Along Came Trouble(45)

She laughed, and some internal switch flipped from Maybe to Definitely. It was his confidence. Not egotism, but the optimism of a guy who was accustomed to being competent at everything. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“I am.”

“You think I’m going to walk over there and throw myself at you any second, don’t you?”

There was an energy between them now, a thread of sexual possibility that created crackling excitement on the surface of her skin. It was really rather a lot of fun.

Day in and day out, she walked around with all the sexual power of a Twinkie, but here she was somehow making his eyes go all louche and predatory, and it gave her such a heady rush. She imagined herself in dominatrix boots and black leather, tying him to her bedposts. Unbuttoning his shirt to reveal the solid, beautiful body beneath. Dark skin. Dark hair. White teeth smiling up at her, or grimacing as she gave him pleasure so intense, it was almost pain.

He stuck his hands in his pockets, the very picture of casual, but the heat in his eyes . . . whoa. “I think if you did, I’d make sure you weren’t sorry.”

“Oh, but I would be sorry. I’d miss my chance to watch you stand guard out here, and I really want to see that.”

His dimple was so deep, she could have fallen into it. “Do you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

He straightened up, turned slightly to face the driveway, folded his arms, and went blank.

Ellen peeled off the wall to approach, walking in a slow circle and stopping right in front of him. He’d become a monolith, a man-mountain carved from obsidian. His biceps bulged beneath his fingers, and his stern soldier face announced that he didn’t intend to let anyone or anything by.

He was gorgeous and remote, the single finest specimen of maleness she’d ever seen in her life, and she couldn’t help herself. Her hand rose up and traced a path down his neck. She settled her thumb over the pulse at the base of his throat. She wanted to feel that he was real.

The pounding of his heart moved through her, a slow throb. She inhaled an unsteady breath. Caleb didn’t move. He didn’t look at her. His pulse picked up.

She knew what she wanted.

She wanted Caleb. No strings, no consequences, no deeper meanings. Just hot sex with this hard, experienced, fascinating man. Two bodies in the dark.

What would Jamie have said if she’d told him that earlier? He wouldn’t have liked it. Probably he would have given her a lecture about how casual sex wasn’t her style. And, yeah, fair enough. She’d always been a relationship kind of gal, packaging sex up with dating and getting-to-know-you conversations, with walking to class together and meeting the parents.

Since Richard, there’d been none of that. No men. No dates. No sex. And absolutely zero interest on her part in any of it.

Now . . . now she wanted the sex. She wanted Caleb in her bed, skin against skin, those intense eyes looking down at her as he moved deep inside her body. She didn’t want to go to dinner with him or meet his family. She didn’t care if he even had a family. She didn’t want to swap secrets in the afterglow, or to hear about his life before he’d met her or his plans for the future.

She didn’t have the energy for that shit anymore. She was already her son’s loving mother, her brother’s devoted sister, her clients’ fearless champion. And now, it seemed, she was Richard’s long-suffering ex again, too. Playing all those parts exhausted her. The last thing she needed was to be the wind beneath another man’s wings.

Nope. “Lover” she could handle, but nothing heavier than that. Another ounce of weight, and she would buckle.

She wanted to be a Chiclet.

She’d have to seduce him, but she was so out of practice. When it came to this sort of thing, she’d never even really been in practice. The women of magazines licked their lips and unbuttoned their tops and did stripteases to erotic music. She was fairly sure her stereo was cued up to play “The Wheels on the Bus.”

“I’m going to go inside and take a shower,” she said. “Hold down the fort, will you?”

Caleb didn’t reply. He didn’t need to. She knew what she wanted, and she was going to have him.



Caleb stood guard as the light drained out of the overcast sky and listened to the pok-pok-thwack of someone playing tennis on the courts across the street.

Beneath that sound and the crickets, and the occasional car out on the main drag, he heard the muted hiss of running water and tried not to think about Ellen in the shower, soapy and naked. Wet and hot, her hands sliding over her own skin.