Summer Kisses (275 page)

She nodded. “It really was. Thanks for giving me a lift home.”

“Anytime.”

I let her show me to the front door, not wanting to leave and knowing I should.

Nice.
Like Katherine. A nice girl with a nice job and a nice house. The kind of girl Mom would love. And a distraction I absolutely didn’t need.

Putting her and her niceness and her spectacular cleavage out of my mind, I exited the house. I might have been feeling a bit of regret, but it didn’t mean anything.

Not a damn thing.

My humiliation at the hands of Bizz had faded ever so slightly by the time I walked Quinn to the door. I couldn’t believe she’d pulled that. Or that Quinn had been witness to it, or that I had filled in the details.
Oh, God.

His reasonably tactful handling of the situation had gone a long way toward making me forgive him for his charade the day before. I wasn’t sure that was a good or a bad thing.

As Quinn stepped onto the porch, the curtains in the house across the street parted around a large, owlish pair of bifocals. Old Mrs. Abernathy was at it again. I waved at the older woman, and the curtains snapped shut, only to part a couple of inches moments later.

“Who are you waving to?” Quinn asked, turning toward the street.

“My neighbor’s mother-in-law.” I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t had a bit of privacy since she moved in. She’s nosy as hell and has
9-
1-
1 on speed dial. The police have been out here about once a month since she moved in, ready to arrest a prowler only to find that the culprit is the cat.”

He chuckled. The sound sent warm tingles straight through me.

“Don’t get me wrong. She’s a sweet old lady. I can’t help but goad her when I catch her spying on me.”

“What do you mean,
goad her
?”

“When I see her spying through the window or the lilac bushes in front, I’ll wave so she knows I see her.”

“You’re terrible,” he said, chuckling. The accusation was tempered by a devilment in his expression. “Is she still watching?”

I glanced over his shoulder. Once again, the curtains were still several inches apart in the center, framing Mrs. Abernathy’s face.

“Yes. She seems quite interested in what’s going on over here.”

“Then let’s give her a thrill.” Before I could inquire what he meant, Quinn slipped his arms around my waist and shoulders, dipped me to alarming depths, and put his mouth to mine. It wasn’t exactly a kiss, but it wasn’t
not
a kiss either.

Dear God
. The man was going to give himself a hernia! Shock had me clutching at his shoulders spastically, only to realize that not only was he still standing, I was still in his arms. He was doing fine. That realization made me feel... safe. As safe as I’d ever felt in any man’s arms.

He was big, strong, and had mile-wide shoulders. I refused to think about anything else until Quinn eased me up. I wasn’t ready for it to be over. But as I reluctantly went to break my death grip on his shoulders, he pulled me back to him.

His arms relaxed their hold so that he was no longer supporting but caressing me. This time, he kissed me for real. His tongue teased the line of my lips until I invited him in. All sense of time was lost as his lips dueled with mine. His right hand, which had been wrapped gently but firmly around my shoulder, eased up underneath my hair—now out of its clip—and teased the nape of my neck, giving me a shuddering chill. His other hand moved from the small of my back and left a tingling and fiery trail up my ribs then back down to my waist.

I stopped wondering if things were getting out of hand when he nibbled a path down my neck. Oh, yeah, they had. And as his lips caressed my jaw, I so didn’t care.

I must have sighed or moaned out loud because Quinn started as if he’d been shocked then stepped back. Running a hand through his thick hair, causing it to stand at odd angles, and his breath ragged, he said, “Well. That should have fixed her.”

He looked like he was about to say something else, and I feared what it might be.

Oh, God. Don’t apologize. That was fantastic.
Of course, I didn’t say that, but I certainly thought it. The understatement of the year. However, it seemed a more appropriate remark than what I really wanted to say which was,
Could I interest you in becoming the father of my children?

“Er... right.” I straightened my blouse where it had risen up on my back when he’d dipped me.

My eyes darted around, searching for something else to focus on. Mrs. Abernathy was no longer silhouetted against the light coming from her living-room window. Grasping for quick conversation to break the unbearable tension, I cracked a quick joke. “It appears that at least we took care of the Neighborhood Watch.”

He mumbled what might have been, “And to think she only caught the warm-up,” but I wasn’t certain.

“Excuse me?”

“Nevermind.”

I was about to thank him for the weirdest evening I’d had in years and then send him on his way when the sound of tires in the driveway and a motor idling quietly diverted my attention. A sheriff’s deputy hopped out of the car, his palm resting near the holster at his waist. Swaggering toward us slowly, he looked tensed for action.

Quinn stepped forward, almost as if to shield me from the officer’s probing stare, as I pulled myself together, emotionally more than physically.

“Is everything okay here?” the deputy asked in a booming voice.

Quinn spoke up. “Fine, deputy. What can we help you with?”

“I want to hear it from the lady,” he commanded.

“Everything’s fine,” I assured him. Fine except for the disappointment that the kiss was over.

“Neighbor reported a woman being attacked in front of this house.”

An instant sinking feeling filled the pit of my stomach. “Mrs. Abernathy?”

“I can’t say.”

“Mrs. Abernathy has an overactive imagination. What she saw was a goodbye kiss and nothing more.”

He looked from Quinn to me and then back again, shook his head, and chuckled. “Might want to keep that behind the front door,” he said. Touching the brim of his hat in parting, he strutted back to his patrol car, folded himself behind the wheel, and pulled away.

“Well, that’s one for the books,” Quinn said.

My brain had melted by this point, and I struggled to find something coherent and hopefully entertaining to say in return.

“You’re a good sport, Katherine. Good night.”

A good sport? Oh, come on. Really? He could do better than that! I took a deep breath and tried to stem my disappointment.

“Good night. I’ll call you on Monday so that we can go over the proposal.”

“Sounds good.” He swung behind the wheel of his Jeep.

Seriously?
That was it?

Even as I started the Jeep, a quick body check confirmed it. Yup. Every pulse point in my person was pounding.

That had been...
unexpected
.

Who knew that Katherine’s curvy form would pack such a wallop? I backed out of her driveway, sure that I should have apologized for my pass, even if I wasn’t actually sorry, except for the fact that I stopped things before they got truly interesting.

Next time her neighbor was out of luck. We were starting indoors. Not that there would be a next time.

My phone rang before I could get much further with that little fantasy. “Mitchell,” I said.

“Quinn, it’s John.” The tension in his voice, while not unusual, didn’t bode well.

“What’s going on?”

“Brace yourself.”

Which was John-speak for “bad business news headed your way.” The last time he said “brace yourself,” Charlie, the manager of my downtown fitness center, had been found
in flagrante delicto
with a certain councilman
and
the councilman’s wife. It had made the early edition, wrecked two marriages, and caused Charlie to move out of state. I needed another publicity nightmare like root canal and a tax audit.

“Oh, hell. What now?”

“A friend of a friend at the
Enquirer
gave me a heads up about an article in tomorrow’s paper. Your favorite reporter and mine—”

“Oh, shit.”
Amanda Shoemaker.
This just kept getting better and better. The woman I used to date who was personally responsible for taking down the councilman. I still wasn’t sure if her motivation in that article was hurting me, Charlie, or Councilman Rhodes, but she effectively annihilated the lot of us.

“Yeah. I have no way of knowing if this is true, but if it is, then she’s received a list of your members and the inappropriate nicknames that your staff supposedly calls them. Apparently, there are a couple of high-profile names on the list.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “I think we both know that any member of my staff would be immediately canned if they were caught calling their clients by anything other than their given names. Do we know how long this supposed list is?”

“I have no idea at all.”

“I’m not that worried about it,” I said with more bravado than I was actually feeling. We were talking about Amanda Shoemaker, after all. “It has to be a mistake.”

John chuckled, but it was a skeptical sound. “I’m telling you, man. You shouldn’t have dumped her. Could you see your way to throwing her the occasional bang until this fitness center is built?”

“You’re an ass.
You
sleep with her.”

“Eww. No thank you.”

“Well then why do you think
I’d
be willing to?”

“Because you’ll sleep with anyone.”

“Bullshit.”

“Tell me you’re not contemplating the bump and grind with your new ad agency girl.”

I paused. He had me there. “I cannot confirm or deny. But even if I were, that doesn’t mean I’d do anyone.”

“
Seriously?
I was only kidding.”

“Katherine’s a nice lady, and that’s all I’m saying.” She was also one hell of a kisser and completely stacked, which didn’t hurt anything.

“You’re
actually
thinking... Why
her
? I was only kidding when I said that.”

“Leave it alone, John.” I wasn’t surprised at his comments but screw that. I’d had my share of sex with phony, hard-bodied women whose idea of an ideal partner involved plate weights and pulleys. At least Katherine was real. And soft.

So amazingly
soft
.

“Man, I’m sayin’ this to you as your friend and your business advisor. You live in a very image-conscious world. You’re the public face and body of Mitchell Fitness. You can’t afford to be seen with...” He trailed off.

I’d known John for more than twenty years. He isn’t the complete asshole he sometimes appears. However, his entire life would have been a lot different had he spent more time living in the moment and less time worrying about what other people might think. But that was a story for another day.

On the other hand, if Amanda Shoemaker was on the warpath again, I didn’t need her to get any ideas about Katherine. It wouldn’t be fair to her, and the bad publicity would make an already difficult situation worse.

I said goodbye to John and tossed the phone down on the passenger seat.

In the good-news column, at least John’s bad news managed to cure me of my raging woody.

The bad news was that I had to avoid thinking of Katherine as anything more than a friend, at least for now. Even if I wanted to do nothing but bury myself and my troubles in her warm heat.

God, I hoped that John was misinformed.

The next morning, I was still reeling at the thought that I’d made out with Quinn. Outside. In full view of the world. And the police showed up.

Ugh.

So much for holding onto my mad.

Even as I headed to my office—in a rental car—I was at least as excited about the anticipation of seeing Quinn again as I was about leading this project. Which was saying a
lot
, because this was the kind of project I’d been dreaming of!

Maybe I was coming down with something. That might explain my hideous lack of good judgment yesterday.

After an hour of nothing but the steady clickity-click of my fingers on the keyboard, I found myself staring out at the Cincinnati skyline, daydreaming instead of working. The brilliant sun warmed the glass and thus my office, leaving me with an atypical desire not to work.

Quite by design, I’d become a workaholic. But there were times when it felt like something was missing. Nothing big. Not anything that was making me unhappy. Just a nagging feeling that there was something more to life than a big promotion, a big office, and a big paycheck. Something I needed to find to be truly happy.

“Needing Saturday to finish your work, Kathh-ryn?” Bennington Wurther III, or as I referred to him Ben-III, interrupted my depressing self-contemplation. Not that he ever pegged my bliss-o-meter. He deliberately mispronounced my name every time he said it. It’s Kath-er-ine. How hard is that? He always lost a syllable and drew out the “th” about a full second too long.

A dumb thing to get my panties in a twist over. But because he annoyed me on so many other levels, this was an easy thing to fixate on today.

If I’d been Will—or any other man in the company—Ben-III would have said, “Way to show initiative. That’s what I like to see. Dedicated employees coming in on the weekend.”

If his daddy hadn’t started this firm, I was sure Ben-III would have ended up in a job with his name stitched on his shirt. Ben had disliked me almost from the moment I met him. Mostly because I’d inadvertently showed him up in front of his father my first week as an intern. Ben-II went on to become my mentor and an amazing one at that! But I was kind of glad he hadn’t been my father.

He’d somewhat forced Ben-III to compete with me during our training program, which consisted of working in every department in the agency—video production, web development, print design, copywriting, and public relations. Unfortunately, Ben-III suffered for that competition.

“Just wanted to get a jump start on the Mitchell Fitness proposal. Hopefully, we can get him to sign Monday, and I’ll start work on Tuesday.”