“Okay, what time should I be there?” she asked as excitement raced through her.
Blade smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think so. I pick up my dates, sweetheart, and I’ll be here at six o’clock.”
He turned and walked to the front door to leave, and she quickly thought to ask, “Wait, what should I wear?”
When he turned back around and raked her body with his bold gaze her insides melted. “What you’re wearing now is fine by me, Candy girl.”
She plucked at the skirt of her oversized dress. “You like this thing?”
“I thought I made it clear when I told you I wanted you. You could be wearing a brown paper bag and it would be a fucking turn-on.”
She had no response to that. Without warning, Blade strode across the room and stood in front of her again. He leaned down and barely touched her lips with his own. The kiss was so quick, only a slight brush of lips, yet its intensity stunned Candice to the core.
Then he admitted one more startling bit of information.
“I don’t know why, or how, and I swear it’s never happened like this before, but I have these dreams about you. Hot, uncontrollable dreams, and damn if I don’t wake up hard and ready because of them. Because of you.” His voice simmered with barely checked passion. “Think about that today. Get used to it. Because eventually I’m going to get you over your fears, and then you and I are going to make those dreams a reality.”
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When he walked out her front door, Candice imagined Blade lying in bed, naked and wound up, and all because of her. Could it be true they’d both been dreaming about each other? It wasn’t possible, was it? Something else flitted through her mind. “Candy girl”?
She giggled at the silly nickname. She’d never allowed anyone to call her Candy, much less Candy girl. But coming from Blade it felt…sexy.
***
Candice had changed, changed and then changed again. She’d tried on several outfits before settling on a pair of low-slung jeans, t-shirt, and clean white sneakers. The shirt was pink and too big, giving her a small sense of security. Now, all she needed was Blade. He was late, and she started to wonder if he’d forgotten about her. Then her doorbell rang and Candice jumped out of her skin.
She ran to the door and called, “Who is it?”
“It’s Blade, sweetheart.”
He sounded tired. Candice didn’t think that boded well for the evening. She quickly undid the locks and tried very hard not to feel excited that he had indeed remembered her.
“You’re late,” she scolded as she got the door open, but then her eyes widened in alarm when she noticed his face and hands. “Oh my god! What on earth happened to you?”
“Christ, I’m so sorry, Candy. I would have been here sooner but—”
Candice never gave him a chance to finish. She tugged him inside and slammed the door behind him. She surveyed his injured hands and dirt-streaked face. “What happened to your hands, Blade?” They were scraped and bleeding and it made her heart flip just looking at them. His poor, gorgeous hands. “Have you been in some sort of accident?”
“No, baby, nothing like that,” he whispered. “We had some trouble with a contrary roof, that’s all.” He looked her over from head to toe and growled, “Christ, you’re a pretty thing.”
“Uh, thank you,” she replied, then, “A roof?” Mentally, she squashed the excitement skittering through her over his compliment, but she was secretly pleased she’d taken her 26
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hair out of the bun she’d worn earlier. She’d finger-combed it and the soft curls fell past her shoulders. Given Blade’s reaction, it had been the right move.
He smiled at her. “Yeah, and if you think I’m beat up, then you should see the roof.”
A soft gasp escaped her. “You did this to yourself on the job?”
He nodded and leaned heavily against the door. Heck, she knew he was in construction. Blade had his own thriving business, and she’d assumed he worked out of an office in a supervisory capacity, leaving the grueling stuff up to his employees. She should have figured him for the hands-on type.
“If you aren’t up to the cookout, I’ll understand.” She’d be terribly disappointed, but he seemed ready to drop. Instantly, he stood upright with his legs widespread and frowned down at her, as if he hadn’t been exhausted just a second ago.
“You trying to wiggle out on me, Candy girl?”
She blushed. “Well, of course not! But you don’t appear ready to—”
He silenced her with a touch of his lips. Like the first, this kiss was also fleeting and barely-there. When he rose again, he grinned mischievously. “Oh, I’m ready all right. If you believe nothing else, you can believe that.”
She couldn’t ignore the double entendre in his words. She sighed, wishing she were also ready, but it was just a little too soon. “Okay, but I insist we clean those cuts first.”
He gave his hands a quick inspection and shrugged, as if that sort of damage occurred daily. Well, she certainly didn’t like seeing his hands all beat up, and she would only worry about infection if she didn’t tend to them right away.
“Come on,” she said, both pleased and nervous when he followed behind her. He was always that way, silent but alert. He reminded her of a panther. She led him to her kitchen and showed him where the soap and paper towels were so he could clean his hands first while she went in search of peroxide and bandages. When Candice returned, he was staring into her fridge.
“Uh, Blade?”
“Geez, woman, don’t you ever eat?” He waved at the contents of her refrigerator and slammed the door shut. “Your fridge is practically bare, for Christ’s sake.”
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“Of course I eat, Blade Vaughn, but I’m not accustomed to having big, hulking men to feed.”
“A fact I’m not real disappointed about, mind you, but that’s about to change, isn’t it?”
She rolled her eyes at his chauvinistic attitude. “You think I’d cook for you?”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I need to eat, don’t I?”
The man was a total throwback. “No wonder Lacey is always having such a hard time with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? What’s Lacey been saying about me?”
Side-stepping, Candice said, “Sit down so I can take care of these cuts properly.
We’re late enough already.” When he only stood there, brooding, she changed tactics.
“You do want me to go to the cookout with you, don’t you?” The steel in his blue eyes narrowed on her, but he sat. Secretly, she smiled. She knew darn well he wasn’t used to being ordered about. She’d bet her last dollar that Blade was usually the one who did the ordering.
Candice went to the table, set the first aid supplies down and got started on the worst of the cuts. She stood over him and dabbed a peroxide-soaked cotton ball on his battered palm, cringing when it fizzed. To take her mind off the oozing blood, she answered his earlier question.
“Your sister loves you very much, but that doesn’t make her as blind to your faults as you’d like to think.”
He snorted. “What faults?”
She nearly laughed at his genuine surprise. “Your arrogance, for one.”
“I’m not arrogant. I just know what I’m capable of.”
Candice dabbed and, because she was distracted, asked softly, “Is there anything you aren’t capable of?”
Immediately she realized what she’d said and could’ve smacked herself in the head.
She hadn’t meant to make him think she thought him perfect—even if she did. After all, it was never a good idea to give a man that much pull over you.
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“I’m not capable of cooking a decent meal.” His playful smile made her forget what she was doing. “So, if you don’t feed me, I just may starve, sweetheart.”
She wanted to moan over the sexy sound of his voice, the fascinating features of his hard-edged face. “So, maybe I’ll cook for you,” she conceded, and could easily have smacked him for smiling so broadly over her concession. She ripped open a bandage, slapped it against his wrist and was rewarded by his grunt of pain.
“Oh, gee, did that hurt?” she asked, feigning innocence.
“You’re lethal, lady.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled. She stood straighter, surveying her handiwork, and smiled in satisfaction. “Funny, that’s what my self-defense instructor keeps saying, too.”
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Okay, so she was willing to cook for him. She could even fix up his wounds after a hard day’s work, and she knew self-defense. He could easily fall for a woman with those qualities.
In the fading light of day, he watched as Candice talked in conspiratorial whispers with his sister. The two women stood in the backyard, apart from the boisterous crowd, while he sat at the picnic table only half paying attention to Merrick and Chloe as they yakked about honeymooning in Hawaii.
Every so often, Candice and Lacey would giggle and look his way. Christ almighty, he could just imagine what Lacey was saying about him. Nothing good, most likely.
“Blade, are you even listening to me?”
He realized, belatedly, that Merrick had asked him a question. “What?” Blade asked, still watching Candice.
“I wanted to know if you’d done that bid on the office building downtown.”
Was he serious? Work was the furthest thing from his mind. “Uh, well, thing is—”
Merrick shook his head and laughed. “Look at him,” he said to Chloe and their parents sitting at the table with them. Nick, Lacey’s boyfriend, stood a few feet away cleaning off the grill. “He can’t take his eyes off her for five seconds to string two words together, much less think about work,” Merrick complained.
“Well, I think it’s nice. I like Candice. She’s a sweet girl who deserves a good and gentle man like my Blade.” That from his mother, as if he weren’t sitting right there hearing their every word. Merrick snickered, but Marie Vaughn wasn’t through just yet.
“Honestly, have you ever seen your brother like this, Merrick? He does seem quite preoccupied, doesn’t he?” Now she sounded worried. What was he, some dolt who couldn’t put his pants on straight in the morning? Just because Candy fascinated him, just 30
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because the mere thought of her set his blood on fire and turned his body to iron didn’t mean he was completely whipped.
Not to be left out of the
let’s help Blade with his love-life
crap, Chloe tossed in her two cents. “Candice is a very sweet girl, and such a hard worker, too. She’s never late and never complains when she needs to work overtime. I don’t know what I’d do without her, that’s for sure.”
Even though Blade liked what he was hearing about Candice, he was ready to put a stop to their meddling. He wasn’t sure what was going to come of his time with her, and until he had a better grasp for where their relationship was headed, he would tolerate no interference. Not from anyone.
He scowled at the lot of them, and in a deceptively distracted tone said, “You know, Mom, I gave Lacey that boutique card and she said to ask Nick when they plan to set a date.”
Nick turned around so fast he nearly lost his scrubber. The grimace Nick sent his way was enough to make Blade grin. And as expected, his mother—the pit bull—began bludgeoning Nick with various reasons why it was so important to select the right date.
Merrick laughed and warned about little sisters and payback. At the moment, Blade could care less; he just wanted to get back to watching Candice. As his gaze zeroed in on her once more, she dropped something on the ground. When she bent low to pick it up, her pert ass jutted toward him, causing Blade to clench his hand too tightly around the neck of the beer bottle he held. Damn. He itched to close the distance between them and grab a handful of her sweet curves.
“Blade can handle his own love life, Merrick, leave him be.” His dad, Cal Vaughn, did what dads do: toss in a hand whenever needed. “After all, you know as well as any that when a woman wiggles her way in, you aren’t always so inclined to shove her back out again.”
That got his attention.
Blade glanced over at his father. It was like seeing himself in thirty years. He was still as big and intimidating as ever, but now, holding his mother’s hand gently and with a
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secret smile lighting his normally menacing eyes, he made Blade wish for that same sort of relationship.
Someday, that was. Way, way off in the future. Obviously.
Deciding he’d had enough of Merrick’s needling and figuring it was time to put a stop to Lacey’s big mouth, Blade dropped his beer bottle on the picnic table, got up and started toward the two women. Unfortunately, his cousin Josh chose that moment to step up to Candice.
Josh slung a careless arm over Lacey. Blade snarled when he started to talk, smile and flirt with Candice. He was the charmer in the family. His boyish charm and easy smile usually made women melt, not to mention the fact he was practically a poet with words. Blade, on the other hand, was none of the above. He could easily see that Candice might find Josh attractive.
The degenerate. Blade would kick his ass for even thinking about hitting on Candice.
“So he actually let you put bandages on his cuts?” he heard Josh say as he approached.
“Oh, Josh, they were awful! You should have seen them. It was as if he’d tangled with a wildcat and lost.”
Josh, the idiot, chuckled. “I just bet he did.”
Blade glared at his younger cousin when he drew near, which caused Josh to laugh even harder. He was about to tell him to piss off, but Candice turned and stared up at him with such tenderness that it took all the bristle right out of him. He took her hand in his, entwining their fingers as he did, staking a claim for all to see.
For Josh to see.
Josh’s eyes held a challenge, which surprised him. Usually, he was the good-natured one, ready when needed, but content to stay in the background. However, the way he stared at Candice made Blade think maybe Josh had designs on her. No way in hell.