Barking Up the Wrong Tree

by Jenn McKinlay

  A tiny sound, a whimper, escaped Carly’s lips and she felt James smile against her mouth as he went back in to kiss her again and again almost as if he was determined to coax more sexy sounds out of her. Carly was more than willing to let him.

  “Oh, ho, what’s this?” a voice cried as the cover of the heavy canvas drapes was snatched away. “Don’t tell me Jamie has finally brought a girl to meet the family.”

  As if it were her own conscience barking at her for the public display of affection, Carly jerked back from James. He was staring at her as if he planned to devour her, and the hot fire of desire raging between them overwhelmed any lick of common sense she might have and she knew that at this moment she would let him do anything he wanted to her. She was gasping for breath and so was he. The rapid rise and fall of his chest made her smile and she put her hand over his heart to see if it was racing as fast as hers.

  Suddenly, someone grabbed her arm and jerked her away from James. She started to protest but then her gaze met a pair of furious pale blue eyes and just like that the past eleven years of her carefully reconstructed life fell away as if it had been clobbered by a wrecking ball.

  “Carly? Carly DeCusati?” Preston Bradley was staring at her as if he’d swallowed his tongue.

  Carly felt the blood drain from her face as the man—the same man who had shattered her heart and destroyed her trust in men—loomed over her looking like he wanted to drag her out of the party and toss her into the street.

  “Hi,” she said. She gave him a little finger wave. She was amazed the word managed to muscle its way past the lump in her throat.

  The pale blue eyes that had once reduced Carly to a lovesick kitten now made her feel as if she was being impaled by shards of ice.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  The shame that Carly had put years of time and miles of distance behind her rose up like a dark shadow and blocked out the light. She couldn’t breathe, her mouth was dry, and her hands were sweating. She felt as if she’d just had her legs kicked out from under her and she was going to fall in a broken heap onto the floor.

  Amazingly, James’s arms came around her from behind, holding her up and supporting her. She had never been more grateful to anyone in her entire life.

  “I . . . I didn’t know you were related to James until a few days ago,” she stuttered but she didn’t know if she was talking to herself or Preston.

  “You didn’t, really?” Preston asked.

  He wasn’t looking at Carly but rather at James. There was a tension there and Carly figured it must be because of Preston and Heather shacking up behind James’s back. The mere thought of the two of them treating James so badly made Carly’s blood boil and she had to take a deep breath to calm her temper.

  “She didn’t,” James said. His voice was cold. “We’ve never spoken of you before we started planning the party.”

  He made it clear that he thought Preston wasn’t worth the time and Carly almost laughed out loud at the look of disbelief on Preston’s face. God, what a narcissist.

  “Sure you didn’t,” Preston scoffed. His gaze was withering. He stepped toward her and he hissed, “I’m Preston Sinclair Bradley, a fact that I’m sure you knew when you stalked me after our brief relationship.”

  “Relationship?” Carly blinked. She felt her temper begin to heat. “That’s what you’re calling it? Seriously?”

  “Listen, I don’t know what game you’re playing, Carly, but you need to leave immediately.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” James said. He shifted so that Carly was behind him and he was facing Preston. “So you and Carly knew each other once. So what? Are you planning to share the details?”

  “Do you want me to?” Preston asked. “I could.”

  “And how would that work out for you?” James asked. “You’ve already got quite the reputation in the family.”

  Carly glanced around James to see the two men glaring at each other. Their fists were clenched and their jaws were tight. It was clear that the layers of betrayal ran deep between these two.

  “Don’t threaten me,” Preston hissed.

  “Then you’d better watch how you treat my girlfriend.”

  “Your girlfriend?” Preston snapped. “Are you crazy? You can’t be serious with that—”

  “Tread carefully, Preston,” James said. The warning in his voice was unmistakable.

  Carly pressed her forehead into his back. She wanted to run, she wanted to hide, she wanted a meteor to hit the brewery and blow them all to bits. Okay, perhaps that was overly dramatic, but she wouldn’t have minded if a random fire broke out somewhere on the premises.

  “Jamie, you can’t date her.” Preston gaped. “Don’t you get it? She’s using you to get to me.”

  “Wow, there’s a level of narcissism you don’t see every day. Think pretty highly of yourself there, don’t you, A Factor?” Lola asked as she joined them with several cousins flanking her.

  “Shut up, Lola,” Preston snapped. “And stop calling me A Factor! What does that even mean?”

  There was a ripple of laughter among the cousins, all of whom were watching the confrontation as if they had front-row seats to a show.

  Carly felt herself relax just the tiniest bit. They called him A Factor and, boy, they didn’t know the half of it. She was here for James not him. She sucked in a shaky breath. She had thought the shame from the past, how small Preston had made her feel, would destroy her if she ever saw him again. But here she was confronting him and she was okay.

  Preston Bradley couldn’t hurt her anymore. The realization made her feel as if a small car had been lifted off her chest. He had no impact upon her. None. Coming here with James, who was all that was good, had set her free. She was almost giddy with the rush of pure relief that hit her low and deep.

  But Preston wasn’t about to let it go. He stepped close to James and hissed, “How did she even find you? Did you ask yourself that? Don’t you find it odd that she chose to date you of all people?”

  “They met at a bachelor auction,” Tom called out helpfully. “Carly bagged herself a James.”

  “No, no, it was in jail,” someone else shared with a laugh. “James staked her out when she was released.”

  Preston glanced around the courtyard, looking bewildered and frustrated. No one was buying into his drama. The man who had made her final days of college an exercise in heartache and humiliation had no one groveling at his feet, while he kicked her in the teeth for their amusement.

  It occurred to her that she had control of this situation, not him. The balance of power had shifted and it made her stiffen her back and stop hiding behind James. She didn’t need to hide from Preston Bradley, not anymore.

  She stepped forward and said, “I can assure you, Preston, my interest in James has nothing to do with you. In fact, I’m dating him in spite of the fact that he is your cousin. I’m here to be with James, not you. Just so we’re clear, zero fucks are being given about you.”

  She leaned into James’s side and he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in close, supporting her and comforting her at the same time.

  “I don’t believe you,” Preston said. “I don’t believe you’re a couple. It’s not possible.”

  “It’s true. Their meeting is a classic,” another cousin cackled. “They met when James was working as a stripper. Carly stuffed his G-string.”

  The twenty-something young woman then busted out what Carly assumed was supposed to be stripper moves but looked more like she was miming riding a rodeo bull, which made everyone hoot with laughter.

  “Yeah, and this is why saying we met in the bakery might have been the better choice,” James whispered in her ear.

  His gruff growl made her shiver and Carly leaned into him, feeling his warmth and strength buffer the humiliation that was nipping at her heels just waitin
g for her to be vulnerable, so it could sink its teeth into her flesh and render her crippled. She was not about to let it.

  “Noted,” she said.

  On impulse, she rose up on her tiptoes and went to kiss his cheek. James must have anticipated her move because he turned toward her at just the right moment and their mouths met in one of the sweetest kisses Carly had ever received. Again, she was reminded of what a good man James was and she was grateful all over again.

  When they broke apart, she gazed up at him, wishing there were words for what she needed to say to him. Instead, she just adored him with her eyes and he did the same.

  Carly glanced back at Preston. He was regarding them with suspicion as if he couldn’t imagine that they were together. In his designer jeans, loafers, a chunky wool sweater, and without a strand of his thick black hair out of place, he looked so Ken doll perfect that Carly was reminded of how long it took him to get ready for any outing. So very different from James and how he rubbed his hand through his hair and called it done. How had she ever imagined that she was in love with the A Factor?

  “Are we done here?” James asked Carly.

  “More than,” she said, making it clear that Preston’s presence didn’t bother her one bit.

  The dismissal was clearly more than he could take. He looked at James with a sneer full of malice. “Well, if you really don’t care that you’re fucking my sloppy seconds—”

  That was as far as he got before James punched him right in the mouth with an uppercut that snapped Preston’s head back and sent him sprawling onto the table behind him. When James looked like he was going to dive after him, Carly grabbed his arm and dug in her heels.

  Tom grabbed James’s other arm and between them, they weighed enough to stop James’s forward momentum.

  “That’s enough, Jamie,” Tom said. “You delivered a good one on the A Factor. Let’s not upset the party with an out-and-out brawl.”

  Preston was lying across a dinner table, flailing as he tried to extract himself from the refuse. Carly thought it telling that no one helped him up, not even Horrible, his wife, who was standing off to the side, looking as if the sight of her husband sickened her.

  “Preston?” An older woman with the same ice blue eyes came dashing across the veranda. “Preston, baby, what happened?”

  Carly knew without being told that this was Preston’s mother.

  “Preston bumped into James’s fist,” Tom said. “Freak accident, truly.”

  “Uh-oh, you’d better bounce before Aunt Grace figures out that he didn’t trip and land on your knuckles,” Lola said.

  “Agreed. Might be a good time for you and Carly to go do a walk-through of the lighthouse for tomorrow’s party,” Tom said.

  He spun James around and pushed him toward the exit. Tom gave Carly a desperate glance and she tightened her grip on James.

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “Come on, James, party prep is never done.”

  He looked like he’d balk but Carly was stronger than she looked; plus, she really needed to get away from here and put a hundred yards or miles between her and her past.

  Chapter 27

  “This is lovely,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

  James glowered but she knew it had nothing to do with her question so she let him resume pacing.

  They had driven to James’s lighthouse, but because the main part of the house was full of decorations for the party, they had checked on Hot Wheels, who was fast asleep on his bed, and then retreated up into the top of the lighthouse. While Carly examined the lights she’d strung in the windows, which spelled out Happy Birthday, Pops!, James paced around the room.

  “Come on,” she said. She pushed him toward the bed in the center of the room and tugged him down beside her.

  James glanced back at the stairs as if he was considering going back down to return to the brewery to find Preston and finish what he started.

  “Don’t even think it,” she said. Then she climbed into his lap, straddling his thighs so that he was pinned down and they were facing each other.

  The glower left James’s face, much as she thought it would, and was replaced by a look of regret. She refused to let him feel badly about what had happened. If Preston had behaved like a nice guy and not, well, an A Factor, then James never would have clocked him. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Preston’s.

  James moved his hands to her hips and leaned his head back as he studied her. It was too dark for her to gauge the color of his eyes, but she suspected they were veering off into her favorite shade of blue.

  “Carly, I am so sorry. Preston was so rude. I never should have—” he began but she interrupted him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’s not your fault. There’s no way you could have known what happened between your cousin and me, a fact I’m finding incredibly embarrassing right now.”

  “I wish things had been different,” he said and Carly got the feeling he wanted to talk. She did not.

  “Does it matter? We’re here right now,” she said. She studied his face. It was a good face. Handsome but not pretty, honest but not judgy; yes, she really liked James’s mug. In fact, she liked everything about him.

  She had never had a guy punch someone on her behalf before and the fact that the guy who got punched was also the one who had all but destroyed her self-esteem when she’d been at her most vulnerable—well, that made James Sinclair something pretty special in her book.

  She knew she had drawn the boundary line very clearly between them, and she knew that if it was going to change, she was going to have to be the one to open the border, so to speak.

  Carly wasn’t one to give out confusing signals, so instead of talking over the situation, she decided the clear way forward was to use action instead of words. She ran her index finger over his bottom lip. When his lips parted in surprise she placed her mouth against his, making it more than clear that the conversational portion of the evening was over.

  She felt his hands clutch her hips as if he couldn’t decide whether to pull her in or push her off. She knew that as a nice guy, he was probably struggling between doing what he wanted to do—her—and what he thought he should do—not her. She decided to make it harder for him, and by harder she did not mean the decision.

  She slid forward on his lap until his guy parts and her girl parts were in perfect lockstep, then she wriggled just the teensiest bit. James dropped his hands from her hips as if she’d burnt him. She smiled against his mouth and then slid her mouth to his ear where she gently bit down on his earlobe.

  He hissed out a breath and pulled back to lock his gaze onto hers as if he wasn’t sure what was happening between them and was afraid to get his hopes up.

  “I didn’t think temporary girlfriend meant spending the night together,” he said.

  “It didn’t,” she agreed. “But I changed my mind. I don’t want my life dictated by my past anymore.”

  “Oh, Carly, I wish we had met differently.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, I like the way we met.” She leaned in close and whispered, “James, oh, James.”

  “Oh, fuck,” he said. “I can’t think . . . damn it.”

  His hands came back to her hips and he locked her in place on his lap while he reclaimed her mouth in a kiss that Carly was pretty sure made sparklers shoot out of her fingertips.

  As if he couldn’t touch her enough, he let go of her hips and buried one hand in her hair while the other trailed up her side to cup her breast. Carly arched into him. She matched his hunger perfectly, because she felt as if she could never get enough of him, of this, of the way he made her feel.

  She tugged up the hem of his shirt up so that she could touch his skin. He hissed a breath and his lips left her mouth to slide down the side of her neck to the base of her throat where her pulse pounded like a bass drum.

 
Carly closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling of being close to someone not just for a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am one-night stand, but because she liked him. She genuinely liked James Sinclair. She waited for the panic to set in, the feeling that he was too close, that her potential to be hurt was too great; instead, she felt a sweet sense of connection.

  She liked seeing that when she ran her hands over his hot skin, he arched into her touch. And when she skimmed her palm across the front of his pants, he bucked against her and she chuckled. She enjoyed having the knowledge of their previous encounter to make him as crazy for her as she was for him.

  “If you touch me like that again, I might lose my mind,” he panted. So naturally, she did.

  One minute Carly was across his lap and the next she was lying down on the bed with James on top of her. She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him in until they were pressed together from head to toe.

  The pale light from the strands of bulbs Carly had strung in the windows washed over them. Carly wanted to see the light dance on James’s skin, and she pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it to the ground.

  “I was fine, totally fine with my life . . . and then you showed up and changed everything. I told myself that if you waved me in, I was going to ruin you for any other man,” he said. He paused to unzip her dress, pulling the top down to pool about her waist. “The first time I saw you, I wasn’t looking for this, but I couldn’t get you out of my head. It’s like I knew deep down that you belonged with me. Now I know it for sure, but really, I’ve known it for a long time.”

  It was quite possibly the hottest thing any man had ever said to her, and Carly was pretty sure she melted into a puddle beneath him.

  When he unhooked her bra and caught the hardened peak of one breast in his mouth, she moaned his name again and dug her fingers into his hair. Any coherent thoughts she might have had were gone like ashes on the wind under the onslaught of his mouth on her body.

  He wasn’t gentle, he was ruthless as he employed all of the knowledge he had learned from their previous night against her. He used his teeth to inflict a flash of pain before he ran his tongue over the abused flesh, making Carly writhe beneath him with a longing that was a painful physical ache down deep inside.