If You Can't Stand the Heat...

by Joss Wood

  He touched the corner of her mouth with his.

  ‘So sweet. Spicy.’ He stroked her jaw and placed his lips on the spot between her jaw and her ear. ‘Soft. The point can be that I think you have the most beautiful skin.’

  Jack moved and dropped his other hand onto her bottom. In a movement that was as smooth as it was sexy, he pulled her onto his lap so that she straddled his thighs.

  As sparks bolted down her inner thighs Ellie dimly remembered that she had to be pressing on his knife wound and tried to scramble off him. Jack’s hand on her thighs kept her firmly in place.

  ‘Nuh-uh—where are you going? I like you here,’ he said.

  ‘Your cut,’ Ellie protested, her head dropping so that their noses were practically touching.

  ‘I’m fine and you feel great,’ Jack informed her, lifting his head to nibble on her mouth. ‘I love your mouth...’ he murmured. ‘Love your eyes...fantastic skin...’

  He lifted his hands from her thighs and placed them on her chest, holding the weight of her breasts in his hands. Ellie moaned as he thumbed her nipples into gloriously sensitive peaks.

  ‘As for these...these are simply a point of their own.’

  Ellie couldn’t find any words, was drenched in the wet heat of his voice. She arched her back and rolled her neck as she pushed into his hands seeking more.

  ‘You are so beautiful...’ Jack dropped his hands down to her waist.

  She shook her hair out and it spilled down her chest, over her brief tank top. Jack leaned back and just looked at her, his caress as bold as his eyes.

  ‘Take it off,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘Let me look at you.’

  Somewhere in some place deep inside her Ellie knew that she should probably say no, that she should climb off his lap and be sensible, but instead she arched her back, pulled her shirt over her head and held the garment in place against her chest. She hadn’t thought it was possible for Jack’s eyes to darken with passion, but they did and she saw his jaw clench.

  She felt feminine and powerful and wondrously, wickedly wanton.

  ‘You’re killing me here, woman,’ Jack growled and he lifted his hand to yank the shirt away. His nostrils flared as he took in her creamy skin now flushed with arousal. He held her face in his hands. ‘Trust me, El. I’m going to show you exactly what the point of this is...’

  * * *

  Ellie walked into the bedroom from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel from waist to mid-thigh and towel-drying her hair. She looked from the clock to Jack, who was lying crossways across the bed, spread out on his stomach. ‘We’ve wasted a good portion of the morning.’

  ‘Hush your mouth, wench. A morning in bed is never wasted,’ Jack said as he stood up and stretched. He was totally self-confident about his body and he had a right to be, Ellie thought. Apart from the nasty scar on his chest, he was perfect.

  ‘How did you get that scar?’ Ellie asked.

  Jack lifted his hand up to his chest and immediately turned away. ‘Operation.’

  Ellie rubbed the ends of her hair between the folds of the towel. ‘What operation?’

  Jack walked past her and swatted her backside. ‘The one I had in hospital.’

  He stepped into the en-suite bathroom and Ellie heard water hitting the shower door. Well, that had gone well. Not. Obviously his scar-causing operation was not up for discussion. Ellie wondered why not. It couldn’t be that big a deal, surely?

  Jack raised his voice. ‘This is such a waste of water...you should’ve let me shower with you.’

  Ellie smiled at herself in the dressing table mirror. ‘I couldn’t trust you not to have your wicked way with me again.’

  She’d thought about yanking him into the shower with her but she didn’t think she could stand another bout of that sweet, sweet torture. Or maybe she could—in an hour or two, when all her nerve-endings had subsided slightly.

  ‘You like my wicked ways.’ Jack’s voice was chock-full of self-satisfaction.

  ‘I do? How can you tell?’

  ‘Well, I think your begging was a huge hint,’ Jack said dryly, before she heard the shower door open and close.

  Ellie pulled fresh underwear out of her dresser drawer and quickly slipped into a matching aqua-green set. White shorts and a pretty floral top were perfect for a day to be spent at home...she had to stock up on cleaning products and dog food, spend some time on the internet paying personal bills, and she needed to finalise the arrangements for Jess’s bachelorette party.

  Maybe after that she could persuade Jack back into bed...

  Jess! Jess and Luke! Oh, man! She’d forgotten that she was having lunch with them. She picked up her watch from the dresser and cursed again. She had barely ten minutes before they were due to pick her up. This was Jack’s fault and his ability to make her forget everything when his clever hands were anywhere near her body.

  Ellie stomped over to the bathroom and looked into the steam to the stunning body beyond. Tight buns, broad chest, a nice package.... A very nice package that knew exactly what it was doing.... Concentrate, Ellie!

  ‘Jack?’

  Jack, his head full of shampoo, turned around and lifted one eyebrow. ‘Changed your mind? C’mon in. I’ll wash your back.’

  Ellie gestured to her clothes and tipped her head. ‘No—no time. Listen, I just suddenly remembered that I made plans for today.’

  She saw the disappointment on Jack’s face before he rearranged his features into a blank mask. ‘Okay. Have fun.’

  Ellie tried not to roll her eyes and failed. ‘I’m having lunch with Luke and Jess—I forgot. Want to join us?’

  Pleasure, hot and quick, flashed in his eyes. ‘Sure.’

  Ellie thought she’d push her luck and try to satisfy her curiosity. ‘So why won’t you tell me about your scar?’

  Jack tipped his head back under the stream of water. ‘Because it’s not important.’

  ‘If it wasn’t important then you’d talk about it,’ Ellie told him, and sighed when she saw the shutters come down in his eyes. She was beginning to recognise that look. It meant that the subject was no longer up for discussion. Ellie blew out her breath. She’d made sweet love to him all night but that didn’t mean she could go crawling around in his head. ‘Okay, then, be all mysterious. But hurry up, because they’ll be here any moment.’

  Jack rinsed out the last of the shampoo, switched off the water and grabbed a towel that hung on the railing. He wrapped the towel around his waist and shoved his hair back from his face. Catching Ellie watching him, he placed his hand on her shoulder and leaned forward to drop a kiss on the corner of her mouth.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Not too sore?’ Jack placed his forehead against hers and his hands on her waist.

  She was a little burny in places that shouldn’t burn. ‘A little.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Jack kissed her forehead and stepped back. ‘I’m going to find something to wear. Jeans and open-collar shirt?’

  ‘No, shorts and a T-shirt,’ Ellie said, following him out of the bathroom. ‘We’ll probably end up on the rickety deck of some about-to-fall-down shack...’

  Jack pulled a face. ‘And that’s where we’ll eat?’ he said, doubt lacing his voice.

  ‘That’s where you’ll eat the most amazing seafood in the world. Luke knows all the best places to eat up and down the coast,’ Ellie replied, and sighed when she heard the insistent pealing of her gate bell. ‘That’s them—early as usual. I’ll see you downstairs.’

  ‘Ellie?’

  Ellie turned at Jack’s serious voice. Oh, God, what was he going to say?

  Jack’s smile was slow and powerful. ‘Thank you for an amazing night.’

  Ellie floated down the steps. Ellie Evans, she mused, sex goddess. Yeah, she could get behind that title.

  * * *

  In the late afternoon Jess and Luke, seeing the old lighthouse a kilometre down the beach, decided that they should take a closer look at the o
ld iron structure. Ellie and Jack, who were operating on a lot less sleep, shook their heads at their departing backs, took a bottle of wine and glasses to the beach, found an old log for a backrest and sat in the sand.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Jack asked, pouring wine into a glass and then handing it to her.

  Ellie squinted at him. ‘I’m utterly exhausted. I think we got about two hours’ sleep.’

  Jack covered his mouth as he yawned. ‘I’m tired too. So, did you have fun?’

  Ellie blushed. ‘Yes, thanks. You?’

  Jack laughed. ‘I think the fact that I couldn’t get enough of you answers that question better than I could with words.’ He watched her face flush again and internally shook his head. Her confidence had really taken a battering at some point and never quite recovered.

  ‘Tell me about your ex.’

  Ellie looked as if he’d asked her to swallow a spider. ‘Good grief—why?’

  ‘Because I think that he messed up your head—badly. Dented your confidence.’ Jack dug his toes into the sand as he looked at her. ‘Did he?’

  Ellie picked up a handful of sand and let it drift through her fingers. ‘S’pose so. Not that I had much to start with.’

  ‘And why would that be?’

  Ellie tipped her head at him. ‘Jack, you saw me. I was plump and very shy, and standing firmly in the shadow of my famous father—who was everything I wasn’t. Good-looking, charming, erudite, confident. Then I went to art school.’

  He loved that secret smile—the one that lit her up from the inside out. ‘And...?’

  ‘And I flourished. I found something I loved and excelled in. I was happy and the weight fell off me. Boys were asking me out on dates, and although I never went I was being asked.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go?’

  ‘As I said, I was shy. They asked and I said no and I got the reputation of being hard to get. And, boys being boys, they thought that was cool, so I became more popular, which made me more confident and I finally started dating.’

  ‘Where does the grim gallery owner fit in?’ Jack asked, draping a possessive leg over hers.

  ‘He was a friend of one of our final-year lecturers and he came to give a talk to the graduating class. On a whim he said that he’d look at our work in progress. He asked to see my portfolio, said that I had talent and told me look him up if I ever got to London, saying that he might offer me an exhibition.’ Ellie watched a crab crawl out of a hole and scuttle towards the waves. ‘A couple of months later I did meet up with him in London. We started a relationship and he slowly eroded every bit of confidence I’d worked so hard to acquire.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘My art wasn’t up to standard.’ Ellie shrugged as thunderclouds built in her eyes.

  ‘Why did you stay with him?’

  Ellie bit her bottom lip. ‘Because he told me he loved me and said that he’d never leave. The two sentences I’d waited to hear all my life.’

  Jack rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’

  ‘Then, during the little time he spent with me, he started on everything else. Clothes and hair. Weight. My cooking, my friends, my skill in the bedroom.’

  Jack felt his mouth drop open with surprise, which was closely followed by the burn of fury. ‘He said you were a bad lover?’

  ‘No, he said that I was a damned awful lover and a blow-up doll would be more fun.’

  If that...Jack swallowed the names he wanted to call Ellie’s waste-of-skin ex. No wonder she’d frozen the other night. No wonder she seemed constantly to second-guess herself.

  Ellie dug her bare feet into the sand. ‘Merri thinks that he and my father scarred me emotionally.’

  Well, yeah. ‘What do you think?’

  Ellie sipped her wine and dropped back so that her elbows were in the sand. ‘Of course they did. I’m scared to get close to people because I don’t want to run the risk of getting hurt and I know that they’ll leave me. I tend to keep myself emotionally isolated. It’s safer that way.’

  ‘Safer isn’t necessarily better,’ Jack pointed out.

  Ellie slanted him a look. ‘You do the same thing, Jack Chapman, and don’t think you don’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jack asked, bewildered by her suddenly turning the tables on him.

  ‘You observe, watch, report and walk away. You don’t get involved, so you’re as much as an emotional coward as me.’

  Jack sighed as her well-made point hit him dead centre. He took a minute to allow his surprise to settle before placing his hand on her knee. ‘Maybe I am, El.’

  Jeez, he wished he could get the words out. It was a perfect time to tell her that they had no future, that she shouldn’t expect anything from him, that he couldn’t consider settling down with her—with anyone. That he couldn’t afford to take this any deeper, to allow her to creep behind the doors and walls of his self-sufficiency.

  Ellie’s teasing voice snapped him out of his reverie. ‘You awake behind those shades, Chapman?’

  ‘Yep.’ Jack hooked his arm around her neck, pulled her to him and dropped a hard kiss on her mouth. ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Careful, you might hurt yourself,’ Ellie teased, and yelped when his fingers connected with her ribcage. Her wine glass wobbled in her hand and she dropped it when his other hand tickled her under her arms.

  ‘Jack! You wretch! Stop...please, Jack!’ Ellie whimpered, and then her breath hitched.

  He realised he was lying on her, her mouth just below his. Tickling turned to passion and laughter turned to need as he plundered her mouth.

  Jack felt his heart sink into his stomach as he placed his head in the crook of her neck.

  Dammit, Ellie, how am I ever going to find the strength to walk away from you?

  * * *

  ‘I hate hangovers,’ Jack thought he heard Ellie mutter.

  She was showered, teeth brushed and dressed, but she still looked headachey and miserable, huddled into the corner of the couch, tousle-haired and exceptionally grumpy. But, amazingly, still so sexy.

  ‘Why did I drink so much last night?’ she wailed.

  Jack crouched down in front of her and smiled as he handed her a couple of aspirin and some water. ‘Hey, in reply to every drunken text you sent at various times throughout the evening I suggested that you stop. You told me that you could handle it.’

  ‘Well, I can’t,’ Ellie sulked.

  ‘Tough it out, sunshine.’

  It had been Jess’s hen’s party last night and Ellie had hosted the pre-clubbing ritual of cupcakes and champagne. When he’d run down the stairs at eight Ellie had been sitting on the edge of the couch and his eyes had rolled back in his head when he’d seen what she was—almost—wearing: a piece of sparkly scrap material covering her breasts, held in place by strings criss-crossing her back, tight jeans and screw-me heels. She’d pulled back her hair into a severe tail, and with dramatic make-up she’d looked dangerous and sexy.

  She’d had ‘trouble’ written all over her face. He’d decided to leave the house before he carried her upstairs, made her change and lectured her on exactly what the men in the club would think, seeing her in that outfit.

  When he’d heard her stumble in—with Jess, Clem Copeland and Maddie—it had been after two. The dogs had wandered upstairs at three, and at three-thirty he’d heard the shouted suggestion of skinny-dipping in the pool. He really deserved credit for not looking.

  He’d known he must be getting old when he’d chosen to roll over and go back to sleep rather than spy on hot naked women cavorting in the moonlight.

  He grinned as he placed his cup on the coffee table in front of them. Oh, he was enjoying this, he thought as he took the opposite corner of the couch and settled in, his laptop between his crossed knees.

  Ellie held her head. ‘What’s with the computer?’ she demanded. ‘Oooh, I think there are a hundred ADD gnomes tap-dancing in my head.’

  ‘You and I are going to talk about Mitchell,’ Jack said pleasantly.<
br />
  Ellie groaned. ‘No, we’re not.’

  ‘Mmm, yes, we are.’ Jack looked from his screen to her.

  His eyes were alert with intelligence, his fingers steady on the keyboard. He was after a story and she was part of it. ‘Jack, please...’

  ‘It’s just a couple of questions about your father.’

  ‘Questions I don’t want to answer,’ Ellie said stubbornly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t change anything!’ Ellie shouted, and watched as her head fell off her shoulders and rolled across the room. ‘He wasn’t there for me, ever! He was a drop-in dad, and I loved him far more than he loved me.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘How old were you when your parents got divorced?’

  ‘Fifteen,’ Ellie snapped.

  ‘And how did your mother take it?’

  ‘How do you think? She was devastated.’ Ellie leaned forward to make her point, groaned and sank back. ‘Do you know she never fell in love again after him? He was her one love. And he brushed us both off like we were nothing...’

  Ellie felt a sob rise and ruthlessly forced it down. She’d shed enough tears over her father, her ex, men in general. Hangover or no, she wasn’t going to shed any more. But she wanted to. She wanted to tell Jack how much it hurt, how much she wanted to be loved, cherished, protected. She didn’t need to be—not as she had when she was a little girl—but she still had a faint wish to be able to step into a strong pair of arms and rest awhile.

  Like now, when her head felt separated from her body and her stomach was staging its own hostile rebellion.

  ‘So you ran from an emotionally and physically absent father to an emotionally and physically absent fiancé. Why?’

  ‘That’s not a question about Mitchell,’ Ellie retorted.

  ‘Why, El?’

  ‘Because it’s what I deserved! Because my love was never enough to keep someone with me! Because I choose badly!’

  Jack sighed. ‘Oh, El, that is off-the-charts crap. You had a father who was useless and you had a bad relationship. It doesn’t mean that you are useless!’