She bit down on a cry of frustration and glanced over her shoulder to see two couples spilling from the pub’s rear entrance. They strolled in the direction of the far side of the field, but it was too late. She felt Jack withdraw from her even before the delicious warmth of his hand left her breast. There was a sense of iron control to his movements as he stepped back and slid her gently, firmly to her feet.
He took another step back and folded his arms. He might as well have hung a No Right Of Way sign around his neck. The passionate high drained through her confused hormones, leaving her breathless and slightly dazed.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly, raw hunger straining at the determination set in his jaw.
No, she wanted to scream. With shaky fingers, she adjusted the cup of her bra and did up her buttons. Her eyes searched his, trying to understand what had changed. Her throat went dry. “Oh, God, you seriously meant it when you said this was a mistake.”
“You’d think so too, if you hadn’t…”
“If I hadn’t…?” Understanding finally came to her. “You think I’m drunk and don’t know what I’m doing!”
“Not drunk.” He gave a wry grin. “But you’ve had enough wine to lower your inhibitions.”
This just got better and better. “I don’t need lowered inhibitions in order to enjoy sex for the sheer hell of it.”
“You do when you’re still mad at me from the last time you indulged.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snorted, cursing both his arrogance and the truth. No way could he ever find out that she’d barely looked at another man since that night, let alone been tempted. He’d make mincemeat of that, season it with leftovers from her pride and feed it to his commitment phobia. “I’ve indulged plenty since.”
His arms unfolded. He pushed his hands through his hair, then brought them down and hitched his thumbs in the belt of his jeans. “Would you care to state a number?” he asked casually.
Too casually. The suggestion that he might give a damn bristled the hairs at her nape. The scowl riding his brows and the intensity of his gaze unwound the anger she’d coiled for the night. This primate ‘you’re my girl’ thing he had going on was so typical Jack and such a load of shit. She knew first hand that his actions seldom lived up to his attitude.
“After you, Jack.” Her smile was sickly sweet and something that felt a lot like panic clawed at her belly. She did so not want to hear this answer. But now the question was out there, and a darkness inside her, compelling her to press on. “A rough estimate will do. Ten? Twenty?”
He remained silent. The pause seemed to stretch to infinity and then he pulled out that grin that eased his scowl and dimpled his cheek and turned her knees to butter. Her breath caught and the rest of her ached for what she’d started and he refused to finish.
Why wouldn’t he take what she offered and call it his lucky day? She hadn’t been generating that heat all on her own. He’d been hot, hard and pulsing between her thighs with no good reason to back down.
All the angst and over-thinking was her style, not his.
Oh! She glared at him, her cheeks stinging at the unvoiced accusation. Not again. Friggin’ unbelievable. This time he hadn’t even waited until the morning after.
“You missed the part where I said ‘your game, your rules.’ Is that what you’re afraid of? Seriously? That I’d wake up sober beside you and demand more than you’re bloody able to give?” She covered the precious distance he’d claimed to jab a finger at his chest. “Where did you get this warped idea of me? Maybe I wouldn’t normally sleep with a guy unless I feel there’s some potential for a future, but I’ve never expected a life-long commitment from anyone up front.”
She jabbed at his chest again. He glanced down, then up to meet her hard stare again, but made no effort to stop the jabbing. He looked a little shell-shocked.
“I’m a big girl, Jack, I know that sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t…and you know what? Maybe sometimes I’m entitled to enjoy a fling without your preconceived notions making me feel worse than shit.”
She paused to gulp down a much-needed breath.
He took the gap with a drawled, “Are you done?”
I’m just getting warmed up. This fight had been brewing inside her for far too long and Kate had been spot on. It was exhilarating to finally get it out of her system.
She shook her head, giving one last jab before standing back.
“And for the record, I never expected more than a couple of nights from you. Why would I, when you’ve never let a single visit over-stay three days?” Her voice pitched in anger. Of course she’d dealt with stirrings that went deeper than sex, but she’d never put that on Jack. She’d known his limits and she’d kept well within them. “What I did expect was respect, for me as a woman, for our friendship.”
“I’ve always respected you.”
Yeah, right. “I wasn’t a stranger you picked up in a bar and never had to see again.”
“Come on, Megan, that isn’t why—”
“You changed your cell number,” she said, feeling the chill rippling over her spine all over again. That moment of discovery was, quite possibly, the most humiliating moment in her life.
“My phone met with an untimely accident.” His expression indicated he still didn’t get it. “I got an emergency replacement from a different service provider and ended up staying with the new contract.”
“The very next day?” That’s how long she’d waited before calling, hoping to gain some measure over her anger so they could have a calm and collected conversation. “That’s quite a coincidence.”
Suddenly he couldn’t meet her eyes. He grimaced and studied her feet.
“I thought not.” She gave a disgruntled laugh. “I had no intention of stalking you! Stupid me, for believing we could have a rational discussion about how to play through our attraction without making life impossible in the future. Sex was always going to complicate matters, but I thought once we’d burned through the passion, we could find a way to go forward without too much baggage.”
Now she was done. She was trembling from head to toe, her heart pounding, pushing tears to her eyes. She fingered the bulge of her keys at her hip pocket, but she was over the limit and couldn’t drive. She clamped her jaw and glanced across the field to the welcoming light that hung over the pub’s rear entrance. That option involved too many explanations she wasn’t ready to give. She supposed the two-mile walk home in the dark wouldn’t kill her, but what the hell!
Megan spun on her heels and yanked open the Land Rover’s passenger door. As she slid into the seat, however, she decided she wasn’t quite done. What she had to say next would probably confirm his worst suspicions: she was an emotional wimp, a sucker for happy-ever-after. But this was her unzipped and she needed it all out there, whether he could handle it or not.
Jack hadn’t moved a muscle, hadn’t said a word.
“I wasn’t trying to chain you down to a commitment. When I asked where we went from there, it was an opening to lay down some ground rules we could both live with.” She couldn’t meet his gaze, kept her eyes level with his chest. “You and Frank were all the family either of you had. You spent so little time here with him as it was, Jack, I didn’t want you to have yet another reason to stay away.”
She pulled the door closed and settled into her seat. Her head fell back, her eyes squeezed tight to hold the tears in that were closing around her heart and swelling her throat. She hadn’t realised how much that unleashed fight had been holding her together. Now it was gone and she was falling apart. The pressure on her chest had lifted too, a weight she’d grown so accustomed to, she almost missed it. She wanted to weep like a baby and she wasn’t even sure why. Relief…perhaps? Right or wrong, she cared what Jack thought of her and for the longest time, he’d been thinking the worst.
She opened her to eyes to see Jack had moved around to the other side. He leaned forward against the door, not climbing in. Givin
g her some space to get it together? Or battling his own demons? She brought her gaze from him on a sigh, wishing she could truly hate him, plain and simple, without the backlash of sympathy and understanding. He’d lived a solitary, nomad’s life since the age of seven. That wasn’t a bad habit one could break, easily or otherwise. That’s why she’d never been mad at him for leaving, only ever for the way in which he’d left.
It was a good five minutes before Jack climbed in, started the engine and navigated the Land Rover from the parking field. The threat of weeping had subsided and she’d more or less bound her wayward emotions. God alone knew what all the fuss was about. Tomorrow would make it Day 5 and she’d eat every page of her current manuscript if Jack was still in the vicinity of Corkscrew Bay by mid-morning.
She snapped her seatbelt into the buckle, tucked one foot beneath her backside and turned her shoulder into the seat so that she faced him. The reminder that he’d be out of here soon and it was anyone’s guess when—if—he’d be back, eclipsed everything else that had happened this evening. Megan drank in his profile, committing every shaded hollow and shadowed ridge to memory.
Once they were on the narrow lane that skirted the town along the base of the cliff, he glanced at her.
“You’re not lily-white pure yourself, you know.” His voice was a deep rumble that spread through her with the warmth of a compliment rather than the jibe that it was. His gaze went to the road. “No matter how much you want me, you needed one too many glasses of wine to blame before you’d allow yourself to give into it.”
Wasn’t that the truth. To be fair, she felt stone-cold sober right now and if he gave the slightest indication, she may well pounce anyway. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I take my sexual encounters short, spicy and honest,” he said, eyes glued to the road as they began the ascent up Bluff Drive. “If you need a get-out clause before we hit the sheets, then that’s one doubt too many for me.”
“No doubts,” she murmured. Short? Yes. Honest? Maybe. Spicy? Huh! It was the huh part that flustered her hormones all over again. “Just a little confusion as to how mad I was at you.” She settled forward, moving her gaze from Jack to the windshield. Down, girl. No hope of pouncing or being pounced on tonight. Jack’s sense of honour may be screwed up, but it was his and he always stuck to it.
Chapter 5
He was either a saint or the dumbest male on the planet. Jack tossed the photograph he’d been staring at onto the pile and scooted up from the floor. He was supposed to be pulling a portfolio together for Art de Natique and that was going nowhere fast. One half of his attention was on next door and the other half was hard-wired to the semi-erection he couldn’t get rid of.
Megan’s alarm had gone off at six-thirty, a piercing cock-a-doodle-doo, and like an idiot his body had immediately tuned in to the fact that she was waking up in bed less than two feet away from him.
If not for a very flimsy wall, their headboards would be touching.
From there, it was just a short hop down memory lane to feel her satin-soft skin slide over him in a slow, kittenish stretch as her eyes fluttered open on a drowsy groan. Warm fingers trailing across his chest as she rolled lazily onto her back. A long, shapely leg tangled in the sheet she’d taken with her. The firm mound of one breast exposed between the white folds of the sheet, peaked with a pebbled, sensitive nipple that sent a rush of fresh desire straight to his groin.
Maybe he should move his bed back in here.
He glanced around the stark guest bedroom—one armchair he’d brought up from downstairs and a wobbly bookshelf—seriously considering it. Because another night of sleeping beside Megan, give or take a wall, and he’d be seriously reconsidering the noble intentions that had kept him on the wrong side of her front door last night.
No, not the wrong side. That kind of thinking was a shove down the slippery slope, the one that landed him right on top of her, in his bed or hers, it didn’t matter… Jack gave an irritable grunt. Damn it all, when it came to Megan, he was like a plane circling in a holding pattern and he knew exactly what the problem was.
He had a handful of friends sprinkled around the globe and plenty of lovers littered along the way, but he’d never blurred the lines.
With Megan, the lines weren’t just blurred; they were non-existent. Their friendship was founded on flirtatious teasing and had simmered hotter with each visit.
The sound of Megan’s front door banging drew him toward the open window. He had to pick his way over the photos strewn across the floor, the task that should be occupying his head instead of the testosterone-induced clutter.
The sight that greeted him on reaching the window wasn’t much help.
Not at all.
Megan, skimpy white shorts riding up her backside, balanced on one leg with the other raised level with the porch, her foot propped against the edge for support. She stretched forward with the supple grace of a ballerina, her torso bent double along that golden thigh by the time she was finished. She grabbed her ankle and perked her cute butt high while she worked a calf back and forth to warm up the muscle. As she straightened, her breasts bulged close to spilling from a body-hugging tank top. She changed legs, flipped her ponytail off her cheek and spread out over the opposite thigh.
“Aw, come on,” he muttered under his breath.
He was walking on eggshells around his own damned cock and his neighbour had taken up erotic aerobics in the front garden. “You have got to be kidding.” His eyes turned skyward, but of course they didn’t stay there.
Her top slid even lower the second time around. She came up again, gave an ineffectual tug to the bodice, then dipped a hand inside to cup one breast back into her bra. His jaw dropped. There might have been saliva. His blood was definitely panting.
Why was she off limits again?
She raised her arms and linked her hands high above her head, arching her back and jutting out her breasts in a feline manner designed to drive a man wild. Her head went back and she’d started to roll it from her left shoulder to her right, when her eyes met his and startled wide.
Okay, so that performance hadn’t been for his benefit.
He leaned out the window with his forearms resting on the ledge. “Morning there.”
Her cheeks tipped in a hot blush. She dropped her arms and shook them out. “How long have been gawking at me?” she demanded.
Long enough. She’d been doing the stretching, but he was all warmed up and not looking for a fight. “Sleep well?”
“Like a baby.” She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and turned to jog down the path and through the gate she always left open.
He watched her pert backside bounce to the rhythm of her stride until she disappeared around the bend at the end of the drive. His gaze moved to the blue expanse of ocean as he contemplated his options. Leave Megan the hell alone. And leave Megan the hell alone.
“I am so screwed.” He pushed away from the window, dragging his hands through his hair.
Maybe he was approaching this problem from the wrong angle. Their friendship didn’t need to end gracefully; it deserved to go out on a big bang for old time’s sake.
Megan wasn’t going to be the girl-next-door for very much longer. She’d wanted first option on 21a, and he’d give it to her as soon as the contract arrived from his lawyer. He didn’t know her financial position, but he’d set the sale price back four years to what he’d paid for the place. He knew she wanted to restore the house to its whole again, and he’d do his damned best to help her make it happen.
Meanwhile, he had a little free time on his hands and a hot soon-to-be-ex neighbour to fill them.
When that didn’t sit quite right in his chest, he knew he was deluding himself. That argument might have worked initially, but since then, he’d gotten to know her. He’d gotten to care. However unintentionally, he’d already unearthed the kinks in his tried-and-tested philosophy when it came to Megan Lane.
He refused to risk hurting
her again.
But damn, there had to be more than one alternate angle to come at this. He never gave up this easily when it came to looking for the perfect shot
Fragments from her outburst last night came back to him.
I’m entitled to enjoy a fling without your preconceived notions making me feel worse than shit.
I never expected more than a couple of nights from you.
I thought once we’d burned through the passion, we could find a way to go forward without too much baggage.
Maybe it was time he listened to the woman. She wasn’t a child and she seemed to know exactly what she wanted. And how she wanted it. She even had a strategy to conclude their fling in an amicable fashion.
He couldn’t find a single flaw to argue against. His grin came out before he recalled the obvious hitch: Megan was royally pissed at him.
He was waiting for her on the porch when she pulled up in her car forty minutes later. She must have jogged the two miles into town to collect it. He jumped the hedge and strolled around her side of the house.
“Hey,” he called as she climbed out, “I could have given you a lift in.”
“I was going for a jog anyway.” She clicked the door closed and leant against it. “What time are you leaving?”
“For where?”
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged, those expressive eyes narrowing on him. “The Serengeti plains? The Amazon rainforest? The Republic of Congo?”
“Tempting, all of them.” He grinned, taking a step closer to her. “But my immediate plans don’t extend beyond Smugglers Inn. This evening,” he added succinctly. “Join me?”
“Yeah, right.” She folded her arms, inadvertently—he guessed, given her tone—swelling her breasts practically out of her low cut Lycra tank top. “Because that worked out so well for us the last time.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” he reminded her. The romantic setting of the eighteenth-century Inn, tucked away in a sea-battered cove, had lured them to their downfall faster than a smuggler chasing a case of contraband rum.
Falling for the Guy Next Door Page 5
