Since it appeared that the opening of her bed-and-breakfast had suffered at the very least a not inconsiderable delay, maybe she should think about starting a restaurant, Carly reflected. With every meal, it seemed like they were feeding more of the town.
Then she glanced sideways and there was Matt, leaning on the chain-link fence that surrounded the backyard. Dressed in full sheriff mode with a sheaf of papers in one hand, he was looking at her, not quite smiling, so handsome in the bright sunlight that her heart skipped a beat.
She was glad to see him, she realized, really, really glad, and smiled at him before she remembered that maybe acting a little cooler toward
him might serve her purpose better. But he had taken her by surprise, and anyway he was already letting himself in through the fence and quite possibly hadn’t even noticed.
“Hey,” he said as he reached the stoop, and from the look in his eyes she knew that he
had
noticed, that he was perfectly well aware that her heartbeat was suddenly as erratic as one of those yellow butterflies Annie had been chasing before spying Matt and rushing over to be patted. But it was so hot, the humidity was so enervating, and she was so tired, mentally and physically, from everything that had happened, that at the moment she just didn’t have the energy to sort out what kind of attitude would best serve her purpose.
Besides, she’d already won a victory of sorts, she realized. The kiss-and-run was over for the moment. He was here.
And good luck to you too, Mike.
“I’ll take over the baby-sitting detail,” Matt said after greeting Sammy. “You can go serve these.”
Sammy nodded, already on his feet, and Matt passed him the papers he was holding. Then Matt looked at Carly.
“Want to go for a ride?”
Her stomach was behaving as erratically as her heart.
She nodded, and he held out his hand to her. She put hers into his—just feeling his hand close around hers caused her pulse to skip—and he pulled her to her feet. With a quick glance at the closed back door, which muffled most of the laughter and chatter in the kitchen but not all of it, he steered her back toward the gate, still holding her hand. He was clearly of the same mind she was. No point in facing a battery of curious eyes and tongues unless it was absolutely necessary.
But their stealth getaway was almost thwarted. When the gate shut behind them, Annie, who’d been following on their heels, was still inside. She started up with an indignant yapping.
They stopped and looked back. Annie was bouncing up and down like a kid on a pogo stick, barking all the while.
“Bring her,” Matt said in disgust.
Carly opened the gate and Annie, happy now, bounded through. Not another word was said until all three of them were in Matt’s
cruiser. Matt picked Annie up off Carly’s lap and deposited her firmly in the rear. Then he leaned over and kissed Carly hard.
Caught by surprise, her lips fluttered and flattened beneath his. Then her hand came up to clutch the back of his head and she kissed him back.
“Now that we’ve got that straight,” Matt said after he’d let her go, “why don’t you tell me how you talked Mike into taking you out?”
As he spoke, he started the car and reversed it down the driveway without coming anywhere near the restored mailbox, Carly noted.
“What makes you think I talked him into it?” Carly hedged. Her pulse was still pounding from that kiss and she was still breathing too quickly.
Matt’s mouth twisted wryly. “I know him, and I know you.”
“Maybe I like him.” Carly was rallying a little, trying her best not to appear too besotted. Like Erin had said, Matt had had girls swarming over him his entire life. One thing she did not want to be was just part of the swarm.
“I’m sure you do. He’s a nice guy. What’s not to like?” They were turning out of the subdivision, heading toward town.
“Maybe I
really
like him. He’s cute, have you noticed? And sweet. And thoughtful. And—”
Matt glanced at her. “Give it a rest, Curls. You went out with him to get a rise out of me.”
Carly looked at him meditatively. As she had noted before, there were numerous disadvantages to trying to have a relationship with a man who knew her so well. “To make you jealous, you mean?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“So did it work?”
He grinned. “Okay. It worked—until I saw you two together. Mike looked like he had a tiger by the tail. You looked like the tiger. Then I remembered something.”
Carly was cautious. “What?”
“That you’re crazy in love with me.”
That home truth hit her like a body blow. She sucked in air, realized that he was enjoying her reaction, and frantically tried to regroup.
“Listen, sweet cheeks, I wouldn’t get cocky. Maybe I just want your body.”
He was smiling now as he watched the road. “There’s that, too.”
They braked at a stoplight. Desperate for something to look at besides him, Carly glanced around. By the golden glow of the late summer sun she could see beautiful downtown Benton unfolding around her in all its refurbished glory. Theirs wasn’t the only vehicle on the road—Sunday afternoon drives were a favorite activity—but most of the other cars were clustered in the parking lot that served The Corner Café. Sunday supper out was a popular activity too.
“Where are we going?” Carly asked as the light changed.
“Well, we can go for a drive, maybe revisit scenic childhood haunts and walk down a memory lane or two. Or we can grab a bite at The Corner Café and give our friends and neighbors the chance to see that I’m back in your good graces again. Or we could forget about the preliminaries and just cut to the chase and go have great sex.”
Carly’s heart started to pound. She pretended to think it over. “If we have great sex, are you going to propose?”
She thought his jaw tightened fractionally. He glanced at her, his expression faintly wary. “Do you want me to?”
Not if he didn’t want to. Never if he didn’t want to.
“Just so you know—if you do you’re dead.”
“I take it that’s a ‘yes’ to the great sex option?” The heat in the look he sent her way made her quake.
“Yes.”
It was probably stupid, Carly thought, she should hold out, she vividly remembered Erin recommending “no sex” as a way of getting Matt, but suddenly she was far more interested in doing Matt than getting him and anyway at the moment stratagems were pretty much beyond her. At the thought of him on her and in her she was dizzy, melting, ready to rip off all her clothes and jump his bones and—
“If you don’t quit looking at me like that, I’m liable to end up wrecking the car.”
The drawl in his voice was pronounced; the heat in his eyes was palpable; the electricity in the car was as potent as summer lightning.
It was all Carly could do to breathe.
“The county wouldn’t like that,” she said, striving to keep him from guessing that it was all she could do not to pant, that she was so hot and hungry for him that she could practically come from just looking at him, from just thinking about what they were going to do. But of course he knew her so well. He knew how turned-on she was. She could tell from the dark color creeping up into his cheekbones and the sudden tension in his body and the hot secret gleam in his eyes that he knew.
And she knew how turned-on he was, too.
The car stopped, and she managed to focus enough on something beyond the two of them to discover that they were in front of his rented garage. Reaching past her, he opened the glove compartment and extracted a homely blue garage door opener. He pressed the button, the door went up, and they drove into the dusty shadows. Then he pressed the button again, and put the transmission in park and turned off the key as the door rattled its way back down, enclosing them in the cave-like interior.
It was cool in the car, and dark, and Annie was napping in the backseat. Carly just sat where she was for a second, dizzy with wanting him, willing herself to ignore her weakened knees and trembling muscles and dry mouth and get out. Matt looked at her as he undid his seat belt, then reached over and undid hers, too. She stroked his arm, sliding her fingers right up under his short sleeve to caress the hard warm bulge of his biceps, and he turned his head and pressed his mouth into the curve between her shoulder and her neck. She caught her breath, clutching at him, and he lifted his head and looked at her. Then he gathered her up and lifted her right across the console onto his lap, tilting her back against his arm and the door, and kissed her. His lips molded themselves to hers, his tongue was hot and fierce and demanding, and his hand was on her breast, closing over it, squeezing. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back with abandon, wanting him so much she could die. She was in an awkward position, cradled on his lap with her hip pressed into the steering wheel and her bare legs (she’d stripped off her pantyhose and shoes as soon as she got home from church) bent over the console so that her feet, wearing only one flip-flop now as the other had fallen
off, were in her seat. But it didn’t feel awkward, it felt wonderful,
he
felt wonderful, so warm and strong and good that he made her head spin. Kicking off the other flip-flop, toes curling, she threaded her fingers into his hair, holding his head for her kiss, taking his mouth with her tongue. Her heart was pounding and she was breathing hard and the quickening deep inside her was already fast and close and urgent.
“You’ve been using my soap again, Curls,” he murmured as he slid his mouth down her throat.
That made no sense, or maybe she was just too fuzzy-headed to sort it out, so she kind of opened her eyes to find him watching her. He was breathing hard too and looming over her so that his wide shoulders blocked out her view of the rest of the front seat, looking dark and sexy and turned-on as hell. She forgot why she was looking at him then and just looked and breathed, and his eyes turned obsidian on her and he kissed her with a fierce hunger that made her moan into his mouth. His hand was on her breasts, caressing and squeezing, and she arched her back like a cat being petted, letting her head fall back against his arm and reveling in his touch and kissing him back until she was trembling and dizzy and so hot she thought she’d catch fire. Then his hand moved down her body, down between her legs, and slid warm and hard over the soft smooth skin of her thigh. He pushed her skirt up and touched her through the thin pink nylon of her panties, pressing against her, rubbing her until she was on fire and gasping into his mouth and moving mindlessly beneath his hand. Then he slipped his hand beneath the elastic of one of the leg openings and touched her that way too, and his fingers felt so good on her that she couldn’t stand it, she was slick and hot and wet for him and so ready that when they slid inside her she moaned and moved and couldn’t wait…
Do me, Matt.
He made a sound like a growl against her lips and she realized that she might have said it aloud, no, she
had
said it aloud, and then she stopped thinking at all as in a fierce, urgent burst of need he pulled her panties off and scooted the seat back and unzipped his pants and lifted her astride him and thrust into her. He was big and hot and
huge with desire and the sensation as he drove into her was mind-blowing.
“Ride me,” he said, his voice thick and guttural, and she did, closing her eyes and clinging to his shoulders as he grasped her hips and surged up into her again and again and again. He kissed and sucked and bit at her breasts through her clothes and then finally yanked her dress up over her head and pulled her bra off too. Then he kissed and sucked at her breasts some more so that the hot dampness of his mouth on her bare skin drove her wild and she pressed his head against her breasts and arched her back and moved with mindless pleasure and gasped out
yes, oh yes, oh yes.
“Carly,” he said then, groaning, and thrust hard, grinding himself into her, pushing her butt back up against the steering wheel, making her cry out, making her shudder, making her clench and convulse inside and then come so hard and fast that she was screaming, mindless, blown away—and utterly his.
I love you, Matt.
This time, when those damning little words came out of her mouth, it wasn’t in the heat of passion. It was in the drugged aftermath, when she lay limply against him, naked and damp with sweat and utterly spent. For a moment after she heard them, she hoped they were part of her inner dialogue, that she hadn’t actually said them aloud, but no such luck. When had she ever had that kind of luck?
“Yeah, Curls, I know you do,” he said, sounding as tired as she felt.
Oh, the romance of it.
She lifted her head to look him in the eye. It was not a loving look. She was draped across him, her arms looped around his neck, her body plastered to his so tightly that she could feel the entire outline of his metal badge pressed into her breast. Totally, unmistakably, indisputably his, and he clearly realized it too. Her spine stiffened at the thought, and she sat up in his lap.
“Sweet cheeks, just so you know, I say that to all the guys.”
One corner of his mouth tilted up fractionally. His gaze was moving down her body now, his eyes gleaming appreciatively as he drank
everything in, and she realized that while she was naked he was still fully dressed, although his shirt was halfway unbuttoned and wildly askew and his pants were somewhere down around his thighs. Still, he had a distinct advantage in the dignity department, especially considering the fact that she was straddling him and whenever she moved, her butt hit the steering wheel and her breasts brushed his chest.
“Your nose just grew,” he said, flicking it.
Goaded, she scowled at him. Before she could say anything else he laughed and leaned up and kissed her, primarily, she thought, to shut her up. Then he let her go and lay back in the seat and slid his hands up her rib cage until they rested just below her breasts and smiled lazily at her.
“Just so you know, Curls: I love you too.”
Carly felt as if every one of her senses had been suddenly suspended.
“What?”