Emergency Attraction (Love Emergency)

by Samanthe Beck

  The thought had left a slippery feeling in her stomach. It was. Of course, it was. He had connections to Magnolia Grove. But maybe it wouldn’t hurt to remind him?

  When he’d called yesterday to let her know he’d be back in town this afternoon, she’d informed him she’d meet him at his hotel at three p.m. sharp. She was taking charge of their next tour.

  Now that the moment had arrived, however, a part of her wished she’d planned their tour for tomorrow, so they could spend this Saturday afternoon making up for six days of separation. Well, several parts of her, actually. She’d missed him. Her phone dinged with an incoming text. She lifted it from the inside pocket of her purse, and checked the screen.

  I’m ready for my tour.

  Her eyes automatically lifted to scan the three orderly rows of shutter-flanked windows decorating the front of inn above the lobby level. Nothing…nothing…then her eyes stalled and her heart cartwheeled. Top floor, end window. Shane stood there, staring at her, his wide, bare chest filling the window, his torso tapering down to where a white towel hung from his hips, only a hairsbreadth above indecent. Her throat went dry, and one of those parts of her that had missed him badly went very, very wet. But she’d made arrangements, and backing out at the last minute repaid someone’s kindness with rudeness. Manners forbade canceling the plans, even for the sake of her…parts.

  She tore her eyes away from the mouthwatering view and started typing.

  You pervert. Stop flashing people from your hotel window, and get your ass down here.

  When she looked up again, he was reading his screen. She was too far away to see his expression, but a quick second later her phone dinged again.

  I’m not wearing a stitch, and you’re ordering me to the street. Who’s the pervert? And what does she have in store for my ass?

  Okay, she was definitely the pervert for all the highly depraved ideas polluting her mind. Ideas she’d spell out for him in intimate detail. Later.

  Put some clothes on that ass first. Then get down here, and you’ll find out.

  He braced an arm on the window frame and leaned forward—no doubt to glare down at her. The pose turned his torso into a lean, rippled monument of masculine beauty and slid the towel so low it disappeared from view. Finally, he lifted his phone and texted her, one-handed. Just thinking about his nimble thumb left her a little sweaty despite the mild, partly sunny day.

  Bossy. Sure I can’t tempt you upstairs? I’m told it’s a damn fine ass.

  She grinned in spite of herself but shook her head.

  Put something pretty on it. Quickly. My tour starts in ten minutes, and I don’t want to be late.

  After she hit send, she looked up. He was reading the text. Once he finished, he straightened and gave her a salute. Then he tossed something aside and turned away from the glass, deliberately offering her a view of his rangy shoulders, the long, muscular line of his back, and his stark naked, and damn fine, ass. She slumped against the side of the Tahoe as it disappeared from sight.

  A few minutes later one side of the elaborately frosted glass door of the inn swung open. Her heart did more acrobatics as Shane stepped out. Instead of making her forget the staggering abundance of hard muscle hidden beneath, the long-sleeved black polo he wore emphasized the expanse of his shoulders, the loose-limbed strength of his arms, and the formidable wall of his chest. A triangle of white T-shirt peeking out from his collar teased her with the knowledge two layers of fabric now separated her from his warm, vital flesh. He’d haphazardly tucked the very front of his shirt into the waist of his jeans—wash-whitened at the stress points along the button fly and a shade darker just below, where the denim cupped a truly impressive bulge.

  Long, powerful thighs flexed as the bulge drew closer. A deep voice drawled in her ear. “You keep looking at your favorite toy like that, baby girl, and it’s going to want to come out and play.”

  She ran her tongue along her suddenly dry lips, and he groaned. “Too late.” A big hand closed around the lapel of her jacket and dragged her to him. “It’s good to see you,” he murmured and then waited a beat for her to say it as well, but her breath deserted her. Before she ruined a perfect moment due to emotional clumsiness, she closed the space between them and kissed him. If he noticed her fumble, he didn’t hold it against her, just kissed her back, and kept right on kissing her until she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him so she could have more. More of his lips, his tongue…more of him. When he trailed his mouth over her chin, a moan erupted from deep in her throat. When he nibbled his way along her jaw, the moan turned to a sigh of surrender.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he whispered around her earlobe.

  “My, my. This sure is interesting.”

  Shane’s muffled curse vibrated in her ear, but he lifted his head slowly, unhurried. She opened her eyes and turned to face Ricky Pinkerton. A couple of men she recognized as some of his cohorts…okay…co-investors, walked with him.

  “Pinkerton,” Shane said with the briefest of nods. “Gentlemen.”

  “Maguire,” Ricky returned. “Sinclair, always a pleasure. I didn’t realize you two were so…friendly.”

  “Surprise,” she shot back.

  “It is,” he replied. “It explains a lot, too.”

  She heard something snide in Ricky’s tone, but Shane answered with a disinterested, “You think?”

  “Uh-huh. Now I understand why we’re making a mountain out of a molehill over a little creek water.”

  Shane’s eyebrows went up. “Because I’m doing my job?”

  “Right. You’re Mr. Ethics. No personal interests in play for you.”

  She opened her mouth to tell Ricky he wouldn’t know ethics if they smacked him in the face, but Shane beat her to the reply. “None that conflict with my professional duties, which is more than I can say for some.”

  Red rushed into Ricky’s face. He stepped into Shane’s space and puffed his chest. “I live here. I work here. My family is here. So, you bet your ass it’s personal for me. I don’t need you showing up after all these years and interfering just to convince people you’re some kind of big shot. Everybody knows the creek isn’t a problem.”

  “Fine, Pinkerton.” Shane stepped up, too, and Ricky immediately retreated a half step. “Don’t fortify the creek banks. Roll the dice. See what happens. I’m sure your personal opinion will satisfy the planning commission, and the other investors. They probably don’t even care what a certified water resources engineer has to say on the matter.”

  Silence ruled for a full ten seconds. Then one of the cohorts cleared his throat and mumbled, “Ricky, we’re gonna miss our tee time if we don’t shake a leg.”

  “Don’t let us hold you up,” she said. The closest course was at the country club two towns over and thirty minutes away. “Enjoy your drive. Better not cancel that membership any time soon,” she added under her breath as Ricky passed.

  “Sinclair, kiss my—”

  “Watch it.” Shane directed the warning to Ricky and held the Tahoe’s driver’s side door open for her.

  She laughed as she climbed in. Then, just to remind Ricky who really called the shots, she taunted, “Give my regards to your grandma.”

  The slam of the door didn’t quite cover Ricky’s response.

  “Go on and go, Maguire. You don’t belong here. You didn’t belong ten years ago when we kicked your ass out, and you don’t belong here now.”

  …

  Shane sat in Sinclair’s passenger seat, watching the scenery pass by without really seeing it. Ricky rubbed him the wrong way just by breathing, but the motherfucker had taken irritation to a whole new level in less than three minutes, simultaneously cockblocking him, insinuating he had personal motives for bringing up the flood risk created by the golf course, and being a prick to Sinclair. If Pinkerton had half a brain in his inflated head, he’d be helping find a solution to the situation instead of pretending no problem existed. Instead, Shane was going back and forth wit
h an architect, a structural engineer, and a contractor about how to retrofit a two-hundred-year-old foundation to raise the barn to an appropriate flood-protection elevation.

  “It’s good to see you, too,” a voice said softly from beside him.

  Well, there was that. Irritation faded. He turned and regarded her, taking in her perfect profile and the pretty blush decorating her cheek. He decided to push his luck. “And exactly why is it good to see me, Sinclair?”

  “Because of the sex.”

  He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Stubborn woman. “I don’t buy it. We could be back at the inn, scratching that itch, but you refused my personal invitation. Try again. Why are you happy to see me?”

  “Um…” She bit her lip and stared through the windshield. “It might have something to do with the fact that I missed you.”

  Irritation gone. But now he regretted more than ever that they weren’t back at his room, where he could reward her lavishly for volunteering the words he knew scared the crap out of her. He slid his hand over her leg, squeezing her thigh through the baggy jeans she wore. How quickly could he have them undone? Pooled around her ankles? All he needed to do was get her to stop the car.

  He leaned in and nuzzled behind her ear. “I missed you, too.” He swept his palm up her leg, to her hip, and then fiddled with the tab of her zipper. “Pull over.”

  Surprisingly, she slowed the car. He’d figured on this requiring more effort on his part, because back at the inn she’d been so dead set on taking the tour she’d arranged. He skimmed his tongue along the rim of her ear. She shivered and applied the brake.

  “We’re here.”

  A distinctly cautious tone had crept into her voice. He lifted his head to see how secluded a spot she’d chosen…and froze. The heat licking along his veins fizzled. “Here?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “This place doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  “Of course, it does, Shane. This place helped shape you.” With that, she opened her door and hopped out.

  He sat still for another moment, inspecting the small post-war house where he’d grown up, with its sagging porch, faded paint, and cracked asphalt driveway. Ten years hadn’t altered much. Someone had planted a raggedy-looking pine tree in the front yard at some point, and the screen door was different, but otherwise, no big changes. Certainly no big improvements.

  But apparently, that was about to change. Mayor Campbell’s wife, Deanne, came down the drive to greet Sinclair. A realtor by trade, the mayor’s other half had leveraged the collective Campbell talents and created a healthy side business buying, remodeling, and flipping underappreciated properties. He opened his door and unfolded himself from the passenger seat.

  “Shane, sweetie,” she called to him when he started up the drive, “it’s good to see you outside of city hall.” He took the hand she offered and accepted the encouraging little squeeze she gave him. “When Sinclair called me and said y’all would like to swing by and take a look around, I was surprised at first, but then she reminded me your family lived here.”

  He nodded. “About twenty years, I think. They moved in when Derek was a baby.”

  “Well, I can understand you wanting to look the place over before Jim and I whip it into shape. Not much has been done yet.” She turned and led the way along the narrow concrete walkway to the front door. “The guys have mostly just hauled junk out. Old Roy Hamilton’s family rented it after your parents left, and he spent about eight years here, hoarding away, before he passed on—God rest his soul. Watch yourselves here,” she interjected and pointed at the bowing porch steps. “Then it sat empty for a couple years before I finally convinced Ethel Finch to sell it to me because its days as a rental were O-V-E-R. So, anyway”—she swung the front door open—“I warn you two, it’s a dingy mess in here.”

  Sinclair took his hand and cast a careful look at him as they followed Deanne inside.

  “We’re keeping the floors—that’s good, solid oak under all the dust and scratches,” the older woman chattered. “The kitchen’s this way,” she went on, like she was showing the house, and then laughed at herself and looked at him before adding, “but, of course, you know the layout.”

  “It’s coming back to me,” he replied, still not sure how he felt about being there—or why Sinclair had felt the need to bring them here.

  “Well…” Deanna peeked at her watch. “I’d better be on my way so I’m not late to an open house. I’m going to lock the front door behind me. The kitchen door can be locked from the inside, so if you could exit from there when you’re done exploring, and just be sure it’s shut tight, I’d really appreciate it.”

  Sinclair spared him a glance, and a small smile, and then turned to Deanne. “Will do. Thanks, Deanne.”

  “Oh, no problem, hon. I hope you’ll both come back and look around once we’ve remodeled.”

  Shane listened with one ear as the ladies exchanged a final round of niceties, while his eyes took in the empty shell of a living room. His mind, however, saw back in time. A door closed, and a second later Sinclair stood beside him.

  “This was the living room?”

  “Yeah.” He sounded like he’d swallowed gravel. He cleared his throat and went on. “There was a long, brown sofa against this wall, and, over there”—he pointed to the right—“an oversize eyesore of a recliner my dad practically lived in. Over here”—he indicated the wall opposite the sofa—“we had the TV on a fancy cabinet my mom was so proud of because she’d won it at a church raffle and swore it was an antique. I’m pretty sure they still have that ugly old thing.” He laughed. “If it was an antique, it was wasted on us. Half the time, the living room floor looked as though that cabinet had puked PlayStation components all over it.”

  “Oh, you were one of the lucky kids,” Sinclair said. “Savannah and I begged, but our parents refused to get us a PlayStation. Dad told us it would be too depressing for him to come home and see his girls glued to a screen, blowing up the planet.”

  “Derek and I worked on our mom for the better part of a year before we talked her into buying it.”

  “I’m betting she worked you, too.”

  He inclined his head. “She tried, extracting promises from us to stop wailing on each other, and keep our rooms clean, and do our chores. We agreed to everything, naturally, and followed through on none of it, but I suspect she knew all along our promises weren’t worth the breath it had taken to utter them.”

  Sinclair’s lips curved into a smile. “But she bought it for you anyway.”

  “Probably to shut us up. We had fun with it, though. Kyle Grieger and Marc Waggoner from down the street would come over, and we’d all play Final Fantasy, or Grand Theft Auto, until Dad would get home and commandeer the TV.”

  “God, Kyle Grieger. There’s a name I haven’t heard in eons. Whatever happened to him?”

  Shane racked his brain and came up mostly empty. “I don’t know. He got busted in Atlanta with Derek—for grand theft auto, ironically—and I lost track after that. Marc was my year. He went to college, met a girl, got married, and now he’s an actuary in Philly.”

  “Ever see him?”

  He nodded. “We grab a beer whenever I’m in town.”

  “That’s nice, keeping up a connection from your childhood.” She graced him with a cryptic smile and ambled through the archway leading to the kitchen. He followed.

  She stood at the kitchen door. “Can you get to the backyard through here?”

  “Uh-huh.” The warped frame protested when he pulled the door open. The wooden step down to the basic concrete slab of a back porch looked rickety. “Careful,” he said and held her elbow while she stepped down. The slat groaned under his weight when he followed, and rotted sections splintered. He gave his next move a moment’s consideration and then shifted his weight to one foot and brought the heel of his other foot down hard. The wood cracked.

  Sinclair turned around, startled, and gave him a wide
-eyed look. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” He stepped down to the concrete, leaned over, and hand-pried the broken halves off the supports. After he stacked them against the wall, he crouched and brushed away leaves and debris that had accumulated under the step. And there they were. Two sets of handprints in the cement. One a little larger than the other, but both small.

  Sinclair crouched beside him and used a finger to trace the right hand of the smaller set of handprints, lingering in the valley between the ring finger and little finger. “Are these yours?”

  The same valley on his right hand tingled. “Yep.”

  She placed her palm over the imprint and rested it there. “How old were you?”

  “Five or six. The old slab had pulled away from the house, and after my folks complained enough, the landlord sent a crew over to break it up, haul it off, and pour a new one. Dad told us to stay away from the drying cement, but Derek and I didn’t want to hear that. The next morning, my dad spotted the handprints and was like, ‘What the hell is this?’”

  “Busted?”

  He laughed. “We gave him our best innocent looks and told him some kids must have come along in the middle of the night. He stuck our hands in the prints and said, ‘Yeah, right.’” Another reluctant laughed rumbled up from his chest. “We didn’t think it through.”

  “Well, you were only five. And a pristine, freshly poured expanse of wet concrete is pretty impossible to resist.”

  He looked over at her. He’d needed this. He couldn’t say why, but he had, and the fact that she’d known made him want to get her back to that barn of hers, lay her across the big bed, and give her everything she needed. “When I was five. Nowadays there’s something else I find impossible to resist.”