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Authors: Victoria Pade

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BOOK: Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

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“Good idea,” she said in a hurry because she felt that she might melt if she didn't get out of metre. Besides, if she was going for the moment's rapture, she didn't want it to happen in an already overheated kitchen. Or even upstairs in the bedroom that kept flashing through her mind, where the heat had risen to undoubtedly make it overly warm, too. She wanted somewhere more comfortable....

“Know a spot?” he asked.

Lost in her own musings, for a split second she thought he was asking if she knew a spot where they might go to make love. Then she realized he couldn't know what was on her mind, what had been on her mind before he'd arrived tonight.

Reminding herself that he was only asking if she knew a good spot to cool off and eat brownies, she said, “I could deliver these things to the schoolâI have a key to the cafeteria door so I can leave them inside. Maybe we can come up with a place from there.” Like his place...

“Okay.”

Abby put a few of the brownies on a paper plate, loosely covered the tray for the picnic with foil so they wouldn't get soggy and did a quick cleanup.

When that was accomplished, Cal carried the tray out to the front while Abby locked the back. By the time she'd followed him through the bakery, he was waiting with the black Corvette's passenger's door open for her.

It occurred to her that if her sisters came into work in the morning and found her car in the alley but her nowhere around, they might be alarmed. Yet it was a brief thought she put aside to deal with later as she slipped into the leather seat and let Cal set the big tray in her lap.

“We won't have a night watchman or a janitor shooting at us for this, will we?” he joked as he started the car and eased away from the curb.

“There isn't a night watchman, and the janitor is only at the school in the day.”

“No alarms to set off this time of night?”

“There isn't any alarm at all. This is Clangton, remember. Speeding is the biggest crime we've seen in the last five years. The sheriff doesn't even patrol at night. We're probably the only two people out. And I have a key,” she repeated, dangling it at him. “We'll just pop in, leave the brownies, lock up and be out again before you can say boo.”

They made it to the school in five minutes flat because it was only two blocks from First Street.

A single-story, blond brick structure, the school was built in a U-shape in order to keep the three levels of education somewhat separate. The youngest kids attended classes in the center section so they could be closest to the gym, cafeteria and main office; the middle-school and high-school kids were put in opposite wings.

Cal pulled into the circular driveway in front, but Abby directed him around the flagpole to another portion of the driveway that took them to the rear where the playground was just behind the building and beyond that was a football field.

One of the football field's eight tall lights was left lit at nightâthe only concession to securityâso it was easy to find the cafeteria door and let themselves in.

Another five minutes and the brownies had been left among other picnic supplies already accumulated, and Abby and Cal were back out in the night air.

But rather than head straight for his car the way she thought they would, Cal paused to look out at the manicured lawn of the football field.

“How 'bout we eat our brownies on the fifty-yard line?” he suggested.

What could she say?
I had a more romantic spot in mind
â
something along the line of your bedroom maybe....

“Okay,” she answered on a quiet, disappointed sigh that made him frown slightly at her.

But he just went to the car for their share of the brownies and then came to lead her out to the middle of the athletic field, where they sat on the grass.

“Ah, that's nice,” he muttered, stretching out long legs to cross at the ankles and leaning on one elbow.

Abby had her legs curved to the side and underneath her, bracing her weight on a single hand, looking down at him.

The gold dusting of that single light didn't reach all the way to the fifty-yard line, so they were in the shadows.

But still she could see his handsome features, not marred by the day's growth of beard that shaded his face. And she had to admit that it was nice to sit there with him, surrounded by the scent of freshly mowed grass and summer leaves, all alone.

Maybe not as nice as being in his bedroom. But nice just the same, with a certain element of privacy in the darkness of night and the fact that all of Clangton was so quiet, so still, they really did seem to be the only two people awake. Certainly the only two people out and about. And it occurred to her that being anywhere with him had a special quality all its own.

“I used to come here to blow off steam when I was a kid,” she said as she handed him a still warm brownie and then took one for herself.

“Blow off steam? You? As in temper tantrum?”

“Mmm.”

“I never pictured you havin' a temper.”

“I don't really. Not now. But you know how kids are. I'd get into trouble or be sure there was some injustice being heaped on me, and then I'd go off in a huff.”

“What kind of trouble did you get into?” he asked, as if he didn't believe it was possible.

“I got into my share of mischief,” she said defensively.

“Like what?” he challenged her to convince him.

“Like bombarding a birthday party I didn't get invited to with water balloons from over the backyard fence. And booby-trapping a bully's doorstep with open cans I'd filled with paint so when he came out he tripped over them and splattered paint all over himself. And the stoop. And the door. And his mother, who'd followed him out to see who had been calling him names from behind the bushes to get him outside in the first place.”

“Abby,” Cal admonished. “I never imagined you as an ornery kid.”

“Well, I was. But I didn't really start coming here to walk off my mads until I was a teenager. Usually after fighting with my sisters about something and having my parents come down on me for it because I was the oldest and should have known better. Then I'd head over here and sometimes, if I was really peeved, I'd climb up onto the top of the equipment shed and scream at the top of my lungs.”

He sighed. “Want to do it now? I'd like to see that.”

She wanted to do something right now, but screaming wasn't it.

“Sorry, can't do it without provocation and I'm not provoked.”

“But are you still hot?” he teased.

She was. Though not in terms of temperature. “It's nice out here,” was all she would commit to.

This time it was Cal who just said “Mmm” as he took another brownie. “These have to be the best things I've ever tasted,” he complimented.

“I'm glad you like them.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes as Abby's gaze caught on that equipment shed she'd just mentioned and her mind wandered.

“What're you thinkin' about?” he asked.

She laughed and felt her cheeks heat slightly. “I was thinking about once when I was really, really ticked off at Bree and I came here. I climbed up onto the top of the shed and screamed until my throat was raw. Then I plopped down, flat on my back, spread-eagle like a perfect martyr. I guess lying that way made it hard to see me because a while after my tantrum had worn itself out I heardâand then sawâone of my friends' mothers and the gym teacher sneaking into the shed underneath me. They were both married to other people, so I knew that in itself was bad enough, but then they started... uh...having an affair...inside the shed.”

Actually she'd also been thinking about what it might be like for her and Cal to do just what that other illicit couple had done, but she didn't admit that.

“Ooh, bad timing,” he groaned and laughed at once.

“You're telling me. I couldn't get down without making a lot of noise and letting them know I was there, so I just stayed, wishing they'd leave. But they didn't. And I could hear everything. I never looked at that shed the same again.”

“Funny, but when you were lookin' at it just now, I thought I saw some longing in your expression.”

Oh, the man was a devil.

And she loved it.

She met his blue eyes with her own and saw the glimmer in them that said he was enjoying himself.

“Maybe I was longing for a nice pair of shoulder pads,” she countered with a barely suppressed smile.

“Were you?”

She straightened her legs, scooted her hips down and lay on her side just the way he was, facing him. “Okay, no, I was not longing for a nice pair of shoulder pads.”

He grinned with a single side of his mouth. “What were you longin' for?”

“You're the one who said I was, not me.”

“Maybe I was just seein' in you what I was feelin' in myself.”

“You were longing for a nice pair of shoulder pads?”

“Not quite,” he said so softly she almost couldn't hear him.

He held her eyes with his, and Abby let him, expecting him to reach over to her. To touch her. To kiss her. Wishing he would.

But he didn't. Damn him, he didn't. Now, when she had talked herself into indulging in the feelings, the yearnings he stirred up inside her, when she was ready to give herself to him completely, he only stared into her eyes.

So Abby summoned courage of her own and reached a hand to him, to his hair where it had fallen to his brow, running her fingers through it much the way he did.

Still he only studied her as if delving into the depths of her soul with that gaze.

But Abby didn't retreat. Not when touching him seemed to answer at least one need in her.

She caressed his whisker-stubbled cheek with the tips of her fingers, traced the line of his sharp jaw to his chin, to his mouth, letting them stay there as if to halt words he wasn't even speaking.

He kissed her fingers then, but only barely before parting his lips to flick his tongue teasingly against them. When she still didn't pull away, he drew one of those fingers into the warm, velvety inside of his mouth, sucking slightly.

It didn't take more than that to light sparks in Abby. To awaken the arousal that waited just below the surface and had kept her sleepless tonight. To make her even bolder.

She slid her hand away and leaned forward to replace it with her mouth on his, kissing him tentatively as she trailed her fingertips down his Adam's apple and into the open placket of his shirt, finding a smattering of coarse hair hiding there.

Cal deepened the kiss, finally raising a hand to cup the back of her head, to pull her closer to him as his lips parted farther, as his tongue came to play.

What was it her sister had said? That if she couldn't help thinking about Cal or getting moony eyed over a simple kiss from him, she might as well give in and enjoy herself?

Well, that's exactly what she was doing. And she didn't care if it was out in the open, in the middle of the football field. With a man who probably wasn't good for her. She didn't care about anything but being with Cal. Kissing him. Touching him. Being touched by him. Quenching the thirst she had for him.

His mouth was open fully, and so was hers, in a kiss that was rapidly turning demanding. He eased her back into the cool grass, laying his big body half on top of her, raising a knee over her thigh in a way that brought them so close together she could feel the hardness lurking behind the zipper of his jeans, straining for her.

Abby reached her arms around him, pressing her palms against the expanse of his broad shoulders, letting them ride the rise and fall of muscles that were like steel, trailing them down to the narrowness where his waistband held his shirt so she could pull it up and slip underneath to feel the warm smoothness of his skin.

Passion made her braver still, and she eased the shirt upward, interrupting their kiss only long enough to bring it off over his head so she could have pure, unadulterated access to at least his magnificent torso, to run her hands across every inch of his back, his shoulders, his hard pectorals and the sides of his flat stomach.

But it wasn't enough.

As wonderful as it all felt, what she needed was to be rid of even the scant barrier of her tank top, to feel her naked breasts flattened to his chest, in his hands, in his mouth....

She arched her back to give him a clue, letting kerneled nipples brush against his skin, hoping it did as much for him as it did for her.

Cal groaned deep in his throat, as if she were torturing him, as if she were tempting him with something he couldn't have.

BOOK: Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

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