Tangled Hearts (Passion in Paradise) (9 page)

Slowly lifting his eyes
until he met her own blazing gaze, he smiled wickedly.  “Denial ain’t just a
river in Egypt, sweetheart.  You don’t need to feel ashamed.  If it helps, you
made my dick hard the first time you opened your mouth this morning to sass
me.”  He continued to smile as Melody’s mouth opened and closed several times
as she tried to speak.  “It’s okay, baby.  We don’t need words right now.  Just
know, that I’m feelin’ this sexual pull, too.”

“There is
no
pull,” Melody finally managed to squeak. 

Cal unhurriedly rose
from his seat on the couch to cross the room to Melody.  When he was standing
in front of her leather chair, he bent, bracing one strong arm against the
chair on either side of her.  Leaning over until his face hovered just above
hers, he smiled.  “Melody, I came here to make sure you were safe as a favor to
my friend and your brother.  I’m staying here because the woman I’m supposed to
protect has captured my attention in a way no woman ever has in all my
forty-two years.  And I’ll continue to remain here until I’m convinced you’re
completely safe from any threat and we’ve figured out what this very real
pull
between us is.  But I’m warnin’ you now, babe, if this pull is what I think it
is, you better get real used to seeing my face because I’m not going
any-fucking-where.  We clear?” he asked, nearly groaning when he felt the warm
bursts of her breath bathing his parted lips.

Melody swallowed hard and
nodded quickly, her eyes bright and nervous as they stayed on his face.

“Good.  Now, I’m gonna
go take Goose for a walk before I give into the urge and show your stubborn ass
just exactly how much of a pull there is between us,” he growled, unable to resist
dropping his head and claiming her mouth for a single rough kiss.  He groaned
as his mouth touched her soft lips and had to force himself to keep his touch
light, simply skimming those puffy pink lips with his tongue.   He moaned as he
tasted her for the first time.  She tasted exactly how he imagined.  Sweet,
heady, and addictive.

Lifting his mouth, he
met her surprised gaze.  “Oh, yeah, baby.  There’s a pull.  Fuck, I’m fairly
certain there’s an invisible fuckin’ magnet drawing your body to mine,” he
whispered to her raggedly before pushing himself away from her and calling for
Goose as he strode toward the door.

“Get ready, Melody,” he
ordered without turning around, “I’m gonna be coming for you, Princess.”

Ten days later, Melody
knew exactly what the saying, ‘at her wit’s end’ meant.  Mostly, because she’d
passed being at her wit’s end and moved on to being three steps away from a
nervous breakdown.

“Seriously, Harmony, I
don’t think my brother sent Callum Valentine here to help me.  I think it’s all
some kind of plot to drive me crazy and have me institutionalized,” she shared
to one of the few girlfriends she’d reconnected with since coming back to
Paradise.  Since Harmony had her own alpha male at home to contend with, she
knew the other woman got where she was coming from now.  “I swear to God that
man is going to drive me certifiably insane.”

Harmony giggled.  “It’s
only been ten days, girl.  How bad can having a man around that looks as good
as Callum Valentine be?  If I weren’t married to my own dreamboat, I swear, I’d
give some real thought into takin’ a bite out of him.”

Melody rolled her eyes
as she watched a shirtless Cal continue painting the back wall a pale green
shade called meadow that she’d chosen at the paint store yesterday.  She’d
wanted to select a mauve hue, but Cal had convinced her to go with a non-gender
specific hue since the bookstore portion of her shop needed to appeal to both
women
and
men.  She’d hated it, but the man had made a good point.  In
fact, where Hooks and Books was concerned, Callum made a lot of good points. 
It seemed like the guy was a born businessman.  In the ten days he’d been fully
in her life, he’d taken over the construction portion of getting her store
ready for launch while she’d overseen getting the inventory tagged and ready to
shelve.  She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but the two of them made a good team.

“Oh, I’d like to bite
him, Harm.  I’d start with tearing a hunk out of his ass.  He’s taking over my
freaking life.  At home.  At work.  Everywhere I turn, he’s there!” Melody
complained, biting her lip as she watched the play of muscles in his sweaty,
sculpted back as he lifted a can of paint to the ladder beside him.  God, the
man was sex on a stick…and yeah, if she was honest, she’d love to sink her
teeth into him.

But she wouldn’t.

Firstly because the
last relationship she’d had with a man had ended in her issuing a restraining
order against him – which, incidentally, had done NOTHING to slow down her ex-fiancé
from contacting her.  Brad still called at least once a day to beg her to give
them another chance.  This was something she hadn’t shared with Cal, either. 
She knew him well enough to know that information would send him sailing toward
Knoxville, determined to end the life of one very thick Bradley Weller.  No,
she kept her mouth shut and prayed Brad got bored and moved on soon.  After
all, he was hardly a threat.  Just an annoyance.

Secondly, Callum was
her brother’s friend.  If she let herself go there with him and things ended
badly, she didn’t want to cost her brother one of the few men he trusted in the
world.  Over the last two weeks, RJ had confided in her that Cal had saved his
life on more than one occasion, both literally and figuratively.  She didn’t
know the details (and wasn’t sure she wanted to know if truth was told), but it
was clear that Cal had been a kind of mentor for her big brother.  He was
important to RJ.  And because of that, he was important to her, too.  There was
no way that Melody wanted to do anything that would jeopardize RJ’s friendship
with Callum, even though Cal had made it clear with both words and deeds that
his interest in her wasn’t changing.   

Lastly, Melody would
never make a romantic move because Callum Valentine was dangerous to her in a
way her ex, Bradley, never was.  While she’d always thought Brad was
classically handsome, she had never been attracted to him the way she was to
Cal.  Between his rugged good looks and his hard muscular body, Cal could make
her panties wet with just a smoldering look in her direction.  It had taken
poor Brad an hour of foreplay to get her body even remotely interested in sex. 
Cal only had to look Melody’s way and her body was poised for an orgasm.  Honest
to God, she’d masturbated more in the past two weeks than she had in the last
year… and always to the same fantasy: Callum taking her body hard, fast, and
passionately. 

She blamed it all on
the big jerk, too.  If Cal would just keep his hands and lips to himself, she
could get over this weird attraction she had to him.  But every chance he got,
Cal found a reason to touch her.  Whether he was helping her at the shop or
cooking with her at home, his hands always found a way to touch her body. 
Sometimes innocently, other times not so innocently.  And the crafty man had
stolen more than a couple of kisses from her unsuspecting lips.  Kisses that
she’d enjoyed way more than she should, she silently admitted.   But Lord, the
man knew how to turn her on and he knew it.  Shivering slightly, she forced
herself to focus on what Harmony was saying.

“Of course Cal is
there, Mel.  He promised RJ that he’d protect you.  Speaking of which, have you
told Cal yet that Brad is still trying to reconcile with you?” Harmony asked
worriedly.  “Or the fact that you’re still getting those weird hang-ups?”

“Uhmmm….” Melody
hedged, privately wishing like hell that she’d never confided those particular
items to Harmony.  The other woman had been harping on her for a week that she
needed to tell Cal what was going on. 

“Melody, how is he
supposed to keep you safe if he doesn’t know what’s going on?”

“Harm, there’s nothing
going on.  Brad is just pissed that I’m not taking him back.  It’s a pride
thing.  And the hang-ups might be a little creepy, but they’re harmless. 
Nothing has even happened to indicate I should be scared.”

“Besides the fact that
some asshole is calling you and terrifying the shit out of you by breathing
into the phone and saying absolutely nothing.”

“Yeah, except that,”
Melody muttered, keeping one eye on Cal’s firm ass as he climbed a few steps up
the ladder to reach the top of the wall with his paint roller.  God, how could
a middle-aged man look that damned good without a shirt on, she wondered.  It
wasn’t fair.  She wasn’t too many years younger than him, and she already had
to worry about wrinkles and cellulite.  Sergeant Sexy, however, just seemed to
get better with age.

“Tell him!” Harmony
ordered, her sweet voice serious.  “I know that Callum isn’t exactly a “hearts
and flowers” kind of guy, but any idiot can see that he wants what’s best for
you, Mel.  Help the man out and tell him what you…and
he
… are up
against.”

“I’ll think about it,”
Melody offered with a sigh.  She knew her friend meant well, but she refused to
be an alarmist.  She could handle things on her own without the assistance of
the Bossy Pants currently painting her store, she thought with another
lingering look toward Cal. “I gotta go, lady.  It’s time for Goose’s walk.  I’ll
call you tomorrow and we can finalize the details on the ribbon cutting
ceremony for the store,” she said, shooting a smile toward her waiting canine
friend.  She and Goose had bonded over the past ten days and he’d quickly
become her closest confidant, listening to her rants and ramblings without
judgment.

“Fine,” Harmony
consented reluctantly.  “Just think about what I said, okay?”

“I will; I swear,”
Melody promised her solemnly before saying goodbye and hanging up the phone.  Looking
at the back of the store where Callum was still moving his paint roller up and
down, spreading the soothing green color over the wall, she dug in the pocket
of her lightweight jacket for a jellybean as she murmured aloud to herself,  “Lord,
forgive me for the dirty things I wanna do to that man,”.  Popping the cherry-flavored
candy between her lips, she moaned quietly at the sweet burst of flavor. 
Jellybeans were her stress food, and she’d been eating them by the bagful for
days.  They weren’t quite as satisfying as good sex, but they’d do in a pinch.

“Hey, Cal” she called
back to him as she gathered the dog’s leash and her keys off the counter, “I’m
gonna take Goose for his walk around the park.”  She held her breath as Cal
turned to look at her, his bare chest gleaming with perspiration.

“If you give me a few
minutes, I’ll have this wall done and I can walk our boy with you,” he said,
dipping his roller back into the paint.

“Perfectly capable of
walking a dog all by myself,” she retorted tartly, her eyes flashing as her
stubborn gaze collided with his amused one even as her neck tingled at the way
he referred to Goose as their boy.  She had to do a better job at keeping their
lives separate.  Although, it seemed the harder she fought him, the deeper Cal
tried to entrench himself.  He was tenacious like that.  “I was just telling
you out of common courtesy, Mr. Pushy Pants.  It wasn’t an invitation.”

“Okay, Little Miss
Independent, I was just offering.  I thought after he dragged you all over the
park yesterday that you might want some help today,” he returned, unperturbed
by her sour attitude.

“He was chasing one of
the ducks,” she retorted hotly as if that justified everything.  “I’ll make
sure not to take him down the path that leads to the pond today.  We’ll be fine
… we’ll just stick to the playground trails.”  How was she to know that the dog
had a duck fetish?  Every time Goose spotted one, he lost his little furry
mind.  

Cal nodded as he
resumed his painting. “Okay.  See you after a while.” 

Melody stared at his
huge, muscled body for another moment, unable to tear her eyes away from the
way his sinewy muscles clenched and released every time he lifted his arm to
roll paint against the wall.

 “Baby, you keep
staring at my ass like that and that dog is gonna do without his walk,” Cal warned
without turning around.

Startling at the sudden
deep sound of his voice reprimanding her, Melody jumped and softly gasped.  “I
wasn’t staring!” she immediately denied.  It was a useless waste of her breath,
however, since she suspected he knew that she was lying.  His easy laughter
only confirmed her suspicion.  “Oh, shut up!  You shouldn’t walk around half
naked if you didn’t want somebody to look at you,” she chided him sharply.

“Fuck, Princess, I’ll
take it
all
off if you promise to keep looking at me like I’m the last
meal on Earth.  Hell, I’ll even be generous and let you do a little touching if
you ask me real sweet,” he offered over his shoulder, his blue eyes heated as
he wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“In your dreams, Cal,”
Melody growled as she bent to clip the lead of the leash to Goose’s collar. 
She was more than a little embarrassed that he’d caught her ogling him.  Hell,
he hadn’t even been watching her.  She wasn’t sure how he’d known she was
drooling over him.  Maybe he’d developed some weird kind of telepathy where she
was concerned.

“Baby, you have no
idea.  The things I’ve been doing to you in my dreams are positively sinful,”
Cal shared as his eyes moved over her body longingly.  “I’ve already corrupted
that gorgeous body of yours thirty different ways in my sleep.  Wanna hear
about ‘em?” he asked, leaning against the ladder as he shot her another of his
patented panty-dissolving smiles.

Running her hand over
Goose’s sleek coat of fur, she shook her head at the dog.  “I hope your daddy’s
dick is as big as his ego.  If it is, he’s gonna make some woman very freaking
lucky,” she whispered to the animal.  Goose merely snorted in return.  “Bye,
Cal,” she shouted as she led her guard dog toward the glass door at the front
of the shop.  She did her best to tune out Cal’s laughter as she led her dog
out onto the sidewalk.

Taking a deep breath of
the fresh air, she realized that in just a few more days, it would be
Christmas.  Chewing her lower lip, she debated with herself over whether she
should pick up a gift for Cal.  They’d agreed they’d share Christmas dinner
together since he had no family and was new to the area and her only family was
half a world away serving their country. Heck, like a true good sport, her
roomie had even agreed to help her start decorating for the holiday this
afternoon and climb up on the roof to help her put up Christmas lights.  Sure,
he’d grumbled about it over their breakfast of eggs, toast, and orange juice
this morning, but he’d eventually conceded to her wishes.   Tomorrow, she’d
either ask to borrow his truck or enlist his help to go pick up a live
Christmas tree.  No fakes for her home, thank you very much.  She’d been forced
to use an artificial tree for five years thanks to Bradley’s allergies, and she
was excited to finally be able to use a real pine tree now that her ex was no
longer a part of her life.

She picked up the pace
on her walk as Goose pulled her toward the gates of the town park, smiling as
she took in the pretty holiday decorations hanging from the light poles and
trees.  The town of Paradise loved its holidays and went all out when it came
to decorating.  At night, the park was lit up like a winter wonderland and
people from all over the area made the trip into town to look at the holiday
lights.

Smiling and nodding as
a mother pushing a stroller walked past her, Melody pulled gently on Goose’s
leash to get him to slow down.  Following after the huge Great Dane, she bit
her lip as she again turned her thoughts to a gift for Cal.  She could ask her
brother when he called if he had any ideas, but she honestly wanted to figure
it out on her own.  Since he’d moved in a couple of weeks ago, she hadn’t noticed
him having any hobbies like reading or sports.  Honestly, he spent most of his
time following her around, trying to get to know her better.  His clothes all
seemed like they were relatively new and in good condition, so that idea was
out.  The harder she thought about it, the more she wished that she’d asked him
more questions about himself.  It would have made things easier if she knew him
a little better.  She could go with something impersonal like a wallet or a
money clip, but that just seemed cold to her.  She wanted him to know that she’d
at least put a little effort into getting him something that he’d like.