Caught Up in the Touch (33 page)

Jessie turned to Logan and locked her hands behind his neck. “I was going to head home after the lunch rush. The first two weeks have gone even better than I imagined.”

“That’s because you are amazing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. You don’t need to butter me up to get me into bed, Mr. Wilde.”

With his forefinger under her chin, he tilted her face to his. His expression didn’t hold an ounce of tease. “I mean it. You really are amazing. Virginia’s is spectacular. Adaline’s has never run smoother with you handling the inventory and orders. I’ve loved having time to experiment with new dishes.”

“Summer football practice starts soon.”

“Yep. I love that too. But not as much as I love you.”

He kissed her again. With a deep, shuddery breath, he broke away and skimmed his lips along her jaw. She turned her head, searching for his mouth.

“I suppose we could head on home. Alvin has everything under control.”

“Damn straight.” He brushed her now chin-length mass of red waves back and laid a kiss behind her ear, breathing deeply. “I’m not going to make it back to Falcon. We might have to find a dirt road.”

The animal in her roared with approval. The out-of-control passion would have sent her running away at one time. Now, she gloried in the tempest and not only encouraged but instigated their wild encounters.

After Jessica told a grinning Alvin she was heading home, Logan pulled her out the front door into the bright early summer sun and steered her toward the Porsche. “Don’t we need the truck to…” She waggled her eyebrows.

She slipped into the low-slung seat, and he bent over her in the opened door. “We might have to get creative. What do you say?”

She tipped her face to his and smiled, her heart near to bursting with excitement, love, and laughter. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pressed her lips against his. “I say, let’s get a little crazy, Mountain Man.”

Read on for an excerpt from
Laura Trentham
’s next book

MELTING INTO YOU

Available in November 2015 from St. Martin’s Press

Falcon, Alabama, October

“Well now, I can’t rightly figure it.” Carl’s muffled voice filled Lilliana Hancock with dark foreboding.

She stared at the three inches of plumber’s crack sticking out from under her guest bathroom’s bureau. Ironic, considering the man was her electrician. A not-so-great electrician who was doing her a huge favor and happened to be her third cousin once removed.

“Alec Grayson will be here tomorrow to inspect. What can’t you figure?”

Carl’s gritty, smoke-roughened chuckle echoed off the hot-pink tiles that made Lilliana think longingly of a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. An ulcer seemed imminent.

He shimmied another inch of crack into view. “Can’t figure why there are so many sets of wires.”

Lilliana dropped her forehead into her palm and massaged her temples. Her headache didn’t abate. “Forget it, Carl. Why don’t you leave everything where it is? I appreciate you trying, I really do.”

Carl crawled backward and stood, hiking his jeans up and over his belly. “Sorry, I couldn’t be of more help.” His expression was the definition of hangdog.

“Not your fault.” She leaned in to kiss his cheek, the smell of nicotine strong on his collar. She’d be sure to send him a thank-you gift. Maybe a sturdy belt. “I’m sure you have real work to do.”

The rest of the electrical was in decent shape—she didn’t worry about the house burning down around her—but this bathroom was her nemesis. She hated everything about it. And Alec Grayson would make a beeline to it considering it was the epicenter of carnage when her friend Jessica Montgomery had fried half her hair off with a flatiron.

She’d informed Alec Grayson two weeks ago that the electrical work had been completed. A bald-faced lie. While her intentions had been honorable, her follow-through was questionable. Or maybe her motivation. How else to justify why Hancock House still wasn’t ready to open as a B&B after two years of work?

After she saw Carl out the front door, Lilliana retreated to the airy bedroom she’d claimed as the master and threw herself crossways on the king-sized bed. A blue and green blocked fabric hung from ten-foot high curtain rods and decorated the dark-stained four-poster bed. The wall was painted a matching light blue. She’d designed and sewed everything herself. The room was her oasis and usually soothed her, but not today.

Hancock House looked fabulous, but the problems with the two-hundred-plus-year-old building weren’t cosmetic. Outdated plumbing and electrical systems, termite damage, and mold in the attic from a chronically leaking roof made her compare the house to a hundred-year-old woman with osteoporosis. One wrong move and the entire thing could come crashing down.

Her family’s homeplace was once a bustling planation, the center of Hancock County. On holidays, huge gatherings had spilled out onto the lawn. Her ancient, wrinkled, funny-smelling great-grandmother had owned the house then. Curtains stayed shut, plastic covered the couches, and lamps were unwelcome. The house had been dark, dusty, and creepy.

She and her cousins would scare the dickens out of each other by pretending to be the ghosts from stories they’d heard all their lives. Even today, Lilliana didn’t like to get up at night without turning a light on. The clanging and groaning of pipes took on a more sinister feel in the dark.

At first, inheriting the monstrosity from her father had seemed a godsend. She’d struggled in New York City after completing art school, working as a bartender at night and painting during the day. She couldn’t afford to sleep, which was hard to come by anyway in the small apartment she shared with two other girls. But now she was feeling like Sisyphus, with Hancock House playing the part of her boulder.

A hint of Carl’s nicotine clung to her hair, wrinkling her nose. She’d never smoked cigarettes, even as an excuse to take extra breaks as a bartender. But marijuana was a different story. Call it peer pressure or experimentation or youthful rebellion, but she’d smoked more than her fair share of pot in art school, occasionally indulging even after she’d left campus life behind. It had been a staple at most parties in her social circles in NYC.

Fighting the temptation to curl up under the covers for a good cry, she crawled to the head of the bed and pulled an old-fashioned cigar box from her nightstand drawer. She slid her fingers under the false bottom and searched for the remains of her last joint. The last time she’d indulged was after her father’s funeral, huddled in this same room after her family and her friends and the lawyers had gone.

Holding the inch-long, hand-rolled, half-smoked joint between her thumb and forefinger, she estimated she had only three or four draws left—enough to get mellow before calling Alec Grayson to cancel tomorrow’s inspection. His self-important attitude would be easier to handle, and maybe the temptation to bait him as she was wont to do on occasion wouldn’t be as strong.

Stepping onto the grandiose balcony outside her bedroom, she squatted down so no neighbors could see and lit up. She pulled in a lungful and coughed, out of practice. After a smaller puff, her stomach quieted and her headache began to abate. The blue sky turned bluer, the green leaves of the magnolia tree at eye level turned glossier.

She splayed her legs out and leaned against the balcony rail, sending pieces of old stonework pebbling to the porch stairs directly below. She tilted her face to the sky, the sun warm and soothing.

“Adult and professional” should be her motto when dealing with humorless, stoic Alec Grayson. Yet around him she reverted to the immature scorned teenager of a decade earlier.

White streaked from the magnolia tree toward the front of the house, offering a welcome distraction. Her cat. Well, not hers exactly, but one that had adopted the dank hollow under her porch. She’d named it Ghost.

Taking a last long drag, she stubbed the tiny remnant out with finality. Marijuana was a crutch, an escape, and one she wouldn’t use again. Anyway, if she so much as put out one feeler to buy more, her great-aunt Esmerelda would be at her door with Preacher Higgs staging an intervention. Or maybe an exorcism.
Cast out the evil spirits.
She giggled as she stood and stretched.

As soon as she completed the half-finished commissioned portrait waiting in her workroom, she’d have the money to hire a real electrician. Then she’d rub Alec Grayson’s nose in the perfection of the wiring. In the meantime, she had a cat to coax.

Grabbing a can of tuna from the pantry, she pulled the tabbed top off and, as quietly as possible, headed out the back door and around to the porch. The October day held the remains of summer’s heat, but with fall’s decorative colors. It would be one of the last days for bare feet and shorts.

On hands and knees, she crawled between the bushes calling, “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on, Ghost. I have a can of yumminess for you.”

Eyes glowed through the rotted wooden lattice. She kept her movements slow, even as her heart kicked into a higher gear and her singsong voice took on an urgency. “Come on kitty. I have a treat.”

Ghost crawled closer, but on its haunches, defensive and distrustful. Its fur was dirty and matted. Lilliana didn’t move her body, only extended her offering of tuna, crooning nonsense.

A vehicle rumbled down her street. The cat’s ears pricked up, and it vanished into the darkness. That was the closest the cat had let her come. Crawling farther into the bushes, she slipped the can through the broken lattice.

A car door slammed, sounding close enough to be in her driveway. Shoes crunched on gravel. She shimmied backward, hoping her pants weren’t riding as low as Carl’s had been. A throat cleared, freezing her.

“Ms. Hancock?” The deep rumbly voice made her want to follow Ghost under the porch, spiders be damned.

She checked over her shoulder. Framing work boots and khakis was a white truck emblazoned with “Grayson Construction” in bold, black, unfrilly letters. What were Alec Grayson’s long legs and truck doing here?

She hoped this was the start of a bad hallucination. Her short-shorts-covered ass in the air was probably not projecting “professional.” She popped to her feet, brushing fallen leaves and dirt from her knees. Her ancient T-shirt’s stretched-out neck fell off one shoulder. She adjusted it only to have it slide off the opposite one.

Alec’s gaze dropped from her head to her toes and back up, no smile marring his unimpressed face. The sleeves of his plaid button-down were rolled up his forearms, and every time he tapped his paper-covered clipboard against his thigh, his arm muscle jumped. The effect was hypnotizing.

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and let it escape slowly. The rhythmic tapping stopped, breaking her trance. Her eyes shot up to his. She imagined herself shrinking to the size of a ladybug. Then she could fly away home. A giggle slipped out. Damn, she’d forgotten how irreverent smoking pot made her. This man could make things difficult for her, and all she could do was laugh.

With the smile on her face at odds with everything else churning inside of her, she asked in a too-breathless voice, “What are you doing here?”

“We have an appointment. Don’t you remember?” His deep voice came out clipped and fast. More like a Yankee than a born-and-bred Alabamian. Maybe it was the two years he’d spent playing football in Philadelphia. Although she’d spent five years in New York City and never shook her drawl.

“Our appointment is tomorrow. Thursday, the fourth.”

“You have it half-right. Our appointment is today. Wednesday, the fourth.”

Her mind rolled slowly around the problem. She couldn’t say with certainty she hadn’t screwed up the day. When she was painting, time became irrelevant, her days running together. She didn’t feel sharp enough to engage in the war of wits their encounters inevitably degenerated into. Could her timing to smoke the last of her marijuana be worse?

Unless her heretofore-absent fairy godmother appeared, pulled a wand out of her ass, and waved it around, she would never pass an inspection today. She needed more time.

“Actually, it’s funny—” She laughed, but he didn’t break into anything resembling an answering smile. Her laughter trailed off, birdsong filling the awkward silence. She swallowed before continuing. “I was going to call in a little bit and cancel.”

His dark-brown brows cut nearly straight lines over his hazel eyes. Taken together with his prominent nose, thin lips, and strong wide jaw, he wasn’t handsome in a male-model sense, but he was blatantly male. The type of man who was supremely capable and good at anything he put his hands to.

Good at anything he put his hands to.
The unfortunate wording went on repeat in her head. One of his large, broad hands removed the pen from behind his ear and jotted a note on the clipboard. His nails were clean and short, but a couple of nicks and some older, white scars peppered the back of his hand.

A fluttery, warm sensation settled in her lower belly. It always happened around him, and she usually amped up her resentment to mask her nerves. But with her usual defensives stripped away, she recognized the sensation for what it was—not nerves, but attraction. Inconvenient, since she had vowed to hate him since college.

Not that he had a clue. The first time their paths had crossed in Falcon after her return from New York, the realization that he didn’t even remember her had reopened old wounds. Their one-night stand the only semester she’d spent at the University of Alabama loomed large in her memory. The hurt at being insignificant and unmemorable sharpened her tongue and strengthened her grudge. Seeing him so often around town and at games made it impossible for her to let it go like she should have years ago.

“Can I come in and get started?” The corners of his lips hitched upward in what might have been a weak smile, but it made him look more like a predator ready to devour its prey.

She clasped her hands together behind her back. “I would prefer to reschedule.”

“I already initiated the inspection in the county computer system.” He tilted his head and slid the pen back behind his ear. Cut short on the sides, his hair was longer on top and combed to one side in a straight thick wave. He looked like the preppy version of kick-ass marine.