Blown Away (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 1) (2 page)

Dammit.

“What’s got your panties in a bunch?” he asks. “That time again?”

I bite my lip. I wish it were that time again. It hasn’t been that time in fifty-one days. It reminds me of my purse filled with used pregnancy tests. I hate those little bastards.

Dammit.

Cade puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze. “Okay. Okay. I give up. I know when to shut my mouth.”

“Oh yeah? Since when?”

“You got me. You see right through me.”

I step out of his embrace and open my purse, digging out my reporter’s notebook and pen, careful not to let him see the pregnancy tests. “Has he said anything, yet?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Nope. He’s too busy arguing with his butler.”

I turn toward Cade. “His what?”

“Boris. Or Sven. I don’t know his name. The guy in the funeral home outfit.”

He points beyond the balloon with his perfect Hugh Jackman finger, and I follow his line of sight until I spot the guy in question. Yep, the deposed dictator Samba does indeed have a butler. At least he looks exactly how I think a butler would look, except that this one looks like he’s been dead for several years. I almost approach him for an autograph because I’m convinced that he starred in the Addams Family as Lurch, but that would make him almost one hundred years old.

“No, he didn’t star in the Addams Family,” Cade says. “I already asked.”

The man must be boiling. Our island is called Summer Island for a reason. We have sun three-hundred-and-thirty-five days a year. Tourism is our number one industry, and everything is covered in solar panels. But the funeral guy didn’t get the message. He’s dressed in head to toe black wool. A three-piece suit with tails. It’s a wonder the suit isn’t soaked through with sweat.

The butler is the polar opposite of Cade, who’s wearing his typical worn jeans and tight Fruit of the Loom T-shirt. I catch myself staring at his defined pecs and abs, which show through his shirt, and I quickly change focus upward before he notices, as if I’m interested in the sky. Cade elbows me in the side.

“Check it out,” he urges.

The butler is arguing with his boss, who’s the subject of our assignment and why I trudged out in the middle of the field in my heels. Olivier Samba, a developing world despot of the worst order, made some kind of deal with the United States to turn himself in and spend the rest of his days in a white-collar prison.

Samba has done despicable things in his life, not least of all completely bankrupting his country. Now, he’s taking his sweet time turning himself in, taking care of last-minute details and loading up the government with lots of information about other countries.

With a vacation home on Summer Island, Samba has been spending his time here, much to the chagrin of our progressive, civic-minded locals. There’s been a nonstop picket line in front of his mansion since he arrived a couple of months ago.

As weirdly dressed as his butler is, Samba doesn’t disappoint, either. He’s dressed all in white, with billowy eighties-style parachute pants and a peasant top that looks like it came from the women’s department in Neiman Marcus. To top off his outfit, he’s wearing a long silk scarf wrapped around his neck, which flows behind him with the wind.

Just like Cade said, Samba and his butler are arguing. As far as Samba’s reputation goes, it’s a death sentence to argue with him, but the butler doesn’t look scared. In fact my money’s on him, not the man in a peasant blouse. The butler wags his finger at Samba, who in turn stomps his foot on the grass and yells back at him. I can’t make out what they’re saying. I’m just about to step closer to hear when Jessica Hemmings, the town gossip, slaps me on the shoulder with her picket sign.

“I’m watching you, Millie Mossberg,” Jessica warns me, pointing at my nose. “I know your mother, you know.”

Everybody knows my mother. Everybody knows everybody. It’s a very small island. But I understand her threat. If I don’t do my job right, if I don’t write an article about the dictator that she’ll like, she’s going to rat me out to my mother, and my mother is going to let me have it. What else is new?

“We got this,” Cade tells Jessica, and her eyes glaze over and her pupils dilate, even though Cade is at least twenty-five years younger than she is. I wish I had his superpower to shut up busybodies and people who want to rat me out to my mom, but I’ve never learned the art of seduction. Cade has. He’s the Batman, Superman, and Incredible Hulk of seduction.

“I can’t believe our town council allowed that man to come here,” Jessica screeches at me. As if it’s my fault.

“It is a free country, Jessica,” I say. “The man does own property here.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Jessica doesn’t want to hear about our free country, especially how it relates to a despot who lives in her neighborhood. She cocks her head to the side and studies me. “Are you back talking me? Are you defending this criminal?”

I’m not defending him. And normally I would never backtalk Jessica Hemmings, because even if I don’t have Cade’s powers of seduction, I do have a great survival instinct. If I’m back talking now, it’s because I’m getting impatient, and not just for the Olivier Samba interview. I’ve got four positive pregnancy tests in my purse and my breasts are starting to swell and tingle, which I don’t think is the effect of standing so close to Cade.

Damned Cade. I slap him hard on his arm. He clutches at it in pain. “Hey! Why did you do that?” he demands, his eyes wide with horror.

I bite my lip, but there’s steam coming out of my nose, and I think my eyeballs are going to explode out of my head. Why did I hit him? Maybe because you got me pregnant, you jerk.

Oh, yeah. Did I mention that? Cade got me pregnant.

Alcohol is a villainous substance. If you never let alcohol past your lips, you’re a much smarter woman that I am. Actually, I don’t do too badly with beer. I rarely drink red wine because it gives me a migraine. I never go near vodka after the international incident with the ambassador from Russia. But tequila does me in every time.

Yes, I’m going to blame the tequila. Hear that, unborn baby poised to give me stretch marks and destroy my metabolism? Yes, you’re a tequila baby. I’m going to call you Tequila and dust you with salt when I see you.

It all started back in kindergarten when Cade Reed pummeled me with a dodge ball during recess, knocking me onto the ground and destroying my favorite dress with grass stains and mud.

All right, sure I’m going far back in time. Normally people don’t hold grudges from when they were in kindergarten. But it really was a nice dress.

Okay, I’m not telling you the whole truth. It has nothing to do with the dress. Yes, he pummeled me with the ball, but this is Cade I’m talking about, the superhero of seduction, and he already had his superpowers way back then.

As I sat in the mud, with my cheek beginning to swell, dazed and confused and in a lot of pain, Cade leaned over me and offered me his hand. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Of course I wasn’t okay. I had a bruise for three weeks, and I lost two teeth prematurely, which I swallowed and didn’t get a dime from the tooth fairy. But all of that was put aside when I was face to face with Cade. I was hooked.

I had Cade fever.

Just like the swiftness of a measles epidemic that sweeps through Disneyland, I was infected right there and then. My attraction to Cade burrowed into my body, altering my DNA forever. I was doomed.

Ever since that moment, I’ve fought this attraction to Cade. I mean, how could I give in, when Cade was only interested in me to play beer pong, watch Marvel movies, or to torture me? Sure, he’s a great pal when he’s short-sheeting my bed, but I’m not going to be just another sock on his doorknob, another Jessica Hemmings, going goo-goo-eyed over his perfect bone structure and mutant good looks.

Not to mention, Cade has never given me the slightest bit of interest in the romantic way. Not a peep of passion. Not an iota of intimacy.

Not until the evil tequila.

It was fifty-one days ago. Cade and I had just put the newspaper to bed. Dan Smothers owns the paper, and he’s the editor in chief, but Cade and I have been single-handedly running it for the past couple of years. I have to admit that working hand in hand with Cade has been a lot of fun. It’s sort of like working in a frat house, but with a cleaner bathroom.

So, there we were at the office fifty-one days ago. It was around midnight, and because it was during the week, the bars in town were already closed. Cade wanted to celebrate the end of a stressful day. He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle.

It was the evil tequila.

“Come on, Millie,” he urged. “You know you want it.”

It had been a very hot day, and he was wearing a muscle tee and cargo shorts. It was like porn from Sears. “I don’t drink tequila.”

“You’re not going to let me drink alone, are you? Come on. I need a drink.”

His goo-goo eyes twinkled at me, and just like Superman’s laser beam vision, they shot right down to my uterus. I was made powerless. The next thing I knew I was handing over my coffee mug, and he was pouring tequila in it. “Listen to that,” he said.

“What? I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. Silence. Peace. Ain’t it wonderful?”

He handed me the cup of tequila, and our fingers touched. He kept his fingers on mine, and I didn’t pull back.

Whoa.

Holy Moses.

Hot diggity.

It was electric. Immediate. Impossible to resist.

My mouth went dry, as if all the liquid in my body was pooling down below, like it was getting ready for what was about to happen. I guessed I needed lots and lots of liquid for that.

Oh, God.

“What’s happening?” Cade asked me. I guess he was just as shocked as I was. Our eyes locked. His were enormous, his pupils fixed and dilated. I almost checked his pulse to make sure he was still alive. Or give him mouth-to-mouth to revive him. Oh, mouth-to-mouth. I really wanted to get my lips on him. Anywhere on him.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “But hand over the damned tequila.” He did, and I gulped it down like it was a peach Snapple. He poured me another, and I slapped that one back, too.

I was feeling warm all over, but it wasn’t from the drink. The office had gotten smaller, and somehow, Cade had appeared on the other side of the desk, our chairs facing each other, and our knees touching. I could smell his expensive cologne and something else that I suspected came from his pores.

Yum.

“You two need to stop moving. You’re making me dizzy,” I said.

“There’s only one of me.”

“Okay. Well, one is enough,” I said, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and pulled him toward me. I slammed my mouth onto his and kissed him like my life depended on it.

Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I never actually wished to get into Cade’s pants, but I have to admit that I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since my mother told me about the birds and the bees and the dangers of getting into boys’ pants. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that there was something fabulous in Cade’s pants, and now after all that wondering and fantasizing and eating Snickers bars while thinking about it, I was about to go there. I was about to unzip his cargo shorts and hit the mother lode.

But first it was all about the kiss. I had initiated it, but Cade took over pretty fast. His hand weaved its way under my hair, as he pulled my head closer. My mouth opened to let his tongue enter, and he slipped his tongue around mine and over my teeth and generally made my eyes roll back in my head.

What were we doing? I had no idea. But I had never been kissed like that, and I didn’t want it to stop.

I was dimly aware that Cade scooted forward in his chair, his knee parting my legs. His knee felt wonderful, and I wondered if his knee was that good, how great his other body parts would be.

Then, it stopped.

Cade pulled back, and I moaned in disappointment. I could hear him breathing hard, and I opened my eyes. He was wearing my lipstick, which was smeared all over the lower half of his face. It wasn’t his color, but he looked sexy as hell. His hair was mussed, even though I didn’t remember mussing it, and his face was flushed, even beyond the lipstick.

“I’m going to hate myself for asking this,” he croaked. “But are you sure you want this to happen?”

I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen. Were we flirting? Were we going all the way? Was one or both of us going to get naked and were bodily fluids going to get swapped? I was all for swapping. I was all for it all. All of it. Every last bit of him.

The last time I was that horny for a man, it was my freshman year in college, and I stumbled on the quarterback in my dorm hall right after I had finished watching The Notebook. Oh, baby.

I didn’t know how to answer Cade. It was a horrible mistake to have sex with him. I knew it. He knew it. It was one of those obvious mistakes, like eating two-day old sushi from 7-eleven.

Mistake or not, there was a strong throbbing in my undercarriage that wasn’t taking no for an answer. So, I didn’t answer. Instead, I grabbed Cade’s crotch, which had grown to an impressive size, as it pushed against his cargo shorts. Holy crap. It was like someone had put a baseball bat in his shorts. A really big baseball bat.

A wood one.

My hand on his enormous erection seemed to be a good enough answer, and no matter if it was a bad idea, he was going for it as much as I was. He stood up, grabbed me around the waist and dragged me up, too. I melted against him, letting him carry my weight. He stared me down with his blue eyes that had turned dark as night. He was definitely a man on a mission. I held his gaze. I was swirling around in a cloud of hormones so powerful that it must have been illegal under the Geneva Convention’s rules against chemical warfare. I had gone over to the dark side, and I didn’t want to return.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and lifted up on my tippy toes in order to reach him. I nibbled his earlobe and blew gently in his ear. He moaned, and his cargo shorts strained against the pressure, ready to explode. He dropped one hand and pushed it across the desk, sending everything on it crashing onto the floor. Then, he grabbed me once again by the waist and threw me onto the desk. I landed with a crash and a loud oomph, but he kissed me silent.