GUILTY OR HOT

by Carson, Mia

  “So you cook, too?” she asked, and he raised his eyes to hers.

  “On occasion,” he said with a grin. “I’m sure I can whip up something.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and her fingers tapped against her bicep as she scrutinized him. “My kitchen is your kitchen. Guess I’ll join you.”

  “Great. I’ll go wash up real quick then get started. Give me about an hour?” He turned to go after she nodded and caught sight of a photograph on the bookshelf. The two people in it were smiling widely, giddy with joy. The woman was Mel—a much happier version of her—and the man beside her wore navy fatigues. His hands held her belly and Danny frowned, studying the photo a moment longer before Mel walked towards it and turned it face down.

  “Anything else?” Her words were sharp with pain etched in every line on her scowling face.

  “No, no… I’ll see you in an hour.” He backed out of the room. He expected the dogs to stay with her, but Xena appeared at his side. “Well, at least someone here likes me.”

  She barked as if in agreement and stayed with him all the way to his room, laying down at the foot of his bed when he opened the door. Danny smirked at the massive beast as he grabbed fresh clothes from his bag and went to take a quick shower.

  The water grew hot and he stepped inside, letting the spray wash over his body and clean off the sweat and grime from the day. He tilted his head back under the water, and his eyes slid closed. He was going to use this time to come up with a plan to convince Mel to sell the inn, but all he thought of was her naked body… the curves of her waist and hips, the fullness of her breasts as they bounced when she jumped and turned away from his view. If only he’d been a second slower, he might’ve caught a glimpse of her ass, too.

  His arousal grew to a painful throbbing, and he glared down at his bobbing erection. He tried to force his thoughts back to the plan of simply wooing this woman to sign over the inn and not figuring out how to get into her bed. His hands clenched at his sides as he imagined running them over her soft skin and tracing the slopes of her breasts and then lower to grip those hips hard as he ground against her. Never had he experienced such a hunger to claim her body with another woman, but with Mel, he wanted to possess her. Wanted to be the man to chase that pain out of her eyes, if only for a few hours.

  He needed to make her his while still getting her to sign over the inn.

  As his erection continued to swell, he washed as quickly as he could and hoped it would go away on its own. A few minutes later, his hand gripping himself tightly, he did something he hadn’t done in years. One hand pressed against the shower wall to support himself, and his eyes slid closed as he imagined a night with this fierce, stubborn Mel, her legs wrapped around his waist and her moans in his ear as he drove her to new heights of passion. When his body sagged with relief, he groaned and fumbled for the faucet to turn the water off and snagged a towel off the rack. The last time he’d had to take care of himself was in college. Since then, he’d always been able to will the arousal away, but not with Mel.

  Xena eyed him from his bed as he stepped out of the bathroom with his towel wrapped around his waist. “Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered to the dog.

  Her dark eyes followed him as he reached his suitcase and pulled out a pair of jeans and t-shirt.

  “What? You going to tell me something about her or just stare at me like I’m out of my league?”

  Xena growled and tilted her head.

  “You think I can’t handle her, is that it?”

  She barked, wagging her tail as her tongue lolled out of her mouth.

  Danny leaned in closer as he scratched her ears. “What’s her story, huh? Can you give me a hint here?” Xena barked again and leapt off the bed. She pawed at the door, dragging down the handle, and it sprung open. She slipped out into the hall, and Danny was left to dress as quickly as he could, hopping into his jeans and tugging his shirt down over his head as he darted out the door after the dog. When he stepped out onto the balcony, he looked for her, but she’d disappeared. “Xena,” he hissed in a whisper.

  A bark reached him, and he glanced down to see her on the main floor, her tail wagging as she stood in the doorway to a hall he hadn’t been down yet. Danny looked around for a sign of Mel, but she must’ve still been in her room. He traipsed downstairs to Xena and followed the dog as she meandered down the hall to another door, one with a normal doorknob she pawed at but couldn’t open.

  Danny glanced from the dog’s dark brown eyes, filled with an intelligence he hadn’t noticed before, then back to the door. “You want me to open it?”

  Xena promptly sat down hard beside him and seemed to bob her head.

  He glanced around again, waiting for Mel to appear at the end of the hall, but she didn’t so he reached out a hand and tried the knob. The door opened, and he peered inside. He felt along the wall for a switch. The light flickered a few times over his head before it flooded the room with light. Shelves lined the small walk-in closet, and he stared at boxes on one side labeled Christmas decorations. He turned to his right and found more with no labels. Danny reached for one and opened the flaps to peek inside and saw stacks of pictures—some framed, but most of them loose in the box. Each one was of the man he saw in the photograph in Mel’s room.

  He shoved the box back and glanced down when Xena nudged his leg. “Who was he, huh?” He scratched the dog’s ears absently as the mystery that resided in this inn broadened and continued to draw him in. “Come on, let’s go make some dinner.”

  Xena trotted happily out the door. Danny glanced around one more time before he turned off the light and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 3

  “How goes it up north?” Todd asked over the phone as Danny cooked dinner at the inn.

  “The town of Westbend is certainly interesting.” Danny pondered the afternoon when he first met Mel.

  “And the inn? Do you have it yet?”

  Danny searched through the cabinets until he found two wine glasses and set them on the counter. “No, hit a bit of a snag in that regard, but think I’m close to remedying the situation.”

  “Are you having problems smooth-talking an old widow?” Todd’s laughter drifted from the other end of the line.

  “She’s not the woman we assumed, I can tell you that much,” Danny said though he wasn’t sure why he hesitated to tell him more about Mel. She was not an easy woman to understand, and even as he told himself he’d be able to convince her tonight to sell the inn, the sinking feeling in his gut said this wasn’t going to be so simple. “I think we’re making progress, though.”

  “Good, giving her more money?”

  “If that’s what it takes, I’ll up the price for this land. You should see it.”

  “Remind you of home? Maybe you need to call on some of that Iowa small-town charm to get this over with.”

  “No, I won’t have to resort to that. That man is gone, remember?” Danny pulled the fine bottle of wine from the counter to pry the cork out, forcing his hands to relax before he broke the bottle. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning when it’s done and I’m on my way back.”

  “Of course,” Todd said. “Janet misses you terribly.”

  Danny pursed his lips at the thought of Janet and him again in his office. No sudden hunger stirred in his gut… nothing. Instead, he saw Mel’s naked body again, and his stomach tightened. “I’m sure she does,” he said stiffly and hung up.

  He tapped his fingers on the counter, trying to decide the best way to go about bringing up the truth of why he came to Westbend when he heard the dogs’ claws clicking across a hard floor and Mel’s voice talking to them as they neared the kitchen.

  “Well, that smells great,” she said as she entered the kitchen and breathed deeply.

  Danny grinned as he turned, wine in hand. “Steaks, potatoes, and asparagus. Hope you didn’t mind me going for the good stuff first.”

  She shrugged. “Someone has to eat it.” She mo
ved to the small dinette table in the kitchen.

  The hairs on his neck prickled as her gaze remained on him. He picked up the two plates filled with their dinner and carried them over. “Sorry, again, for earlier,” he said roughly, trying not to picture her nakedness and failing miserably. “I hope this makes up for it.”

  “It’s a start,” she muttered, but he heard amusement in her words.

  After pouring two glasses of the red wine Danny had brought with him from the city, he carried the glasses over and sat down across from her. She swirled the wine in her glass and sniffed it, a crooked grin spreading across her face before she sipped it and set it down.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Always been more of a whiskey girl,” she replied. “I never really enjoyed the finer things of life. It tastes expensive, though. What did you say you did again?”

  “I didn’t.” He sipped at his wine studying her. “Just work in sales in the city.”

  “Sales. Sounds dull,” she said with that same crooked smirk.

  He returned her smile. The warmth that filled her eyes had chased away the pain he’d seen before. “It can be, but sometimes, it can be pretty rewarding, too.”

  “Your boss must like you to give you so many days off around the holidays.”

  Danny laughed quietly. “Yeah, my boss isn’t so bad. He can be an ass sometimes, though. I guess that’s something you don’t have to worry about, owning your own place. You can run your days however you want, run the place how you want,” he said, eyes taking in the kitchen and the surrounding inn. “Quite the setup you have here.”

  She nodded and picked at her food without eating it. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “You don’t seem too happy about having such a great place,” he said slowly, sensing his way to grow closer. “The neglect of the place says a lot about the owner.”

  Mel’s fork clattered loudly to her plate, and she pushed from the table. “You’ve barely been here a day and you’ve already figured out everything about me, is that it?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said, stumbling over his words, trying to recover.

  She dug around in a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a glass. “Sounded like it. You show up on my front porch and offer to help do some work for a few nights at my inn. You see broken railings and dinged doors and you think to yourself, this poor woman must hate her life. She must hate owning an inn.” She put the whiskey back and sat down hard at the table, sipping on her glass of amber liquid as she eyed him sharply over the rim.

  Danny met her stare evenly and drank his wine. “I never said you hate owning the inn, but your heart is certainly not in it,” he challenged and waited for the sharp retort.

  “No? Maybe not.” She tapped her nails on the glass, the clinking echoing around the tiled kitchen. “It’s not like you’re the only one who thinks I need to get rid of this place.”

  Danny shifted in his chair and bit the inside of his cheek. “What do you mean?” Shit, she does have another buyer. I’m going to kill Todd when I get back to the city.

  “Some jackass developer from New York has been trying to buy the land out from under me for months. The idiot thinks I don’t know he’s short-changing me, either,” Mel muttered.

  Danny choked on his swallow of wine. He coughed and sputtered as he set his glass down and avoided her gaze. “Really? Why does he want it?” he asked, hoping he sounded normal as his mind raced. If she figures out I’m the jackass, she’ll never sell. He wondered why she thought the buyer was a jackass. He personally never spoke with Mel or even drafted the proposals sent to her, but if he had, she would certainly not think he was being rude. Todd. He needed to talk to his esteemed business partner and figure out how he’d really handled this procurement.

  “I’m not sure, but there are days I consider taking his offer,” she confided quietly. “Then there are days this place casts its spell and sucks me right back in. I’m stuck somewhere in between.”

  Danny swirled his wine as his stomach twisted with guilt. “Why not move somewhere else?” he suggested, forcing the words out. “I’m sure you’d get a good amount of money for it. You could travel, start somewhere new.”

  Mel sipped her whiskey, licking the drops from her dark red lips. Danny’s gut clenched. “Why do you think I need to start somewhere new?” she asked lightly, but he heard the warning in her tone.

  “No reason.” He busied himself with eating.

  Xena trotted over to his side and plopped down, resting her head on the table by his plate. “Xena, stop being a mooch,” Mel scolded, though she grinned while she said it.

  “I don’t mind,” he said and scratched the dog’s ears. He cut three small pieces of steak and gave one to each waiting dog. “I grew up with dogs—not as big, but they followed me around like this. Loved the lot of them.”

  “You don’t have a dog now?”

  “Can’t, I work too much,” he said, surprised by the hint of sadness in his words. He was happy with his life and loved where he was in the city and the amount of wealth he had accumulated, but even after he’d told Todd and anyone else who asked that he didn’t need a woman in his life, a pang of loneliness filled his chest. He rubbed at the annoying ache and downed the rest of his glass.

  Mel raised a brow and slid her glass towards him. “You look like you need it.”

  He didn’t argue and poured the rest of the wine from her glass into his. “And I thought you were the one who might need some cheering up.”

  She stiffened across from him. “Is this about the holidays again? I don’t know why it’s a big deal for me not to want to celebrate something people have forgotten the true meaning of anyway.” She pushed back from the table, taking her glass with her.

  “Mel, wait,” he called out, standing to stop her. “I’m sorry, but it’s not like you’re giving off a positive, happy air here.”

  “You know where the door is,” she muttered over her shoulder. “Feel free to leave whenever you want and let me wallow in my negativity.” She whistled, and the three dogs followed her out of the kitchen. Xena stopped at the door and wagged her tail when she glanced at Danny, then ran after the others.

  He rubbed a hand down his face with an annoyed grunt as he stared at the table. She hadn’t even touched her food. Worry made his palms itch, but he clenched his hands into fists. What the hell was getting into him? He was here to get Mel to sell the inn to him, but he couldn’t even force the words out of his mouth. Why had he agreed to stay here?

  “You’ll just leave in the morning,” he told himself as he cleaned up dinner and drank the rest of the wine himself. “You’ll tell her the truth, and once she realizes you’re not such a jackass and you give her the right amount of money, you’ll leave and never look back.”

  As he drank the last drops of wine, he imagined how this night could’ve gone if Mel was like the women he was used to meeting. They were charmed by him, taken in by his attractive smile, but Mel… He couldn’t figure her out. One minute, he’d see a smile in her eyes, and the next, they’d overflowed with pain and her walls shot up. He shouldn’t care—didn’t want to care—but the idea of him leaving her alone in an inn falling apart around her made him scowl at his reflection in the kitchen window. Whomever she lost ate at her, and he doubted he’d be able to break down the hardened shell around her.

  As he climbed to his room, he tried to figure out why he suddenly wanted to try so hard to do it.

  ***

  Mel sat in her rooms for the rest of the evening as Lucy and Bobby played by the fire, growling and yipping as they always did. Mel grinned at them and looked at Xena sitting in front of the closed door. She stared at it expectantly as if waiting for someone who no longer lived there to come inside.

  “Xena,” she called softly, her smile gone, and the large dog turned her head to look at her. “He’s not coming back, you know that. Go lay down.”

  Sh
e turned her head stubbornly back to the door and didn’t move.

  “Fine,” Mel muttered, staring into the whiskey in her glass.

  It had been a long time since she’d had a one-on-one dinner with a man like Danny, and she’d been hesitant to say yes. She should’ve said no. She was not a social person anymore, and even though she didn’t want to admit he was right, she knew he was—about everything. She wanted to be happy, but there were too many damn memories around this place, and her sadness turned to bitterness and anger for being left alone, for having everything taken from her. Moving on and starting somewhere new was a good idea, but she nibbled at her lip with worry. She’d simply move to a new town and be the same shut-in the town saw her as now. The same miserable woman who had forgotten how to live.

  Before she tucked in for the night, she glanced outside at the snow falling from the sky and wondered if the weather reports about this storm were right. By morning, when the dogs jumped into bed with her, licking her face and begging for breakfast, she stretched and slipped into a black, bulky sweater she wished still smelled of another man and peered out the window.

  “Damn,” she whispered. “Danny’s not leaving today.”

  The snow was at least two feet deep and still falling. The roads in and out of Westbend would be impassable. She was stuck with him for at least another night—maybe two—unless he’d decided to take it upon himself to leave last night.

  The dogs beat her to the kitchen, ready for breakfast, and she was greeted by the strong smell of brewing coffee and bacon frying. Danny’s voice reached out and caressed her skin as he talked to the dogs, his laughter a deep timbre that warmed her frigid heart, if only a little. She tugged the sweater tighter around her, remembering how she’d snapped at him, and rubbed the back of her left leg with the toes of her right foot, debating if she should apologize. But she remembered him calling her out on not being happy with her life or the inn, and she steeled herself for whatever would meet her as she stepped into the kitchen.