One Night with Sole Regret 03 Take Me (7 page)

As she sang the perky chorus
, her cute little butt wiggl
ed
side to side. Her dancing was a hell of a lot better than her singing.

“Whoa-o.”
Shade couldn’t resist joining her.

Amanda whirled around, knife in hand.
Her face went instantly red
,
and she yanked her ear buds out. “When did you get back?” she asked.

“Put the knife down, lady, and we’ll talk.”

She glanced down at her hand, which was holding the knife like a weapon, and then dropped it on the dark granite of the kitchen island. “Oh God, how long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know you sing sharp.
Way
sharp.”

“You weren’t supposed to hear that. I figured it would be at least an hour before you got back.”

His brow crinkled. “I told you I’d hurry.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t take you for a minute
-
man.”

“What?”

“Oh
,
come on, Jacob, I know why you wanted to take her home. I’m not dumb.”

“You think I wanted to be alone with her?”

“Well, didn’t you?”

“No. I wanted to be alone with you.”

She stared at him with wide eyes and her fist over her heart, apparently dumbfounded.

Shade circled the island’s counter and
pulled out
a towel to dry off the fruit sitting in
the
big bowl
in
the sink. His cleaning lady always stocked his fridge with fresh fruit because she knew how he craved it whenever he was home. He popped a grape in
to
his mouth and tossed Amanda a
golden
delicious apple.
He sang the first line of “Walking on Sunshine’s” chorus
.

“Whoa-oh,
”
Amanda sang.

He repeated his line.

“Whoa-oh-oh,
”
she sang with even more gusto.

T
hey sang
the next line
together
, grinning at each other like a pair of insane hyenas
.

Shade plucked grapes off their stems and tossed them into the bowl while Amanda cut the cores out of several varieties of apples—red, yellow, green—and sliced them. She settled for singing backup while they worked.

He wondered what his fans would say if they heard him singing a girly pop song. His band was known for creating melt-your-face-off metal, but he was having such a good time goofing off with Amanda, he’d risk any public outcry.

Amanda tackled a pair of oranges next, while he removed the greenery from the strawberries. They had enough fruit in the bowl for ten people by the time they finished and had s
u
ng the chorus of the same song at least twenty times, but Shade was reluctant to end the easy camaraderie between them and checked the fridge for fruit they might have overlooked. He didn’t get to do this kind of thing often.
Especially not with a woman.
He had a certain reputation to uphold, but with Amanda, he could let go and just be himself without worrying about what she thought of him. It had always been this way between them. Even when he’d been engaged and married to her sister, if he’d wanted to have a little goofy fun, he’d seek out Amanda’s easy-going companionship.

Something ice-cold blasted him in the back of the neck. He yelled and spun around only to get hit with a
stream
of water in the face. Brandishing the water
sprayer
from the island sink, Amanda laughed and
sprayed
him in the ear.

“Shit, that’s cold,” he protested, covering his ear with one hand and rubbing the liquid out of it.

She made a sad puppy dog face at him, her lower lip protrud
ing
in a pout. “Oh, poor baby,” she said and then squirted him at the base of his neck.

“You,” he growled, though he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.

Laughing gleefully, Amanda dashed around the island and when the counter was between them, turned and sprayed him again.

He circled the counter at a run. She squealed and skidded out of reach,
squirting
water in all directions. The icy liquid caught him
on the
arm. Despite getting drenched, he didn’t back down, not even when he had her trapped against him and she
directed
a steady spray of water down both their bellies.

“That’s cold,” she squealed and released the nozzle.

Shade wrested the sprayer out of her hand. “You’re damned right it’s cold.” He held her tightly with one arm and sprayed water down her shirt.
Which drew his attention to her now sopping wet breasts, transparent pale pink T-shirt and hard nipples.
His body’s reaction was instantaneous. His brain was a few seconds behind.

She yelled, “Cold, cold, cold. Jacob!
Stop!”

He dropped the hose and cupped the inviting succulence of
one
breast in his hand. His thumb brushed
the
hardened nipple
,
and she shuddered. There wasn’t enough cold water in the Arctic Ocean to cool the hot lust flooding his groin.

Amanda needed to slap him
,
and soon
,
or he was going to do something they’d both regret. She lifted her hand and instead of delivering a stinging palm to his cheek, she pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them across the counter.

Their eyes met. He couldn’t look away. She moved closer. Or he moved closer. He wasn’t sure which.
Didn’t care.
All he knew was that he had to sample her lips. He’d
dreamed of kissing her so many
times
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
H
e wondered if she’d taste as sweet as she looked.

His heart thudded faster and faster as he leaned closer. He hadn’t felt this giddy since his first kiss in junior high school.

His lips were a hair’s breadth from hers when the doorbell rang and he came back to his senses.

“Sorry,” he said and jerked away.

No matter how much he wanted her, Amanda Lange was off limits.

Yeah, tell that to his dick.

Chapter 4

Amanda had never wished harm to a pizza delivery person before, but as
Jacob
stepped away and she was robbed of the heat of his hard body and the scent of his delectable flesh, she
started
compiling a list of torture
s
.

Jacob
had almost kissed her.
Almost.
And she could still f
ee
l the weight of his hand on her breast. Oh God, she wanted the man. And for about thirty seconds, she’d thought she might actually have her wish fulfilled.

Leaning against the kitchen island for support, she watched him leave the room to answer the door. Why hadn’t she been more aggressive? She should have just grabbed him and kissed him.
Made it perfectly clear that she wanted him.

As usual, her tendency to hesitate and think things through left her without the prize she craved. She needed to let loose. Get aggressive. Paw the man like a sex-starved lioness. Yeah
,
right. Even if she could find the courage to throw caution aside, those kind
s
of tactics didn’t work with
Jacob
anyway.

With a sigh, Amanda reached for a towel and began to mop up the water
covering
the kitchen. It kept her hands occupied so she didn’t start peeling off her clothes
so she could
wait for him
,
naked
,
like the woman he’d ditched earlier. She
wouldn’t
put herself in
a
position to be rejected by him. Amanda had felt bad for Veronica
—n
ot that
she’d
wanted Big Boobs Maloney to stick around, not that she wasn’t glad that
Jacob
had rejected her and
taken
her home
—
but Amanda was desperate enough
for the man
to do something like wait for him naked in a hot tub, so she empathized
with the woman
.

The smell of pizza accompanied
Jacob
back into the kitchen. Amanda tossed the wet dishtowel in the sink and turned to face him, pretending she didn’t feel awkward by forcing a smile.
“Smells great.”

Avoiding her eyes, he stared over her head as he slid the pizza box onto the still-damp island counter. He was not so good at hiding his own awkwardness. “I guess you decided against the pineapple and anchovies.”

“Yeah, I had that a couple nights ago.
Thought I’d mix it up a little.”

He reached for his sunglasses, but she snatched them up before he could get his hand on them. No way was she letting him hide behind them. She didn’t care if it made him uncomfortable to look at her after he’d almost kissed her.

“No sunglasses for you tonight,” she said
,
stuff
ing
them down the front of her shirt. His gaze landed on her chest and her damp T-shirt. This time when her nipples hardened, it wasn’t from the cold. It was from the heat in his eyes.

“Um.”
He jerked his head up and took a step backward. “I’ll get you something dry to put on.”

He fled the room before she could tell him she was more than happy to wear a wet shirt if it made him look at her like that. She sighed
, hid his sunglasses in a random drawer
and
then
searched the cabinets for plates. A few minutes later he returned with a bath towel and a button
-
down m
a
n’s flannel shirt. “I figured you were probably cold.”

Oh sure. So she was supposed to wear a big flannel shirt that covered her from neck to knee while she was forced to look at him in
his
skintight T-shirt that pulled against his well-defined muscles every time he moved? And he expected her not to tackle him to the floor and get her hands on every bulging inch of him
?
Her eyes dropped to his crotch. Yeah, she especially wanted to get her hands on that particular bulge.

“Thanks,” she managed to say.

She pulled her T-shirt off over her head and reached for the shirt he was holding in her direction. He gaped at her
as if he’d never seen a chick in her bra before. A
s soon as she had his shirt in her possession, he spun around and faced the opposite direction.

“Amanda,” he said breathlessly, “what are you doing?”

She
smiled,
glad he was at least a little flustered.
“Putting on your shirt so I don’t catch cold.”
She buttoned it to the middle of her chest and the
n
wriggled out of her wet shorts. She tossed them at him
,
and they smacked him in the back before falling to the floor. “Should I take off my panties too? They’re positively drenched.”

“No!”

She bit her lip to hold in a laugh. Why was he acting so embarrassed? Amanda imagined women threw their panties at him all the time.

“I’m decent,” she told him. Not that she wanted to be.

He took a deep breath and turned to face her
,
as if dreading a walk to the guillotine. His gaze slid from her feet up her bare legs and
to
the large, shapeless shirt that fit her like a muumuu.

“Mercy,” he said under his breath. He squeezed his eyes shut and then bent to retrieve her wet shorts and shirt. “I’ll put these in the dryer for you.”
H
e fled the room again.

Perplexed, Amanda scratched her head. What the fuck was his deal? She wasn’t
that
unappealing, was she? For a few minutes she’d actually thought he was attracted to her. Now he was treating her like she had a communicable disease.

Oh well.
She wasn’t going to let his lack of interest ruin her evening.
Even if he didn’t want her in a sexual capacity, they could still have a few laughs together. She searched the fridge
for a couple of beers, tossed
several
slice
s
of pizza on
a
plate and grabbed the bowl of fruit before carrying it all to the family room off the kitchen. She set everything on the coffee table and knelt in front of his shelves of Blu
-r
ay discs, scanning titles for something that would give her an excuse to bury her face in his chest. Just because he wasn’t attracted to her didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy being close to him.
Right?