by JoAnn Ross
He shrugged. Grinned. “Just saying . . .”
They chatted for a while, easily, as friends do.
“I miss Phoebe and Ethan,” Kara said.
“Phoebe said they couldn’t get a sitter,” Maddy said dryly.
“More like they didn’t want to come in from the farm,” Charity replied.
“Not that much of a surprise,” Kara said. “Phoebe’s been through a lot, what with escaping that horrible husband, even after she and Ethan found each other. I think they just want to enjoy the family they both fought so hard for.”
“Agreed,” Maddy said.
The thought of everything Phoebe and Ethan Concannon had been through to achieve their happy endings had Annie wondering if, just maybe, she and Mac could end up the same way. After all, the reason the mayor had come up with the idea of the Matchmaking Fair was that it was rumored there must be something in the water in Shelter Bay that had so many people falling in love.
As she was falling in love with Mac, despite the little voice of doubt reminding her that unlike those fairy tales Emma loved, all the other times in her life when she’d wished for her own happily-ever-after, it had remained elusive.
“There they go again,” Cole said, drawing Annie out of her introspection.
The others followed his gaze to the dance floor, where his and Sax’s parents were slow-dancing cheek to cheek, plastered together like a pair of teenagers.
“That used to embarrass the hell out of us kids,” Cole said.
“Now I just want to be them,” Sax said.
“Don’t worry, darling.” Kara took his hand and stood up. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
“I hope we’re still that hot for each other when we’re parents,” Kelli said on a sigh as they watched Sax and Kara sway together, in perfect rhythm, as they’d always seemed to be. Even, apparently, Annie thought, back when Kara couldn’t, or wouldn’t see it.
“Believe me,” Cole assured her, “that’s not going to be a problem. Not even when we’re grandparents.”
And speaking of grandparents, Adèle Douchett and her husband, Bernard, were dancing as well. She looked younger than her seventy-some years in a flowing royal blue gown that swirled around her ankles when he twirled her. It crossed Annie’s mind that were it not for Adèle’s persuading her to volunteer at Still Waters, she might never have met Mac. And what a loss that would have been!
“They look so happy,” she murmured.
“Sax said they’ve had some rough times the past couple years,” Mac said. “With her fall down the stairs causing that dementia. But I guess she’s nearly over that.”
“She was tested two weeks ago,” Annie confirmed. “And the doctor said her scores were now higher than a woman ten years younger. It’s amazing how her brain was able to create new pathways with time and therapy.”
“If only that would work for Gramps.”
“You never know.” She took Mac’s hand in both of hers. “If it weren’t for his tendency to wander and leave the stove on, he could still be on home care. It’s so early yet—there’s still time for a cure. Or at least more drugs to slow the progress.”
“True. But I don’t want to think about problems tonight,” Mac said decisively. Pushing his chair back from the table, he held out a hand. “Dance with me?”
She smiled and put her hand in his much larger one. “I thought you’d never ask.”
One of the first things Owen had done, when they’d started dating, was to enroll Annie in a ballroom-dancing class. Dancing, like everything else he’d done, was formal, stiff, and boring.
Dancing with Midnight Mac, she quickly discovered, was like making love standing up.
The intimate, even possessive way he held her, which kept any other would-be partner from even thinking of cutting in, caused that familiar heat to flash through her.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “This isn’t some cotillion where we both wear white gloves and behave like extras in a period movie.”
She laughed at that. “I did that,” she admitted.
He drew his head back. “You were in a movie?”
“No.” Wouldn’t that have shocked everyone? “I wore white gloves.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Long ones to just above my elbows.”
“Well, that’s just dumb. How could a guy do this?”
Taking hold of her wrist, he lifted her bare hand to his mouth and kissed it, right in the center of her palm, which she’d never before realized was directly connected to that dampening place between her legs.
“Or this?” Seemingly unaware that they were in the center of the dance floor, he skimmed his lips up to the crook of her elbow, causing her pulse to leap.
“I think if anyone had done that, they wouldn’t have been invited back.”
“Lucky you to escape,” he decided as he released her hand, allowing her to lift her arms around his neck as he nuzzled her neck.
“Lucky me,” she agreed wholeheartedly, as red lights swirled around them and the not-bad Barry White wannabe declared a woman to be his first, his last, his everything.
“You are, you know,” Mac said.
“Lucky?” She leaned tighter against him, swaying to what she’d always considered one of the most romantic songs ever. Which was why it had been added to her luncheon seduction playlist.
“I’m the lucky one.” As he kissed her, lightly, tenderly, he slid his leg into the slit of the dress and pressed it between hers.
“I knew this dress was a mistake,” she said as his intimate touch caused embers to flare to life within her.
“That’s a matter of opinion.” When he lifted his knee, ever so slightly, as other couples moved around them, Annie was afraid she was going to come right there on the dance floor.
“You’re my everything, Sandy from Shelter Bay.”
Even as her heart felt as if it were about to float up with those red, white, and pink balloons on the crepe-paper-draped ceiling, Annie feared it was all happening too fast. Too soon.
“You don’t know me,” she said, realizing she was going to have to share her personal failure with him.
“I know all I need to know.” He lowered his head and as his lips brushed hers, he said, “I also know that I want, no, make that need, to be inside you.”
And wasn’t that what she wanted?
She would have to tell him. But not tonight, she thought, as she belatedly realized people were returning to the tables during the band’s break. Tonight was created for romance. Tonight she was Cinderella. With red-hot-come-and-take-me-big-boy stilettos instead of those silly glass slippers.
“The music’s stopped,” she said.
“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong.” He skimmed the back of his hand down her face. “It’s just beginning.”
51
Annie stopped into the ladies’ room for a moment when Mac went to retrieve her shawl, and although he knew some women could take forever in there, especially when they were holding a summit, as she, Sedona, and Maddy had at the restaurant, she surprised him by being in and out in a flash.
“Quick,” he said.
“You’re not the only one in a hurry.” The proof of that was in her low, husky-as-hell voice that reminded Mac of Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Which, in turn, cranked up the thermostat on his own body temperature.
The fog had rolled in from the sea while they’d been indoors, making it seem as if they were engulfed in a cool white cloud as they walked back to where Mac had parked the Prius.
“Are you cold?” he asked as her heels clicked on the pavement, bringing up that fantasy he intended to live out as soon as he got her back to her house.
“Actually, I think I’m burning up,” she said.
“I know the feeling.”
“It’s a good thing you remembered where we parked,” she said. “Because I can’t see more than a few inches in front of me.”
<
br /> “We’ve got good fog lights,” he said, in case she was concerned about getting back to Castaway Cove in such low visibility.
“I’m not worried. I was just thinking of something.”
“Want to share?”
“Absolutely.” He could hear the smile in her voice as he clicked the remote to open the front doors. “As soon as we get in the car.”
He was treated to a weakening flash of long bare leg as she slid into the passenger seat.
When he joined her in the car, she caught his hand before he could buckle his seat belt.
“Wait.” She reached across the console and pressed her hand against the front of the single pair of dress slacks he still owned. “Don’t move.”
The sound of his zipper lowering in the still of the night was the sexiest thing Mac had ever heard. Then, sweet Jesus, she freed his erection, which was at Defcon One maximum readiness.
“I don’t think I could move if I wanted to.” Which he so didn’t.
“That’s the plan.”
Proving to be full of one surprise after another, she climbed over the console and straddled him and, without a second’s tease or hesitation, lowered herself fully, hot flesh against hot flesh, onto him.
“Don’t tell me you’ve spent the night going commando,” he managed, while his throbbing penis expanded to fill that warm, wet, happy place and she reached behind her back and unzipped the dress. Which fell to her waist, giving his mouth full access to soft, perfumed female flesh.
“Of course not.” She brushed her mouth against his and bit his bottom lip. “That’s what I was doing in the restroom. My panties are now in my bag.”
That she’d planned this only made him hotter.
“I’ve got to warn you,” he said, as she began moving against him in a way that would probably blow the top of any guy’s head off, “this isn’t going to last long.”
“Oh, I hope not,” she said, as she began to ride him, hard and fast.
With each slap of her slick, damp flesh, his hunger soared. One. Two. Three . . . He lost count, but didn’t think either of them had made it to ten when she came, violently, setting off his own explosive climax.
Since it was too late for protection, and the fog was surrounding the car as thickly as if it had been wrapped in cotton batting, he stayed inside her. Right where, he thought, still dazed as hell, he belonged. She’d slumped forward, her head resting on his shoulder.
Mac ran a hand down her bare back. “If I’d known you had that in mind, I would have blown it right there on the dance floor and forced Kara to arrest me for indecent exposure,” he said.
“It was an impulse,” she said. “Did you enjoy it?”
“What do you think?”
She shimmied a bit against him, causing another sharp twinge of hot need. He was turning into an addict, Mac realized. And luscious, tasty, very hot Annie Shepherd was his drug of choice.
“I think we’ve now had the entire prom experience,” she said on a light laugh. “Because I’ll bet we’re not the first couple to have sex in his dad’s car in this parking lot during a dance.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. Which, for a fleeting moment, had him wondering again about the possibility of locking Emma into a chastity belt as soon as she reached her teens.
Then, because he was trying to be a grown-up, he said, “I hate to bring up practicalities at a time like this, but we didn’t use anything.”
“I know.” She sighed, as if he’d brought her crashing back to reality.
Way to go, Culhane, he thought as she reached behind her and zipped the dress again. He felt a literal ache of loss when she returned to her own black leather bucket seat. “But you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to get pregnant. And you said you hadn’t had sex since you left the the service.”
“I haven’t.”
“So you would’ve been tested in your separation physical.” She fastened her seat belt. “And I had a test myself when I discovered Owen had been cheating on me. So there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah. There is.”
“Oh?” She glanced over at him.
He reached into the pocket of his jacket, which he hadn’t had time to take off. “Whether this is going to be enough for the rest of the night.”
The string of condom wrappers was as long as a kite tail.
Her merry laugh sounded like sunshine in the fogged-in car. “We’ll just have to try to practice restraint.”
“Yeah.” He clicked his seat belt, and pressed the ignition. “Good luck with that.”
52
They might have three nights together, but that didn’t mean that Annie didn’t still have to go to work and that Mac didn’t want to be there when Emma woke up.
So as much as Annie would have loved to stay in bed all day the morning after the dance, they were back in the kitchen, drinking coffee. He was dressed in the jeans and T-shirt he’d brought over, she was wearing her red sundress again, wanting to keep every memory of last night’s dance alive as long as she could.
“What did you mean?” he asked. “Last night in the car when you said I didn’t have to worry about you getting pregnant.”
“Exactly that.” Having known this was coming, she’d also decided, while they’d been driving each other crazy in the shower that morning, that the time had come to tell him about the real reason for the failure of her marriage.
So, haltingly at first, because it was much more difficult to tell someone she’d been so intimate with than to tell a girlfriend, she related the story of her marriage. Of her too high expectations, of how she’d pushed her husband into the arms of another woman.
“He should have been honest with you from the beginning.” Mac was not going to let her take the blame. “If he’d told you from the start that he had no intention of having children, then it wouldn’t have even gotten to the point of IVF treatments or adoption.”
“Maybe he tried. And I just didn’t listen.”
“Okay. Let’s try something. . . . Stand up.”
Curious, she did as instructed. He stood up, too, face-to-face, his hands on her shoulders. “Annie. I know it’s soon to talk about this. But you’ve gotten under my skin. In my blood. And my heart. Everyone in my family cares for you as much as I do. I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you. So, here’s the deal. . . .
“I don’t care if you can have a child nor not. What happened to you was a tragedy. Especially given that you always wanted to be a mother. But there are other ways to get to the prize. If you want to try to do it with in vitro, that would be okay with me. If you want a surrogate, hey, that’s okay, too. Or adoption would be cool. Your experience is proof that there are lots of kids out there in need of a good home.”
“That’s what I told Owen.”
“Forget Owen. He’s an idiot douche. He’s in the past and we’re not looking back. And there’s another thing. You want a child. I have a child.” He smiled down at her. “See how easy that is?”
Despite the seriousness of their situation, she almost smiled back. But even with easygoing Mac Culhane, it couldn’t be that easy.
“That’s what Sedona said.”
“She’s a helluva smart woman. You should listen to her.”
“But what if you want another child and none of those other things work out for one reason or another?”
“Do you always plan for the worst?”
“I think I do,” she admitted.
“That’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”
“No. It’s only practical. Everyone’s always big on going with the flow. Well, it seems to me it’s easier if you know what might be lurking around the bend.”
“Me.” He took her hand in his and brushed a kiss against her knuckles. “I’m what’s waiting around the bend. And, hey, not only am I an only child, but I was kind of adopted, since my dad adopted me after my birth father died. And look how good I turned out.”
“Another thing Sedona
said. Maybe you two ought to be together.”
“I like her. She’s pretty, friendly, smells like vanilla all the time, and is smart as a whip. But she’s not you.” He held her close, this time not to arouse but to comfort. “She’s not the sweet, sexy, also very smart, not to mention hot woman I’m falling in love with.”
“You said you thought you were.” She couldn’t say the words. Not out loud. It was as if her saying them might ruin everything.
“I lied. I know I am. Hell, I’ve already fallen for you. I just didn’t want to scare you off before I could convince you what a dynamite catch I am.”
“I already know that.” She wanted to say the same thing back to him. But for some reason, she was tongue-tied.
She’d decided, after leaving Owen, that she was probably destined to spend her life alone. Which didn’t mean she’d be lonely. Her life would be—and was—full. It would have meaning. She’d have friends. She just wouldn’t have a husband. Or children.
That had been her plan. Carefully conceived during her long drive across the country. Logical, she’d assured herself, as she’d crossed the Rocky Mountains. To a fault.
But she hadn’t prepared for Midnight Mac.
And she definitely hadn’t prepared for love.
Although she trusted him, she couldn’t quite ignore what a lifetime of experience had taught her.
“Think on it,” he said easily. “Meanwhile, want to have dinner over at the house tonight? Dad grills a mean burger.”
“Why don’t you and Emma come over here?” she heard herself saying. “I’ll toss together something after work.”
“Seriously? You’d cook for us? Like homemade food not from the microwave?”
“Of course.” How hard could it be? Other women did it all the time. “What’s Emma’s favorite meal?”
“That’s easy. Mac and cheese.”
Relieved, she gave him her best smile. “Piece of cake.”
She hoped.
53
Annie was standing in the aisle of the market, holding the familiar blue box in her hand, amazed there were so many choices to the staple she’d grown up eating, when Maddy suddenly turned the corner and came to an abrupt stop.
