by Cindy Gerard
When he pulled up in front of her house and cut the motor, though, he experienced an unfamiliar moment of hesitation. This could be a mistake. The lady had made it plenty clear that she had about as much inclination to become romantically involved with him as a wild horse had a mind to be broken to ride. At least in words and deeds she’d made that clear. Her eyes though, and that sexy little tremor in her voice, sent other signals. There was something going on behind all that denial and it felt a lot more like a yes to him than a no. And he was far too interested to give it up until he’d made a better effort to swing her around to his way of thinking.
Determined to do just that, he loped up her front porch steps and rapped his knuckles on the screen door.
“Come on in. Door’s open.”
Okay. He could go two ways with this. Clearly, she was expecting someone and it sure as the world wasn’t him. He could do the right thing, ID himself and give her a chance to come up with an excuse not to let him in, or he could walk on in and catch her off guard.
Like there was any contest.
With an ornery grin, he stepped through the door. And there she was, standing on a stepladder in the dining room, her back to him, rolling cream-colored paint in the corner where wall met ceiling.
Holy longhorn.
She was dressed for the heat, yet in bare feet, a pair of worn jean short shorts and a skimpy little white tube-type top that left a whole lot of skin bare both above and below it, she looked anything but cool.
What she looked was hot.
Lord have mercy, did she look hot.
He’d never seen her in anything but working jeans and T-shirts and clunky boots but he’d been pretty sure there was a tidy little female form underneath them. Man, oh, man, was there. He hadn’t been prepared, though, for the punch of lust that shot through him now that he knew exactly what she’d been covering up. And it took seeing her like this to finally get a handle on why he was so intrigued.
The doc was a mature woman. Complete with a mature woman’s body, soft and supple and lush. He liked it. He liked that while her legs were short and slender and her calves were strong and firm, there was a soft resilience about her thighs and hips. He liked very much that there was a gentle roundness to her bottom that a man could just sink his hands into. Some women her age might fret and stew over the fact that their body wasn’t as toned and firm as it had once been. Some might worry over every little wrinkle on their face. He had a strong gut feeling that the doc wouldn’t give much thought to, either. She was comfortable with who she was and how she looked. Confident. He thought it was sexy as hell.
And the truth was, he’d had his fill of calendar girls. Pretty young things with smooth, flawless skin and firm toned muscles—and often nothing much going on inside except concern over how their hair looked, was their lipstick smeared and did the pants they were wearing make their butt look big.
The doc was different…not just outside, but in, and that was part and parcel of why he was taking a chance coming here today. Nothing he’d seen so far made him think he’d made a mistake.
She’d pulled her hair up on top of her head in a no-frills topknot. And while most of it stayed put, the silky strands that had escaped tumbled down her back in wispy wheat-gold ribbons to tickle her bare shoulders when she stretched to reach a spot in the corner. It also gave him a little extra glimpse of skin when she lifted her arms above her head and her shorts rode a little lower on her hips.
She had the most amazing skin…not pale as he’d imagined it, but sort of a light, golden tan that looked silky smooth and so touchable his hands had started to itch with the need to find out just how it felt up close and personal.
Up close and personal, however, was the very least he wanted to be with this woman.
That’s when he decided. It was a done deal. He and the reluctant Alison Samuels were going to become real good friends. Real good. And wearing her down was going to be half the fun.
“You sure you’re up for this?” she asked without turning around. “Not exactly a great way to spend your day off.”
He thumbed back his hat, shoved his fingertips into the front pockets of his jeans and leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Oh, I don’t know…it’s looking pretty good from where I’m standing.”
Three
Ali froze. The amused, sexy drawl was about two octaves lower than Peg’s. John Tyler’s voice also had an effect on her that Peg’s never would—and right now, it was making her pulse spike and launching a fleet of butterflies into liftoff in her tummy.
When she slowly turned and saw the smug smile tilting his generous, flirty lips, she became painfully aware of what she was wearing and that the cowboy had been getting an eyeful.
“Hello,” he said, all little-boy eyes and impish grin.
With a very deliberate movement, calculated to assure herself as much as him that she had things under control, she lowered the roller onto the paint tray. “I was expecting Peg.”
“Life’s just full of little surprises, huh?”
The air was close and hot. She was already tired. And she just wasn’t up to sparring with the likes of John Tyler. “Isn’t it just?”
“Got yourself a major project going here, I see. Need any help?”
She forced herself to smile down at him. Friendly and polite. Approachable yet distant. Woman to boy. “The Titanic needed help. I need a miracle.”
And she needed to get off this ladder because judging by the look on his face, he was having a little too much fun enjoying the view.
Trying to ignore how rattled his company made her, she took a backward step down and, “Ohmygod!” completely missed the ladder rung. She felt herself falling, was aware of her arms flailing in open air and braced for the impact.
“Hey, hey.” A pair of strong arms scooped her up and lifted her up against his chest. “Whoa, now. That was quite a dismount. Not to mention a great way to break your neck.”
Breathless, her heart hammering, Ali blinked up into his startled but smiling eyes and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Or do. Only one thing was certain. She didn’t dare move. Not with him holding her like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold. Not with his fingers pressing against the side of her breast and a sudden awareness that her bandeau top had slipped so far south that even breathing represented a huge risk. In fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that if she made one wrong move, she’d give a whole new meaning to overexposure.
Wasn’t this special?
Even more special was the adrenaline rush. It hit her like a ball bat and, for all intents and purposes, paralyzed her. For the life of her, all she could do was lie there in his arms, hyperaware of the heat of his body against hers—specifically his warm fingers digging into the soft swell of breast tissue under her arm. No one had touched her there since…well, no one had touched her there in a very, very long time. The fact that she was being touched there now awakened reflexes and response triggers that had lain dormant for years.
Without warning, her nipples tightened as blood flooded them to aching sensitivity. And for one insane, intense and sexually charged moment, her mind’s eye flashed on the image of John Tyler’s dark head bent over her breast, of his generous, mobile lips caressing her nipple, his tongue laving it as his mouth alternately kissed and…
“Hey…hey. Doc? Sweetie, you’re shaking like a leaf. You okay?” His voice broke into her thoughts, penetrating the sound of blood rushing through her ears.
No. No, she was not okay. She was mortified. And aroused and…and confused.
“I, um…I’m fine. I…a…delayed reaction to the fall, I guess. I…I don’t know how I could have been so clumsy.”
“Might have been the line about the Titanic,” he said easily. “The mention of one disaster courted another. Although, as disasters go, I’ve got to say, I like the way this one played out.”
Yeah. She just bet he did. A quick check confirmed that she was still covered—barely—but resurrected
the unsettling visual image of his mouth making love to her breast.
Talk about a dangerous fall. She needed to snap out of it—no easy feat when she was swamped with an acute awareness of the strength of the arms that held her, of the breadth of the chest beneath his white T-shirt, of his heart beating steady and true and picking up speed where it pressed against her.
How could she have forgotten all the wonderful differences in the physique of a woman and a man? How could she have forgotten this wonderful sensation of being a woman, pressed against a man?
By blocking it from her mind, that’s how. When the nights had become so long and cold and empty because she’d missed David so much, forgetting had been the only way to survive.
On a bracing breath, she calmed herself and finally felt the blood return to her brain where it belonged. Along with it, the feeling returned to her arms—and just in the nick of time. She lifted a hand and made what she hoped was a discreet adjustment on her top.
“You can put me down now,” she said, her voice whisper-soft as she looked up and into a pair of eyes so dark brown they were almost black.
She meant to look away. Really, she did. But at this close range, his eyes were as fascinating as they were beautiful. She could see the full range of browns in his irises—cinnamon, chocolate, earth. All intense, all warm, like his lashes which were sable-dark and silky thick. Years of smiling and hours in the sun had dug creases at the corners that added to rather than detracted from eyes that held far too much sway over her reactions when she absolutely did not want to think about him in any way other than as a client and acquaintance.
A tough trick when so much of her was in direct contact with so much of him. The heat and the dizzying scent of him didn’t help, either: sage and a little sweat and, woven through it, the scent of leather.
“John?”
“J.T.” he insisted, holding her gaze with a little too much heat.
“J.T…I said, you can put me down now.”
“I could, you’re right, but the question is, are you steady enough? I mean, I’d hate to see you try for another header into the floor. How about we don’t take that chance and I just hold on for a little while yet?”
She narrowed her eyes. “How about we live dangerously?”
He grinned but slowly lowered her to her feet. “Can’t blame a guy for trying. Besides, it’s not often an opportunity like this falls into my arms.”
Once she was on her feet and able to put a little distance between them, her emotional as well as her physical equilibrium returned. She wasn’t sure what had just happened to her but she knew it was an anomaly. She was not getting involved with him. In the first place, she didn’t want to; in the second, it was ludicrous. It had nothing to do with running away from her feelings. She wasn’t running. She wasn’t scared, even though the feelings rustling around inside her walked like, talked like and overall made a pretty convincing imitation of fear.
So she experienced a little case of happy hormones when she was around him. She didn’t have to act on them. Before this got any further out of hand, though, she needed to make him understand that a boat with him and her in it just wasn’t going to float.
But how? Resistance hadn’t worked. Maybe she simply needed to convince him that he didn’t get to her…which meant she needed to treat him like she would any other man who did not heat her blood and make her question, why, exactly, the idea of a friendly affair with him was such a bad idea.
“Guess it’s a good thing for me you showed up. The last thing I need is a sprained anything.”
“My pleasure. Promise me you’ll be more careful from now on.”
“Lesson learned,” she said. “The practice is too busy and I’ve got too much work to do on the house to put myself out of commission.”
“Well,” he said, with a long, lingering sweep of his gaze down the length of her body that had her fingers itching to tug on her top again even though she was all tucked in, “things really are shaping up nicely.”
An involuntary shiver ripped from her breast to her belly and back again at the blatant heat in his eyes that made it very clear he wasn’t just talking about the house.
All right. This must stop. Right now. As angry at herself for letting him draw these reactions out of her as she was at him for prompting them, she squared her shoulders, primed to deliver a very clear message.
“John—”
“You know,” he said before she got any further, “I can still remember when this house used to be the town showplace.”
His statement stopped her cold.
“You can? Really? You remember how she looked in her prime?” She’d been desperate to know more about the house but hadn’t had time to search for pictures. “I want very badly to restore her to her original colors and style.”
“Her?”
“Absolutely.” She averted her eyes from his amused grin and bent to pick up a paint rag to wipe her hands. “She’s every inch a lady.”
“And you know this because…?”
She lifted a shoulder. “It’s just a feeling. There’s an underlying softness about her…in the graceful curve of the woodwork, the spindled banister…even in the leaded glass windows.” She let her gaze drift around the room. “Yes. The house is definitely a beautiful, elegant lady.”
“Just like her owner,” he said and had her heart going all fluttery again.
And again, she felt self-disgust for reacting. She worked at wiping the bulk of the paint from her fingers. Studied her fingers, actually, so she wouldn’t be compelled to study him. Or to be taken in again by those sexy brown eyes and by the way he looked in his chest-hugging white T-shirt, tight, worn jeans and gray cowboy hat—like he’d been the man the entire cowboy look had been created for.
“I don’t remember the kind of details you’re wanting,” he said, making her realize she’d been staring. Fortunately he was inspecting the woodwork around a pair of pocket doors separating the foyer from the dining room, and hadn’t noticed. “But I might be able to find them for you.”
“You’re kidding. How?”
“My mom was president of the Gray County Historical Society until Dad retired and they moved to California. She’s no longer active with the organization but I’ll bet she has some old photographs of this place. And even if she doesn’t, she’d know where to find them. I’ll give her a call. See if I can turn something up.”
“That would be wonderful,” she said, caught up in the excitement of the possibility of finding some significant information on the house. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble. Plus I’ll get mega brownie points for not only calling her but showing an interest in one of her pet projects.”
Ali had to smile in spite of herself. “And what do these points net you?”
“Oh, it’s big. Real big. She’ll send a box of homemade fudge for sure.” His grin was guileless and, she thought with reluctance, endearing. “Probably a box of cookies. Oatmeal-raisin are my favorite, by the way…just in case I’m making points with you, too.”
Okay. So he was annoying. He was also charming. And sexy. And he’d just dangled a very delectable carrot. She wanted those photos. “Show me results and I might be persuaded to show you some cookies.”
He grinned again, slow and sexy, his thoughts as clear as the Montana sky. No doubt he’d like her to show him her cookies, all right, and a whole lot more.
“In the meantime,” she said, giving up on lecturing him—he was incorrigible, anyway—she led the way to the kitchen, “you want to tell me why you stopped by? And don’t say to ask me out to dinner because we’ve already established that’s not going to happen.”
There. That was good. Decisive. To the point. See? She could do this. She could keep it neat and tidy and benign. She was being neighborly. And feeling a little self-conscious again, suddenly—not about whether or not she was going to pop out of her top but about what he thought of the way she looked in it.
&n
bsp; Figure that one out. Sheer female vanity, she supposed, something she wasn’t used to experiencing. She was carrying about five too many pounds and ten too many years to pull off short shorts and a tube top—although it hadn’t seemed to be any effort at all for him to catch her and hold her in his arms. She didn’t care if Peg saw her this way but she’d never intended for anyone else to see her like this.
Maybe it was a good thing that John had. Maybe he’d realize there was nothing subtle about the differences between a thirty-year-old and a forty-year-old woman’s body and he’d cool his jets. She kept in shape, she took care of herself and she was good with the way she looked, but Mother Nature and gravity were power players. Like City Hall, you could fight them but you’d never win.
If she’d been into masochism, she’d make sure he got a good, long look. But thinking about long looks started her thinking about the close call with her top so in the end she snagged the T-shirt she’d thrown over a kitchen chair earlier and tugged it over her head.
Walking to the fridge, she pulled out a pitcher of tea. And because it would be just plain rude not to, she offered him a glass when she poured one for herself.
He shook his head. “Thanks, but I never did get a taste for the stuff. Water’d be great though. And since you said not to tell you that I came to ask you out to dinner, I won’t. How about we go dancing instead?”
So much for cooling his jets.
“Don’t dance,” she countered, plopped some ice cubes in a glass of water and held it out to him.
While she couldn’t prove it, it seemed that he very deliberately touched her fingers with his as she pulled her hand away. Once again, she had to divorce herself from the sensations his touch stirred to life and the reminder of how rough and steady he’d felt holding her. She’d sensed a restrained strength that came from years of working cattle and made her wonder if he was rough or gentle with a woman—and which she would want him to be with her.