Let's Do It
Page 1
Five brothers. One small town. Journey’s End.
Reeve Banks desperately needs a clean break from her dark past. Luckily, today marks her triumphant return to her hometown.
Until a nail sticks it to her tire, stranding her by the side of a country road.
And an intriguing stranger, Mr. Tall, Dark and Sexy, shows up to rescue her...
“Ann Christopher gets it right every time. Emotional, page-turning reads and characters that stay with you long after you close the book.”
—Lori Foster, New York Times Bestselling Author
“Ann Christopher’s gift with words will leave you captivated and breathless.”
—Brenda Jackson, New York Times & USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Let’s Do It
Ann Christopher
Contents
Also by Ann Christopher
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Introduction to Excerpt
Excerpt from ON FIRE
Also by Ann Christopher
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Ann Christopher
JOURNEY’S END Small-Town Contemporary Romance Series
“Book” 1: A JOURNEY’S END Novella Book 2: LET’S DO IT
Book 3: ON FIRE
“Book” 4: LET’S STAY TOGETHER Novella Book 5: UNFORGETTABLE
SEXY EUROPEAN MILLIONAIRE ROMANCE Series
Book 1: NO ORDINARY LOVE
DEADLY Romantic Suspense Series
Book 1: DEADLY PURSUIT
Book 2: DEADLY DESIRES
Book 3: DEADLY SECRETS
IT’S COMPLICATED Contemporary Romance Series
TROUBLE
RISK
JUST ABOUT SEX
SWEETER THAN REVENGE
The Davies Legacy: TWINS OF SIN Contemporary Romance Series
Book 1: SINFUL SEDUCTION
Book 2: SINFUL TEMPTATION
Book 3: SINFUL ATTRACTION
Book 4: SINFUL PARADISE
WARNER FAMILY SECRETS & LIES Contemporary Romance Series
Book 1: TENDER SECRETS
Book 2: ROAD TO SEDUCTION
Book 3: CAMPAIGN FOR SEDUCTION
Book 4: REDEMPTION’S KISS
Book 5: REDEMPTION’S TOUCH
Single Titles
CASE FOR SEDUCTION
THE SURGEON’S SECRET BABY
SEDUCED ON THE RED CARPET
Novellas
TAILS OF LOVE
GIFT OF LOVE
BELLA MONSTRUM Young Adult Horror Series
Book 1: MONSTRUM
* * *
Chapter 1
Reeve Banks savored a fleeting life is good early July moment.
With the windows open, she drove north on a winding highway along the Hudson River, where the views were spectacular in every direction. Glittering blue water. Rolling mountains in vibrant green. The occasional pop of color from wildflowers growing along the road.
She sighed with contentment.
Sarah Vaughan, who’d been keeping her company, was halfway through wondering when her lover man would show up, and Reeve sang along with gusto, remembering every lyric but massacring the melody with her faulty pitch. A kitty carrier full of an irritable and flinty-eyed fifteen-pound orange tabby cat named Muffin sat facing Reeve in the passenger seat. Every now and then, when Reeve hit a particularly high and admittedly painful note, Muffin, whose disapproving face was visible through the wire door, would yowl his dismay.
Naturally, she ignored these rude interruptions with dignity.
Meanwhile, her perpetual mental to-do list scrolled through her mind with one big thing crossed off, courtesy of last month’s graduation ceremony: Med school at Emory? Check! Yay!
Pediatric residency at Journey’s End Medical Center, her hometown hospital? Not so fast on that one. She’d landed the gig already, true, but she still had three years of training to put in, starting bright and early Monday morning. Hence, the move back to Journey’s End, her destination today.
Find an apartment? That was priority number one on her list, especially since she’d be staying with Sofia, her BFF since high school, in the interim. She and Sofia got along great, but Sofia was now living with her boyfriend, Toby, in the McMansion they’d recently bought together, and Reeve didn’t want to be a third wheel for any longer than she needed to. So she’d scheduled several apartment viewings and fervently hoped she’d be settling into her new digs no later than—what the hell?
Without warning, her ten-year-old Saab, which was crammed full of the belongings she could bring with her (the rest were in storage until she got settled), started acting crazy, juddering as though it had been dropped inside an earthquake simulator. She hung on to the steering wheel and ignored this bizarre behavior for as long as she could, telling herself that it'd go away in a minute and wasn't that bad. But then it got that bad and didn't go away, escalating until her teeth clacked.
Cursing, she turned off the stereo, edged her limping Saab to the side of the road and killed the engine. Then she got out and did a quick walk around to assess her situation, taking care to keep her front pressed tight to the car so she didn't lose her buttocks to any of the speeding passersby, none of whom stopped to help her, the bastards.
It didn’t take long to find the problem: a giant nail head, about the size of a railroad spike, embedded in the left front tire.
“Well, that’s just great,” she muttered, peering into the open window at Muffin. “We’ve got a flat tire.”
Muffin’s pale green eyes narrowed into a glare. Apparently he’d never received—or, more likely, had ripped to shreds with his sharp front claws—the memo informing him that orange cats had uniformly sweet dispositions.
“Oh, sure,” she snapped as Muffin turned his back on her and stared out the window at the back of his carrier, probably plotting how best to escape and kill the sparrows twittering in the nearest tree. “Blame the victim.”
Fishing her cell phone out of her shorts pocket, she shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head, eyed the forbidding mass of gray clouds as they inched overhead, and thought about her options. Well, option. Singular: Change the tire.
Sighing, she dialed. Sofia’s voice came over the line after half a ring.
“Reeve?” Her tone had the usual undercurrent of low-grade worry, as though she expected and was prepared for Reeve to bear news of anything from a nasty case of the flu to incarceration in a Turkish prison. “Are you here yet?”
“No, I'm not there yet — hey! Watch where you're going, you maniac!” Jumping quickly out of the way and deeper into the berm, Reeve used her free hand to give the finger to a disappearing minivan that had sped by a little too close for comfort. The driver responded with an angry honk. “I'm on the side of the road with a flat tire,” she told Sofia, swiping her blowing hair back out of her face. “Just wanted you to know before I started changing the tire in case I get killed by someone who's texting and driving at the same time. Which seems like a real possibility.”
“That’s not safe. I’ll come get you.”
“It’s okay.” Reeve said. “I’ll just change the tire.”
“Don't you dare! I'll call Triple A. They can change the tire. I’ll come get you. You s
tay on the berm.”
“That's crazy,” Reeve said, trying to exude more confidence than she felt. But how hard could it be? She'd watch a tire-changing tutorial on her smart phone, get it done herself, and hit the road again. “I can deliver babies and take out appendixes—”
“No, you can’t. Just because you’ve watched those procedures doesn’t mean you can do them.”
“Details,” Reeve said, waving a hand. “I can totally change a tire. No worries.”
“I'm on my way,” Sofia said firmly. “Where exactly are you?”
Reeve told her and hung up, secretly glad the cavalry was riding to her rescue. Especially since the sky was getting moodier by the second. Then she pursed her lips at the offending tire, wondering how long it’d take for Sofia to get there.
Forty-five minutes or so, probably.
Reeve leaned against the car, crossed her arms and ankles and told herself to be patient.
Two seconds later, she’d run through her day’s supply of patience.
The thing was, forty-five minutes seemed like a ridiculously long time, especially when she could change that tire herself.
She wavered, wondering if she could really do it.
At that exact moment, a gust of wind whipped through the overgrown grasses framing the road, making them ripple with menace and announcing the storm’s imminent arrival.
Yeah, okay. Decision made. Worst case? She’d have the tire halfway changed by the time Sofia and/or Triple A turned up.
Adam would help you.
Adam would know how to change a tire.
The thoughts, distant and unwelcome whispers that seemed to originate in her heart rather than her head, had the usual effect. A chill trickled over her skin despite the day’s heat. The echoing emptiness inside her pulsed and expanded, taking up a bit more space than it had yesterday. The world dimmed independently of the looming rain. Her shoulders got heavier and heavier until the extra weight threatened to put a bend in her spine.
Stop it, Reeve, she told herself sternly.
The Black wasn’t going to take over her mood again.
Not today.
Tipping her face up to the sky, she took a deep breath that forced her belly to expand and push out any lingering wisps of darkness. And another. And another. Then she gave her bare arms a brisk rub and warmed up enough to focus on the task at hand.
Change the damn tire.
Peeking inside the car—Muffin, apparently now disgusted by the sight of her, didn’t deign to look in her direction—Reeve made sure the parking brake and hazard lights were on and rolled up the windows in case the threatened storm became an actual storm. Then she opened the trunk and got an unpleasant wake-up call: spare tire and accessories were buried beneath layers of luggage and boxes full of medical texts and a lot of the other stuff that comprised the last four years of her life.
Grumbling, she unloaded some of the junk, making a neat stack on the berm, and was just dragging out the spare tire when she heard the approaching purr of a sleek engine. Straightening, she glanced over her shoulder in time to see a slowing blaze of headlights roll past and park in front of the Saab.
Black BMW SUV with some sort of a sports rack on top, she saw at a glance. Propping the spare tire against the car, she make a quick reach for the tire iron, just in case, and stared at the BMW, which was pretty sweet. A few years old, but still pricey enough to finance a couple years of tuition at her former med school. Must be nice, she thought, shooting the Saab a sidelong glare.
She watched as the driver's door opened, feeling forty percent hopeful and sixty percent uneasy. If the local serial killer was on the prowl for an abduction, rape and murder, this was a pretty good scenario, wasn’t it? Other cars continued to race past, so there’d be plenty of witnesses to the crime, but still. She’d prefer not to make tonight’s local news.
She waited.
A guy wearing a black T-shirt, faded jeans and hiking boots climbed out of the Beemer, but he might as well have been climbing out of the pages of Men’s Health. He was a few years older than Reeve, she guessed, putting him in the early-thirties-ish range, and looked athletic. Brown-skinned, he was on the tall and lean side, which made him the basketball type rather than the football type, and his sable hair was an unruly mass of curls. He had thick brows to match the hair, straight lines of attitude over hooded black eyes, and his cheeks and nose were sharp, but his full lips softened his edges a little. He sported the kind of five o’clock shadow that was the Central Casting requirement of hot guys everywhere—a walking cliché—and it worked for him. Probably because he was also working the kind of gleaming-eyed intensity that proved his facial hair was not an affectation. He seemed like a guy who rolled out of bed in the morning, decided whether he felt like shaving or not, then told people to go screw themselves if they didn’t like his choice.
All the air left Reeve’s lungs in a single breathless whoosh.
The guy was the anti-Adam, darkly imposing compared to Adam’s olive skin, amber eyes and brown hair, and so unreasonably hot that she could almost see waves of steam rippling over his body as he strode toward her. Dumbstruck, she stared at him, tracking his easy stride and the way he now seemed to own the road and the situation. Commanding. That was the word she was looking for. This was the sort of man who’d instruct pirates on pillaging, generals on leading and Don Juan on seduction. He was—
Hang on. Suddenly becoming aware of her tightening skin and shallow breath, Reeve mentally backhanded herself across the face and snapped out of it. He was good-looking, true, but so what? Ted Bundy had been handsome, too, and it hadn’t stopped him from raping and murdering all those women in the 1970s, had it?
Lightning flashed just then, emphasizing the glint in the guy's dark eyes.
Widening her stance a little, she gripped the tire iron and waited.
“Hey,” he said, eyeballing Reeve and the metal with a healthy respect. He had a drawling voice, husky and deep, and it wasn’t hard to imagine him singing in a blues band. When he wasn’t bludgeoning helpless young women to death by the side of the road, that is. “You're not going to hit me with that thing, are you?”
She shrugged. “Depends.”
One dark brow headed north. “On?”
“On whether you make any funny moves or not.”
His lips pressed together. Crouching, he examined the flatter-than-a-pancake tire and stood again, looking grim. “Suspicious, much?”
“Yeah. Much.”
“Well, I stopped to help. I'm not a murderer.”
She frowned at him, torn between wanting to believe him and a double dose of caution.
“Do I look like a murderer?” he asked when it took her too long to respond.
She pointed out the obvious. “What you look like and what you are could be two different things.”
The edge of his mouth curled. “Are you going to give me the tire iron so I can get started, or not?”
“No, thanks. I can handle it,” she said, motivated by an irritating combination of lingering caution and stubborn pride. Why did everyone think she couldn’t handle a simple tire change?
The guy’s gaze swept her up and down, skimming her white tank top, frayed jeans shorts and hot-pink-painted toes in flip-flops. His attention lingered on her bare legs for a beat, after which his jaw tightened. Then he made a skeptical noise she didn’t appreciate.
His gaze flicked back to hers as he studied her face. “You. Can handle it.”
“Yes. But if you'd like to be helpful, please stand guard and make sure none of these speeding maniacs swipe off my butt when I’m bending over.”
“And that would be a real shame.”
“What did you say?” she asked, shocked and not sure she’d heard him right. She and her butt had a troubled history together, probably because it insisted on being way bigger than it should be, even now that she’d shed most of her med school freshman forty, and she wasn’t always a fan of it.
And what kind of Good S
amaritan commented on the needy woman’s ass, anyway?
“Nothing.” His expression was bland, but exasperation crept into his voice. “Look. Give me the tire iron so I can work on the lug nuts for you. It's about to rain.”
She glanced up at the sky, which now looked as if it were thinking about spawning a tornado. The wind was a continuous swirl, and the lightning flashes were coming on top of each other. All in all, there was no cause for optimism, but she didn’t let that stop her.
“There’s plenty of time,” she said.
“Yeah, okay. Buh-bye.”
With a dismissive wave over his shoulder, he stalked back to the BMW and leaned against the safer passenger side, crossing his arms and ankles the way she’d done a few minutes ago. She thought she heard him murmur something like Unbelievable as he went, but it could just as easily have been Idiot.
In a classic example of poor timing, the first cold sprinkles began to fall.
“Really, God?” Reeve asked the sky.
More sprinkles. Harder sprinkles.
Galvanized and muttering, she stooped and went to work loosening the lug nuts with the tire iron, which was difficult given their ancient condition and the guy’s unwavering attention.
Uncomfortable with an audience, she decided to ignore him.
Tried to ignore him, anyway, but his watchful gaze was like a warm finger pressed to her nape.
The lug nuts, meanwhile, were rusted into permanent place and refused to budge, no matter how she struggled with the tire iron. Increasing frustration made her lose her head and wrench at the thing, and that, naturally, made her overcompensate and lose her balance. She toppled out of her squat and landed, flat on her butt, on the damp pavement.