A Small-Town Homecoming

by Terry McLaughlin

  “Why don’t I?”

  He wrapped his long, rough fingers around her arms and drew her close. “I’m probably going to regret this when it’s over.”

  Her head tipped back, and her lashes drifted low. “Why wait until then to figure it out? I already know this is a big mistake.”

  One of his legs brushed against hers as he shifted still closer. “So why do you want to go through with it?”

  “I’ve already warned you. I’m a terrible person.” She skimmed her palms up his sides, savoring the sensation of warm, soft shirt stretched over hard, shifting muscle. “I have a lot of trouble denying myself the things I want.”

  “I don’t.” His fingers tightened, and then he eased his grip and lowered his hands to her waist. “Not usually, anyway. You seem to be the one exception to all my rules.”

  “Golly, Quinn. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.” She gasped and shivered as he tugged the hem of her blouse from her skirt’s waistband. “And you don’t have to worry. I’ll try to make this as easy as possible for both of us.”

  “I appreciate it,” he said.

  She raised her arms to his shoulders and tangled her fingers in his thick black hair. It was still damp from the storm and warm with the energy emanating from his body. She pressed closer, craving more of that heat for herself.

  His head lowered toward hers, and his mouth was a tantalizing fraction of an inch away. “Any requests?” he asked.

  “You mean, like do I want it fast and hot?”

  The crinkles at the sides of his eyes deepened. “Maybe I could talk you into slow and easy.”

  “You could try, but neither of us has that much time to waste.”

  “Kissing me won’t be a waste of your time.”

  “Prove it,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  QUINN’S HANDS were shaking. He tightened his grip on the slippery, satiny thing Tess wore beneath her shirt and held on as if it were a lifeline and he were sinking, sinking, struggling for breath, his heart pounding. It couldn’t be true; he wasn’t a young boy touching his first girlfriend for the first time. He was a grown man with enough experience to be appalled at this dry-mouthed, weak-kneed reaction to the feel of a woman’s body against his and the warm, moist rush of her breath across his face.

  But he wanted desperately to dazzle her, to make her desire him the way he desired her. He wanted to make her forget all the other men she’d ever kissed, ever made love with. He wanted this kiss to spin out, to go on and on, to scatter her thoughts and set her on fire. He wanted so much—too much. This one thing mattered too much.

  Too late. Her lashes fluttered and drifted down over her wonderful, whiskey-hued eyes, and her lips parted on a soft sigh, and then he was closing the last charged sliver of space between them and covering her mouth with his.

  Dark, rich flavors coasted over pliancy and heat—coffee and silk and sin. He brushed his lips against hers, again and again, drawing out the moment, tempting her with promises, savoring his delight, chaining his greed. Their mouths slipped, caught, moved over each other’s in moist, delicious friction as she pressed against him and he drew her still nearer, crushing her breasts against the thin wall of his chest, against his hammering heart.

  Her fresh, flowery scent surrounded him, seeped inside and wound through him as his hands stroked up her sides, sliding beneath airy fabric to the layer of warm silk that was her skin. His hands fanned across her narrow back to gather her tighter, closer. Rain burst against her windows like machine-gun fire, and thunder roared into the room to shake them both. He swallowed her sigh and thrilled to the lingering vibration of her moan within his embrace.

  Yes, he thought as she turned her head and bared her throat to his lips. Yes, he breathed as her hands clutched his hair and pulled him back to her ravening mouth. Yes, he groaned as her body rubbed against his. Yes, yes.

  Past arousal, past care, he sank mindlessly into the moment and made hot, languid love to her mouth, pouring the weeks of frustration and craving into each teasing nibble, each luxurious bite, straining against her, wanting more, needing more, needing…Tess. And losing himself to her in the bargain.

  She’d completely dazzled him.

  The next clap of thunder broke the enslaving trance that had come over him, and he drew her away, regretting the loss of contact, grateful for the lingering taste of her on his lips. “Proof enough?” he asked in a voice hoarse with strain.

  “Hmm?” She blinked once, twice, as her eyes slowly focused on his and a charming blush flooded her cheeks. “Oh. Yeah.”

  Her hands slid down his shirtfront to her waist to tug on a jacket that wasn’t there, and her pink cheeks reddened as she fumbled and stuffed her blouse back into her skirt. “Not bad, Quinn,” she said. “Not bad at all.”

  Near the front of her office, a ringing buzzer interrupted their conversation. An instant later, another clock jumped and jangled on the counter behind them, its harsh metallic clanging competing with the obnoxious beeping from her computer.

  “Shit,” said Tess as she tugged her purse from a desk drawer. “Shit, shit, shit. No quarters. Do you have any?”

  “Quarters?” Quinn reached into his pockets, uncertain whether he’d heard her correctly.

  “You know—twenty-five cents,” she said. “Quarters. Do you have any?”

  He pulled out a fistful of change. “How many do you need?”

  “All of them.” She tossed her purse on her desktop and began rummaging through another drawer. “I never have enough. Damn it, I hate to use dimes. Dimes mess up my entire system.”

  “Here.” He dropped three quarters into her outstretched palm.

  “Thanks.” She grabbed a big black umbrella from a slim metal bin and dashed out her door.

  He followed as far as the front of the office and stood, jangling the rest of the change in his pocket and staring out the Main Street window while she battled the wind for control of her umbrella. She reached the curb near her red roadster and huddled over a meter, her hair whipping around her face and her shirttail flapping against her rain-spattered butt as she slid coins through the tiny meter slots.

  A guy had to respect a woman who could stick to her principles even when it wasn’t convenient.

  As she rushed back to the office, one of her open-toed shoes splashed through a puddle, and she danced to the side, her mouth moving in what he imagined was some pretty inventive cursing. The muttering continued when her umbrella caught in the bell above her entry.

  “Let me help you with that,” he said, reaching toward the metal strap on the transom window.

  “No need. I’ve got it.” She yanked the umbrella free, slammed the door behind her and leaned against it, her breasts rising and falling beneath her dampened shirt. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “That’s okay.” He carefully removed any trace of amusement from his features. “The show was worth the price of admission.”

  She wrestled with the umbrella strap and then simply shoved the sodden mess back into the bin and plopped into her desk chair. “Look. About what just happened—”

  “I understand. It’s the principle of the thing.”

  She looked adorably confused for a second, and then she frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “About the meter?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Not. One. word.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “The kiss. Kissing. You and me…kissing.” She toed off her wet shoes and rubbed one foot over the other. “This isn’t going to cause problems for us on the site, is it?”

  “Not unless you go looking for trouble.”

  “Is that what this is?” she asked, her mouth curving with a seductive smile. “Trouble?”

  He moved behind her desk, turned her chair to face him, placed his hands on its arms and leaned over her. “Lady, you’ve been trouble since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

  She ran one of her feet over the top of his b
oot. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Figured you would.”

  Her smile faded. “I don’t set out to cause trouble, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t be working with you if I thought you did.”

  He allowed himself the pleasure of looking at her. Of noticing the way her lashes spiked and her hair waved when it was wet, the way her perfume rose from her skin as it warmed, the way her shirt lay open along the curve of her throat and draped along the slope of her breast. The way her toes splayed over the laces of his boots. He steeled himself for the torture of taking in just this, and nothing more, and when the pain grew exquisite, when he knew he was about to lean in and press his lips to hers again, he straightened and allowed himself one more thing. He slowly trailed one finger along the back of her long, slender hand, enjoying the textures of warm skin, ridged knuckle and slick polish before breaking the contact.

  He retrieved his jacket from the hook on the wall and shrugged into it as he crossed the office toward her door. Without a backward glance, he pulled on his cap, flipped up his collar and stepped into the storm. The cold, stinging rain hammered some sense back into him, and he realized they’d never settled the business that had brought him to her office.

  Idiot. Liar, he added as he climbed into his truck. Business hadn’t brought him here—he could have discussed the specs with her over the phone. But he couldn’t have watched confusion cloud her eyes or breathed in her floral scent from the phone in his dreary trailer. He couldn’t have teased her or tempted himself with the possibility of a kiss, and he couldn’t have sampled the sweet coffee taste of her or run his hands over her amazing skin.

  He couldn’t have faced the long holiday weekend without being near her once more, just for a few minutes.

  With his truck idling at the curb outside her office, he fumbled in his deep, damp jacket pocket for his cell phone and punched in her number. “Tess.”

  “You again.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Change your mind about the specs?”

  “Is that why you kissed me?”

  “You know, we could discuss kissing over the phone, if you’d like. Or you could come back inside, and we could pick up our discussion right where we left off.”

  “Or we could discuss it this weekend.”

  Her slight pause had him writhing inside, just the way he used to suffer when he was seventeen and begging girls for dates.

  “That works for me,” she said at last.

  “How about my place?” He cringed when he realized what he’d done, but withdrawing the invitation seemed worse than carrying through with this half-brained idea. “Dinner, tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll bring the food. You bring a change of mind about those specs.”

  He gave her his address, agreed to a meeting time and disconnected. And then he stared through the streaks of water on his window, straining for another glimpse of her.

  Foolish. Worse than foolish, he thought as he pulled from the curb and considered the logical outcome of a dinner date with Tess at his apartment.

  Rosie would kill them both.

  TESS SKIRTED the large stain on the third-floor hallway as she made her way toward Quinn’s apartment the following afternoon. The Barlow Building’s exterior was charmingly vintage; the interior was heavy on the vintage and light on the charm. Still, what looked like the original lighting fixtures hung from lofty ceilings, and the shoulder-high paneled wainscotting was fabulous. The doorways she passed wore elaborate trim and fanciful transom crowns of tinted, pebbled glass. Definitely some possibilities here, if someone would invest in basics such as paint and plaster. Some new flooring wouldn’t hurt, either, she thought as her sandal heel snagged in a threadbare section of carpet.

  A solid foundation and attractive structural elements hidden beneath layers of neglect and indifference. Much like the man who lived here. He cleaned up well, she’d discovered that night at Charlie’s house. His sense of humor might be low-key, but she was beginning to appreciate the subtlety. And his kisses—oh, yeah, there were lots of possibilities there.

  Thinking about those possibilities had her stomach fluttering and her pulse skipping as she approached the end of the hall. She couldn’t remember now what it was she’d been expecting from Quinn, but it hadn’t come close to what he’d done to her in a few moments and a few touches. He’d had her breathless, he’d had her boneless, and in a short while he’d have had her begging him to drag her down onto her office floor and…

  She stopped and gave her floaty kimono-style top a neatening tug. And then she juggled her briefcase, a sack of groceries and a Bern’s Bakery box onto one arm, lifted her free hand and knocked on the door of apartment number 305. A few moments later, a gangly girl with Quinn’s dark hair and solemn eyes opened the door.

  “Hi, there. You must be Rosie.” Tess shifted her load while waiting for a response, but Quinn’s daughter had obviously inherited her father’s annoying habit of silent, motionless staring.

  “Rosie.” Quinn’s voice growled from somewhere deep inside the apartment. “Let her in.”

  The kid turned and disappeared, leaving Tess to catch the door with her foot before it closed in her face. Tempted to retreat, she sucked in a deep breath, bared her teeth in a delightfully social smile and elbowed her way into the war zone.

  Rosie had curled in a defensive pose on an ugly brown sofa, the television remote clutched in one fist. Tess recognized the hostile slouch; she’d spent much of her own childhood in the same position. “Always a good plan to be nice to the lady with the food, kid,” she said.

  “We’ve already got food. And I’m not a kid.” Rosie aimed the remote at the television. Rock music blared through the room.

  Tess found it easy to ignore the change in volume, since she’d been momentarily stunned by the decor. It was like being buried alive, surrounded by unrelenting earth tones, smothered by the scents of dust and decay. She caught a glimpse of peeling olive-green paper in what she guessed was a bathroom and shuddered.

  The noise crept up another level. “When you’re standing on this side of thirty,” Tess said, raising her voice over the mayhem on the screen, “anyone younger looks like a kid.”

  “Maybe you need glasses.”

  And maybe you need an attitude adjustment.

  Quinn entered the room, confiscated the remote and switched off the TV. “Hi,” he said as he pocketed Rosie’s weapon. “Let me take some of that.”

  “Thanks.” Tess passed him the grocery bag. She lowered her briefcase to the floor near the table and followed him into a kitchen that had seen better days—and all of them in the fifties. At least the brown had disappeared. Too bad it had been replaced by aqua and pink.

  “I kept it simple,” she said. “Tri-tips, salad, baguettes. And for dessert, a cream cake from Bern’s.”

  “Sounds great.” He set the bag on the flamingo-colored counter, pulled out a plastic packet filled with the marinating steaks and then stepped back, wiping his hands on his jeans. “I—I don’t have much in the way of cooking tools.”

  Flustered was a new and interesting look on him. A very appealing look. Enjoying his discomfort far more than she should, she crossed her arms and slouched with a shoulder against one wall. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I don’t eat red meat.” Rosie stood guard in the wide doorway. “And I don’t like salad.”

  Quinn frowned. “You love salad. And since when don’t you eat red meat?”

  “Since I learned about the harmful effects of cattle on the environment. Not to mention how fattening beef can be,” the kid added with an innocent glance at Tess. “I’ve heard it can give you cellulite. Some people need to worry about that more than others.”

  Tess gave her a wide smile. “Good thing I’m not one of them. I have an amazing metabolism. Not to mention an endless supply of patience.”

  “You’re going to need it,” Quinn muttered as his daughter sauntered back to the front room. “Sorry about that.�
��

  “No need to apologize. I expected a reaction of that sort.” Which was why she shouldn’t let the kid get to her, Tess reminded herself as she pulled her salad ingredients from the bag. Not her daughter, not her problem. Thank God. “I’m a potentially threatening female trespassing on her territory.”

  “Could the fight for female dominance be fatal to the men in the immediate vicinity?”

  “Only if they don’t do the dishes.” She opened a cabinet, searching for a large bowl and a shallow baking dish. “If I were you, I’d be more worried about the crap they’re teaching kids in school these days.”

  She paused in her hunt and glanced over her shoulder at Quinn. He was studying her with his usual stony intensity, but she thought she detected a trace of something different—something softer—in his features tonight. Something twining around her heart and trapping too much inside.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked him, because she didn’t want to have to answer that question herself.

  “I thought it would be strange to see you here. In my place.” He pulled the remote from his pocket and set it on the counter before taking one hesitant step closer. “To be with you here, like this.”

  “You did?” Heart pounding, she busied herself by turning the oven on. “Is it strange?”

  He shook his head.

  She carefully arranged the meat in the baking dish she’d found, excruciatingly aware of his every move, inexplicably nervous with the warmth of his gaze and the turn the conversation had taken. “If you thought this would be so strange, why did you invite me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Beyond the front room, a door slammed.

  “Wrong answer,” Tess said.

  Wrong situation. Wrong idea, coming here. Wrong man, for her. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  But still, she wanted him. With every shaky breath she dragged in past ribs that squeezed so tightly she was sure her lungs would bruise.

  Her social smile stiffened at the corners, taking on a determined edge. “You’re going to have to come up with a better reason before dessert.”