Diana’s head whipped in the direction of the house and the sounds of the anguished woman. A baby? This was worse than she imagined.
But then she spied the same large boots she’d seen a week ago sticking out from under the house. “I’ve got her.” Scott’s big body was half under the house, half out.
“Thank God. I don’t know why she keeps running under the house and getting stuck.” The older woman stood on the front lawn, ringing her hands.
“I think I know why.” Scott emerged from under the house, carrying with him a litter of five puppies. A larger dog trotted close behind Scott. “One way to get a dog to come out? Take her puppies. She almost bit my hand off but here you go.”
“Oh my goodness, Lady, what have you been up to down there? We thought she’d given birth to the puppies and abandoned them. I had no idea.” The woman accepted the puppies one by one, taking them into the house.
“Bet she doesn’t run under the house again.” Scott squatted down to pat Lady’s head, and she licked Scott’s face.
Diana became vaguely aware of the fact that she was staring at Scott, who was now brushing off cobwebs, grass, dirt, and who knew what else off the navy blue fire department t-shirt that clung to his body like a second skin. Rebound guy. She wanted to be the one to do that—let her fingers wander down, brushing everything off that shirt from his broad chest to his abs. Later maybe licking it down to make sure she hadn’t missed a spot. Maybe she could, just this once, have a rebound guy.
“Diana?”
“Yes! What?” She shook off the fantasy and dialed back to the present time and location. Bookworm versus Hot Stud. It sounded like a porn movie.
Scott was studying her again, a little smile tugging at his lips. “What are you doing here?”
“I left Gran at St. Catherine’s playing bingo and just took a walk through town.” Then fell head first into a river of lust.
“Yeah? Pop plays every Saturday too.”
“He won.”
The grin slid off his face. “He won’t stop talking about that for weeks.”
“He seems like a nice man. Maybe a little excitable.” She thought back to the fists pumped high over two hundred dollars. She might have done the same had she won, but she wasn’t the one well acquainted with a multi-millionaire.
“He doesn’t need the money and always gives it away. It’s all about winning for him.”
“Let’s go, Prince Charming,” one of the wise-ass firefighters called out. “Pretty sure someone of the two-legged species might need us.”
Diana caught a slight wince from Scott but to his credit he mostly ignored the guy. “Gotta go.” The driver had just started the engine. “See you tonight?” Scott hopped on the tail of the truck as it slowly moved onto the residential street.
“Tonight?”
“Running.” He winked as the truck drove off. “You didn’t think I’d forget?”
No, of course he wouldn’t forget. The abs and the dimpled grins weren’t enough. Neither was the child and puppy rescuing. He would now torture her by not allowing her to forget that she’d said she wanted to run in a moment of clear madness. Diana strode back to the church hall to pick up Gran, who waited for her at the curb chatting with Mr. McCarthy.
Gran smiled. “Pat, I’d like you to meet my granddaughter. Diana.”
“Call me Pop. All the young people do.” He held out his hand and shook Diana’s. “Bets and I are old friends.”
“Bets?” Diana glanced at Gran, who was—blushing?
“It was my nickname in the good ol’ days.” Gran waved it off. “When I was a much younger woman. Pat, you really shouldn’t call me that.”
“The hell I won’t! Bets is who you are, and a few liver spots won’t change that.” He smiled at her, and then flashed another grin in Diana’s direction.
Gran laughed, which sounded to Diana unnervingly like a cross between a giggle and a snort. “Oh, Pat!”
Pop turned to Diana. “I offered to take Bets home, but she said she already had a ride.”
“That was very nice of you.” Interesting that in all the socializing she’d pictured Gran doing, a man had never been a part of it. “I’ve got my car in the back. No worries.”
“Next week I’ll pick you up. It’s been too long and we have a lot of catching up to do. How about it?” Pop asked Gran.
Diana wanted to protest and explain that she’d be the one to do the driving, followed by asking to see Pop’s driver’s license and possibly his driving record. But wasn’t this what she’d wanted? Gran out of the house? Making friends? She just hadn’t pictured—this development. But they were just friends, and what could be wrong with that?
Gran looked from Diana to Pop. “Actually, that might keep my granddaughter out of here so yes! Thank you, Pat. Pick me up next Saturday.”
Pop tipped his head, and touched the blue striped bowtie he wore.
“Nice to meet you.” Diana took Gran’s arm and led her to the car. Once inside her car, Diana quizzed Gran on just how well she knew Mr. McCarthy.
But Gran seemed struck mute. “He’s a nice man.”
Diana wasn’t going to borrow trouble. If it got Gran out of the house it had to be a good thing.
* * *
What the hell was he doing? Answer: he had no clue.
The only thing he realized for certain was that every time Diana made no secret of checking him out—her gaze traveling from his chest, abs and lower, then acted like she’d been caught in the middle of a lewd act—something happened to his brain. It stopped working. It was the only reasonable excuse for the way he kept seeking her out.
Part of the problem was that old memories had started to flood back. Like the summer he had spied Diana dancing alone behind the bookstore when she obviously thought no one else could see her. Her sexy belly laugh, which he’d first heard at the lake when he’d pushed Troy off the pier and he’d yelled an expletive. She might look like the girl next door but her laugh was wicked and sensual.
But she was Mrs. Paulsen’s granddaughter, and would be leaving at the end of the summer as she’d done every year since the first time he’d met her. She didn’t strike him as someone who would want to stay in their little town. Yeah, she loved visiting but she had no intention of staying. And maybe that was for the best. Not like he was looking for permanent or had any high hopes that he’d ever find a woman willing to put up with him.
Once he’d finished his forty-eight on Saturday night, he went home and showered. He cooked himself some ramen noodles, and headed out the door to meet Diana for a run.
He found her slumped on the side of the track.
She looked up like she’d been caught slacking, adjusted her glasses and slowly rose, brushing off bits of grass from her knees. She wore a pair of shorts—black jogging ones with an orange stripe down the side. An oversized black t-shirt in neon pink lettering that read, ‘If you find me dead on a jogging trail, I was killed elsewhere and my body moved there’. Obviously, the lingerie the night of the fire was a complete fluke because Diana seemed to have little if no imagination when it came to clothes. Even so, she had great legs that she couldn’t hide under those ridiculous shorts. No matter how hard she was willing to try.
“I was just taking a break. I’m going around again.”
“Sorry I’m late.” He inspected her from top to bottom. Maybe he should take her heart rate first. “You okay?”
“Sure!”
Her false bravado encouraged him. Exercise was healthy and helped everyone so even if she had some misguided reason for it he wouldn’t discourage her. They ran around the track several more times before he acknowledged that she deserved another break. He led her to the bleacher stands and handed her a bottle of water.
“Thanks.” She accepted the bottle and climbed to the top of the bleachers. “I like the view up here.”
He also liked the view. Even those shorts couldn’t hide her world class ass. It would be a crime to make that ass any smaller
as it happened to be the perfect size, but he’d given up on telling women that some men didn’t appreciate the stick figure types. Single women exercised and dressed for each other, he’d been told by both Brooke and Genevieve. That’s when he realized he’d never understand women so he’d given up trying.
“Sometimes the team Billy coaches practices here, on the other side of the field.” He threw a glance in the direction of the baseball diamond in the distance. Empty now.
“I think I’ve seen them.” She took a swig of water. “Did you play baseball too?”
“Nah, not me.” How was he supposed to compete with Billy’s record? Even though he’d been pursued time and time again by the coach who had prayed that some of that skill might have been in the Turlock genes. If so, it had bypassed him. “I played basketball.”
She glanced at him. “That makes sense. You’re tall enough.”
“Yeah, that’s what the coach said but height isn’t everything. I was good but I didn’t excel at it. My best friend was five eight and one of the best point guards we ever had.”
She nodded. “I never played sports, as you can probably guess.”
“I don’t make assumptions.”
“All right, that’s fair.” She blew away a stray hair that had loosened from her ponytail. “I’m sure you remember me as the bookworm. The wallflower. Guys like you didn’t date girls like me.”
“Guys like me?”
“Big man on campus. Athletic. Popular. Handsome.” The last word was almost whispered.
“Were you the only beautiful bookworm at school?” He sat close enough to feel her flinch at the remark.
“C’mon, Scott. Stop.” She looked at her feet.
“No.”
“Please?”
“So we’re just going to pretend nothing is happening between us?”
“Can we?” she almost squeaked the words out.
“I don’t think so. We’re both wildly attracted to each other.”
She sighed. “But what I need now is a friend.”
Ouch. Friend-zoned. Despite his disappointment, he’d never turn his back on a friend in need. Never. The one time he’d thought that a friend could wait, the one time he’d failed to act selflessly, had devastating consequences.
That would never happen again. “You got it.”
“Really?”
This wasn’t about what he wanted, and he agreed it probably wasn’t a good idea. It couldn’t last, anyway.
“I’m your friend, your pal. Whatever you need. Let’s see what we can do to get this video down, and maybe set the record straight about that night.”
“That would be great.”
“I don’t like the gossip any more than you do.”
When Billy had been forced to retire from baseball, the vultures had come to feed on the dead carcass of his career. Then he’d come home to buy the vineyard and they’d started spying on him and his general manager, now wife, Brooke. Scott didn’t care much for reporters as a matter of Billy’s experience, but Stephan the town blogger wasn’t a reporter so much as he was a creep with too much time on his hands.
“Once people get to know me, the real me, they’ll see that night was a freak thing.”
A light bulb suddenly went off in Scott’s head. An explanation for why she’d taken to dressing the way she had, hiding her body from the world. “Is that why you’re dressing like this?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Like what?”
“C’mon.”
“No, tell me.” She glanced down at her t-shirt. “Am I supposed to dress like a cheerleader to run?”
“I didn’t—” Great, he’d stepped into it, and back pedaling at this point might be useless. “Look, I’m just suggesting that you stop worrying about what other people think.”
She gaped, jaw slack. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“Easy for you too.”
“You do care what people think.” She squinted behind her frames.
He loved those liquid brown eyes, deep and dark, and many times flashing heat. Because he enjoyed the flashes of heat, he could admit to sometimes pushing her buttons. He realized he’d hit on one right now, and damned if he couldn’t take his thumb off it. “I care what I think.”
She didn’t appear convinced, giving him a smirk.
But he did care what his family thought. Especially since he’d already embarrassed them enough in this lifetime. So if he played the part of the good guy, everybody’s friend, it was only because he had so much to make up for.
Diana didn’t need to know that.
* * *
Diana stared into the piercing green eyes of her new pal. The way those eyes made her squirm when they almost undressed her didn’t feel friendly. Instead she felt hot hazy deep tugs of lust starting in her stomach and moving decidedly—lower.
She’d never in her life gone for the bad boy, except for that one misguided time with Scott. Even if he’d turned his life around, she’d bet there was still a little bit of the bad boy in Scott. He probably just confined it to the bedroom. Sure, Diana wished she could live her life not giving a crap what anyone thought about her, but that was a dream. She cared what people everywhere thought about her, but most significantly in the town where she was Betty Paulsen’s granddaughter. Right now they seemed to think she needed to wear flannel to bed.
She had to fix that. “You haven’t been the one to get free bathrobes and flannel PJs through the US Postal service.”
He squinted. “Flannel PJs.”
“Since I’ve been here, my secret admirers have sent me no less than two new bathrobes and three pairs of flannel PJs. With hints that I should never wear anything else to bed.”
He chuckled. “Clever.”
“Or mean.”
He nodded. “Are you wearing them?”
“No! I already have a perfectly good bathrobe and I told you that.”
“I meant the flannel.” Was he smirking?
“It’s too hot for flannel.”
“So what do you wear to bed?”
Smooth. She didn’t even see it coming and softened a little. Maybe even smiled. He had a way of flirting with her that made her uneasy because it worked far too well and far too fast. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“It’s why I asked.” He shifted, moving closer.
“Well, pal, it’s not romantic or anything. Normally I wear an oversized long t-shirt to bed.”
“Nothing else?”
“My panties.”
He sat close enough that she could sense his thigh tense next to hers. His voice sounded gruff and deep. “Right.”
“Now how can that turn you on?”
“I could work with the loose t-shirt. Makes sense. I imagine it would pull off easily. And the panties—those usually slide right off too.”
She swallowed. He’d obviously given this a lot of thought and more likely, practice. “So—panties turn you on?”
“Yours.” He slung an arm around her and pulled her in, whispering the word into her hair.
“You haven’t even seen them.” Diana leaned in even closer. From somewhere deep inside her brain, she wondered why she acted as if she’d just swallowed a Crazy pill.
“And whose fault is that?” He stared at her lips.
She stared back, but he still made no move to kiss her. Then she remembered she’d asked him not to, and he’d obviously listened.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She leaned back, catching her breath, pulled her phone out and glanced at the text. “My sister.”
Just checking to make sure you didn’t jog yourself straight into a cardiac induced event. Or that some crazed wino hasn’t slashed your throat. Just kidding. Only Gran is worried about the second one.
I’ll be home in a minute. Diana texted. “I should go.”
He spread his arms across the bleacher behind him. “We’re always interrupted. Someday we’re going to have to do something about that.”
Of course
Scott insisted on walking her home. She let him, but they reverted to their friends status, walking like two normal people and not two idiots who had constant issues crossing the friendship line.
“I’ll call you,” Scott said at Gran’s front lawn.
She didn’t need him to call, because that sounded like expectations and too much like a relationship. But then she told herself that friends called each other too. “Okay.”
Inside, she found Mandy on the couch in front of the TV with a container of Ben & Jerry’s in her hands.
She laughed and pointed. “You look like death. Death by way of jogging. What a way to go.”
“Must be nice to be the tall slender blonde. Move over,” Diana said. “Where’s Gran?”
“She went to bed a few minutes ago, when I reassured her you’re not dead. I think we’re tiring her out. She left your dinner warming.”
“Does she seem okay to you?”
“You mean do I think she needs to be put in the home? No way.”
“I thought so. Mom’s overreacting as usual. Gran is not a shut–in. When are you going back?”
Mandy stopped mid-spoonful of the caramel and salt concoction. “That anxious to get rid of me?”
“Just figured Mom needed you back soon.” Mallory handled all the accounting which was handy when Mom was a self-confessed math phobic. An Excel spreadsheet had once made her openly sob.
“I’ve got a flight back tomorrow. Doing a full-fledged audit. Since Florina came on, nothing makes sense with the ledgers anymore. I’ll figure it out. What’s going on with you and Scott the stud muffin?”
“Nothing,” she lied. “He’s a good guy so he’s running with me. Plus, we both happen to be in that viral video and want it taken down.”
“Which is impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible!” And she was trying damned hard to believe that.
“This one might be.” Mandy shrugged. “I figured you’d be into him.”
She was very much into him since she, along with the rest of the female population, had a weakness for strong and gorgeous. “He’s just going to be my friend.”
THE STARLIGHT HILL COMPLETE COLLECTION: 1-8 Page 72