Accidental In Love
By
RaeLynn Blue
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright© 2009 RaeLynn Blue
Cover Artist: Shara Azod Editor: Lacynda Hill All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. Due to copyright laws you cannot trade, sell or give any ebooks away.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter One
Turning toward her little Ford, Charlotte unlocked the driver’s side door and
plopped herself inside. Soaking wet from the downpour, she fastened her seatbelt and
cursed the cleaning she’d have to do tomorrow to keep the car from smelling like old,
moldy carpet. Gripping the steering wheel, she listened to the rain slam onto her
windshield and tried to rearrange the sequence of what just happened. It started out so
damn simple—get a job. The drumming of the rain as it fell harder against the car’s
exterior didn’t drown out the disbelief in her head. Nothing could quiet the demons.
She should’ve known.
She slipped the key into the ignition.
The little car roared to life and she headed out onto Hobbs, making a right. She
wanted nothing better than to go home, take a long hot bath, and drown her
humiliation in a few glasses of zinfandel. Sting on the CD player with some Maxwell
tossed in and all memories of yet another day of job hunting would evaporate.
It was these happy thoughts that swirled around Charlotte’s brain. She turned
right, heading north, and reached to turn on her CD player, when horns blared, and the
wet screech of rubber and asphalt tore through her musings. Her head shot up. From
her rearview mirror she saw the sleek metallic of what appeared to be a Mercedes
careening down Hobbs.
“Oh shit!” she screamed and tried to steer her car out of the path of the boat of a
vehicle now hydroplaning toward her. The damn thing blurred with the precipitation. The impact slammed into the rear and sent her face first toward the steering wheel. Her
car went sprawling into the left lane, into the face of oncoming traffic. More horns
blared as Charlotte turned the steering wheel this way and that to avoid being struck
again. Thin blood trails streamed down her face, but she had to stay awake, to stay
conscious, and avoid getting killed. Thankfully her car jumped the curb and ended up
on the sidewalk, facing the Tanger Botanical Gardens.
Her heart banging in her chest, she turned off the car and put her head on the
steering wheel. Nauseous from the spinning of her car, she closed her eyes to stop the
damn merry-go-round. God, she was going to throw up.
She leaned back against the seat and panted. Swallowing the acidic mix of fear
and adrenaline, she reached up to touch her forehead. Wincing, the first stinging licks of
her injury erupted.
“Great and wonderful, I’m bleeding,” she croaked and closed her eyes again.
It could’ve been worse. She could have been killed.
Three hard knocks made her bolt upright.
“Oh shit!” she screamed.
Heart in her throat, she peered at the person staring into her driver’s side
window.
“Are you all right?” came a muffled voice.
Between the heavy shower and the rolled up window, she couldn’t tell if it was a
man or woman. In the distance the wail of an ambulance and what sounded like police
cars wafted up to add to the din. She’d been hit. Right. She’d been in an accident. “Are you okay? Need an ambulance?” the person asked again.
She shook her head no and realized a bit too late that it wasn’t the best thing to
do. Before she could stop it, the nausea raced up her throat, forcing the contents of her
stomach out onto her passenger seat.
Damn.
“Hey, hey, over here!” the Good Samaritan outside her window called.
Everything faded along the edges and she struggled to get the seatbelt off, but
nothing doing. The odor of bile and her late breakfast made her stomach turn and
another whirl of nausea threatened to make her spew. God, she had to get out of the
car!
“Ma’am, are you okay?” asked a masculine voice, followed by the scent of
rainwater.
Crouched down in the V of her now open driver side door, was the most
beautiful man she’d ever seen. She fought back the blackness threatening to engulf her.
She had to stay awake, if only to get his name.
“I, I don’t think so,” she mumbled. She yanked the seatbelt, but it wouldn’t
budge. “I, I think it’s stuck.”
“Shush,” the angel man said. His slanted eyes and warm smile made her relax
even though panic hovered at the edge of exploding. “We’ll get you out of here and
over to Wesley Long Hospital. Ah, Todd, I think she has a mild concussion! There’s a
head injury over here.”
She swallowed again, and this time it was easier. Another man appeared behind her angel, but she didn’t really look at him. Her
gaze kept going to the man with the marvelous voice, kind smile, and sparkling eyes.
He reached over her, leaning into the car. The warmth keening off of him made her go
all gooey inside, and she forced herself to stay awake and her eyes not to droop. This
close, she could tell he was of Asian descent. The arrow straight black hair had been
yanked back into a ponytail, and he didn’t have any facial hair at all. Still, he was
gorgeous. His lips hailed from some other ethnicity—so full, she could tug on them
with her teeth, suck that bottom lip right into her mouth and lick it in abandon. He
smelled good, like a man, but sporty. She inhaled air filled with him and sighed. Wow.
Every man should smell like this one.
Darkness nibbled at her consciousness and her eyes shut leaving her vulnerable
to the approaching black.
*****
“Well, let me help you out of that uniform,” Charlotte teased, the palms of her hands soft
against his torso. Pale, sinewy, and athletic, Mr. Paramedic smirked as she rotated her fingers
across his warm skin.
They made small, circular motions across his chest, and then down to each of his nipples.
Already hard with desire, his nipples tightened even more when her hands slid across them. She
twisted her palms against them and, if possible, they hardened even more. As if she were holding
some invisible string connected to his cock, each pass she made caused it to grow thicker, tenting
his pants below the waist. She’d taken that moment to put her malleable lips onto his left nipple and tug. His arms
gr
abbed the sofa’s armrest for stability. His mouth tasted like honey, but her lips, they met his
nipple with an electric intensity that bolted through him. Her tongue darted out and flicked the
tortured point. His thigh muscles tensed in response.
“Ah, you like that, Mr. Paramedic.”
“Why yes, Charlotte, I do,” he replied, blithely. “Give me more.”
She nodded, as all efforts to speak had vanished completely in a whirling fit of yearning.
With her free hand, she took his sensitive nub, still wet from her mouth and rubbed it
between her thumb and forefinger, while licking, sucking, and damn the gods, biting his right
one.
Unable to stop himself, he put his hand in her hair and wrapped his fingers in their silky
strands.
“You, you want this, me, Charlotte? You’re certain?”
She stared up at him and scowled. “Absolutely!” She growled and leaned up, grabbing
and greedily seizing his shoulders to pull him down to her from the fantasy bedroom her stressed
and weary mind conjured.
He didn’t have to be told a second time. He curled his arm around her shoulder, holding
her to him. Rising up on her elbows, she thrust her pelvis toward him. Answering her body’s
unspoken demands.
She wouldn’t be denied. Stealing his breath, she shot her hips forward, and captured his
wonderfully steel shaft…
***** “Okay, I think I got your seatbelt, yep, it’s just a little bent,” he explained and
moved back to his original position, outside the car, squatting beside her. “All right,
miss, I’m going to help you out of the car. We’re going to put you right here, on this
stretcher. Do you understand me? Say yes or no. Try not to move your head too much.”
“Yes,” she coughed out her craving and returned to the present. Damn.
She smiled at him, or at least she hoped that was what she was doing, because
her head throbbed with such force, she couldn’t tell what her facial features were doing.
It all hurt.
He leaned forward again, and rooted around her seat until he found the L
shaped bar. He tugged on it and guided her chair as far back from the steering wheel as
it would go. Next, he pushed the driver’s side door until it couldn’t open any further.
When he turned back to her, he sighed and grinned.
“We’ll go slow.”
Yes, slow. Too fast and Charlotte feared she’d puke again.
This time when he crawled into the car, he slipped his hands under her arms
and gently lifted her toward him. Groaning, she fought down the boiling mix of aching
and agony in her stomach. Her head pounded, her back ached, and her world had been
rocked by a Mercedes, but this, this she could get used to—his solid, muscled chest
pressed against hers. His comforting embrace. Yeah. She could spend a lifetime here.
“You’re soaking wet,” he said, surprise making his voice higher. “Get a blanket,
Todd.” She shivered against him and burrowed further into his warmth. He stiffened at
her actions, but didn’t release her. When she gazed up at his triangular face, he smirked
down at her.
“Make it two!” he shouted, making sure he was out of her ear when he did so.
Hugging her to him, he whispered softly, “On the count of three, you get ready to get
out of the car. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“One. Two. Three!”
She pushed herself up, but really, he did all the lifting. He guided her out of the
vehicle and onto the stretcher with haste. It happened so fast, Charlotte wondered how
she’d had time to even blink. Todd, or the man she assumed was Todd, draped first
one, then another blanket over her body. An arctic chill forced her body to quake, and
she couldn’t get warm. Without her angel’s body heat pressed close to her, she couldn’t
stop her teeth from chattering or her body from trembling. All Charlotte wanted was to
be back in that circle of heaven again.
“Close your eyes,” he said, smiling down at her. He pushed the stretcher from
one end and Todd guided it from the other. Drizzles of rain fell to her face, and she
continued to shake, the cold infiltrating the blankets. “You’ll be better in no time.”
“Thank you,” she said, her throat tight, her heart galloping at the sight of him
again.
“You’re welcome,” he said, and patted her shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”
Fine. She took his advice and closed her eyes. Bouts of blackness came and went, but
each time her eyes creaked open, they landed on his face. Being lifted into the
ambulance, traveling in the back, and being rushed into the E.R., all of which she knew
must have happened, but she didn’t see or experience any of them.
“All right, miss, here you are,” her angel said, still smiling down at her. Standing
by her bedside, he put her purse on top of the little table beside the bed. “Here’s your
purse. The police are probably gonna want to talk to you about the accident.”
She nodded numbly. The stitches in her forehead pulled tight and the anesthesia
made her face feel numb. God, she hoped she didn’t drool.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. The doctors and nurses here are good. They’ll take care of you,
Miss Neal.”
Through the cloud of drugs and resonating pain, logic forced the question out of
her mouth.
“Wait, how’d you know my name?”
He blushed a bit. “I peeked at your driver’s license to give your name to the
police officer at the scene.”
She nodded, though giving her consent after the fact was mute.
“What’s your name?” she called as he headed for the exit. Seemed only fair since
he knew hers.
“Ichigo. Ichigo Isamu.”
Chapter Two
Ichigo’s weary muscles groaned as he climbed out of his truck. Rain continued to
pound on his garage’s roof, drumming hard and consistent. Every time it rained people
behaved like they’d lost their minds. It made his day busy—too busy for something as
natural as water. People simply underestimated how dangerous it could be. Those
errors in judgment cost people their lives, their property, and sometimes their limbs,
ability to walk, run, fuck.
“こんにちはパパ,” Hi, daddy, squealed Kanon, as she zoomed toward him on her
tiny legs.
“Hello, my little flower,” he boomed so loudly, she instantly fell into giggles.
“I not flower, daddy! I a girl!”
Pigtails bouncing, eyes gleaming, and her face glowing, Kanon looked more and
more like her mother every day. The angelic face, the full lips, the free spirit. That
pinched his heart, but he hastily shoved it away. Her mother had left and abandoned
them. He’d give no more thought to the woman and he was damn sure she wasn’t
thinking about them either. He stepped fully into the kitchen, bent down, and swept her
up into the air. The kitchen’s soft, powdery blue walls swirled around as she roared,
powered by her father’s strong arms.
“…and balloons, and bubblegum and cake, and daddy, the teddy fell and…” On and on she talked with fits of giggles in between as his daddy-induced
turbulence made her peel in laughter.
His daughter. She’d be too big before he knew it. This time, this moment, he had
&n
bsp; to snatch, hoard and savor before she sought the arms of a boyfriend. Screw that. Not
ever—not his baby girl. The boy who thought he would be good enough for his
daughter better think again. And so help him if he ever touched her.
“Mr. Isamu,” drawled out from behind him. Ruthless and icy, the voice hinted at
disdain.
Just hearing the voice sliced through the cheery warmth of Kanon’s laughter,
managed to kill it. She got quiet at once. They both frowned, as Ichigo hugged her tight
to his chest and turned to face the somber-toned individual.
Goodness he disliked the woman, and it wasn’t like him to not get along with
most people. When Sybil left, he had had to scramble to get someone to watch Kanon.
He worked nights, and this meant someone had to be here for his five year old
daughter. Funneling through a barrage of strangers wasn’t his idea of finding a good
nanny, and this one had come highly recommended among several choices from his
sister.
He’d have to pay his little sister back for her wonderful reference. But then
Akemi and he never really had the same viewpoints on things. Every bit the stereotype,
his sister had done exactly what his parents had wanted—she was the valedictorian in
high school and college with a damn near perfect G.P.A., she had become a doctor with
a successful practice. Akemi had married a man from Japan, a neurologist, and together they lived in Charlotte in a big house, complete with two dogs and a private interior
designer on retainer.
He’d taken his own path.
And he’d had to walk it alone, because his parents didn’t want any part of it,
especially when his path involved Sybil.
“Miss Avery.”
Cold. Flat. Dangerous.
She had the humility to swallow hard and clear her throat before she opened her
big pie hole. If only she’d thought before she talked as well, he might be able to stomach
her, but as it was, she spoke.
“Mr. Isamu, Kanon is too wild and undisciplined. I, I thought your, your people,
were more disciplined than the others. More well behaved, but she, she’s too
energetic…” she rambled off to a whisper.
Perhaps she saw the zip of anger ripping across his face. She stepped back from
him, and nearly tripped over Kanon’s toys. He’d set Kanon down on the floor minutes
Naughty Nanny Series- Accidentally in Love Page 1
