by Shirley Jump
“The lust thing is highly overrated.”
“Maybe. But the whole night I kept thinking about—” Alex shook her head and started flipping through her stack of pink message slips.
“Thinking about who?”
“This is going to sound crazy, but…I kept thinking about Mack, wondering what he was doing. Who he was out with.”
“Maybe you do have a thing for him,” Renee said.
“I don’t.” Alex dropped the pink slips to her desk. “Okay, maybe I do. But he’s Mack, Renee. One of my best friends. I’d be crazy to go out with him and ruin a great friendship. Plus, the man is so commitment-phobic, he could be the poster boy for bachelors worldwide.”
“He was married once.”
“For about a minute. And he got divorced. Plus, you forget he’s fixing me up with other guys, for Pete’s sake.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Renee conceded, deciding that even if Alex was hiding her true feelings about Mack, she wouldn’t probe into it now. Her own life was messy enough. “My guy-reading skills are pretty rusty.”
Alex shot a quick glance at Renee. “How are things going with Tony? Did you two talk last night when he brought the kids home?”
“Things will be fine,” Renee said quickly. Too quickly, she realized, because Alex’s brows shot upward. “I have to go. I’m, uh, late for a meeting.”
She was late for a meeting. Of sorts. But she didn’t tell Alex it was with another man. A man who had made Renee feel like she was a woman again. Reminded her that she was indeed desirable. Funny. Intelligent. Something other than the tired mommy and overwrought wife who washed Tony’s briefs. The same woman whose husband hadn’t touched her in six months.
Leaving Renee to wonder: if he wasn’t touching her—
Who was he touching instead?
Chapter Eight
Mack had been at it for three hours and had yet to find any satisfaction. Sweat drenched his shirt, exhaustion plagued his muscles, but still he kept up the same pace, trying to work Alex out of his system.
Didn’t work.
With every piece of wood he tore down, every nail he ripped out, he still kept hearing Steve’s excited voice on his cell phone…“Mack, she was fantastic. Thank you for setting me up with her. Alex is just amazing. Wonderful. I can’t wait to see her again. You didn’t tell me she was beautiful. I mean, you said she was pretty, but she’s a friggin’ knockout.”
Mack’s blood pressure rose again, just replaying those words in his head. At the time Steve had said them, Mack had clenched his cell phone so hard, he’d cracked the little plastic case. “Yeah, she’s okay.”
“Okay? Mack, you really are losing it. Alex Kenner is a catch and a half. I can’t wait to get to know her better.” Steve’s chuckle was deep. The kind in man-speak that meant more than playing-Monopoly-on-a-Friday-night and what’s-her-favorite-color better. “A lot better.”
“You lay a—” Mack bit his tongue.
“What’d you say, Mack?”
“Nothing. Have a good time.” Wasn’t this what he’d wanted? What he’d planned? What Alex had asked him for?
Yeah, if that was so, then why did it suck so much?
Mack had clicked off the phone, then threw it onto his bed. He took a long, cold shower. He’d headed to the job site of the newest house his company was building on Larchwood Street. Ended up taking out his frustrations on most of the construction crew. And still didn’t feel any better. What he needed was good old-fashioned work with his hands, not playing supervisor. Not doing paperwork. He put Larry, his second in command, in charge of the Larchwood Street house, then headed to Alex’s monstrosity to work Steve’s call out of his system.
Mack ripped another two-by-four out of the wall, the wood splintering at the base where he’d forgotten a nail, and threw it into the growing pile of debris. He bent over, slammed out the nail with a hammer, then tossed that one, too, into the pile. He sunk the claw end into the next section of wall and pulled, tearing out another hunk, throwing that to the side, moving fast onto the next one.
Alex. Amazing. Wonderful. Knockout.
He’d show Steve a knockout. With his right fist.
So far, most of Monday was gone, and Steve’s words still marched through his head like perky high school cadets. What he really needed was to get good and drunk.
And find another woman. Any other woman.
“Hi, Mack.”
Any other woman but her.
Mack spun around. Alex stood in the center of the room, wearing shorts that should have been considered illegal and a tank top that probably was. She held out a cold soda in his direction. In her other arm, she cradled a vase with flowers. White roses. Damn.
He’d been the one to suggest them. He’d practically driven Steve to the damn florist. What the hell had he been thinking?
“What are those?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.
“Flowers. I thought they’d brighten this place up a bit.” Alex smiled. She inhaled the scent of the blooms, and a smile curved across her face. “They’re from Steve. Aren’t they gorgeous?”
“Yeah. Gorgeous.” Right now, he wanted to rip those flowers out of Alex’s hands, throw them out the window and stomp them into the ground. The tidal wave of jealousy rising in his chest nearly choked him. For Pete’s sake, they were just flowers. Not a ring.
The problem: they were flowers in Alex’s hands, from another man. Up until yesterday, Alex had been Mack’s fantasy. Not that he owned her, but, damn it, he hadn’t thought he’d been sharing those images, not until that phone call from Steve.
Clearly, he was going to have to kill Steve.
“You seem awfully grumpy. What’s up with you?” Alex asked.
How could he tell her that she’d walked in on him at a very, very bad time? When he’d been thinking about her. Wondering what she was up to. Picturing her in his arms, his groin hardening at the thought of her. If it was true that men thought about sex every four seconds, those researchers hadn’t met Alex Kenner, because Mack thought about sex with her every four hundredths of a second.
He swallowed hard. His body steeled, his heart rate bumped up a few notches. His fist curled tighter around the hammer.
“Mack? Seriously. What’s the matter? Is it something with the house? Did I do something?”
“No. It’s…nothing.” He drew in a breath. Watched her do the same. Her breasts rose, fell. Did it again. Damn. “It’s everything.”
She licked her lips, and that was it. He was a goner. Hell, he’d been a goner the minute she walked through the door and said his name. He dropped the hammer to the floor, crossed to Alex, jerked the vase out of her hands, then the soda, and laid both on the workbench beside her.
A little O of surprise widened her mouth, then escaped her in a whoosh of breath when he swooped her into his arms. He crushed her body to his, and before he could think about what he was doing, or the wisdom of his actions, Mack did what he should have done a long time ago.
And kissed Alex.
Chapter Nine
Alex couldn’t have been more surprised if the entire Boston College marching band had burst into the room and started belting out 50 Cent’s top-ten hits.
When Mack took her in his arms, brought her to his chest and kissed her, Alex froze. Stunned, she didn’t react at all at first. But that lasted all of a split second before every switch in her body flipped to ON.
Then, she forgot Mack was a friend. Forgot she wasn’t supposed to be attracted to Mack, forgot she had, up until this point, never really considered Mack kissing material.
Okay, she had. More than once, but only in moments of clear lunacy. Because Mack was her friend.
But a friend didn’t set your body on fire when he kissed you. A friend didn’t make the world turn on end, then send it reeling in and out of focus.
His lips captured hers, hard, fast. He was fire against her skin, so hot she was sure she was going to spontaneously combust—and enjoy doing it
, too. Her body arched against his, her nipples peaked, straining against her bra, the lace an agony of fabric, while everything inside went hot and liquid.
Mack’s tongue dipped into her mouth, swept across to join hers, and she groaned against him, the desire swift and strong. Her hands roamed up his back—muscles so hard, they were like the lumber holding the framing together—and clutched at the cotton of his shirt, wanting his skin. Wanting him in a way that astonished her.
Then the heat gave way to a surprising tenderness. Mack reached up, cupped her jaw, his thumb rubbing back and forth, easy, gentle, sweet, and another kind of fire, one of yearning, erupted in Alex’s chest.
This kind spelled vulnerable. Open your heart. Let him in. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, yes, oh—
Oh, no. No. No.
Mack was not the kind of man she wanted. Not at all.
Alex jerked back, out of Mack’s arms, stumbling across the floor. “What…what was that?”
Mack stared at her for one long second, then shook his head, bent over and picked up his hammer. “A mistake.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say? You kiss me, out of the blue, then”—she paused to take in a breath, her lungs heaving still—“and you say it was a mistake? What, of mistaken identity? Did you stumble into the Playboy grotto by accident?”
The grin she knew as well as her own curved across his face. “I’d never confuse the Playboy grotto with this place.”
She scowled. “Then why did you kiss me?”
Mack turned away, swiped some nails off the workbench and started slamming them into a two-by-four, driving the metal home with swift, even strokes. “I don’t know.”
A three-year-old could tell he was avoiding the question. Alex considered pressing the issue, then thought again.
Did she really want to know the answer? Because whatever Mack said would tip the equation between them even more. If she let it be, she could just write that kiss off. Pretend the heat, the work, had gotten to him. Or some rogue mosquito had given him malaria.
Yeah, that was it.
And she’d kissed him back because—
Because he’d caught her off guard. Nothing more.
Get back to work. Get back to anything other than that.
“So what are we working on today?” Alex asked, strapping on one of the leather tool belts Mack had brought with him. She’d gotten pretty adept at wearing the heavy apparatus yesterday, and had grown comfortable with the sensation of the leather pouch and tools banging against her hips.
But today, the whole thing reminded her of Mack. Mack’s body against hers. The hammer hanging off the belt slid against her thigh and reminded her very much of Mack’s erection, unmistakable a moment ago.
He’d found her sexy? Wanted her that much? And, Alex knew, just by the steady thudding of her heart, the buzz running through her, that she had wanted him, too.
She definitely needed to get out of the heat.
“New walls and constructing some built-ins,” Mack said. “We demoed, now we’re going to construct.”
Alex looked at him, studying his blue gaze, searching for something, anything, that would tell her what had just happened. “What exactly are we constructing here, Mack?”
He paused a beat, then broke the eye contact. “A house, Alex. Nothing more.”
Disappointment curdled in her gut, but Alex pushed it away. Mack was right. Hadn’t they tried this, once before, years ago and hadn’t it been awful? From here on out, Alex was going to learn from her mistakes. No way was she going to go down the wrong path with any man ever again.
And definitely not with Mack.
Even if this grown-up version kissed much better than the fumbling teen he had once been, in that one kiss they’d shared years ago. Even if the grown-up Alex had this constant drumbeat of desire running through her every time she looked at Mack. Something she hadn’t had back in the old days.
Either way, the older Alex knew better.
Mack had always been the guy next door. The guy, truly, underfoot. She’d practically grown up with him, seen him as a brother.
Her best friend.
How stupid would it be to mess all that up with sex? She could lose Mack, and if there was one constant Alex couldn’t bear to lose—
It was Mack.
Besides, Mack didn’t believe in long-term relationships. He’d made it clear, over and over again, that his brief foray into marriage had been a major mistake he’d never repeat. From now on, he’d said more than once, anything lasting longer than a weekend was a long-term commitment.
Alex wanted, no, needed, much more than a weekend. She needed a man who would give her his heart—and park his shoes in the closet forever. Mack wasn’t that man.
“Are you going to help me?” Mack asked.
Alex realized she’d just been standing there, holding the tools and serving as nothing more than a mannequin. “Of course.”
For a few minutes, they worked together and didn’t communicate except in construction terms. “Hand me that drill,” and “Where do you want me to hold this?” Words that conveyed constructing physical walls and kept those emotional walls firmly in place.
She had to force herself to concentrate on remodeling and not on him. It had to be the heat, because she’d never been this distracted by Mack before. And she’d spent a hell of a lot of time with him over the years.
“So, what’s your plan?”
“Plan?” she echoed.
“For the living room.”
“Oh.”
What had she expected him to say? Her? He’d meant the room, of course. Not them. That, Alex reminded herself, was a good thing. She was not at all interested in Mack for a relationship, regardless of what had just happened.
Regardless of that kiss. That incredible, amazing, earth-shattering kiss. Yeah, that.
Or the firestorm he’d stirred up inside her. Or the way he’d reminded her that he wasn’t just a friend, he was a man. A very attractive man. One who knew how to turn everything inside her to Jell-O with one touch.
What else did he know how to do? And how much would she enjoy the other tricks he had up his sleeves?
Mack started talking about running pipes for plumbing and heating, retreating into jargon that went in one of Alex’s ears and out the other. She just agreed, not knowing what she’d agreed to, but glad to have something to do besides kiss Mack again.
“Well, let’s get to it,” Mack said, picking up his hammer again.
“Yeah, sure,” she agreed again, though her mind still wasn’t quite on the house. Not a good sign. She scrambled for another topic. One that didn’t involve watching Mack’s muscles ripple as he hefted two-by-fours into place, slipped a couple of nails between his fingers and drove them home with his hammer—making her think only of how he could drive something else home with the same rhythmic pounding.
Desire twisted in Alex’s gut. She inhaled a sharp breath and paused, her hand curling around a pile of nails.
Talk to him. About something. Anything.
“So, uh, have you talked to Tony lately?” Alex asked.
“Every day.” He stood a second timber beside the first one, then nailed them together. “He is my concrete supplier, after all.”
“What do you think is going on between him and Renee?”
Mack stopped hammering, turned to face Alex, his cobalt eyes wide with surprise. “I thought you knew.”
She shook her head. “Renee won’t talk about it. And, believe me, I’ve tried. She avoids the subject, avoids me. I planned to talk to her last night after I got back from my date, but she’d already gone to bed.”
Her concern for Renee had grown every day since that afternoon back in Edward’s apartment. Something was going on in the Wendell marriage, something more than the stress that had always plagued it, and Alex, who loved them both, hated to see the relationship self-destructing. But short of staging a Dr. Phil intervention, she couldn’t do a whole lot about it, either.
“I agree. That’s why I’ve been staying here, even though Renee keeps trying to talk me into moving in with her. I figured they didn’t have a chance of…working it out, like you said, with a third wheel around.” Alex’s face heated. Weird, because she had never gotten embarrassed talking about sex with Mack before, and he had never avoided the subject of sex with her before, always treating her just like one of the guys. Of course, he probably hadn’t kissed one of the guys like that before…“So I moved in here.” She gestured toward the front hall, where she’d stowed her air mattress. “It’s a win-win all around, as far as I can tell. Because of the construction, the house is open and vulnerable at night, and I don’t like to leave it empty. It could get vandalized.”
“Are you crazy? You’re not seriously staying here, are you?”
Oh, shit. She hadn’t just told him that, had she? That’s what she got for trying to fill in the conversational holes. “I’m fine. Sure, it’s a little spooky at night, but—”
“There’s no air-conditioning. No security. You are not staying here,” Mack repeated.
“I’m not five years old. I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”
“Apparently you do.” Mack crossed to the rolled up air mattress, picked it up and tested its weight. “This is no type of bed for you. It’s about as thick as a piece of paper. You need a real bed, Alex.”
His eyes met hers, filled with a heat she’d glimpsed just before he’d kissed her, then it was gone, erased as fast as it had appeared, and she told herself she’d imagined it. “I don’t need anything fancy, Mack. And I don’t want to leave the house unsecured.”
