She went slack in Tag’s arms, hoping, maybe even praying, he’d take the obvious hint. Because she couldn’t do this. This wasn’t allowed. It was just Marybell for always. No one was permitted in. Not even casually.
She shrugged. “Do they? I thought they never did normal things with their superheroes because of the identity thing. It was always on the DL, full of subterfuge and innuendo.” Oh, the parallels to be had.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not like every other superhero, because I’m definitely available for dinner, and for the record, I don’t care if you tell people I’m the one who saved your nostril. No subterfuge here.”
“You have chivalry down to a science, but I’m not dat—”
Tag’s lips were on hers before she’d even formulated the rest of her sentence. Greedy. Hot. Firm. Demanding. Knee-buckling hungry. Tasting like mint and man.
So much man. More man than even she’d dreamed up.
Before her brain got in the way, Marybell was returning his kiss, melting against the solid wall of his chest, her nipples taut and rigid, pushing with need at her leather jacket.
Tag’s breath mingled with hers when she inhaled sharply, acutely aware of every sensation he aroused in every nerve ending she owned.
Her breasts swelled in her bra, driving against the material until her nipples tightened even harder. Things began to happen between her legs, too, wet, swollen things she’d long since left behind.
Tag’s tongue slipped into her mouth on a low groan, silky and taut, driving, tasting, deepening their kiss. With his arm around her waist, he hauled her tight to his body until Marybell had to dig her fingers into his thick shoulders to keep from tipping them over.
His arms tightened when her fingers sought the fringe of his hair at the bottom edge of his knit hat, the muscles in them flexing in firm ripples. She rolled the soft wisps between her digits, touching, memorizing the strands.
Tag’s kiss was everything, forcing her to see, hear, feel only him.
There was nothing but this kiss. This breath-stealing, mind-melding kiss. Everything about this kiss was wrong, but right. So right.
No. So wrong, Marybell.
But this kiss...
Tag’s lips were leaving hers in a sudden release of suction and air, allowing the sounds of the chilly night to crowd around her.
He looked down at her as though he wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened, either, but the emotion flickered and died, swiftly replaced with a grin that made the corners of his eyes wrinkle upward. “Dinner. Tomorrow night on your break. I’ll make it. All you have to do is show up. Bring your nostrils,” he said on a husky chuckle.
There was no chance for protest. No time for regret. No time to do anything but watch Tag’s broad back exit the bushes, hear his footsteps hard on the pathway that led back to the guesthouse.
Shaken, Marybell reached for the side of the house, pulling air into her lungs. It hit her chest in sharp, razorlike pangs.
Panic began its deep dive into her stomach, clawing and burning until she almost choked on it.
She couldn’t have dinner with Tag Hawthorne. She couldn’t have anything with him—ever.
In fact, if he found out exactly who she was, her head would be a selection on the menu—not a dinner date.
She’d seen him angry. In the one comment he’d made to a reporter at the courthouse just before the trial. Knew what true contained rage looked like in Tag’s eyes—in the clench of his fists. Marybell shivered at that rage.
Like her, everything had once been taken from him. She understood what that did to you. Her core hurt from what that did to her.
But Tag was unknowingly toying with the alleged enemy, and she had to find a way to keep him at bay.
Her panic evolved into bitter disappointment.
All because of that kiss.
Four
“You did what?” his brother, Jax, asked.
“I said I kissed her.”
“Marybell? Marybell Lyman—the one with the Mohawk?” Jax did a thing with his hands in the air over his head.
“That’s the one.” The one who’d, with just one quick kiss, set him on fire—reminded him he was still a man with working parts.
“Can I ask why?”
“Can I ask why you’d ask why?”
Jax scruffed his hand over his jaw and frowned at Tag. “Because it’s sort of out of the blue and really random, especially with you lately. You’d just as soon bite someone’s head off than kiss her.”
“Sometimes kisses are like that. Random.” It had taken him by surprise, too. But there she was, smelling amazing, her back up, her luscious lips covered in some crazy metallic-blue lipstick, and he couldn’t resist.
At first he’d kissed her because he didn’t want to hear that she wasn’t dating right now. He didn’t know why those words were so unacceptable to him. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been turned down for a date before. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t still stinging from a long-term relationship not so long ago. He had baggage. He didn’t want more.
Yet somehow those words were just unacceptable coming from her shiny-blue lips. So he’d kissed her—he wasn’t even sure if he’d expected the kiss to be especially good. But it was.
And yep, it was definitely uncharacteristic of him as of late. It was more like the old Tag. The one he couldn’t seem to dig out in the rubble of his life—forgive the past. Maybe that was why he was so fixated on Marybell. Because she shook something up in him—something that kept him on his toes—something that felt real.
“You don’t even know her, and you just laid one on her?” Jax pressed.
“I met her when I lit her pilot light for Em.”
“Is there some kind of magic involved in lighting a woman’s pilot light all these years I’ve been missing? I’d have lit one a long time ago.”
Tag grinned. “No, you wouldn’t have. You were waiting for Em to come along. And ya done good, brother.”
Jax smiled, that smile he always smiled whenever Em’s name was mentioned. Kind of stupid and head over heels, but nice. “Damn right I did. But that doesn’t explain how, after one light of a pilot, you were kissing Marybell.”
“I like Miss Marybell. She always makes me paper dolls when we go to Miss Dixie’s house for pool parties. Her hair is so cool,” his niece, Maizy, chimed from the playroom adjoining the kitchen where Tag was expending an infinite amount of time making bologna sandwiches for the date Marybell had never officially agreed to.
“She’s nice, right, A-Maizy?” Tag confirmed. He smiled and winked at her. He didn’t know why seeing Marybell was making him stupidly happy. But it was.
He’d woken up today with a smaller knot in his chest than usual. His financial worries, his life issues didn’t seem as daunting this morning, and when he thought about that, Marybell’s face had popped into his head.
“Does Em know you kissed her?”
Tag stuffed a sandwich into a Zip-Loc bag and frowned. “Why does Em have to know I kissed her?”
“Kissed who?” Em asked, floating into the kitchen to settle herself against Jax’s side with a sigh and a squeeze of his brother’s hand while her boys, Clifton Junior and Gareth, flew into the playroom to join Maizy. She dropped a plate of brownies on the counter for them. One of the many perks of Emmaline Amos.
He liked Em. She’d changed everything for Jax and Maizy. She was a pear-scented whirlwind of hugs and kisses, freshly baked pies, well-balanced meals for Maizy, and one of the biggest badasses with a band saw he’d ever seen.
Truth be told, he and his younger brother, Gage, were probably needed a whole lot less in Maizy’s case since Em had come into their lives. They’d both come to Plum Orchard for their own reasons, but the biggest one had been helping Jax take care of his best friend’s daughter.
Now Em did all the things they’d once done to help Jax, and she did them a damn sight better than the two of them ever had.
But Em wouldn’t hear of them leaving
Georgia—even though a small part of the reason he’d come to Plum Orchard, to help Jax renovate their aunt’s old house, was no longer a valid reason. The house was mostly done, and this was due in part to Em who’d organized and planned until it was exactly the way Jax claimed he’d envisioned it.
He should be out trying to get some contracting work. Unfortunately, his tarnished reputation made that almost impossible, and here in Plum Orchard, there wasn’t a huge call for contractors. So he took side jobs that paid little but kept him doing what he loved to do more than most anything else. Building things.
He’d thought for sure now that Jax had Em, he and Gage would just be in the way of the eventual blending of their two families.
But Em had sat both men down and firmly said, with a teasing smile, “Ya’ll don’t become less important to Maizy and Jax because the house is finished. You’re all she’s ever known since birth. You’re family. Why should that change because of me and my interferin’? You both stay put until you want otherwise. I can work around you.”
He’d been surprised by her attitude. Thought for sure, even the nicest of women wouldn’t want two messy, loud roughnecks with more issues than a stack of magazines hanging around. But not Em. Em had embraced them as hard as they’d embraced her, but most of all, she’d brought all the things to Maizy’s life not one of the Hawthorne brothers could.
Hair ribbons and sparkly dresses and pink castles made out of life-size LEGOs. Nail polish, facials, bedtime stories of evil queens vanquished with the power of love, girl time once a week with Em and the women at Call Girls and a million hugs and kisses.
“So, who are you kissing, Tag?”
“He kissed Marybell,” Jax teased.
Em’s blue eyes went wide as she pulled off her coat and scarf. “My Marybell?”
“Did you have dibs on her, Em?” Tag teased, reaching for the bag of chips he’d dug out of the pantry.
Em made a face at him, her fingers going to her throat in a gesture he knew well. It was a signal she was concerned. “Oh, hush. I’m just surprised.”
“That she’d let a schlub like me kiss her?”
“That she’d let anyone kiss her. Marybell’s...”
Tag’s ears instantly went on alert. “Marybell’s what?”
Em sighed, her eyes thoughtful and cautious. “I don’t know. She’s very private. I just get the impression she’s had some troubles, though I don’t know what, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be tellin’ tales out of school. So you mind yourself, Taggart Hawthorne. I won’t have you upsettin’ my girl with your unspeakable charms.”
Yeah. He got that Marybell was private—closed off somehow; he just didn’t know from what. But he wanted to. “My unspeakable charms?”
Jax slapped him on the back. “It’s a Hawthorne trait. Ask Em. She couldn’t resist.”
Em gave his brother a flirty smile and a peck on the lips. “It was not, either. It was all the power tools you’re related to by familial connections that grabbed on to me and just wouldn’t let go.”
“Just ask me. Can’t get her to give up that darn belt sander to save my soul,” Gage joked, breezing into the kitchen to grab a brownie from the plate Em had brought over. He held it up after taking a bite. “Have I mentioned how much I love having you in our lives, Em?”
Em’s chuckle filled the kitchen. “That belt sander is almost better than a manicure.”
Tag packed up the last of his dinner, the only sort of dinner he could afford at this point, and stuffed it into a backpack. “Don’t you worry, Em. I’ll be on my best behavior. Gotta run, guys. Have a couple of things to do before tonight. Have a good one.”
“Wait!” Em yelled, a bottle of ginger ale in her hand. She caught him at the door and held it out to him. “Marybell likes ginger ale. Has it every night with her supper—which is what I’m assumin’ the bologna sandwiches are about? Supper—you and her?”
The words made his chest tight again. Damn stupid, but it took his mind off the other stuff. The bad shit. He was tired of the bad shit. Marybell made him think of good things—so he was going with it. “Guilty.”
Em’s eyes gleamed. “Then you be sure and wow her with your uncanny intuition and take the ginger ale. I won’t tell if you don’t tell.”
Tag looked down into her pretty face for signs of disapproval. “You okay with this? I know she’s your employee. I don’t want to cause trouble.”
Em grinned—the kind of grin she and Maizy shared when they were up to their eyeballs in something. “How could courtin’ Marybell cause trouble?”
Her heard the metaphoric skidding of brakes in his head. “Hold on there. I’m not courting anything. It’s just some bologna sandwiches.” He wasn’t courting. Was he? Hell, no. He was testing. Testing his social skills. Testing his ability to interact with the world again. Testing a connection that had made him feel good—as though there was life still left to live.
“I saw the way you slathered that mayonnaise on that bread like you were plastering a wall—you did it like you were da Vinci. That kind of care says courtin’ to me.”
“It’s just a sandwich,” he insisted. “I like my mayo to be even on all four corners of the bread. I just assume that’s how everyone else likes it. That’s not courting—that’s for the love of a good sandwich.”
“You call it whatever you like, Tag, but hear me clear, Marybell’s a gentle, kind soul. She’s one of the best hearts I know—one of the best friends I have—and I won’t have you toyin’ with her emotions. I don’t know everything about her, but I do know, if I lost her at Call Girls because of some silly love spat with you, I’d likely snatch old Coon Ryder’s gun from his gnarled grasp and hunt you down.”
Just one more thing he loved about Em. She was fiercely loyal. She could have wrangled the Hawthorne men and Maizy together in a million ways that would have left some of them feeling displaced, but she’d do it without a single resentment from any of them. Slow and steady with a firm hand on the prize. The prize being family.
This fact about her was to be admired. “Swear on my carefully placed mayo, I’ll be on my best behavior—a perfect gentleman.”
She gave him a motherly pat on his cheek. “You see that you are. And one more thing.”
“I know, I know. Coon’s gun. You’re not afraid to use it.”
“Leave your baggage at the airport.”
“My what?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I mean, Taggart. Leave all your broodin’ and sufferin’ out of this noncourtin’. Just for tonight, try to enjoy the company of another human being who isn’t related to you and doesn’t want to play Candy Land for twelve never-ending rounds.”
Tag barked a laugh. “Is this your way of telling me you don’t like Candy Land?”
Her face went soft. “I don’t like that you’ve hurt for a very long time and you might mess up this opportunity to have a little fun by dredging up something that’s long over. I’ve seen you do it before, but it wasn’t with someone I care a great deal about.”
Alison. She meant Alison. Fair. That was a fair assessment of his life at this point. He had things he was working out—coming to grips with. Sometimes they colored everything he did—or didn’t do. “It’s just a sandwich,” he defended.
“One I hope you have the most amazin’ time ever sharing with Marybell—baggage free.” She gave him a quick pinch of the cheek before returning to the kitchen to Jax.
Propping the door open, he fought the envy the picture of Em and Jax made. He loved Jax, wanted him to be happy.
But maybe, after all this time, it was time for him to find some happiness, too. Even if it was just sharing a bologna sandwich with a woman who made his pulse kick up a notch.
Maybe.
* * *
Marybell took better care when she climbed out of her office window this time, avoiding the shrubs below it and hopping right over them only to get caught up on the gutter. “Damn!” she yelped into the night, grabbing for the side
of the guesthouse to no avail.
Her fingers slipped and she crashed to the ground onto something hard. Not ground-hard, something that was softer hard. And grunted.
Her eyes, still adjusting to the light, gripped an arm, muscled and covered in flannel.
That arm came up around her waist and rolled her off him. Tag, covering her upper body with his, pressed her into the cold ground with his chest. He grinned, impossibly handsome, and her heart responded with impossible flutters. “If you squashed my carefully made bologna sandwiches, I’m going to be really upset with you. It took me two hours just to get the bread to rise.”
Her heart pounded so hard she was sure Tag would feel it right through his jacket. Don’t panic. People shield is appropriately in place and it’s dark.
She scoffed at him, refusing to grin back, no matter how much she wanted to. “Two hours? Novice.”
He nodded as if she’d just complimented him. “You make bread, too? Only someone who makes her own bread would know two hours is a ridiculous amount of time to make bread. But look at all the things we have in common. Wanna swap recipes?”
“I make trips to the grocery store to support the people who make it. Now let me up, please.” Before I die right here on this ground with you and all those hard muscles of yours pressed against me. Because it feels far too good—and uncomfortable—and good.
“Is that any way to talk to the man who made you bologna sandwiches?”
Marybell gave him a nudge, even though she really didn’t want to. In fact, what she really wanted was to lie right here with Tag, on the ground that didn’t seem quite as cold, and watch the stars bobbing above their heads on this crisp night.
Instead, she let her arms rest limply at her sides. “Is pinning me to the ground any way to treat the woman you made the bologna sandwiches for?”
“I’ll take that to mean you’ll join me.” He thrust upward to a sitting position and held out his hands to her.
Marybell ignored them and levered herself upward on her own, taking a good look at her surroundings. Tag had spread a blanket out beneath the window of her office right next to the garden gnome that Sanjeev, Dixie’s right-hand man at the Big House, was so fond of. He’d laid out some paper plates and napkins, apparently, now scattered in every direction when she’d fallen on them. “What is this?”
Talking After Midnight Page 5