Along Came Trouble(60)

His shoulders dropped, releasing tension he hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Thanks. Listen, you get anything else on Martin Plimpton yet?”

“Nope, but I still have to call a few of the names you gave me.”

“Let me know if you find something.” He tucked his shirt into his slacks and fastened his belt. Katie looked him over and wolf-whistled. “You look good in black. Kind of a Johnny Cash thing.”

“Shut up.” At least his sister was back to her usual smart-ass self.

Sticking his wallet in his pocket, he grabbed his phone and his keys off the counter and crossed to the garage door.

“The Man in Black. Sing us a song, Johnny.”

“Shut up, Katie.”

“Or like a magician. Mr. Mysterious. Shaazam!”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Knock ’em dead, Cowboy. Oh, and stop by the apartment later. Mom has some work for you.”

“Okay. You making dinner?”

She nodded. “You’re not going to be with your piece of action?”

“Jesus, Katie. Her name’s Ellen. She’s a lawyer. She has a kid. She’s not my piece of anything.”

Katie laughed. “Bring her home for dinner, then.”

“Not tonight. I’ll be back around six.”

As the door closed behind him, he heard Katie singing in a low, wavery voice, “Because you’re mine, I walk the line.”

Now he was going to spend the whole day with that song in his head, wondering if wearing a black shirt with black slacks made him look like an idiot.

Sisters. What a pain in the ass.

Nowhere in Camelot could a man buy condoms by the box at seven in the morning. It was one of the drawbacks of small-town life. He made the ten-mile drive into Mount Pleasant to a convenience store, where he also picked up orange juice and some doughnuts. Did Ellen eat doughnuts? She’d tucked into the pizza last night like the sort of woman who didn’t waste her time counting calories. He liked that.

Basically, he liked everything about Ellen.

When he turned onto Burgess, he counted eight cars. Ellen and Carly’s outing yesterday morning must have drawn a few more sharks to town. He pulled into Ellen’s driveway next to the Camelot Security vehicle. The shift had changed; he nodded to the guys on duty before strolling up to the house.

The front door stood open again, but she’d flipped the lock on the screen door, and he had to ring the bell. She came into view feet first. Red toenails on the step, then legs, legs, and more legs. Off-white corduroy shorts and a tight Camelot College T-shirt in royal purple. She had a headset on, and she was chewing someone out in what had to be her lawyer voice as she thumbed the lock open to let him in.

“No, that’s not going to work. Absolutely not. You can’t take thirty percent on that, not when you’ve already got thirty on—”

She paused, listening, then smiled at him in greeting and looked down at the lock and back at his face with raised eyebrows, as if to say, See? I locked the door for you.

He wanted to devour her.

“Ha!” she said suddenly. “Don’t be stubborn. If you won’t come down to fifteen, she’s going to walk.”

Having noticed the plastic bag in his hand, she narrowed her eyes at him and mouthed No presents.

He shrugged and walked into the kitchen, setting the food on the table and extracting a condom from the box to slip in his pocket. Ellen trailed behind him and rested her hand briefly between his shoulder blades, a casual touch that pleased him and fired him up at the same time. “Oh, yes, she can and will do that,” she was saying. “Aimee has another offer, and it’s looking better all the time. You think about it. I’ll give you an hour.”

She disconnected the call and took off her headset.

He backed her into the nearest wall and kissed her with all the desperation of a man who’d gone home unfulfilled and woken up hungry. Her mouth was soft, her fingers in his hair, and he needed to put on the brakes or he’d do something reckless, like bend her over the kitchen table and take her in front of the window, the blinds open to anybody who cared to look.

Ellen wasn’t helping. She kissed him back hard, unbuckling his belt as he moved his hands inside her shirt to pop the clasp on her bra. When she stroked him through his pants, he cupped her breasts and asked, “How about we do hard and fast and rough right now?”

So much for putting on the brakes.

Hooking one leg over his hip, she pressed up into him and moaned when he pushed her more firmly against the wall. “You read my mind.”