Hard Line

by Erin McCarthy

  Feelings that had him standing outside her door sweating in his coat like it was July.

  As he rang the doorbell to her apartment, he wondered exactly why Candy had agreed to meet him tonight. He also wondered exactly why he had agreed to meet Candy tonight. He didn’t know what he wanted any more than he knew what she wanted.

  Aside from sex, that is. If she even wanted any more of that. And just why in the hell did he care so much?

  Candy opened the door and smiled shyly at him. “Hi.”

  Oh, damn, she was wearing jeans that hugged every inch of her hips and rounded ass. A red sweater stretched optimistically across her breasts and pulled northward towards her belly button when she reached up to run a hand through her hair.

  The flash of skin left him dazed and hard. And possessive. He didn’t want anyone else to see Candy’s skin but him.

  That sweater was the same one she’d been wearing the day they met, and it made her face glow golden. She’d put some kind of shiny wet-looking stuff on her lips and he wanted to eat it off, one little nibble at a time.

  After an embarrassing pause, he managed to say, “Hi. You look great.”

  Oh, now there was an original compliment.

  “Thanks. Do you want to come in or did you have plans to go somewhere?” Candy tucked her hands behind her back and rocked on the balls of her feet in sexy little black boots.

  “Actually, we should get going. I made dinner plans.”

  Alarm crossed her face. “I’m not dressed for dinner.”

  “Don’t worry, this place is casual.” And blissfully close. His place was only twenty minutes from Candy’s.

  “Oh, okay. Let me get my coat. Come on in.” She turned and disappeared into her apartment. “Do I need the Chunky Chocolate file? Or do you have your laptop?”

  Naïve girl. She actually thought they were going to do work? He’d been called a lot of things over the years, but never stupid. Any man asinine enough to discuss how to market chocolate when he had Candy Appleton alone in his condo was… not Jared.

  “I have my laptop.” On his desk back at the office.

  Jared stepped into her living room and was immediately assaulted by an excess of floral patterns. Jesus, Candy had a whole meadow growing in there, various rioting prints covering a sofa, a loveseat and an overstuffed chair.

  Violent red poppies danced across her curtains and every table was littered with little things that he wouldn’t even claim to know the name of. Things like little tiny wicker chairs with plants growing out of their seats, and wooden cats. The coffee table had a bowl full of lemons on it and a round ball of orange fur that was probably a live cat was sleeping next to it.

  He pictured poppy curtains hanging in his apartment and shuddered. Not that he wanted Candy to live with him or anything. But love did not extend to ugly drapes.

  The L word brought him up short. What the hell was he thinking? He did not love her. He was interested in her. He wanted to get to know her. He had great admiration for her brain and her breasts, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with love.

  Candy stuffed her arms into a very fluffy camel-colored coat, with huge quantities of white fur pluming around her face.

  He didn’t even know her.

  She smiled. “I’m ready,” she said in a breathless siren voice.

  He did know she was trouble. But sometimes getting into trouble was so much fun.

  “Is something wrong, Jared?”

  “No, not at all. Why do you ask?”

  She shrugged and the fur nearly swallowed her face. “You just look a little serious. I was worried that maybe you’re embarrassed because we diddled around in Harold’s office.”

  Diddled? He was pretty sure he’d just been insulted.

  “Diddling is not what I would call it. And I’m not embarrassed. I don’t get embarrassed. Especially not when I enjoyed being with you and would do it again in a heartbeat.” He was conscious his voice was rising, but shit, he couldn’t help it.

  Diddled, for God’s sake. He had fucked her. Hard, and with very positive results.

  Candy reached out and put her warm little hand on his cheek and stroked with her thumb. “I’d do it again too.”

  His anger vanished along with the last of his futile resistance. “Good,” he said gruffly.

  Candy was starting to figure out Jared was a whole lot of masculine bluster. Beneath the cool stare and the cutting words he sometimes tossed off, he had feelings.

  Twenty minutes later when she walked into his condo, she realized those feelings included being really doggone romantic.

  He had recreated her idea of a perfect evening, right down to his own addition of a fire popping warmly in the fireplace.

  Oh, Lord. If she hadn’t been on the edge before—taking in the table set for two, the chilling wine, and the scented candles burning did her in for sure. It felt almost like she was falling for Jared.

  Which was insane, since she was supposed to be using him just for the purpose of having some romping good sex. But the stupid man had gone and actually listened to what she had said when she’d been talking. She wasn’t sure any man besides her stepfather had ever actually heard a single word she’d said outside of work related topics.

  Her ex-husband sure in the heck never had.

  “Oh, Jared, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble.” But she was sure glad he had.

  “It wasn’t any trouble.”

  For a man who claimed not to get embarrassed, he was doing a pretty good imitation of just that. He cleared his throat.

  It just made him all the more gorgeous.

  Jared was wearing casual black jeans and a sky-blue shirt, which made his blue eyes even lighter against his dark hair. He had a smooth, understated style, always looking good but never veering into the world of primping.

  He picked up a remote control and turned the stereo on. Jazz music she didn’t recognize started playing softly. Her legs threatened to give way. He’d even remembered the jazz.

  When he held her chair out for her, she looked at the pasta sitting in a covered bowl ready to be served. If he had cooked food that was edible, she might just never want to leave. “Did you cook this?”

  He snorted. “Hell no. I don’t cook. I ordered it from an Italian restaurant around the corner.”

  Then he sat down across from her. He sounded oddly eager when he said, “Do you cook?”

  “Not unless you call pb and j sandwiches cooking.”

  “I can make omelets,” he said.

  She was impressed. Scrambled was the most she could manage. “I can boil hot dogs and heat up canned corn.”

  They both laughed while he poured the wine and served them pasta and bread. She took a steaming bite and silently thanked the unknown chef. Having spent a good portion of her lunch hour holed up in the ladies’ room, she was now starving.

  After a few bites, Candy said, “We’re not going to get to any work on Chunky Chocolate, are we?”

  Jared looked up from his plate. “We’ll get to it.” He grinned. “Sometime before it’s due on Harold’s desk.”

  She was afraid he would say that. Or really damn pleased was probably the more honest answer.

  “Jared, we should at least try and work on it.” Candy tried to sound firm, but she knew she was failing miserably.

  He kept smiling. Geez, she loved his smile. He didn’t ever look so relaxed at work and she felt a giddy pleasure that she could bring that grin to his face.

  “Alright, let’s think up some slogans while we eat.” Jared took a sip of his wine. “What rhymes with chunky?”

  “Monkey. Punky. Funky.” She leaned back in her chair and nibbled on her bread. “So, how about a monkey at a club eating chocolate?”

  He shot her a withering look.

  She giggled. “Hunky rhymes too.”

  “We’re talking about the ad, Candy, not me.”

  His deadpan expression made her laugh out loud. “Hunky and modest, huh?”


  “I’m a pretty good catch, aren’t I?” His serious expression cracked a little, his lip twitching up in a smile.

  “I know you are. Didn’t I ask why no one’s caught you yet?”

  “Maybe I’ve been waiting for the right woman to figure out how to catch me.”

  A fishing net? Handcuffs? With fantastic sex?

  Candy wished she knew, because she was starting to think she’d like to snag Jared for herself.

  “So say a woman wanted to catch you. What would be the best way to do that?” She tried to keep her voice light, but a curiosity crept into it.

  Jared put his fork down and gave her a searching look that made her want to squirm. He said, “I think by just being herself, and letting me be myself.”

  Then he shrugged. “It sounds like an after-school special, but it’s true. I don’t want games, I want a companion, a friend.”

  He raised his wine glass in mock salute, and his voice lightened. “Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?”

  “No.” Candy shook her head rapidly. “No, it doesn’t. I… I was married once.”

  Jared’s eyes widened. “You were?”

  “Yeah.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t quite force it. “Dean was my boyfriend in high school. It was never a good relationship, not even then. We broke up when I went to college, but when I came back home, he came on strong, said all the right things.”

  Yet to this day she couldn’t imagine what she had been thinking when she had married him. “As soon as we were married, I knew it was a mistake, but I didn’t want to admit that.”

  Jared was gripping his glass tightly. “What did he do to you?”

  Startled, she said, “Nothing. I mean, he didn’t abuse me or anything horrible like that. We just had nothing in common, we didn’t talk. He was violently jealous of guys looking at me, and it just got worse. He had to control everything with our money, where I was going, what I was doing. He didn’t want me wearing makeup or nice clothes.”

  No, Dean had never hit her, but he had made her life miserable, and had stripped her of her dignity. He had humiliated her in front of people she cared about. “He said it was my fault men looked at me, that I was a flirt, a tease.”

  “Jesus, Candy, that’s horrible. How long were you with him?”

  It wasn’t pity in Jared’s voice, just honest concern. It made her feel better about blurting out her past business to him.

  “Three years.” Years that she had accepted were gone and she couldn’t get back.

  “That’s a long time to live like that.”

  “It is. But I got away as soon as I was ready, and thank goodness we never had any children together.”

  “Are you divorced then?”

  His hand had snaked across the table and was holding hers, stroking with a light touch.

  “Oh, heck yeah. He tried to fight it, but the judge was friends with my stepdad and he wasn’t having any of Dean’s crap. Judge Anderson pushed it through nice and fast, and I moved to Knoxville. But it still felt too close to Dean, so I picked up and came to Chicago. My roommate from college lives here.”

  She waited for the apology that was sure to come. The pity or even the recrimination. If Jared thought there was an ounce of truth to Dean’s accusations of her being a dick-tease, she would either die from mortification or impale him with a salad fork.

  He didn’t do what she expected at all.

  Instead, he squeezed her hand hard and said, very matter of fact, “Your ex sounds like a big pussy.”

  “Jared!” Good gravy, she couldn’t believe he’d said that. She’d never heard him swear like that before.

  But then Dean inspired those feelings in her too.

  “Well, he is.” Jared was unrepentant. “Any real man would be proud to have you as his wife. He’d want you to dress up and look all sexy, so he could stroll into a room and let every guy there know that he had managed to marry a hot woman like you.”

  Candy flushed with pleasure.

  “So I think your ex had issues about his manhood. That’s the only explanation for treating you like that.”

  Candy had issues with Dean’s manhood now too, since Jared had managed to make her moan squished up against a mahogany office desk. Dean had never inspired anything more than a pleasant sigh from her, and that was on his best days.

  “He wanted to own you, didn’t he?” Jared had pushed his chair back, but hadn’t let go of her hand.

  Candy’s arm was stretched clear across the table, but she never even noticed the awkward position. Jared’s words sliced something deep inside, touching a raw spot she hadn’t known even existed anymore.

  “What do you mean?” She thought she knew precisely what he meant.

  “That your ex wanted a pretty wife on his arm, like a cool car or a great home theater system. Then when he had you, he worried about losing you to someone else who might want you.”

  Maybe she had suspected that all along, but she had never discussed it with anyone. To have Jared guess what might be the truth was an odd relief. “Probably,” she choked out.

  Then she spoke in a rush. “Listen, Jared, I don’t… I’m not… my ex wasn’t right about the tease thing. I…”

  Crud. Candy trailed off, mortified beyond words. She had sashayed into Harold’s office and wiggled her ass in Jared’s face.

  “Come here.” Jared patted his knee like he was Santa and she was a naughty little girl who needed reassurance.

  Common sense told her not to do it. But of course she did.

  And Santa had never had thighs that muscular.

  Nor had Santa ever asked her about her sex life. Jared did.

  He asked baldly, “When was the last time you were with a man? Before today, that is.”

  She swallowed hard and studied the buttons on his shirt. “It was Dean. Three months before I left him two years ago.”

  “So you haven’t been with any man since your divorce?”

  “No.”

  “Until today.”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned. “I screwed up then, Candy. I shouldn’t have lost control like that.”

  His eyes dropped to her lips. A finger stroked her chin briefly. “You deserve better than that.”

  Candy was shocked that he could even think for one minute that it had been less than sexy as hell. It had been wild, yes, and the opposite of what she had thought she wanted, but it had been the most erotic experience of her life.

  So far. She was hoping they could expand on her portfolio here soon.

  “Jared. It was just right. See, I had to know that I could let myself go like that. I was starting to think there was something wrong with me because every man I’ve dated since the divorce made me feel about as sexy as a fish carcass.”

  Jared’s mouth fell open. “That’s not very sexy.”

  She giggled. “No. But I wanted it to be different with you. And it was.”

  Jared’s hands rested against the small of her back and he had managed to slip under her sweater to touch her skin. “So I made you feel sexy?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  His lips brushed her neck. “Do I make you feel sexy now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can make you feel sexier.”

  Jared moved up her sides, causing a shiver to pass through her. “But what about Chunky Chocolate?”

  Candy’s eyes fell closed as Jared reached her breasts and slowly made his way around to the front to caress her nipples.

  “Chocolate is a replacement for sex,” he said. You don’t need it.” His tongue teased her, slipping into her ear then back out.

  She tried to laugh, but it sounded like a wheezing moan. It felt right sitting in his lap, his erection pressing against her and his hot breath pushing down her neck.

  Jared murmured, “I’ll never try to possess you. I’ll never do anything you don’t want. I’ll listen.”

  Candy put her hands on Jared’s shoulders and knew that she’d gone and done something stupid. S
he had fallen for Jared and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it now.

  Her brain, which she had been touting all these years as something to everyone who thought her a ditz, had decided to abandon her. Her body was betraying her by quivering like a Jell-O mold under Jared’s touch, leaving her with the damp panty problem all over again.

  Which left her heart on its own to tumble straight forward into idiocy. She wanted to see where this could go beyond one night.

  She blurted out, “I don’t want this day to end. It’s taken a turn I hadn’t expected.”

  Jared’s mouth still at the corner of hers. “It doesn’t have to. Let me spend the night.”

  It wasn’t a good idea. It was a bad, you’re going to wake up and be really damn sorry, idea, but Candy didn’t give a rat’s patootie.

  She kissed him, savoring the taste of the wine on his lips. “I’d like that. But fair warning, my pajamas are in the laundry.”

  Jared’s eyebrows raised. “Even better. You do not need pajamas.”

  “They’re cute,” she teased him. “Pink with white kitties on them.”

  “You’re cuter naked.” His hands were on the bottom of her sweater, ready to shuck it off of her.

  She gripped his shirt. “You’ve never seen me naked. Not really.”

  “All the more reason to hurry.” He tugged her sweater, yanking it up to her breasts. “Lift your arms.”

  Jared’s voice was hard and urgent. Candy did as he requested and said, “Okay, but I get the top.”

  He stopped tugging on her sweater. “Top what? I don’t have any bunk beds, sugar.”

  Candy laughed. “Very funny.” Her arms were still in the air and the neck of her turtleneck sweater was inside out over her face. “On top of you.”

  She wiggled, red fuzz clinging to her lips and her eyelashes matting. “Now get this sweater off of me. I can’t breathe or see anything.”

  Jared pulled until her head popped through, her hair flattened into her eyes. She waved her arms around in the air. “My hands are still stuck.”

  But Jared was too busy unhooking her front clasp bra to help her out. When his mouth closed around her nipple and drew her towards him, Candy found she didn’t give a darn if she was tangled up in cable knit.