Double the Heat (26 page)

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Authors: Lori Foster,Deirdre Martin,Elizabeth Bevarly,Christie Ridgway

Tags: #Erotic Stories; American, #Man-Woman Relationships, #Mate Selection, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Short Stories

BOOK: Double the Heat
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Or decency, either, as evidenced by the way he just stood there in the towel, his dark, wet hair falling arrogantly over his forehead, his blue eyes glittering with mischief, his broad shoulders spanning the doorway, his muscles bunching and flexing when he braced his arms against the jamb, his long, lean, torso dripping wet, sheening the taut bumps and valleys of his rock-hard abs and that mouthwateringly tantalizing curve of flesh just above his—
Uh . . . She meant . . . That is . . . um . . . ah . . .
She meant the way he stood there half naked, completely unconcerned about the fact that he was standing there half naked. Yeah, that was it.
Max Callahan, who had been a thorn in Amanda’s side since high school and who always made her feel like the girl at the dance who had to stand behind the punch bowl and pretend being on the refreshment committee made her way too busy for frivolous things like dancing. Not that anyone had ever asked Amanda to dance in the first place, so it was just as well she
had
been on the refreshment committee. For every single dance.
The man who still occasionally showed up at the same social functions Amanda did and who, to this day, still made her feel like that awkward teenager who could never say, do, or wear the right thing. The man who always made a thinly veiled mockery of her dedication to her job and her desire to do the right thing. The man who never took her seriously and drove her absolutely nuts.
The man her friend Kate had been telling Amanda for years was absolutely perfect for her.
Two
 
It didn’t surprise Max Callahan to find a woman in the condo his friends Marshall and Kate had loaned him for the week. In fact, he’d been planning on having a number of them in the condo this week. And by having them, he meant, you know,
having
them. But he hadn’t anticipated one being delivered right to his doorstep the very night he arrived. At least not this early in the evening.
Then again, she wasn’t exactly the sort of woman he normally ordered when he called Hottie Hut. Even through a thick veil of steam, he could tell she totally, uh . . . was not his type. There. That was a lot better than saying she was unattractive, right? Saying she wasn’t his type was even better than saying she had a great personality. Who said Max Callahan didn’t have a tactful bone in his body? Besides every woman he knew?
As the steam gradually began to clear, he could tell even better that she was pretty damned . . . loaded with good personality. Her hair was sticking straight up in places, her glasses were slightly askew, she was sprawled gracelessly on the floor on all fours—not that her position wouldn’t afford some measure of interest from him in different circumstances—and she . . .
Wait a minute, he thought when the steam cleared the rest of the way. She wasn’t just loaded with good personality; she was familiar. Too familiar. He knew her. And not in the biblical sense, which would have made this a lot less annoying.
“Amanda?” he said, not quite able to keep the disbelief—or distaste—out of his tone. But even without her answering, he already knew it was her scrambling up from the floor.
Ah, crap. So much for a vacation. Five minutes in a room with Amanda Bingham made a man want to spontaneously combust. It wasn’t just that she was loaded with good personality. It was that she had absolutely no personality. None. She was a corporate drone, plain and simple, a woman who lived to work and had no interests outside doing her job well. And it wasn’t like she had a job that benefited mankind or made the world a better place, like medical research or tech support or R&D for a major brewery or anything. Hell, she didn’t even dance in a strip club. She was the lackey for some corporate big shot whose business consisted of making rich, powerful people richer and more powerful, and paid his own employees bubkes.
Not that Max cared or anything. Kate just liked to bitch about it on Amanda’s behalf, since Amanda never bitched about it herself, being the corporate drone she was. And speaking of her job, what was she doing
here
? She never took time off from work. Not that Max cared about that, either, but it was something else Kate bitched about a lot. That and how Amanda never dated because her boss kept her hopping, and how all Amanda needed was some hot, fun guy to show her how much more life had to offer besides work. And hey, Max, why don’t you ask Amanda out sometime, since a guy like you is exactly the kind of guy Amanda needs, because you could make her laugh and show her a good time and take her mind off her work for a while and . . .
And that was when Max had always had to turn to Marshall and say, “Hey, how about them Colts?” Because there was no way in hell he was going to ask Amanda Bingham to do anything. Except keep her distance. The last thing he wanted was to be infected by her workaholic, no-fun, no-personality tendencies. Max embraced the opposite philosophy: work to live. He did only the minimal amount to get by, and working as a freelance whatever-he-felt-like-being-on-any-given-week, be it carpenter or painter or mason or pool cleaner, afforded him exactly that. His needs in life were few. A soft bed, a warm woman, and the occasional beer. Or was that a warm bed, a soft woman, and a frequent beer? Depended on the day, he guessed. And today . . .
He looked at Amanda again. Today was looking to be one that required way more than bed, woman, or beer. Thank God he’d had the foresight to pack that bottle of tequila.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Strangely, it wasn’t Max who asked the question, but Amanda. Funny, but he didn’t think he’d ever heard her swear before.
“What am
I
doing here?” he countered. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”
She straightened to her full height—which couldn’t have been more than five-four in the scrawny flats she was wearing. He wasn’t used to her being so short. Usually, she wore those power heels women wore to compensate in the workplace, but right now, she wouldn’t even come up to his chin. For the first time since realizing who she was, Max took in the complete package. The reason he hadn’t recognized her right off was because she was wearing glasses that made her eyes—clear green eyes he’d always thought were way too beautiful for a tightass like her—look even bigger than before. But instead of detracting from her looks, they somehow made her kind of appealing. In a sexy librarian porno kind of way. That was probably because she was also wearing a short denim skirt and skintight tank top, which was another departure from her usual corporate-drone attire. Usually, when he ran into her somewhere, she was wearing baggy, man-style trousers and baggy, man-style shirts, and her hair was always pulled back without a single strand out of place. And although it was pulled back now, too, there were plenty of strands out of place, curling riotously and making the sexy librarian look recently tumbled.
He’d never realized Amanda Bingham had such curly hair. Even in high school, she’d never worn it loose. So many mornings, he’d come to his locker, a half dozen or so down from hers, had seen that long braid hanging to the middle of her back, and had wondered what it would be like, just once, to free the band that held the woven strands together and loose the thick mass of strawberry blond.
Her hair was darker now. A rich, dark chestnut with threads of amber and ginger knit through it. It was shorter than it had been fifteen years ago, but still plaited the same way, and still long enough for her braid to have fallen forward over one shoulder. And damned if Max didn’t find himself wondering, even now, what it would be like to free her hair from the scrap of red wrapped around its end.
Not that he cared or anything. He’d just heard Kate go on and on about what great hair Amanda had and how she should wear it loose sometimes. Max had really never paid much attention.
“I’m here on vacation,” she told him.
He started to shake his head the minute she voiced the word
vacation
. But he echoed her sentiment nonetheless when he said, “That’s impossible.
I’m
here on vacation.”
She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “I’m here at Kate and Marshall’s invitation,” she said indignantly.
“You can’t be,” he countered. “
I’m
here at Marshall and Kate’s invitation.”
“They said I’d have the place to myself.”
“They said
I’d
have the place to myself.”
“They told me this was the only week it was available.”
“They told
me
this was the only week it was available.”
He started to say more, but then it hit him. Hit him like a good, solid blow to the back of the head.
“Ah, crap,” he said, speaking his earlier thought aloud. Why hadn’t he listened to those alarm bells that had started ringing the minute Marshall had offered him a free week at the beach? How many times had Max asked for exactly that, only to have his friends reply that A, the condo was booked for every week Max could make it; B, it was hurricane season; or C, the place was being (choose one) painted, cleaned, fumigated, roofed, or whatever other damned thing took their fancy to keep him from enjoying the place because they didn’t trust him not to trash it.
And, okay, maybe Max had a reputation for trashing places. It wasn’t like he didn’t clean up before he left. Or, you know, leave a check to cover the cost of replacing whatever he’d broken. But Marshall and Kate had always been adamant. Until now. Until they’d suddenly decided Max could use a week at the shore. And it was a week when they’d evidently offered their condo to Amanda too.
Funny, but he could usually smell a setup a mile away, giving him ample time to run screaming in the opposite direction. He’d just been too taken in by the prospect of a week at the beach in the dead of winter to let himself think too hard about what might be behind it.
He dropped his hands to his hips, remembered he was standing there in nothing but a towel, and realized he didn’t care. Hell, it wasn’t like he had anything to fear from Amanda. She hated his guts. “Did Kate tell you not to bother packing anything but your swimsuit since the condo would have everything you’d need?” he asked.
Amanda nodded.
“Yeah, Marshall told me that too.”
Amanda said nothing for a moment, obviously weighing the information carefully. Then, when she must have come to the same conclusion Max had, her eyes went wide. “Are you telling me Kate and Marshall set us up?”
This time Max was the one to nod. “In more ways than one.”
“Oh, no,” she said adamantly, shaking her head. “No, no, no, no, no. Kate knows how I feel about you. She knows I can’t st—” She halted abruptly, her eyes going even wider, two bright spots of color blooming on her cheeks.
Max smiled. He knew exactly what she was going to say. That she couldn’t stand him. Which was fine with him, because he couldn’t stand Amanda either. He’d never been able to understand why Kate kept harping on him to ask her out. Obviously, she must have talked to Amanda about the same thing at some point; otherwise, she wouldn’t have known how Amanda felt about him. So if he didn’t want to have anything to do with Amanda, and Amanda didn’t want to have anything to do with him, then why had Marshall and Kate arranged this week for them to be stuck here together?
Because it was a safe bet they
were
stuck here together. Not only could neither of them have budgeted for a hotel, but there probably wasn’t a hotel room to be had on the coast at this time of year anyway.
As if she’d read his thoughts, Amanda said, “They expect us to share this place for a week? Are they out of their minds?”
He started to say “Obviously,” but checked himself. It was a rhetorical question, after all. So instead he said, “Look, I know you’re no happier about this than I am, but there’s no reason why we can’t make it work. We’ll just divide the condo between us. I’ll stay out of your way if you’ll stay out of mine.”
“One problem,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“One,” she repeated. “That’s the problem.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s only one of everything,” she pointed out. “One kitchen, one living room, one balcony, one bathroom, one . . .”
She halted, but he already saw where this was heading. “One bedroom,” he finished for her.
She nodded. “Which means one . . .”
Again, she wasn’t quite able to finish. So Max finished for her. “One bed.”
She nodded again. “So who gets that?”
He smiled. “I’ll wrestle you for it, Amanda. Best two out of three falls.”
Three
 
Amanda felt the blood drain from her face. Wrestle Max? He was crazier than Kate if he thought she would go for that. Immediately, however, she realized he was only kidding. Because he started laughing irrepressibly enough to make the towel dip even lower on his hips. Just before it would have gone tumbling to the floor, he caught it, tucking it carelessly around his waist again. Though none too snugly, since it fell right back to the precarious position it had been in before, perfectly cradling that erotic curve of muscle between his navel and his—
“Hah! Gotcha,” he said when he could stop laughing long enough to catch his breath.

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