The Love Shack

by Christie Ridgway

  After lunch, they returned to Crescent Cove. Skye pulled into the driveway behind her beach house. The ride back had been silent and, on her side, filled with awkwardness. Gage, however, remained an enigma. For all she knew, he stayed quiet because he was tired, or bored or thinking of that woman whose number he had in his pocket.

  “We have to talk about the attraction,” he suddenly said.

  Startled, Skye whipped her head toward him. “Huh?”

  “Don’t think I didn’t realize.” He pinned her with those bright turquoise eyes.

  Damn. She supposed the notion of fooling him had been a pipe dream. An experienced man like Gage would know when a woman was...was drawn to him.

  “It was there in the room with us last night, big as life, and I’d like to get past it, Skye. It’s not—”

  “Don’t say anything more!” Clearly it was not a feeling he reciprocated. Who could blame him? She knew what she looked like—colorless and camouflaged in baggy clothes. That’s the way she wanted to be, needed to be. Still, the whole situation stung her pride.

  Gage cleared his throat. “I’m only trying to say that I—”

  “Have really been out of touch for too long. Or your head has been turned by the attention you’ve received since you got back.”

  “What?”

  She gathered her self-respect around her like a cloak. “Not every woman in the world falls for you, you know.”

  “Skye—”

  “Your ego is overinflated, Gage. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to...to want you. There’s no way that a woman who looks like this—” she indicated her sweatshirt and wrinkled pants “—would imagine herself with a man like you.”

  And on that undignified note, she dashed from the car.

  * * *

  GAGE TRIED LIGHTENING his expression as he turned toward his sister-in-law-to-be. The scowl he erased was more commonly found on his twin, who had always been the deeper, moodier of the two—at least until Griff had found his Jane. “Wedding stuff going okay?” he asked politely, wrapping his fingers around his beer.

  Griffin laughed at him from across the table on Captain Crow’s deck. “Yeah, you’re so interested in the details.”

  The couple had arrived at Beach House No. 9 an hour ago to take measurements for...something. Okay, Gage had tuned out the particulars, and only tuned back in when they’d suggested a happy-hour visit to the bar up the beach. His mind had been occupied by other things.

  Reaching over, Jane squeezed his hand. “Don’t mind him. Wedding stuff’s going fine. Tell us about your day. What did you do?”

  Gage shrugged. “Went shopping with Skye.”

  “Oh,” Jane said, her forehead creasing. “You’re spending time with her, then?”

  “Some.” Though today’s excursion might be the last occasion. Damn woman made him and his ego both feel like asses for his attempt at discussing that little tug running between them. Had he been wrong about the reciprocal sizzle? He thought not, and if so, then he hadn’t been wrong to address it.

  Skye was his lodestar and his talisman, and he didn’t want to compromise those by infusing sex into their friendly, caring relationship.

  Except, he reminded himself, feeling another scowl coming on, she didn’t seem to care for him all that much. Tipping back his head, he took another sip of beer. His gaze landed on a pretty girl sitting alone at a table not far away. Their gazes met, and a small smile curled the corners of her lips.

  He liked her light brown hair, lifted from her neck in one of those messy updos.

  He liked her V-necked blouse that was low enough to reveal a hint of cleavage.

  He liked the fact that she seemed to like him back, so different from the prickly woman who’d practically stormed from her car after making clear she considered him an arrogant so-and-so.

  Why was she his lodestar again?

  What he needed, much more than that, was a sex star. Okay, it didn’t have to be nearly that stellar. He just needed someone with whom to blunt this horny edge. He acknowledged the pretty lady with a dip of his beer, grinning as her long eyelashes fluttered in a half bashful, half teasing manner.

  Griffin groaned. “Get a room, bro.”

  “Got a room,” Gage said, letting his gaze drift back to his brother. “Gotta get a woman now.”

  “Well, have the decency to wait until Jane and I leave, okay?”

  His brother’s fiancée had that little pucker between her brows again. “I thought you were, uh, spending time with Skye.”

  “That was then.” Now he wanted to forget the annoying, infuriating, insulting female. Your ego is overinflated, Gage.

  Jane’s frown deepened. “But, Skye—”

  “Look, can we not talk about her?” If he had a chance of getting laid, he had to pretend she didn’t exist. The memory of her naked earlobes, her flower-water scent, the way her nose wrinkled when she used that god-awful phrase, the Gage Gorge, was attempting to interfere with the satiation of his very normal, natural, nothing-to-feel-ashamed-about needs. “I’m declaring this table, this whole night as a matter of fact, a Skye-free zone.”

  Griffin and his woman exchanged glances Gage didn’t even try to interpret. Instead, he signaled the waitress for another beer and sent over a whatever-she’s-having to Updo. When his twin and Jane finished their drinks and made their goodbyes, he was gratified to see the pretty stranger get to her feet and approach his table.

  Yeah. Screw the afternoon. The evening was going to end so much damn better for him.

  Several hours later, Gage squinted, trying to bring the hands of his watch into focus. They wouldn’t stay still. Lifting his wrist, he addressed the man standing on the other side of the bar. “Does this say it’s wiggly time?”

  He frowned, because that sounded really idiotic. How much had he had to drink? To clear his head, he sucked in a breath, and a delicate scent he couldn’t forget entered his lungs. “Damn woman,” he groused. “She can’t even leave my air alone.”

  “What’s that?” the bartender asked, stepping closer. “I didn’t hear you, friend.”

  “That’s what we were supposed to be,” he told the man. “Me ’n’ Skye. Friends.”

  Someone slid onto the stool beside his. His head still bent over his watch crystal, he pitched his voice toward the newcomer. “Are you another pretty woman? ’Cuz there were two...no, three sitting there before you.”

  “Is that what you’re waiting for?” a voice said, low.

  “Apparently not,” Gage grumbled, “since I’ve sent three—or was it four?—on their way.”

  “So many,” the person beside him murmured.

  The bartender spoke up, a helpful note in his voice. “It was Ladies’ Night. He kept opening his wallet.”

  “And yet I still couldn’t cinch the deal,” Gage added glumly. With bleary eyes, he stared at the TV screen over the bar. When had Letterman lost so much of his hair? “I must be getting old, too.”

  “Or maybe more discerning.”

  The moralistic tone sent Gage’s head swinging to the side. His mood, already on morose, slid straight to grim when he saw it was Skye on the next-door stool, wearing another of her circus-tent sweatshirts and a pair of jeans. “What the hell are you doing here? I declared you off-limits.”

  “I didn’t get the memo.”

  “Blame me, bud,” the bartender put in. “I knew you were staying in the cove and I called her when I wasn’t sure you were good to drive to your cottage.”

  “I walked here,” Gage said.

  “Okay. But I’m not sure you’re good to walk to your cottage, either.”

  “Of course I...” His voice dropped off. To be honest, he couldn’t feel his toes.

  “Give us a couple of coffees, will you, Tom?” Skye asked. “Black, a little sugar?”

  When the mugs were set in front of them, she picked hers up and gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m off-limits?”

  “In more ways than one,” he muttered, taking his own l
ong swallow of the strong brew. Even if she smelled like damn heaven, he wasn’t interested in her in the way he was interested in other women.

  “What’s that?”

  He took another drink of coffee. “Look, I didn’t want you around when I...when I...”

  “Went on a gorge?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “We discussed that terminology, didn’t we?”

  “Sorry—”

  “Because it’s probably what ruined my evening. I had Updo in the palm of my hand. Halter Top claimed she could tell I was going to get lucky tonight by reading the foam on my beer. Tiffany—”

  “Oh, so at least you bothered to find out one of their names.”

  He frowned at her. “It was engraved on the heart-shaped pendant she wore around her neck.”

  “What a guy.” Skye rolled her eyes. “That’s not her name, that’s the jeweler it came from.”

  “As I was saying,” Gage continued, “every time I was on the verge of suggesting we retire to No. 9 for some private...conversation, I would hear your goddamn prissy voice in my head.”

  “I thought it was the margaritas,” the bartender said, pausing to top off their mugs. “That’s what you blamed it on before.”

  “Skye can take responsibility for that, too,” he said, using the logic of the inebriated. “Because it had to be a woman who decided to screw around with the perfection of tequila, triple sec and lime juice. Flavored margaritas are clearly a female invention.”

  “What are you talking about?” Skye asked, looking between him and the bartender.

  “Mango margaritas were the special tonight,” Tom explained. Then he plopped a glass in front of her and poured inside the last icy dregs from a blender. “I don’t think they’re half-bad, myself.”

  Gage stared at the orangeish concoction as if it were a snake. He could smell the sticky sweetness from here. Just as pumpkin could take him back to Thanksgiving and peppermint to Christmas, breathing in the mango-redolent air sucked him straight to another time and place. He closed his eyes and felt the grit of dirt on his palms and the sick, uneven thud of his pulse in his ears. His throat closed, rebelling against swallowing, and his belly cringed as he imagined the thick liquid splashing into its aching depths.

  “Gage? Gage!”

  His eyes flew open and he stared, uncomprehending for a moment, into Skye’s face. “I imagined you a million times down there,” he said absently, “but never could pinpoint your features.”

  “What? Down where?” Her brows drew low. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head, as if he could shake off the memory like a bad dream. “Never mind.” That glass of mango marg still sat there, mocking him, and he slid from the stool. “It’s time for me to get out of here.”

  At his first step, he stumbled a little. “Gage.” Skye put out her hand.

  He brushed it aside, heading for the exit. “I’m fine.”

  She dogged his footsteps. “I’ll go with you to No. 9.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Then you escort me to my place,” she suggested.

  His feet slowed. Damn. “You walked?”

  At her nod, he resigned himself to a few more minutes in her company. By the time they were out of the restaurant and onto the sand, the combination of coffee and chilled air went a long way to sobering him up. He sucked in another long breath and tilted back his head to take in the stars flung against the dark sky. His brain only spun a little.

  “You okay?”

  “I’d be better if I was with another woman,” he said darkly, starting off down the beach.

  She sniffed, trudging beside him. Light from the moon made her face seem to glow. “If your heart was really in it, I doubt anything I might have said could change your mind. Or mango margaritas.”

  He didn’t want to go into the whole mango thing. “My heart really isn’t into it. That’s not the body part looking for company. You get that, don’t you, Skye?”

  She lifted both arms. “So find some solo relief. What’s the big deal?”

  He stared at her.

  Her gaze caught on his, skittered away. “What? I think the hairy palms thing is just a myth.”

  His laughter snorted out. “Still, honey, it’s not the same.”

  One of her shoulders jerked a shrug. “It’s all overrated,” she said under her breath.

  But he heard her. Was that what she’d meant when she said she and Dagwood had physical problems?

  “All men aren’t selfish in the sack,” he said, guessing at the difficulty. “I make certain my partners have as good a time as I do.”

  “I’m sure,” she said, dismissive.

  They’d reached her place. She pulled a key from her pocket, reached to insert it into the lock. The mechanism made an audible click, and then she turned toward him, her expression concerned. “Are you sure you don’t need my help getting home? It’s not far and you appear less, uh, inebriated, but...”

  Her mouth was moving, but he didn’t absorb any of the words with her insulting I’m sure still echoing in his ears. Her unconvinced tone rubbed him wrong, itching at his skin and worming its way under just like her angel scent, her long lashes, her nude earlobes, that unpainted mouth. It was her fault he was alone tonight, and now she was impugning his ability as a lover?

  He took an aggressive step forward, forcing her shoulders against the surface of the door to avoid the brush of his body. They stood so close he could feel her hitching breath against his throat. “I swear I’d do right by you, baby. On my honor, I’d make you come twice before entering you.”

  Her head jolted, thudding against the wood. Eyes wide, she stared up at him. The pale silver of the moonlight couldn’t cool the wave of color flagging her cheeks.

  On my honor, I’d make you come twice before entering you. Jesus! What had made him speak such a thing out loud? There was horny and then there was clumsy, crude, boorish, and...

  ...and God, he could see it in his mind. He’d conjured her in his imagination so many times that she slid easily into his bed, under his hands, against his tongue.

  “That’s never going to happen,” she whispered, her eyes almost as big as the monster she probably now considered him to be.

  “Of course it’s not,” he said, stepping back. His bed, his fantasies, his sex life were all—now and forever—Skye-free zones. The other ways he needed her were just too important.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  POLLY WAS PUTTING SCISSORS to brown paper bag when Teague White breezed through her open front door. He stopped short, taking in the stack of bags, the scraps of paper scattered at her feet, the tagboard pattern and pencil that lay on the coffee table in front of the love seat where she sat. “What’s up?” he asked.

  My pulse rate. But, accustomed to hiding her physical reaction to him, Polly aimed a casual smile at his shoulder—she had to avoid looking too hard at the beautiful face above it. The stark, masculine bones framed by layers of short hair the same color as his almost-black eyes had the power to rock her world. She cleared her throat to answer his question. “I’m making Australian bush hats.”

  “Huh,” he said. “Brown bags stand up to the harsh conditions?”

  She went wooden as he approached, preparing for his usual kiss on the cheek. He hadn’t shaved and his whiskers prickled her skin, little needles of sensation that pierced her heart as if it were a pincushion. Pressing her knees together, she kept her gaze averted from him as he lifted the pile of cut pieces on the cushion beside her and took its place.

  “Polly?”

  Intent on not noticing how close he sat, how she could feel his body heat reaching across the few inches between them, she’d missed his question. “Uh, what?”

  “I asked again about the bush hats, sweetheart.”

  “Oh.” A little laugh burst from her lips. It did not sound nervous. After all this time, it was ridiculous to be nervous around Teague. Their years of friendship had inured her to him by now. “They’re for my class,
as you should be able to guess.”

  “I’m always surprised at what you kindergarten teachers can do with scissors and paper. Not to mention yarn. I remember the finger-weave belts the kids made last year.”

  She felt a dimple dig into her cheek as she smiled, gratified he’d remembered. “Those came out pretty well, I admit.”

  One of his long legs crossed over the other. “You’re harshing on my midsummer buzz, though, by prepping for September so soon.”

  “I hate to break the news. It’s no longer midsummer. In three weeks I’ll be back in the classroom.”

  “Then we’d better make the most out of the time we have left.”

  Polly’s scissors paused, midcut. No, there wasn’t going to be any “we” about the next weeks. There shouldn’t be. There wouldn’t be.

  She’d made that decision after her coffee with Skye. Her best friend’s words had slapped her like a palm to the face. “We both know your biggest stumbling block to a fulfilling love life is Teague.” How had she guessed? It was Skye who also called her “Very Private Polly.” If her feelings for Teague were wearing through her usual deep reserve, then she was in trouble.

  He reached over now, tugging on the end of her ponytail. “You okay?”

  “I’m good. I’m always good.”

  “Then let’s make you gooder and finalize our August calendar. We’ll make it one to remember.”

  “Gooder?”

  He grinned. “Hey, I’m just a dumb firefighter.”

  She glanced away from that flash of white teeth. He wasn’t dumb. It was her, who had never managed to shut him out of her life. For four and a half years she’d wanted him, wanted him to see her as more than a friend, and even when their physical relationship never went beyond ponytail tugs and busses on the cheek, she hadn’t been able to stifle the yearning in her heart.

  Maybe it was because they’d slept together on the first night they’d met, she mused. Just slept. They’d both attended a New Year’s Eve party at Skye’s place, here at the cove. Teague was her childhood friend. Polly had met her in an Asian poetry class in college. The end-of-year celebration had gone on way past midnight and everyone had been invited to crash rather than risk driving home. Accustomed to a much earlier bedtime, Polly had gratefully found her way at 3:00 a.m. to a dark bedroom and an empty pillow.