between her soft thighs. Again and again.

  There was something about Maddie. Something other than her beautiful body and pretty face. Something beyond the scent of her skin and her smart mouth. Something that drew his gaze across a crowded bar to a table in a dark corner. Something that recognized her dark outline as if he knew her. Some indefinable thing that made him kiss her and touch her and hold her tight against his chest as if that’s where she belonged, when in reality, she didn’t belong anywhere near him. A fact he tended to forget when she was near him.

  He brought the sweater to his face. It smelled like her. Sweet, like strawberries, and he tossed it onto his desk.

  A few weeks ago, his life had been fairly good. He had a plan for the future that didn’t include thinking about his past. A past that he’d done a pretty good job of forgetting.

  Until now. Until Maddie had driven her black Mercedes into town and run his life off the road.

  Chapter 10

  It took Maddie a little over a week to track down her mother’s friend and neighbor from the Roundup Trailer Court. Shortly after her mother’s death, Trina Olsen-Hays sold her trailer and moved to Ontario, Oregon. She’d married a fireman in the mid-’80s, had three grown children, and two grandchildren. Now, sitting across from her at a local cafй, Maddie had a slight recollection of the plump woman with red poufy hair, freckles, and painted-on eyebrows. She remembered staring at those brows and being somewhat frightened. Seeing Trina also brought back the fuzzy memory of a pink polka-dot quilt. She didn’t know why or what it meant. Just that she’d felt warm and secure wrapped up in it.

  “Alice was a real nice girl,” Trina said over coffee and pecan pie. “Young.”

  Maddie glanced at the tape recorder sitting on the table between them, then returned her gaze to Trina. “She was twenty-four.”

  “We used to share a bottle of wine and talk about the future. I wanted to see the world. Alice just wanted to get married.” Trina shook her head and took a bite of pie. “Maybe because she had a little girl. I don’t know, but she just wanted to find a man, get married, and have more kids.”

  Maddie hadn’t known that her mother thought about having other children, but she supposed it made sense. If her mother had lived, she’d no doubt have a brother or sister or both. Not for the first time, she was struck by how different her life would have been if not for Rose Hennessy. Maddie loved her life. She loved the woman she’d become. She wouldn’t change it for anything, but sometimes she did wonder about how differently she might have turned out.

  “Did you know either Loch or Rose Hennessy?” As she looked across the table at Trina, she wondered if her mother would have time-warp hair or if she would have kept up with changing styles.

  “They were older than me, but I knew them both. Rose was…unpredictable.” Trina took a drink of her coffee. “And Loch was a natural-born charmer. It was really no wonder Alice fell in love with him. I mean, everyone did. Even though most of us knew better.”

  “Do you know how Loch felt about Alice?”

  “Only that she thought he was going to leave his wife and family for her.” Trina shrugged one shoulder. “But every woman he ever got involved with thought that too. Only Loch never did. Sure, he had affairs, but he never left Rose.”

  “Then what do you think made the affair between Loch and Alice different? What set Rose over the edge and made her load a gun and drive to Hennessy’s that night?”

  Trina shook her head. “I always figured she’d finally had enough.”

  Maybe.

  “Or it could have been that Alice was so much younger and prettier than the others. Who knows? What I remember most was how quickly Alice fell in love with Loch. You wouldn’t believe how fast it was before she was madly in love.”

  After reading her mother’s diaries, Maddie actually could believe it.

  Trina took another bite of pie and her gaze dropped to Maddie’s mouth as she chewed. Her painted brows lowered and she looked up into Maddie’s eyes. “I recognize your mouth. You’re Alice’s little girl, aren’t you?”

  Maddie nodded. It was almost a relief to have it out.

  Trina smiled. “Well, how about that? I’ve always wondered what happened to you after your aunt took you away.”

  “She was my great-aunt and I moved to Boise with her. She died last spring. That’s when I came across my mother’s diaries and your name.”

  Trina reached across the table and patted Maddie’s hand. The touch felt cool and a bit awkward. “Alice would be very proud of you.”

  Maddie liked to think so, but she would never know for sure.

  “So, are you married? Have any kids?”

  “No.”

  Trina patted her hand one last time, then reached for her fork. “You’re still young. There’s time.”

  Maddie changed the subject. “I have a faint memory of a polka-dot quilt. Do you recall anything about that?”

  “Hmm.” She took a bite and looked up at the ceiling in thought. “Yes.”
She returned her gaze to Maddie and smiled. “Alice made it for you, and she used to roll you all up in it like—”

  “A burrito,” Maddie finished as a recollection of her mother whispered across her memory.

  You’re my polka-dot burrito. If Maddie were an emotional woman, the little pinch to her heart would have brought tears to her eyes. But Maddie had never been an emotional person, and she could count on one hand the number of times she’d cried as an adult. She didn’t consider herself a cold person, but she’d learned early on that tears never changed a thing.

  She interviewed Trina for another forty-five minutes before packing up her notes and tape recorder and heading for Boise. She had another bridesmaid dress fitting that afternoon, and she met her friends at Nan’s Bridal before grabbing a late lunch with them and heading home to Truly.

  She stopped at the Value Rite to pick up some toilet paper and a six-pack of Diet Coke. The drugstore had a display of wind chimes and hummingbird feeders and she chose a simple chime made of green tubes. She’d never had a hummingbird feeder, and she reached for one and read the instructions. It was silly, really. More than likely she wouldn’t be living in Truly next summer. No use in making the house homey. She placed the feeder in the cart next to her Coke. She could always take it with her when she sold the place. She’d bought the house as an investment. She was one woman. One woman did not need two homes, but she supposed there was no hurry to sell.

  Carleen Dawson stood in the dog food aisle shelving collars and leashes and talking to a woman with long black hair. Maddie smiled as she wheeled her cart past and Carleen stopped in midsentence.

  “That’s her,” she heard Carleen say. She kept on walking until she felt a hand on her arm.

  “Just one minute.”

  She turned and looked into a pair of green eyes. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck tingled as if she should know her. The woman wore some kind of uniform as if she worked in a restaurant or diner. “Yes?”

  The woman dropped her hand. “I’m Meg Hennessy and you’re writing about my parents.”