Her heart gave a thump, and another until it was thumping all over the place. His jeans molded to his long muscled thighs with loving dedication, his black T-shirt did the same to his shoulders and well-shaped biceps. There was a streak of dirt on his cheek and rough stubble on his jaw. His hair was mussed and coated in dust, making Kelsey want to run her hands through it.
At least he was wearing his shirt.
His eyes swept over her, their ocean blue sparkling, and his impossibly sinful mouth curved in an appreciative smile that had her knees wobbling. “Hey, sugar.”
The endearment seeped into her, making her think of chocolate and cream and everything sweet, and what she would love to do if he were covered in the stuff. Lick it all off him, sweat, dirt and all.
“I didn’t know you were still here.” She meant to sound cool, not like she was having an asthma attack.
“My truck’s around the back. I’ve been loading up some trash to take away.”
“My bedroom wall?”
“Yup. Hope you’re not going to change your mind now. Let me grab those.”
He had stepped forward and relieved her of the bags before Kelsey could protest. He turned and walked down the hall to her kitchen as though he owned the place, placing her bags on the counter. “Want me help you put this stuff away?”
What was he doing—pretending to be a gentleman now? “No, leave it out. I’m cooking dinner tonight, for two.” He sent her a look she couldn’t read. Oh God, had he thought she was issuing him an invitation? She hurried to add, “My boyfriend’s coming over.”
“Your boyfriend, huh?”
Why did his tone sound dubious? “Yes. I have a boyfriend. And he’s coming over.” Could you say it again, Kelsey? Make it sound even more like a fabrication. “In fact, he’ll be here soon, so I have to shower and change.”
He leaned his butt on the kitchen counter and crossed his arms over his chest. Impressive arms, impressive chest. Why couldn’t she stop noticing? He made no move to leave. “Into that red dress of yours?”
“Why would you assume that? I have other clothes.”
He lifted a careless shoulder. “It’s definitely the kind of dress you buy for a man’s benefit. And since you say you didn’t buy it for Frank…”
“Yes, I say that,” she muttered crossly. Pulling the bottle of white wine out of the bag, she opened the fridge and put it on the shelf. At the risk of stirring his suspicions about her and Frank again, Kelsey allowed her genuine concern for his stepfather to show. “How is Frank?”
“You ought to know as well as I. He told me you’ve been to visit him twice.”
“Just to check on him, I swear,” she said wearily. “Nothing untoward about it.”
“I know.” To her surprise he ducked his head and examined his shoes, instead of regarding her with those openly daring eyes. “The thing is…I’ve acted like a jerk with you. I know you’re not after Frank. I should have said so on Tuesday. I’m…sorry.”
Kelsey stood in the middle of the kitchen, a plastic bag of steaks in her hand and her mouth hanging open. She hadn’t expected him to apologize. She had decided he was one of those men who just didn’t. But apparently she’d been wrong.
He raised his head and met her gaze. His level stare made her suck in a breath. “You…you’ve surprised me, Mr. McKinley.”
“Yeah, I see.” He stepped forward and took the package from her hand.
Only then did Kelsey realize she was dripping meat juices all over the hardwood floors and her expensive shell pink shoes. “My shoes!”
KD chuckled. “Women and their shoes.”
“Clearly you have no idea how hard it is to find shell pink sandals in a size five and a half.”
“Clearly.” He smiled at her.
Kelsey nearly lost her footing as she bent to take off the soiled shoes. The man had a smile on him that was positively lethal. When she looked about to fall, he shot out an arm to give her something to hang on to.
She felt the corded forearm muscles beneath her palm. Lightning heat shot out from the point of contact to her every extremity, shocking her so she nearly yelped. Her equilibrium took its time returning and she was forced to keep hold of his arm with her free hand while the one holding her shoes found its way to his abdomen.
God, he was hard there, too. Did he have a six-pack? She’d never actually seen a six-pack in the flesh. What would it be like to run her hands over the hard ridges, to travel lower to the waistband of his jeans and beyond? Would that be hard?
The realization that she was turned on had her pushing away from him. “I really have to go have a shower now.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
His voice was a low, ominous rumble, like approaching thunder. Kelsey met his eyes and saw they had turned dark and cloudy. Fear tingled along her spine. She felt as though she were about to be caught up in the fury of the wild storm that had apparently begun building inside him, just as it had inside her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll see myself out.”
His words brought her back to reality, the moment of ferocity dissipating. Perhaps her own out-of-control response to KD McKinley colored her judgment. Perhaps he hadn’t been as aroused as she in that moment.
Kelsey hoped so. Because if KD felt half of what she’d felt, she didn’t think he was the type of man to let it go.
Chapter 3
Kelsey was in the shower and he really had to leave.
He wanted to toss that woman onto the nearest flat surface and have his way with her. But she was getting ready for her boyfriend to come over, so why was he hanging around? What kind of man was he? A sick man, that’s what kind. A sucker for punishment. A real sad case.
Time to pack up his remaining stuff and hightail it out of Kelsey’s house.
Just for a moment there, he’d seen something in her eyes, felt something go snap in the air between them. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he’d thought she wanted him as much as he couldn’t help wanting her. And that had felt too damn good.
But, as she’d told him, she had a boyfriend. Of course she did. Women like Kelsey Simmons didn’t hang around unattached just waiting for a guy like him to come along and pay them some clumsy attention. Women like Kelsey owned skimpy red dresses that they wore for any guy they chose. And she had already chosen someone.
Enduring the image of some other guy tossing Kelsey onto the nearest flat surface for an agonizing moment, KD grunted in disgust and threw the last of his tools in his battered red toolbox. He was just heading out when Kelsey’s phone rang. He hesitated in the kitchen doorway. Should he answer it?
Nah, he decided when the answering machine kicked in and a man’s voice, smooth and cultured, spilled into the room. “Kelsey, are you there? It’s Stefan.” A pause before the sound of a throat being cleared. “Ah, I guess you’re not home yet. Listen, I’m sorry but I won’t be able to make it tonight, after all. Something’s come up. Enjoy the steaks. I’ll call you over the weekend, alright? Bye-bye…darling.”
KD scowled as the machine clicked off. Something’s come up? Enjoy the steaks? Jeez, it was the lamest fob off he’d ever heard. And on her answering machine! The least the guy could have done was call back and talk to her in person. And he’d hesitated over that ‘darling’, like he’d been unsure about using it. How long had the two of them been dating anyway?
Barring an earthquake complete with tsunami, nothing would stop KD spending the night with Kelsey. Especially if she was wearing that dress.
Belatedly, he realized the shower had stopped running. Hell. He stood there in the hall, hanging on to his toolbox like a dummy, some Bob the Builder cardboard cutout, and Kelsey was going to stick her head out any minute and find him.
But what should he do? Leave without telling her about her lame boyfriend’s message? It might be ages before she checked her machine and realized the doofus wasn’t coming. Double Hell.
He had just resolved to knock on the bathroom door and deliver the mess
age through the safety of two inches of solid timber when the door in question opened and Kelsey stepped out.
She had her arms up, twisting her damp hair into a ponytail. The action caused her breasts to jut against the silky damp material of the chocolate brown robe she wore, her puckered nipples an erotic impression against the thin fabric. The short robe exposed most of her thighs. Damp and dewy fresh all over, she smelled like lavender and good, clean woman.
It was a minute before she saw him. A minute KD spent immobile, staring like a dolt, his mouth drying out like the sun-baked earth in midsummer. He’d never wanted to just grab a woman and take her so much in his whole life.
At last she saw him. Her eyes shot open and her hands covered her mouth as she let out a scream and stumbled back against the bathroom door.
“Shit. Sorry.” He moved forward, making a conciliatory gesture. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her hand moved to cover her heart. “You scared the shit out of me!”
He couldn’t help it. The sound of Kelsey swearing made him laugh. He’d bet she never swore, ordinarily. She might be tough, but she was also a lady.
“What’s so funny?”
“You saying shit.”
“Hilarious. That’s what happens when someone scares the…shit out of me. Shit, shit, shit!”
He laughed harder. Before long Kelsey’s mouth twitched and her answering chuckle rewarded him. It sounded warm and melodic and, despite her recent outburst, pleasantly ladylike.
It felt nice, laughing with her. “You should have seen your face.”
“You should have seen yours. What were you doing, just standing there like that?”
KD hadn’t blushed since he was fifteen and hadn’t been able to hide an inconvenient erection from Heather Winchester, his high school crush. “Ahh…I was, well…when a man sees a woman who looks like you, dressed like that”—he used a hand to encompass her form from head to toe—”staring is kind of involuntary.”
She gasped, suddenly realizing how uncovered she was. She crossed an arm over her breasts and used the other to pull the robe farther down her legs. “You were spying on me?”
“No, dammit. I hung around to let you know you got a message on your machine. Stanley’s not coming.”
She frowned in confusion. “Do you mean Stefan’s not coming?”
“Whatever his name is,” KD muttered. Whatever his name is was a complete idiot.
“Did he say why?”
“Something’s come up, he said.”
“Oh.”
Her blush was telling. She thought it as lame a fob off as he had, and she’d just been humiliated in front of him. In her robe.
“Hey, I’m sure something did come up.”
“Sure. Something more important than me.”
“Aw. That can’t be right.”
But if it wasn’t more important than her, the guy would be here, wouldn’t he?
KD had the strong urge to step forward and gather her in his arms. Just to reassure her. Bad idea. Reassurance wasn’t the only thing on his mind and he couldn’t trust himself. Besides, she wasn’t likely to welcome such an act from him.
“Well, that’s a waste of a couple of rib fillet steaks, isn’t it?” Kelsey said, a little too brightly.
“The man’s a fool.”
She gave him a small smile of appreciation. “Thanks for saying that.”
He just shrugged, struggling for words that didn’t take the conversation to sexual areas. Why don’t you let me show you what a fool I think he is? I’d appreciate a woman like you more than he does. Let me take you to bed, for Crissakes.
“Well, I’d better go,” he said instead, proud he’d managed to get the words out.
But she went and ruined all his good intentions.
“Unless…you’d like to stay and eat with me?”
*
She’d taken leave of her senses, obviously. She must have left them in the car. Why on earth had she asked KD to stay for dinner?
Kelsey sat across from him at the small outdoor table on her back verandah, the warm twilight air creating the kind of intimate atmosphere that only those close to each other usually shared. The wooden table seemed an inadequate and easily surmountable barrier between them. Funny, when she’d been sitting across from Stefan at lunch this very day, she hadn’t been required to fight the insane urge to swipe their crockery off the surface, scramble on all fours atop the table and shove her tongue down his throat.
She had been fighting an ever-growing, frighteningly powerful sexual attraction to KD since the second she’d opened her front door to him almost a week ago. So why had she gone and consumed two glasses of Chardonnay—something sure to dull her sense of propriety and possibly get her into serious trouble if she couldn’t change the sexual orientation of her thoughts?
Because she’d been stood up and it depressed her, that’s why.
She had hastily changed into denim cutoff shorts and a perfectly boring white tank top. Then she’d put the steaks on the grill and opened the wine she had planned to share with Stefan while KD went to get cleaned up. Evidently, he’d stuck his head under the bathroom tap enough to wash his face and get most of the dust out of his thick auburn hair.
She liked the color, she decided as she stole a surreptitious glance at him. He wasn’t quite a redhead, not traditionally dark. His hair wasn’t straight, but wasn’t exactly curly either. Shaggy might be the word, with a little length so it brushed his collar. Up close, the faintest remnants of freckling could be seen across a nose a little too long and broad to be considered aristocratic. On the whole, he might not be considered a handsome man—at least, not in the traditional way that Stefan was handsome. But he had those sparkling blue eyes, a stunning contrast to his unique coloring, and a killer smile that promised satisfaction in the most elemental way.
And that body, of course. Muscles hard and rough-hewn from traditional manual labor, not gym workouts, in a long, lean and thrilling package.
“So do you have family here in Holly Hill?”
Recognizing his question for what it was—a conversation starter that might fill the awkward silence—Kelsey was glad for the opportunity to talk. Even about her family. “Not blood family, but Gabby’s always been closer to me than my real sister.” At his questioning look, she explained, “Genevieve is based in London. She’s a freelance travel writer. We don’t see much of each other. My parents are divorced. My mother’s still in Brisbane—that’s where I grew up—with husband number two. My father’s in Sydney with girlfriend number, I’m not sure, five, I think. And I’m here because…”
Kelsey shrugged. How could she explain? After Adam Scalia had made her the unwitting other woman in a triangle she hadn’t known existed and broken her heart in the process, she had lost her way and gotten on a merry-go-round of short, ill-conceived relationships. She could never admit to KD the humiliation of that alcohol-fuelled one-night-stand with a work colleague that had finally prompted her to take a look at her life and change it. Too deeply ashamed of herself, she hadn’t even told Gabby. She had simply changed her job and stopped dating altogether, stopped going out, limited drinking. She had been determined not to sleep with another man on impulse. With another man who wasn’t The One.
“I got sick of the rat race in the city and the opportunity to take over the real-estate practice here came up a couple of years back.” She gave as much of the truth as she was willing to. “This is Gabby’s hometown and I fell in love with it long ago, so it seemed like fate. Especially as I’d just gotten my real-estate license.” You’re babbling, Kelsey.
“How did you meet Gabby, if you’re from Brisbane and she’s from here?”
“Boarding school. Gabby’s parents sent her so she could get the best education and mine sent me…well, because they were getting divorced, I suppose. Made things easier for them with me and Gen not around.”
“Easier for them,” he noted quietly. “Not for you.”
His
eyes searched her face and she felt them trail warmth wherever they touched. “I didn’t think so at the time, but who knows? Maybe it was better than being in the house with the two of them fighting like the proverbial cat and dog. And I met Gabby there.” Had she already said that?
She cut off a slice of steak and popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your mother lives here, and Frank. They’re planning to stay for good, aren’t they?”
“Seems that way. Ma always liked it down this way. It’s sure a lot nicer than the outback mining towns we lived in most of my adolescence.”
“That’s right. Frank mentioned he used to work in mining.” Kelsey picked up her wine and took a long sip.
“Yeah. Not much excitement in those towns for a teenager, at least I never thought so. I took off as soon as I secured an apprenticeship in Mackay, stayed there until I finished and then”—he made a movement like an aircraft in flight—”I decided to see the some of the world.”
“Have you seen enough of it yet?” Kelsey asked curiously. He sounded just like Genevieve—always looking for the next interesting place to visit, a whole host of new people to meet. No moss gathered on her sister either.
KD just shrugged. “That remains to be seen, I suppose.”
“Ever think of moving here?” Why had she asked that?
His laugh made her regret her question even more. “Oh, my mother would love that, but it’s never appealed. I prefer moving around, anyway.”
All the better not to get tied down, Kelsey deduced. She’d known it already—that he lived like a nomad. He was only staying here now because of Frank’s heart attack. Yet hearing him confirm his intention to leave again as soon as he could had a peculiar effect on her heart. It sank. Suddenly she felt very, very tired.
What had she been thinking? That one look at her and KD might change his mind about settling down with a good woman? Please. She wouldn’t want that anyway. He was so far removed from the type of man she saw as a permanent fixture in her life that it wasn’t funny. And despite tonight’s letdown, she still had Stefan Henley in her sights.
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