Unexpected Bride (19 page)

"Et tu, Brenna?"

The redhead laughed. "Yes, I think you should open an office in Cloverville. I think you should stay here, and not just until Molly comes back. You should stay here for
good.
It's home."

Abby sighed. "No, Brenna, it's not."

Brenna reached out, closing her hands around Abby's shoulders. Her green eyes glinled with knowledge. She'd seen the kiss on the dance floor. Abby just knew it.

Abby braced herself, waiting for the taunts she'd earned by kissing their childhood enemy.

But what Brenna said was worse than any taunt. "Home is where the heart is, honey."

Abby clasped her hand around the sponge, squeezing sudsy water between her fingers. Then she pushed the foam square against the window of Carpenter's Hardware. Washing Mr. Carpenter's windows wasn't as strenuous as the run she'd just finished, but she needed to expend some more of her nervous energy. Or she'd never get to sleep tonight and she'd already lain awake too many nights, staring at the ceiling in Clayton's old room. Violating his privacy, Abby had snuck into Clayton's room on more than one occasion when they'd been growing up. Unlike his brother Rory, Clayton had never indulged in posters of sports figures or scantily clad supermodels. The walls had been stark white, the floor cold, bare wood.

After he'd moved out, his mother had redone the room so it resembled an upscale hotel room, and Abby had no reason for not being able to sleep. Except that she lay there, imagining how much more pleasure Clayton could have given her if she'dcome upstairs with him, if she'd lain with him in his old bedroom.

"First Mrs. Hild's flowers, now Mr. Carpenter's windows," intoned a deep male voice. "Are you doing penance for your past sins?"

He was the reason she couldn't sleep. Her hand tightened around the sponge and water squirted out, hitting her face and the front of her tank top. The dousing did nothing to cool her temper.

"I have to help Mrs. Hild and Mr. Carpenter myself, because you won't rent me a space so that I can open an office here and provide temps for people who need them."

"You can open your franchise someplace else," he said, dismissing her. Dismissing the need for her business in Cloverville.

Although she'd accepted long ago that he didn't respect her, the realization still stung. She shouldn't care what Clayton McClintock thought of her. She shouldn't care about him, at all. She couldn't fool herself into actually believing that, but maybe she could fool
him.

"Don't trust yourself in the same town with Abby Hamilton?" she teased as she turned toward him.

Hell, no. He gritted his teeth to hold in the groan that was building in the back of his throat. Water streaked down her throat, over the curve of breast exposed by the low neckline of her damp tank top. Some country singer once had sung about a woman wearing a white tank top, but until now he'd never understood the fascination.

"Don't trust Abby Hamilton," he said. But she was right. He didn't trust himself around her. He bunched his hands and shoved them into his pockets, so he wouldn't reach for her as he had in the hall the other night; so he wouldn't lose control and want more from her than he could handle.

He cleared his throat, thick with desire for her. "I'm not stopping you from opening an office in Cloverville. There're other spaces available for lease."

"Come on, Clayton. You heard Mr. Carpenter," she said, calling him on his eavesdropping. "Your space is perfect. If I go into one of those strip malls, he'll consider it a betrayal of Cloverville."

"If he can forgive you for mutilating the town founder, I think he'll be able to forgive you for not opening your business on Main Street."

"He can forgive me," she agreed. "So can Mrs. Hild. Why can't you, Clayton?"

Because he wouldn't let himself. He needed some excuse to help him fight his crazy attraction to her. But he had other reasons to avoid getting in deeper with Abby. Although as she stretched and reached, pushing her breasts against the damp cotton of her ribbed shirt, he couldn't think of any of those reasons. In fact, he couldn't think at all.

She leaned over the bucket of water and squeezed out the sponge, then reached up and continued washing windows. "Why can't you forgive me?" she asked him again, almost offhandedly, as if she didn't really care that he hadn't. "Why can't you see what everyone else has—that I've changed?"

God, he knew she'd changed. She was a successful businesswoman, a loving mother. She was an exceptional woman who deserved someone with more than he had left to offer.

"We both know I see you differently now," he pointed out, knowing that she probably couldn't forget their kisses, either. But did she lay awake, just as he did, wanting more? Wanting him as hungrily as he wanted her?

"What do you see, Clayton?" she asked as she worked on rinsing the windows. In the reflection of the clean glass sparkling in the sun, she held his gaze. "What do you see when you look at me?"

"Trouble." For his peace of mind. For his heart.

'Then you don't see me any differently." She sighed and lossed the sponge down on the sidewalk before reaching for the bucket. "And since you still see me as a troublemaker, I might as well make some trouble."

Clayton's breath caught in his chest as Abby stepped closer, her body nearly touching his. Then she tipped the bucket of water over his head. Soap bubbles clung to his lashes, some popping, some escaping to float away.

The plastic bucket clattered against the cement when it dropped to the sidewalk and then bounced off the sponge and rolled to a stop against the dark brick at the front of the hardware store.

Abby's hand shot to her mouth, holding in a gasp of surprise, but Clayton just stood there, water and suds dripping from his hair and chin. Wet, his black knit polo shirt molded to every impressive muscle on his chest, and his khakis clung to his lean hips and long legs.

With her attention on his long, narrow feet, she didn't notice that he'd moved until his arms were around her, spinning her so that her back pressed against the damp glass of the windows she'd just washed.

"You want to play?" He uttered the words as a threat. his voice a deep rumble in the chest that was pressed tight against hers.

She mocked him gently. "You don't know how to play, Clayton."

Realization that she was right staggered him. He
didn't
know how to play. In thirty years. Clayton had never learned to have fun.

Abby lifted her arms, wrapping them around his neck as she rose up on tiptoe. When she pressed her lips to his, he stood as still as he had when she'd dumped the bucket over his head; as shocked by her kiss as he'd been by his dousing.

She pulled back. "See, you should lease me that space," she told him. "You need me."

"Abby..." His eyes darkened as he stared down at her.

She knew better than to hold her breath waiting for him to agree with her. But she didn't expect the burst of warm water. She sucked in a breath, then screamed, "Clayton!"

He dropped the wrung-out sponge back on the sidewalk. He'd moved fast when he grabbed her, and she hadn't even seen him pick up the sodden block of foam. As he looked at her now, his chest shook with laughter.

Abby sucked in another breath. She couldn't get over the transformation of Clayton's face when he laughed. With his dark hair and eyes and chiseled features, he was always handsome. But at this moment he was also happy— his eyes wanned and they sparkled, and his cheeks creased with a grin.

She'd been teasing him a moment ago about needing her. Now, however, she wondered who needed whom.

She knotted her fingers in the wet fabric of his shirt and pulled herself up so that her lips, still tingling from the previous contact with his, could brush over his mouth again. Once. Twice.

He groaned, then stroked his fingertips through her curls, holding her head steady while he deepened the kiss. Her pulse racing. Abby opened her lips for the bold exploration of his tongue. She lost herself in his kiss. In Clayton.

Until the bell jangled above the hardware door, as a customer entered the store. Clayton jerked back, leaving her arms to drop to her sides. Had he realized, as she had only now, that they were making out on Main Street? Cloverville's busybodies would have a field day with this one. And if his mother heard about it, she'd be relentless in her matchmaking.

Abby chanced a glance at Clayton's face, but he wasn't looking at her, or even looking around to see who'd witnessed their kissing.

"Damn, I'm going to be late," he said, his attention on his watch.

"What? Missing a hot date?" Abby fought back the jealousy—she had no reason for it. Clayton meant nothing to her. And she meant less than nothing to him, despite what they'd nearly done a few nights before. He was probably glad she'd turned him down.

"No hot date, but I have someplace I have to be." He glanced around then, as if he'd just noticed where they were. "Where's Lara?"

"With your mom." The two of them had become so attached that Abby worried about how she'd separate them when she and Lara left Cloverville.

"I should thank her."

"Your mom?"

"Lara." His voice and eyes softened when he said the child's name.

Her breath caught. She already worried that Lara was becoming too fond of him. Was he beginning to fall for the little girl? She hoped not; she and Clayton could never have a future. Only these few stolen kisses.

"Why do you want to thank my daughter?"

"For taking off some of the must-have-grandchildren-now pressure that Mom's been putting on me."

Abby actually thought Lara had made the situation worse with Clayton's mother, as she was probably the main reason for Mrs. Mick's attempts at matchmaking.

"Well, you're thirty years old and not even dating anyone," she pointed out. "She has reason to worry about you."

"I
was
dating someone," he said, his admission causing jealousy to course through her again.

She had no right to such an emotion, no claim at all on Clayton. "That's right." The woman who'd dumped him. "Erin."

"Ellen."

"So why did she break up with you?" Why would any woman break up with a man as successful, responsible and passionate as Clayton McClintock?

"I was going to be late to pick her up for a date."

"She sounds like she's high-maintenance."

"No, she wasn't. She was just sick of coming last, after everything else in my life." A weary sigh slipped through his lips.

As Abby had suspected, Clayton had taken too much on himself after his father died. Once she thought he'd have enjoyed being in charge, but now she realized he harbored some resentment over all the responsibility.

"I avoid high-maintenance," he said as his smoldering gaze skimmed her wet hair and clothes.

"I'm
not high-maintenance," she said with a laugh. She'd never had anyone but herself to maintain her, so she'd learned to never expect much from anyone
but
herself.

"I know, Abby, but I still want to avoid you."

His admission hit her like a sharp slap. She drew her head back. "I could always count on you to be honest with me."