Melting Into You (Due South Book 2) (13 page)

Ignoring the flush of heat from the images those words conjured up, Kezia said, “You’re a dad now. You have responsibilities too.”

His eyes narrowed. “That responsibility flies to Auckland Sunday morning. I’ll be a free agent again.”

“But you’ll make adjustments to be involved in Jade’s life—now that you know you’ve got a daughter, won’t you?”

He picked up his coffee, took a sip. “Yeah, of course. I’ll buy her a cheap cell, so she can ring whenever she wants. Get Marci to put her on a plane back here for a couple of weeks in the Christmas school holidays or something. She’s a good kid. We’ll keep in touch.”

The last mouthful of frosting turned bitter, and the heat burgeoning in her belly snuffed out. “Keep in touch? She’s not a friend of a friend you’ve added to your Facebook contacts—she’s your daughter!”

Ben’s face froze. He pushed his coffee mug aside. “What would you have me do?” His voice was a razor slashed through ice. “She lives in Auckland, I live at the other end of the country. Should I sell up and move nine hundred miles away, so I can take Jade to the zoo or the mall every other weekend?”

“I don’t know what the answer is—but a cellphone and a once-a-year visit isn’t enough.”

“Isn’t enough for who? Do you still think Jade and I will somehow turn into you and Zoe? The perfect mini family.”

Kezia flinched. “We’re not perfect, but my daughter comes before anything else.”

“Even your own happiness?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been down that road. Putting my mother, my sister, hell, even my mate’s happiness first. Martyr-hood wears you down. Sometimes you need to do something to make just you happy.”

“And you’d make me happy?”

“I’d make you very happy.” The deep rumble of his voice promised all sorts of decadent things.

Only they were really temporary things. Things that would lead to catastrophe, because even though Ben was oh-so-wrong for her? She couldn’t deny wanting him. But wanting bred the danger of needing, and hi
dden between need and want lay a slippery pit where she could fall in love and never get out.

“You’re like this frosting.” She swiped another swirl of it on her finger, stood and leaned forward to touch it to his bottom lip. “Pretty, momentarily pleasurable, but with no real substance or sustenance.”

Ben surged out of his chair, blocking her path. She tried to edge around the table but he captured her gaze and held it while he licked the sweetness off his lip.

“I tempt you,” he said.

Broad shoulders carved from solid muscle, the corded lines of his throat working as he swallowed, the slight swell of pecs pushing against his thin cotton shirt...tempted?
Merda
. He tempted her beyond all sanity.

“Touch me,” he said.

“No.” Yet her fingers flexed with the need to bury themselves in his thick, sandy hair and pull him closer still.

“How long since you’ve touched a man,
Kez?”

Before she could formulate a reply, he snatched up her hand and held it to his chest. “I’m the first one in a long, long time, aren’t I?”

The heat pumping off his skin and into her palm dizzied her. She wanted to yank her fingers from his grasp, but her muscles rebelled.

Ben rubbed his thumb lightly over her wrist. Shivers skated up her spine.

“Aren’t I?”

She licked dry lips. “Yes.”

He dragged her fingertips over the smooth ridges of his chest and down to the defined bumps of his abs, until the heel of her palm hit the waistband of his jeans. His other hand feathered up her arm, danced across her shoulder and cupped her nape. Dropping his head, he brushed the lightest of kisses on her mouth, his brown eyes open and focused on hers the whole time.

She went liquid. Knees, mouth, and especially b
etween her legs.

“Touch me,” he said again.

And he let go of her wrist, slid his hands into her hair.

Nerves in her lips tingled as Ben continued to tease with fluttery, undemanding kisses. Passion warred with common sense as her fingertips played with the metal button on his jeans. Common sense demanded she take her hand away, but passion drugged her system until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think about not touching him.

Ben pulled back from nuzzling her lower lip and pinned her with an unreadable stare. He no longer forced her hand to remain on his body, and they both knew it. The points of his pupils darkened as her fingers dropped from his jeans. Her thumb and forefinger spread either side of his erection, tracing its length. His eyes widened, then hooded. The barrier of denim wasn’t thick enough to mask his size, and the roar of a lawnmower cranking up somewhere down the hill wasn’t loud enough to drown out his low moan.

Pressing his forehead gently to hers, he rocked into her touch. Her palm flattened over the fly of his jeans, and a bolt of pure, feminine pleasure fired into her core. Such power he’d given her. Simply by caressing him, she ached in places that had been numb for far too long.

Her mouth parted and her hips swayed forward, her other hand clutching the bare skin of his arm.

“
Kez,” he said, her name a groan and a plea as the rough stubble around his mouth grazed her jaw and his fingers tightened in her hair.

Her hand stilled. She was intimately groping a man with her daughter playing close by. The sick realization sliced through the lust-fog clouding her brain. She jerked away. Ben’s fingernails caught in her curls, yanking a few strands painfully from her scalp.

“I have to go.” She stumbled past him, tears prickling the corners of her eyes.

“Kezia—”

“No, I’m sorry.”

She speed-walked into the house and yelled for Zoe so the raw longing in Ben’s voice didn’t tempt her a second time.

***

Ben accepted a beer from his position behind the barbecue and wished Kezia, not West, handed it to him. Which was plain pathetic.

He viciously turned a sausage.

“Good idea of Glenna’s.” West sprawled on the pa
dded bench that ran the length of The Mollymawk’s stern deck. “Jade got such a kick outta catching her first fish.”

“Can’t believe she’s never been fishing before.” A
nother sausage flipped onto its side sizzled and spat oil.

His mother and Piper, plus Jade and Zoe, remained warm and snug inside the cabin. As a guy, of course, he was up for barbecue duty. Didn’t matter the temper
ature made his balls retract—someone had to cook up the two kawhai Jade caught earlier.

Since Jade was leaving tomorrow, his mother insis
ted they go on a family fishing trip. He hadn’t needed much coaxing once she mentioned inviting the Murphys along. Worked for him. You betcha.

Except Kezia hadn’t shown up. Shaye dropped Zoe off with them that morning with Kezia’s apologies. She had a headache.

Pah
. Headache-shmedache.

Yesterday, she’d been snowed with teaching stuff and far too busy to talk to him. Thursday, she had the girls again. When he stopped by to pick up Jade after dinner, guard-dog Shaye gave him the stink-eye—
Kez was enjoying a bubble bath, do not disturb.

Hint taken.

West sipped his beer. “Pity Kezia couldn’t come, huh?”

Ben grunted, turning the final sausages since the girls refused to eat the “poor little fishes” Jade caught.

“Real pity,” West added.

Ben cut him a glance and cracked open his bottle. He downed half, then belched, loud and proud. Take that—hot Italian woman who wouldn’t spend the day in his company because she had a headache.

“Better out than in?”

“You know it.”

“No woman around to give you the look.” West shook his head, blue eyes gleaming.

Ben took another gulp of beer. Speaking of looks…He’d seen the one on West’s face before and needed to fortify his gut for the grilling ahead.
Wait for it…wait for it.

“So. You and
Kez, huh?”

“Drop it, West.”

West laughed. “Fuck no. Not after the grief you gave me about your sister.”

Yeah
. West wouldn’t drop it. Ben flipped more sausages, resisting the urge to shove one in his mate’s big gob to shut it.

“Benny-boy’s sniffing after the hot school teacher. Woo-
hoo.” West stretched out on the bench seat and tilted his head to the sky, a big-ass dopey grin on his face.

Should’ve known his sisters would be onto his inte
rest in Kezia like gossip-seeking missiles. “Your fiancée’s got a big mouth.”

“Jealous ‘cause you can’t talk to women?”

Ben snorted. “Actions speak louder than words, mate.”

“Well, hell!” West folded upright and bounced to his feet. “Didn’t know you’d gotten that far.”

“This topic is officially closed, so shut up, and drink your damn beer.”

“That tells me you’re not chasing
Kez for a booty call then.” West pointed the neck of his bottle at him with a level stare.

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“Don’t believe it for a second. You wouldn’t mess with a local woman if you were only looking for a casual screw.”

The muscles along Ben’s shoulders corded with te
nsion. First rule for guys living in a tiny community? Don’t bang women who live nearby. When you blew them off for wanting wedding bells and shit, they often went ten kinds of crazy. And on an island, there was no frickin’ way to escape.

So why, exactly, did he want to break his own rule with Kezia?

“Hey, West? C’mere for a second, baby.” Piper’s laughter drifted out from the cabin.

“Isn’t that your boss cracking the pussy-whip? You’d better hurry in, see what she wants.”

“Not off the hook, bro.” West ambled over to the door, flung him a pitying glance over his shoulder. “Not off the hook at all.”

Two hours later he said goodbye to his family. Glenna went to check in with Bill and Shaye, and West and Piper offered to take The
Mollymawk back to her mooring spot. Ben walked with Zoe and Jade toward home. Wood smoke drifted on the chill sea breeze as locals hunkered in their homes for another autumn night. The town’s few streetlights cast puddles of light on the sidewalks, fading to darker shadows as the girls skipped past the last one at the corner of their street. They turned and watched him, Zoe whispering in Jade’s ear. Exchanging glances, the girls herded him in on either side.

Zoe tugged his jacket sleeve. “Maybe my mamma’s better now. I’m going to ask her if Jade can stay the night—since her mum’s coming tomorrow.”

Jade hung onto his other arm. “It’ll be so cool! Can I stay, Dad, please?”

“Let’s see how she’s feeling, okay?”

Probably feeling pissed about him arriving on her doorstep was his guess. But he gamely strode up the hill to Kezia’s and knocked.

The moment she opened her front door, Jade and Zoe tumbled past him like exuberant puppies. Three minutes into non-stop stereo detail about fishing, funny-things-West-said, and learning Texas Hold ‘
em, Zoe blurted out the girls’ plan.

“Of course,” Kezia said. “I was going to suggest it—if you don’t mind Jade staying here on her last night?”
She directed the question at him, but her gaze remained level with his jacket collar.

“She’d rather stay with Zoe than her grumpy old man.”

“You’re not
that
grumpy, or old,” Jade said, smart enough to play her cards right.

“Is it okay then, Mamma?”

“Sure. Why don’t you go and each have a nice hot shower. You smell like fish.”

“I’ll drop your toothbrush and pajamas off soon,” Ben said.

The girls giggled and disappeared inside. Kezia’s eyes finally flicked up to meet his and the spark of warmth in them died.

***

Kezia swallowed and looked away. Ben filled her doorway, all long, denim-clad legs and windblown hair. Her internal body temperature rose until she was convinced she suffered from a premature hot flash. She hadn’t forgotten her outrageous behavior. Even her hands hadn’t forgotten molding the hard, gorgeous shape of him under her fingertips—and she’d guarantee Ben’s memory wasn’t faulty, either.

So. Eye contact was a bad idea. A terrible idea.

The man was no slouch. He was observant enough to read the desire to touch him again in her gaze. Reason number
uno
why she’d forgone the fishing trip.

“Listen,
Kez.” Ben dragged a hand over his head, smoothing the strands of sandy hair flat. He stepped over the threshold into her hallway. “About the other afternoon. I—”

From his jacket pocket came the chirpy music of the Angry Birds theme song.

He snorted. “Remind me never to let the girls play with my ringtone again.” He pulled the phone out, glanced down at the screen and grimaced. “Sorry, it’s Marci—I’d better take this.”