Jaded (2 page)

“Ms. Wentworth,” he replied.

The way he said her name shouldn’t have made her heart beat a little faster, but her name on his lips always did. She could salvage this, still get a few minutes to get ready. “I wonder if you’d have a moment later tonight,” she said. “The bathroom sink isn’t draining properly.”

“It’s not the kitchen sink this time?”

“Sorry, but no,” she said.

He looked at his watch, a no-nonsense Timex. “I’ve got a couple of minutes now,” he said. “I’ll get my toolbox.”

Damn!

Alana carried her bags inside, turning on lights as she moved from the kitchen through the dining room and down the short hall to the bedroom she used as an office, where she dumped the bags, then continued down the hall to her bedroom. The house was lovely, with gorgeous hardwood floors, walnut cabinets built into the corners of the dining room, brick molding, and charming window seats in the three bedrooms. When she first looked at the rental property, Lucas had told her his grandparents lived out a seventy-year marriage in the house. Love seeped from the woodwork and floors to give texture to the light that poured through the picture window overlooking Mrs. Ridgeway’s famous rose beds. Chief Ridgeway had scrupulously pointed out the house’s defects—leaky windows, ancient plumbing, and a kitchen straight out of the 1970s—but to Alana, bundling up during the winter was a small price to pay for the chance to see those roses bloom in the spring.

After opening the kitchen door, she poured herself a glass of wine, turned on NPR, and more attentively sorted through her mail. The stack included the usual bills as well as invitations, personal notes, and birth announcements on Crane’s finest paper. She slit open the formal announcement of an upcoming party honoring her stepfather’s contribution to efforts to ameliorate global poverty. Her mother had set the date for the celebration months earlier, but receiving the formal invitation made it all real. Alana’s time in Walkers Ford was almost over. She should start packing, another task she was putting off, but she’d brought so little with her. A few hours one evening and she’d be ready to leave.

Lucas knocked at the kitchen door with the Maglite she recognized from the sports bag he carried to and from work each day. Glass of wine still in hand, she crossed the kitchen and let him in.

“You’re still dressed for work,” she said, stating the obvious. He’d left the gun and badge in his house, though.

“Town council meeting tonight,” he said as he turned sideways to get past her. He carried an old-fashioned wooden toolbox in weathered gray. A hammer and a neatly organized set of wrenches lay on the top shelf, other tools stored in the compartment underneath. His broad shoulder brushed hers as he managed to avoid hitting her knees with the toolbox.

Every cell in her body lit up, and heat bloomed on her cheekbones. His gaze, normally so controlled, flicked down just enough to let her know he saw the blush. Silence. The air between them heated.

“I’ll just . . .” he said with a tilt of his head to the bathroom.

“Of course,” she replied, and stepped to the side to let him down the hall.

Her experience with Marissa Brooks and Adam Collins a few weeks after she had arrived taught her about small-town values, and gossip. After a tragic accident in high school, Adam Collins left town to join the Marine Corps. He returned to Walkers Ford a distinguished veteran and rekindled his relationship with Marissa, setting off a firestorm of gossip. Alana couldn’t just start up a torrid affair with a small-town chief of police. Yet she wondered how to tell him in no uncertain terms that she wanted to go to bed with him and stay there until she couldn’t remember her own name, preferably without sounding like a shameless tart.

A sophisticated woman would know how to go about this. Freddie could probably do it while polishing the paper for an international conference on human trafficking that Alana had researched and outlined for her two weeks ago. But Alana wasn’t Freddie, or her mother, or her stepfather, the former senator Peter Wentworth. In a family characterized by brilliance, wit, and a talent for far-reaching policy development, Alana was quiet, observant, content with the background.
Just stand still and smile
, her mother used to say with resignation.
You have such a pretty smile
. So her pretty smile graced the walls and corners, first of school dances and mixers, then college parties, then cocktail parties and receptions when she went to work for the Wentworth Foundation.

But not even time spent on the edge of the limelight matched the long, heated moments when Lucas Ridgeway gave her his full attention.

“It’s a budget meeting,” he said as he set down the toolbox. He shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over the linen closet’s doorknob.

“Oh. Of course.” Mayor Mitch Turner had asked her to update the former library director’s proposal to renovate and upgrade the town’s library, presumably to round out the town’s annual budget meeting.

The tiny, rose-pink bathroom was barely large enough for her to dry off after a shower. Lucas could brace one shoulder against the wall and rest his palm on the mirror opposite, something he’d done the day the pipe draining the shower cracked and leaked peach-scented water into the basement. He’d been cursing steadily and quite prolifically under his breath then, but not tonight.

He yanked the stopper free and peered into the drain. “It’s clogged.”

“I could use a drain cleaner.”

“It’ll eat right through the pipes,” he replied. “They’re seventy years old. Some weekend soon I’ll replace the drain line and the P-trap. Maybe that will help. In the meantime . . .”

He handed her the flashlight, then stretched out on his back and wedged his torso into the cabinet under the sink. One hand fumbled in the toolbox. He lifted his head to better see, banged his forehead on the cabinet, and grunted.

“Sorry,” Alana said hastily, and shone the light on the offending pipes.

It took only minutes to clear the pipe, then reattach the stopper to the drain lever, each stage punctuated by curt instructions given by the big male maneuvering in the small room. He twisted, his legs pushing against the opposite wall so his knee pressed into her shoulder.

“Do you wash your hair in the sink?” he asked.

“No,” she said, pulling a handful forward to consider it. It was thick and poker-straight, cut in a bob that swung just below her jawline. Its only redeeming characteristic was the natural, pale blond color. Freddie bemoaned her regular appointments with Chicago’s best hair salon to maintain the same shade. “There’s just a lot of it.”

“I can see that,” he said to the interior of the cabinet. His dress shirt pulled free from his pants, revealing the waistband of his dark blue boxers. A thin line of hair ran from his navel into the waistband. Muscles flexed as he tightened the joint, and with each moment the scent of male skin and laundry soap permeated the air.

Don’t let this chance slip through your fingers.

According to the thriving small town gossip, he wasn’t seeing anyone, which gave her an excellent reason to use what she’d heard described as the oldest technique in the book to get over what happened with David. She was going to get under Lucas Ridgeway. Tonight. A single, uncomplicated interlude without any awkwardness because he’d leave for the town council meeting.

She should probably attend, too. Mrs. Battle, a lifelong Walkers Ford resident and her assistant at the library, would be there, providing continuity to the permanent hire, assuming the city council ever got around to choosing one. The relationship between the previous library director, the former police chief, and the fire chief was contentious at best. Efforts to usher the library into the digital age had stalled while Mrs. Battle struggled with cancer, and gone dormant in the months Alana served as the temporary library director while the council slowly weeded through applications.

Ushering libraries into the digital age was her research focus during her master’s program. At his request, she’d given Mayor Mitch Turner a fairly lengthy document outlining a wide variety of possible approaches to upgrading the library. It was an interesting challenge. The library, built with money donated by Andrew Carnegie in the early 1900s, was a beautiful old building dangerously near the point of being irreparable. Something would have to be done, soon, although she assumed the something would be done by whoever they hired full-time. . . .

But she had no long-term business in town. She’d committed to a short-term contract, which extended month after month as the council dickered over who to hire.

The wrench thudded back into the toolbox.

Stay focused.

“Do you want a beer?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

In the time it took him to extract himself from his contortionist’s position under the cabinet, she went into the kitchen and snagged a bottle from the fridge. Back in the tiny bathroom she handed him the bottle. He twisted the cap off and tossed it on the counter, then tipped it back. His throat worked as he swallowed. Her heart skittered in her chest.

Then he turned sideways to step through the door just as Alana made the same move. They ended up chest to chest in the narrow door frame, her breasts brushing that rock-solid chest with each breathy inhale. An electric charge sparked between them, heating the air as she looked up at him. He didn’t move closer, or take her mouth. He simply stayed a breath and a heartbeat away, like he was waiting for her to close the distance.

She went on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his, slow and hot, striking sparks. One arm tightened around her waist, pulling her against his body as he leaned back into the frame, adding to her breathlessness. He wasn’t like any other man she’d kissed. He let her lead, waited for her tongue to touch his before responding, somehow both completely male and completely available to her all at once.

“What are we doing, Alana?”

She grew bolder, drawing back to nibble at the sensitive corner of his mouth, pressing herself against him, and felt his erection thicken against her lower belly.

“Okay,” he said with a growl, and backed out of the doorway and down the hall until the backs of his legs hit the boxy arm of the sofa. He tipped backward. She landed on top of him, forcing a grunt that became a groan as they shifted up until his head lay against a red throw pillow. The vivid color softened his brown eyes, or maybe that was the simmering heat radiating from his big body. She wove their legs together, gripped the armrest over his head, and kissed him through the groan into hot, sexy demand. He looped one leg over hers and rubbed his erect cock against her hip and belly.

Her hands found his lower abdomen, warm skin and ridged muscle that sent a hot zing along her nerves. She looked down. His pants had ridden down again, revealing the erection straining against the waistband of his boxers. She loosened his tie, pulled it free, and dropped it on the floor. Starting with the lowest button on his dress shirt, she worked her way up to his throat, then spread the fabric wide. He looked at her, his body bared to her, his gaze unapologetically, unashamedly sexual.

And for good reason. He was built, ripped, whatever the current slang was for not an ounce of fat under skin stretched over workout-honed muscles. She looked him over, her fingers winding in that tantalizing line of hair.

“That doesn’t tickle?” she asked.

His abs tightened but his smile loosened. “Not enough to distract me from how close your hand is to my cock.”

Heat flared in her cheeks. “Very close,” she said as she trailed the tip of her middle finger down the chestnut brown hair, then squeezed the hard shaft straining against his zipper. A few moments of one-handed work, all very slow and awkward and yet somehow sexy, and she’d unzipped his pants, then tugged the fabric to the tops of his thighs. He didn’t help, just lay there, the fingers of one hand tangled in her hair while the other flexed on her hip, and let her strip him.

The combination of utter availability and remoteness was so hot.

Then hard hands closed on her ass. “Take this off,” he growled as he worked the hem of her sweater over her hips.

“Why?”

He looked at her, the gold flecks in his brown eyes glowing in the lamplight. “Because I like watching you blush.”

“That’s a relief,” she said as he tugged the cashmere sweater over her head. Static electricity lifted her hair in a wild nimbus. He smoothed it down again, hands cupping her ears as his gaze traveled from her eyes to her lips, then to her throat and the tops of her breasts. “I do it all the time,” she added breathlessly.

“All the time?” he asked, as if he hadn’t noticed.

She nodded.

“Show me.”

 • • • 

THE WAY ALANA
Wentworth blushed damn near slayed him. Every. Single. Time.

Blushing usually meant innocence, but the combination of soft hands on his body and the heated slide of her tongue banished any illusions he had about sheltered librarians. The color on her cheeks darkened from the pale shade of his grandmother’s Pierre de Ronsard roses into Fragrant Cloud, a color he would associate forevermore with arousal.

He waited a long moment, letting the heat coursing down his spine show in his eyes, until she kissed him again. Her lace bra chafed his chest. Her nipples pebbled as the kiss extended, her tongue rubbing seductively against his before she nipped at his lower lip. He reached behind her and unfastened her bra. The sweet, hot pressure of her breasts made his heart pound. He shifted and tightened one arm around her waist while cupping her breast in his other hand. Her thigh pressed hard against his erection, and for a few moments he indulged himself in the tantalizing, erotic tease of making out on the couch, lips pressed together, tongues sliding. Her hair tumbled on either side of his face, snagging on his five o’clock shadow.

Duke barked. Hands firmly gripping her seriously luscious ass, Lucas paused to listen.

Alana halted her progress down his throat. “What is it?” she murmured.

The last time a woman purred into his ear that plaintively he’d been deep inside her, moving slow and hard and steady.