Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) (15 page)

"You weren't in the chair back then."

"Yeah. You know that and I know that. But the lady was focused so much on you, she didn't even ask about me. When I tried to pick her up on the road, she even said she was married to you."

"What?!"

"Yeah, I think she said it because she thought I was some sort of creep following her when she was running."

Tess Abbot, the houseguest from hell, the woman who'd sworn to be a thorn in his side
, interested in him? No way.

Yet,
Roman couldn't help but wonder. After all, she had made the first move the night of the storm.
She'd
asked
him
to stay.

He glanced up at the house and thought about her in the dark crawl space by herself.
Sometimes he could be a jerk.

"I
'd better go check on her."

#

Once more, Tess wrenched against whatever had snagged the back of her jeans. Once more, she failed to break free.

She thumped her forehead against the hard ground of the crawl space, muttering, "Hell.
Hell. Hell."

That's exactly where she was
…in contractor hell. Specifically she was in Roman St. John's contractor hell. And he was the only one around who could help her.

"Hell.
Hell. Hell."

If only she could reach…

She tried to angle her arm back to where she was snagged. Once again, her elbow connected with the low floor joist. She couldn't let Roman find her like this. She'd never hear the end of it.

"Is that your little derriere wedged in there, Princess?"

She groaned. "I'm not wedged in here."

"Looks pretty tight to me
, the space that is."

She swung the flashlight back at Roman.
He was standing where the crawl space under the house had been dug out to make a small basement, grinning.

"Something hooked me
," she said.

"
And here I didn't even know it was princess season."

"If that
's some sort of reference to fishing, St. John, go jump in a lake.”

"
I don't think you really want me to do that, Princess, at least not until I've gotten you out of your predicament. Shine your flashlight on whatever snagged you."

She fumbled with the flashlight.

"Not in my eyes," Roman groused. "Shine it on your backside."

"
You getting a thrill out of this, St. John?"

"I'm enjoying it, if that's what you mean."

"Try crawling in here and enjoying
it
a little closer," she said.

"If I get wedged in there with you, we're
both going to be in big trouble."

"I told you, I'm not wedged in here.
I'm hung up on something."

"Try wriggling around a little,
" he said.

"Gee, why didn't I think of that?"

"Didn't work, huh?"

"Just get in here and tell me what I'm hung up on."

She heard him shimmy in beside her. "Hand me that flashlight…carefully. My skull has had enough of a pounding today."

She opened her mouth to tell him what he could do with the flashlight, but decided she wasn't in any position to tell him to shove it.

"This is a heck of a fix you got yourself in," he said, the flashlight beam bobbing against the joists above her and his hand sliding across her backside.

"That hand on my ass had better be necessary, St. John."

"Maybe you'd prefer I hook you up to a come-along and winch you out of there."

"Just get me out of here."

He pressed down on her backside. "Looks like a big splinter snagged your belt loop."

"Just tell me which way I need to crawl to get unhooked."

"You mean you'd follow my orders? That'd be a first."

Was that laughter she heard in his voice?
Damn the man.

"Just tell me, do I crawl forward or shimmy backward
?" she asked.

"I vote for you shimmying backward."

"You're having way too much fun with this."

His fingers splayed across the space just below the waistband of her jeans, leaving hot little trails across her skin.
"I don't know how you did it, but your belt loop is twisted around the splinter. I'm going to have to cut the loop."

"These jeans aren't even a week old."

"You know, Princess, if I didn't know better, I'd almost think you're on a budget."

If he only knew how close to the truth
that was.

"Just cut through the splinter."

He sawed at the splinter with his pocketknife, his forearms, wrists, and the heels of his hands rubbing back and forth across her buttocks. She was in heaven.

She was in hell.

Finally, the splinter gave.

"There you go, Princess."

Given the swing of the flashlight beam and the receding scuffing sounds, she could tell he was shimmying out. She shimmied backward a few inches only to find her shirt was riding up on her. She started forward.

"I wouldn't go that way if I were you, Princess.
What's left of that backside grabbing splinter might snatch you up again."

"I realize you'd prefer I
go out backward, but I crawl forward better."

"You go forward and you're going to get hung up again."

"I can be careful--"

H
is hands closed on her ankles.

"Let go of me."

"This is for your own good, Princess. Put your head down."

He tugged.
She shrieked. He pulled. Her shirt rode up around armpits and dirt collected in her sports bra.

When he had her clear of the crawl space, she swatted him away and tugged the shirt down into place
as he laughed.

So much for aggravating Roman St. John.

The alarm clock on the nightstand next to Roman's head chirped.
Face buried in his pillow, he slapped the annoying object silent and cursed his inability to ignore Tess.

She'd filled his dreams with sensations of her hand
s caressing him, soft and cool as silk, and her mouth on his, hungry and hot. She'd plagued his waking hours with images of her little derriere trapped in the crawl space of Brody's prospective camp…and of her t-shirt pushed up to her armpits.

He groaned and hammered the pillow to either side of his head.
It shouldn't have mattered to him that she'd accepted Brody's invitation to talk about his project over dinner. He shouldn't have waited up last night for Tess to get home from Brody's. What hours she kept weren't his business.

Yet, he had waited up until he heard her car pull into the driveway.
Then he'd feigned sleep as she crept past his door and up the steps to the guest bedroom.

Much as he hated to admit it,
Brody was right. He was jealous. He wanted her laughing and dining with him, not his friend.

He wanted her in his bed where he could explore the rose tattoo on her tailbone and the ring in her belly button.

He wanted to bury himself so deep inside her it would take a month of Sundays to dig himself out of her. All night, he'd struggled with that need. That's what he got for sampling her firm curves and silky skin. An insatiable desire for a prickly tongued goddess.

In spite of how miserable she made him, he throbbed beneath the happy face pajama bottoms.
Physical need. Nagging…teasing…tormenting.

He groaned and vaulted out of bed.

He needed a cold shower.

He dug into his underwear drawer for a fresh pair of shorts. Oddly, the pair of jockey shorts he took off the top of the pile appeared brighter than the next pair. Maybe it was the dim light of false dawn that made that second pair in the stack appear dull by comparison.

He held the bright set next to the dull pair in the drawer.
Same shadows. Same dim light. Yet the pair in his hand was stark white next to the pair still folded in the drawer. That was odd…

Then
he remembered Tess saying she'd washed his shorts.

#

The bedroom door slammed open against the wall, jolting Tess awake. By the time her eyes focused, Roman was standing at the side of her bed shaking something that looked suspiciously like jockey shorts over her.

"Why are my shorts pink?"

"Shorts?" she mumbled, her focus fixing on his chest…his very bare chest.

"Yeah," he snapped.
"My shorts. They're pink. Why?"

Tess stared at Roman's naked stomach.
She had a vague sense of dreaming about those hard abs. Or had the dream been about another equally hard part of Roman's anatomy? Now that was an
aggravation
she wouldn't mind.

She glanced past the
fist gripping the pink shorts and down the washboard firm abdominal wall. The deep dimple of his belly button peeked at her from above the low riding happy face pajama bottoms. Oh yeah. She'd like to tug those pjs down off his hips and see if she was still dreaming.

The shorts filled her field of vision again and Roman shouted, "What happened to my shorts?"

So much for the illusion of dreams.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows and grumbled, "You burst into my room without
knocking over a pair of shorts?"

"
Pink
shorts!"

"What
if I'd been dressing?"

He bent low over her, putting his face close to hers.
"It's before dawn. The whippoorwill isn't even up yet. I took a chance you'd still be in bed."

She wrinkled her nose at him.
"So you woke me up on purpose? Gee, thanks. So, what's your problem?"

"Pink shorts," he
said, shoving the offending underwear in her face.

Tess slumped back against her pillow.
"You finally worked your way down to the shorts I washed, huh?"

The
pair of shorts in Roman's fist shuddered. "What did you wash them in?"

She yawned and drew the sheet up under her chin.
"More like what I washed them with."

"And that would be?" he demanded with annoying persistence.

"Your burgundy towels."

"Why on earth would you wash white shorts with burgundy towels?"

There was that damnable laundry issue again. Tess scowled and let her eyes drift shut.

"Only a moron would wash whites and colors together," he said.

Her eyelids flew open. First the man calls her a Princess, then a shrew, and now a moron. Not even her father had ever called her stupid. He'd refused to acknowledge her talents, but he had at least found her award-winning design of merit…as long as said design had been presented by her fiancé. Make that former fiancé. Men!

"I washed them," Tess
said into the face hovering inches above her. "They're clean. You could at least be grateful for that."

"But they're
pink
. I am not going to wear pink underwear."

"Fine then.
Don't wear them." She closed her eyes with finality.

"All I have left in my underwear drawer are pink shorts," he protested, flapping the offending shorts.
The breeze they caused was annoying.

She
rolled over, putting her back to him, "Then buy new ones."

"
You
ruin my clothes," he growled in her ear, making it itch, "and expect
me
to buy my own replacements?"

"I expect you to leave me alone," she muttered and tugged the sheet over her head.
He tore it back from her.

"I am not going to buy new shorts
." His growl against the back of her ear sent a delicious shiver down her spine. "
You
are going to buy me new shorts."

She rolled toward him and sat up with such speed she almost knocked heads with him.
"But--"

"You caused the problem," he said, jerking back from her.
"You fix it." He tossed the shorts in her lap, imparting over his shoulder as he headed for the door, "You'll find the size on the waistband." He paused in the doorway, a study in bronze as the dawn broke through her window and washed over him. "And, Princess, this time use your own credit card."

#

Any man who woke her before sunrise and ordered her to buy him new underwear had to pay. Trouble was, Tess hadn't yet figured out the optimum retaliation for Roman. But the Franklin and Son Men's Emporium held promise.

Tess stood in the narrow, slanting center aisle of the store giving the yellowed, fourteen-foot ceilings, wall lined shelves, and racks of dark suits to either side of the aisle a once over.
Maybe she'd thought any underwear from Pine Mountain's mecca of men's wear would be made of plaid flannel or, better yet, wool. Oh the justice of Roman scratching himself raw.

But Franklin and Son Men's Emporium didn't harbor a single piece of plaid.
Maybe she should have gone to The Bargain Mart. Cheap underwear might have done the trick. Cheap. Skimpy. Binding.

She was about to turn around and walk out when a slight built man who appeared to be as old as the building stepped out from behind one of the suit racks.
"May I help you?"

She gave his perfectly tailored suit a once over only to discover he was doing the same to her.
When he finished, he raised one eyebrow at her. Obviously, her Bargain Mart jeans and blouse didn't measure up to his standards.

"I need shorts," she replied.

The shopkeeper smiled solicitously. "We sell only men's clothing here, my dear."

"That's what I want.
Jockey shorts. Men's."

The
old man flushed and screwed his mouth up so tight his lips seemed to disappear. Hadn't this guy ever helped a woman buy her husband underwear before?

Behind the aged clerk appeared a younger version of the pinched face.
Only the thin lips on this face smiled. "Pop, Mr. Henson's in back waiting for his fitting. I'll take care of the lady."

The son of Franklin and Son Men's Emporium, no doubt
.

Young Franklin ushered her toward a glassed in case at the back of the store. Discreetly shelved behind the display cases in neat stacks was the men's underwear. No wonder the elder Franklin just about swallowed his face when she asked about men's jockey shorts.

"What size do you require, Miss?"

"Thirty-fours."

"Jockey style you said, correct?"

"Yes."
At least junior didn't suffer the same queasiness about talking underwear with a woman as did the senior Franklin.

Young Franklin handed her a package
d threesome that were definitely superior to the brand she'd turned pink. But that wasn't the reason she'd ventured into the Men's Emporium. She just hadn't put her finger on what she'd thought she'd find in a small town store that specialized in men's wear.

"Perhaps madam would like colored."

She smiled at junior. "Perhaps I would."

Junior set another package on the counter next to the white ones. "We stock navy as well."

Tess' smile faded. Much as buying Roman colored shorts would serve him right for waking her out of a dead sleep before dawn to complain about pink shorts, navy just didn't seem a strong enough statement.

As though reading her mind, Junior supplied, "If you don't mind a less familiar brand, we do stock a more
…adventurous selection."

"Adventur
ous?"

She must have revealed her interest in the inflection of her voice as Junior's thin lips curled conspiratorially at their outer corners.
"I think I have just what you want down here."

He nodded for her to follow him to the far end of the glassed display case where he retrieved a plastic box from the base of the display case.

"I keep these in stock for
special
clients." Junior lifted the lid off the box.

Tess stared at the assortment of men's underwear in the box. Leopard print briefs, slick skimpy silks, and
…There to one side, little more than a black string…Tess grinned and plucked the thong underwear from the box and dangled it in the air to her own and Junior's delight.

"I think these will do nicely."

#

Roman stepped out of the shower and toweled off.
At least the hot water had eased some of the day's tension from his shoulders, tension that had started first thing this morning with the discovery of his pink shorts.

Then the lumberyard had shorted his order.
Banking during his lunch hour, he discovered the deposit check on the current job had bounced. It'd taken two hours to track down the client and straighten out the finances. Delays he didn’t need when he was already short-handed due to Cousin Raymond's light duty status until his thumb was fully healed.

Roman knotted the towel around his waist and headed across the hall to his room.
To cap his day off, he'd met Tess at The Castle only to be stood up by the Fire Marshal. Her Royal Pain in the Butt had screeched like a howler monkey all the while he was on his cell phone tracking down the Fire Marshal who, it turned out, had ended up in the emergency room being treated for an allergic reaction to a bee sting. What more could go wrong?

He eyed his underwear drawer.
Let there be clean, white shorts in there for tomorrow
.

He opened the drawer.
It was empty.

"God help you, Tess Abbot, if you haven't bought me any shorts."

Roman charged up the steps and hit the upstairs bedroom door with a fist. The door flew open, catching Tess in the middle of shimmying into a close-fitting camisole.

In the instant it took Roman to register her state of undress
, in the instant before he turned his back on her, her image burned into his mind. The sweetly tapered back his hands had stroked four nights ago. The gentle curve of the spine his fingers had mapped. The blood red rose at the base of that spine peeking at him from the lacey edge of a mere scrap of pale yellow panty.

Roman tried to force the image of Tess Abbot's nearly naked body from his head
…and his tingling fingertips…and the male member twitching beneath his bath towel.

"Twice in one day, St. John?
Is this going to be a habit with you?"

"Sorry," he muttered over his shoulder.
"I knocked."

"On
ce."

"
The door swung open before I could knock a second time," he said.

"This being your house, I'd have thought you'd be aware of all its little idiosyncrasies
, like an ill-fitting catch."