All Shook Up

by Susan Andersen

  “Throwing trail passes for their families into the package was brilliant, though.”

  “Yeah, I thought that was pretty good, too.” Dru laughed and reached out to squeeze Jenna’s arm. “That array of menu samples you set up in the conference room certainly didn’t hurt, either. Good job.”

  Moments later she was headed up the trail to J.D.’s cabin, still jazzed on the satisfaction of a job well done. How blessed she was to have a career she loved so much.

  Arriving at the clearing, she swept her gaze across the area—and spotted J.D. Carver without his shirt on.

  She stopped abruptly, as if an invisible force field had dropped out of the sky in front of her. Heart rate racing like an Indy 500 contender, she licked her lips several times in a futile bid to get back a little of the moisture that had left her mouth.

  Bare, J.D.’s tanned shoulders looked even wider than they had in his ubiquitous white T-shirts. His back was long, damp, and muscular, and it tapered beautifully down to the sweat-soaked waistband of the jeans riding low on his hips.

  He swiveled to plant a knee on a board braced atop a long sawhorse, and muscles bunched and elongated in his arms and back as he leaned forward to mark it with a pencil. He stuck the pencil behind his ear, and a tangle of dark hair shone in his armpit when he raised his arm higher to swipe perspiration from his forehead. Dru caught a glimpse of the silky hair fanning his chest; then he shifted slightly and she gawked like a schoolgirl at the fuller view it afforded her, helplessly tracking the narrowing growth pattern of dark hair down his hard stomach.

  He slid the board out until the mark he’d made lined up with the end of the sawhorse, the end hanging out beyond it. When he suddenly jerked his chin in a peremptory, c’mere gesture, she jumped guiltily. But he wasn’t even looking in her direction. Tate trotted down from the porch, where—to her eternal shame—she hadn’t even noticed him. He slid under J.D.’s bowed stomach and chest, his back to the man’s front as he assumed an identical posture of one knee on the sawhorse, the other foot planted on the ground. He leaned forward to brace his left hand on the board just before the end of the sawhorse, and Dru smiled at the serious expression on his face. He must be in heaven to be included in such a guy activity.

  Then J.D. bent the elbow of his braced arm, dipped, and came up with a round-bladed, jagged-toothed saw in his free hand. Tate wrapped his hand around the handle, J.D. covered it with his own, and with a press of his finger against the trigger, the saw suddenly roared to life.

  Dru’s spine snapped straight. What the hell was he thinking? Tate was much too young to be handling hazardous power tools. A scream of outrage roared up her throat, but she bit it back, terrified it would startle her son and cause him to jerk his braced hand forward into the path of the screaming teeth that were passing a mere hairsbreadth away from his fingertips. The instant the lumber tumbled to the ground and the saw whined into silence, however, she shot across the clearing.

  Tate, who had hopped down to pick up the piece of wood, saw her first. “Hi, Mom! We’re rebuilding the porch roof.” J.D.’s head snapped up, but Dru hadn’t the first idea what he was thinking as he watched her approach.

  Her inclination was to snatch her son to her and inspect him head to toe for injuries. But she forced a few deeps breaths and reached for a measure of calm, then plastered a smile on her face. “I can see that. But J.D. is going to have to get along without your help for a while. I want you to run along to your grandma and grandpa’s.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “Now.”

  “Aw, man.” He kicked at the grass, but accepted the shirt J.D. swept up off the ground and extended to him.

  “You did good work, Tate. Thanks for the help.”

  Tate’s smile was dazzling. “Yeah, it was major cool. Thanks for the beer.”

  “Excuse me?” Oh, this just kept getting better and better.

  Except for a sulky look, Tate ignored her. “Bye, J.D.,” he said and loped across the clearing.

  He’d barely disappeared from view before she swung around and confronted J.D. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  He climbed the porch stairs in one huge stride. Infuriated at being ignored, she followed directly behind him, dogging his footsteps so closely she all but tromped on his bootheels.

  He grabbed his T-shirt off the railing and swiped it across his chest and arms to remove the sweaty coating of sawdust that covered his torso. He tilted his head slightly when she began to impatiently tap her foot. “Aside from my failure to bring about world peace, you mean?”

  “Don’t you get smart with me, Carver! I leave you alone with my son for two lousy hours, and—”

  “Twenty-five minutes,” he interrupted. “I know. But you don’t have to apologize. I’m not griping about the overtime, even if it was unscheduled.”

  Frustration made her growl deep in her throat. “You’re unbelievable! If Auntie Soph and Uncle Ben hadn’t raised me better, I’d pop you one for pulling stunts like that with my son.”

  His dark eyebrows rose. “I take it you have a problem with my baby-sitting skills?” He had the unmitigated nerve to give her a slight smile, and Dru’s blood pressure soared. “I think I did a pretty damn fine job myself. Tate does, too.”

  She took a hot step forward, and jabbed him in the sternum with her finger. “You call giving a ten-year-old beer and letting him play with power tools a fine job?” Her drilling finger underscored her ire on practically every other word. “If I were a man, I’d—”

  “If you were a man, sweetheart, you wouldn’t get away with half the shit you already have.” He grabbed the offending finger in his fist and held it away from his chest. “Don’t go poking at me; I don’t take kindly to it.”

  In pure, unthinking fury, Dru, who had never hit another human being in her entire life, swung her free hand at him.

  The next thing she knew, both her hands had been captured, and she was being whirled around and thrust against one of the porch posts. Surrounded by the scent of hot, overworked male, she was aware of the hard-skinned hands pinning her wrists above her head, the muscular forearms bracketing hers, the big body preventing any kind of retreat. But more than any of that, it was the fierce expression in his dark hazel-green eyes that pinned her in place.

  “Listen, sister,” he said, thrusting his face close to hers. “You put your hands on me again, you damn well better have friendly intentions.” He pushed back slightly and frowned. “And for the record, I’ve been a construction foreman for more than a dozen years. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s instruct guys in the use of power tools.”

  “Tate isn’t a guy, you troglodyte, he’s a little boy!”

  “Hell, yes, he’s a little boy—and if you’d been paying the least bit of attention instead of reacting like a hysterical mama bear with a threatened cub, you would’ve seen that I was directing the saw, not Tate.”

  “That would have been so comforting if he’d lost a finger,” she snapped. “They were within centimeters of that big blade!”

  “They were behind mine! I would’ve had to buzz off my own fingers before that blade came anywhere near Tate’s, and trust me, lady, I’ve been handling machinery too damn long to make that sort of rank beginner mistake.”

  Her heart pounded and her blood thundered through her veins, and she wanted to argue and rage and call him a liar. But she couldn’t truly remember the exact placement of their hands; she’d only known that Tate’s had seemed much too close to that whirring blade. “Fine,” she said through her teeth. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and agree that’s true.”

  “Mighty damn big of you.”

  “Yes, it is.” She thrust her chin up, only then fully realizing how close they stood. The sudden awareness increased the throb of her already racing pulse and, furious, she added, “But there’s still the matter of the beer.”

  “Oh, for chrissake, Drucilla. I gave him root beer.”

  “Root beer?”
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  “Yes. I’m not half the lowlife you seem to think I am—hell, I doubt anyone could be. Not to mention that only an idiot feeds booze to a little kid.” Releasing her wrists, he pushed back and gave her a look of disgust. “And that, lady, is something I have never been.”

  Her arms dropped to her sides. Okay, she felt like a total fool. Her full-steam-ahead righteousness had fizzled into the humiliation of knowing she’d jumped to an insulting, ill-thought-out conclusion. Rubbing her wrists, she looked at him. Energy radiated off his powerful body and something in his eyes made her heart pound and her breath come short, and it made her want to berate him further, to vilify him for a number of reasons, not all of which had to do with her son.

  But one thing was clear; she’d accused J.D. of being careless with her son when she didn’t actually know that to be a fact. Hell. She’d rather smooch a snake, but she was going to have to apologize. Her lip curled in distaste.

  She hated being wrong.

  Watching her watch him as if he were some ravaging beast that had somehow been allowed to wander into her civilized world, J.D. had a sudden urge to give her a demonstration of just what an animal he could be. The very idea hauled him up short, and he took a smart step backward, thrusting a hand through his hair.

  Holy hell. Where did this shit keep coming from? He’d never been a man who got off on forcing his attentions on women, and he sure as hell didn’t understand why this woman could so easily short-circuit his good sense. Tense and angry because he was still hungry for any excuse to lay his hands on her, he turned away.

  “J.D., wait,” she said.

  He didn’t look back. “So you can tell me again how I’ve screwed up? I don’t think so.”

  “No,” she said, but he didn’t wait to hear the rest. He headed for the door, needing to get away and give all these roaring hormones a chance to settle down.

  “Dammit, Carver,” she snapped and grabbed his arm. “Will you let me apolo—”

  A savage sort of satisfaction burst through him, and whirling back, he backed her against the porch post again. “I warned you not to touch me,” he growled. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Then he clamped his mouth down on hers.

  Her mouth was open in surprise or in protest—he wasn’t sure which, and at the moment, he didn’t honestly care. All he cared about was that her lips were soft and full as they cushioned his as if made for that specific purpose, that the warm inner cavern of her mouth was slick, and that her tongue was moist and sweet as he plunged his in to lick up all her flavors.

  And then, oh, God, yes, there. With a soft yearning sound, her tongue tangled with his, and he groaned when her hands came up, hot skin against hot skin, to clutch at his shoulders. He pressed her up against the post with his body, and made another rough sound in his throat at the feel of her breasts flattening against his chest.

  Seconds, minutes, or hours later, he lifted his head and stared down at her slumberous eyes and swollen mouth. Licking his bottom lip, tasting her there, he canted his head to a new angle and kissed her again, his mouth widening over hers, his tongue dancing deeper. She made a soft little sound low in her throat and slid her hands up to cup his neck. Her legs shifted slightly apart.

  His head reared back. “Yes.” Breathing like a racehorse at the end of a long stretch, he changed the angle again and then plunged back into the kiss. God, she tasted good. He couldn’t get enough. He skimmed his hands down her back and insinuated them between her body and the post, sliding them onto the lush curve of her butt. Sinking his fingers in, he pulled her up onto her toes and bent in order to line up the soft cotton seam of her shorts with the worn denim fly that was doing its best to contain his hard-on.

  “Oh,” she said against his lips and he rocked his hips. “Oh!” Tugging his head back, she panted, “Oh, God. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “I know,” he agreed. But he tightened his hands on her butt and pulled her closer, pressing against her insistently. He watched with satisfaction as her eyes drifted closed and her hands urged him closer; then he lowered his mouth again and kissed her until they both teetered on the edge of control.

  A small background sound tugged at the last bit of sanity still clinging to his consciousness. He wanted to ignore it, but something in its tone pulled at him. He cracked open one eye.

  And saw Tate standing frozen across the clearing, mouth agape, staring at them.

  “Shit!” His breath sawing, J.D. yanked his hands off the kid’s mother and leaned back. Fingers tense, palms braced on the post over Dru’s head, he held himself a stiff arm’s length away and stared down at her, struggling to find a semblance of his usual control.

  “Hmmm?” She blinked up at him with drowsy confusion. “What?” Reaching out, she lazily traced her forefinger in a zigzag pattern down his chest.

  J.D. gritted his teeth against his body’s reaction to her touch. “Tate,” he said, and jutted his chin in the boy’s direction.

  Her hand dropped to her side as if she’d just snagged a thirty-pound fly ball out of the air. “No.” Taking a deep breath, she turned to look out at the yard. With a moan, she immediately rolled back, her eyes closing. “Oh, my God. What am I supposed to tell him?”

  But she didn’t wait for J.D. to offer a solution. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled and forced him to step back as she pushed away from the post. Turning away from him, she went to stand at the head of the shallow set of steps. “Tate? Honey? What—?”

  “Grandma and Grandpa weren’t home.” Tate came closer, but stopped by the sawhorse at the foot of the stairs. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he toed a clump of sawdust and shot them curious glances from beneath his lashes. “You guys were kissin’, weren’t ya?”

  J.D. realized the post had prevented the kid from seeing them as clearly as he’d first feared, which was probably a damn good thing. He sucked in a breath, half expecting to hear Dru tell Tate they’d been practicing their mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  But she merely said, “Yeah,” and he realized that he’d be smart to quit underestimating her. She apparently didn’t lie to her son.

  Tate eyed them with more overt interest. “How come?”

  Now, there was a good question. J.D. still couldn’t believe he’d gone crazy like that. He wished to hell that he hadn’t, because now instead of wondering what she tasted like, he knew—and it was dangerous, dangerous knowledge indeed.

  Face all alight, Tate answered his own question. “You must really like each other, huh?”

  The kid looked as if he were envisioning a brand-new daddy, and J.D.’s gut cramped. But when Dru immediately said, “No!” his eyebrows drew together. No? That sure as hell wasn’t what it’d felt like when she’d been holding onto him, kissing him back. He would have said she liked him just fine.

  Dru’s cheeks grew pinker by the moment. “That is, what I mean to say is that we don’t dislike each other, it’s just…um, we only just met yesterday, and…”

  Clearly impatient, Tate demanded, “Then how come you were kissin’?”

  Yeah, lady, I’d like to hear an explanation for that myself.

  He could all but see the heat waves that radiated off her face. “Well, see, it’s been a long time since I’ve kissed a man,” she said. “So I guess I just wanted to see if I still remembered how.”

  He was a frigging experiment? What had she been doing, an analysis of the kissing techniques of city slickers versus their country brethren? Or maybe she’d been indulging a hankering to experience a guy from the wrong side of the tracks. Some women got off on slumming.

  “So did you, Mom? Remember how?”

  “Oh, yeah,” J.D. interjected. “She remembered just fine. If she’d remembered any better, in fact, I’d be crippled.” He bared his teeth at Dru when she shot him a glance meant to drop him in his tracks. That little session up against the post sure as hell hadn’t been one-sided, and he’d be damned if she got to pretend that it was.

  Dru wra
pped her arm around Tate’s narrow shoulders and abruptly instructed him, “Say good-bye to J.D.” Then she whipped him around.

  “But—” Tate didn’t get the opportunity to say more before she headed for the spur trail across the clearing. Swept along at her side, he craned a look back over his shoulder. “Bye, J.D.”

  “Yeah, so long, kid.” Hands in his pockets, he watched Dru’s braid swish against her back as she disappeared with her son into the woods. “And I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were you, sweetheart,” he advised under his breath as he turned back to his interrupted project. “Because I have a feeling this thing between you and me is a long way from over.”

  “Don’t give me a hard time,” Dru ordered Char as she came back into her living room after tucking Tate into bed. Ever since Char had dropped by, her son had been regaling her not only with his own adventures, but with Dru’s as well. Dru knew her friend was probably a seething cauldron of curiosity by now—curiosity she would just as soon not address. “Whatever this afternoon’s madness was between me and J.D., it’s over now. Completely. Totally.”

  Char grinned and scooped her Marilyn Monroe blond hair behind her ears. She lounged against the corner of the couch, hogging most of the space with her stretched-out legs. “So you really were kissing the hot new guy? And Tate caught you?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t one of my brighter moments, obviously.” Dru dropped down on the opposite end of the couch and swiveled to face Char, hugging her knees to her chest and resting her chin on her kneecaps. “As you can probably tell, Tate’s fascinated by the idea, and he seems determined to spread it all over Star Lake. Just what my reputation needs—they’ve barely gotten over the fact that I never married Tate’s daddy.”

  “Do you really care what a few small minds gossip about?”

  “I do if it affects Tate. But kissing is pretty tame stuff, so even if it does get around, it should blow over fast enough. What I really hate is the thought of disappointing my aunt and uncle.”

  “Don’t be silly. Ben and Sophie love you to death.”