Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch (16 page)

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Authors: Victoria Pade

BOOK: Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch
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She didn't doubt that. She just wanted the opportunity to experience them all.
As they ate, he explained about working as a dishwasher in a four-star restaurant one winter. He'd been between ranch jobs at the time, and the chef had shown him a few things about cooking.
“But I'm a lousy baker,” he added at the end of the story. “So you don't have to worry about any competition for those brownies of yours.”
By the time they were finished eating, darkness had descended outside, leaving them in their cocoon of pillows, candlelight and pearly balloons, with only a bit of a summer's breeze coming in through the open front windows that bracketed either side of a center picture window.
Cleanup was easy. At Cal's insistence, Abby stayed where she was while he carried the egg crate—with everything but the wine and their glasses on it—into the kitchen and came right back.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” he said with more of that mischief in his eyes.
But it wasn't only his eyes she was feasting on as he returned to her. It was the whole picture. Clean, careless hair, ruggedly masculine face, broad, straight shoulders atop a torso that narrowed sharply to his waist, hips just wide enough, thick, bolelike thighs, naked feet that were slightly flat, slightly wide and seemed to add to the intimacy between them just because they were bare...
How was she going to relay the message that she wanted him and be more clear than she'd been the night before?
Visions of herself crawling like a seductive cat across the pillows and slithering up his body ran through her mind.
Or maybe she could claim she was hot again and casually unfasten several of the buttons of her dress.
But somehow she couldn't bring herself to do either of those things and instead decided on more conversation until she could come up with a better idea.
“So are any of your brothers or your sister marred?” she asked as Cal rearranged pillows to fill the gap left by the egg crate. Then he sat very close in front of her.
“Not now, no. There's been a few weddings along the way, but everybody's flyin' solo these days. Unless one of 'em's done somethin' they haven't told the rest of us.”
“How about you?”
“Have I done somethin' I haven't told the rest of them? A lot of things,” he said with a wry chuckle. “I'm the oldest, remember? I'm supposed to be the role model. What I can keep quiet, I keep quiet.”
“No, I mean were any of the weddings along the way yours? Rumor has it that you've never been married, but it's just occurred to me that for all anybody knows you could have been and the grapevine just doesn't have that bit of information.”
“No, on that score the grapevine is right. I've never been married. As my sister pointed out yesterday afternoon on the phone, I haven't really been what anybody' d call a one-woman man.”
“Well, there's probably no threat to that now since I was just informed today that I'm not woman enough to keep a man like you around,” she joked, though there was an edge to it as her former fiancé's words rose up on their own.
“I don't know exactly what a man like me is, but whose dumb opinion is it that you aren't woman enough for anyone?”
“A guy named Bill Snodgrass. I was to have married him last Saturday night.”
Cal's expression waffled between surprise and what looked like concern for her. “The Saturday night you were celebratin' your freedom?”
“The very same. He'd broken off the engagement three weeks before that.” Abby went on to explain what Bill had revealed to her only hours earlier as the real reason for the breakup. But she also made sure to tell Cal all her former fiancé had complained about in her—rattling off his summation of her faults.
Maybe she was warning Cal about her true self, she thought.
Or maybe she was testing him.
Either way, being completely open and honest with him seemed like the best thing to do, in case he'd overlooked the kind of person she was.
“Shy, quiet, steady, provincial and what was the other?”
“Predictable.”
Cal smiled at her, his aquamarine eyes warm with delight. “I don't suppose it occurred to anyone that a lot of that is just what I find so appealing about you.”
Abby laughed again, wryly this time. “No, that would definitely never occur to anyone.”
“Then they haven't walked in my shoes. I've known just about all the other kinds of women there are, and next to them you're like a solid diamond surrounded by yellowed glass.”
Abby tried not to let that statement go to her head. “Is this part of the wild-women-are-shallow-and-I'm-not stuff?”
“Yep.”
“And is that where the good-girl thing last night came from?” she asked.
“This is all new to me,” he admitted. “I've been tryin' to behave myself. To treat you with the respect you deserve.”
Abby let one eyebrow arch, hoping it looked seductive. “There's respect. And then there's respect....”
He laughed a full, rich laugh that echoed off the rafters and made the balloons sway. “Are you tellin' me somethin' here, Abby Abby?”
“I thought maybe you stopped last night because you didn't want me.”
He threw his head back and groaned as if in agony. “Didn't want you? I've never wanted anyone so much. It's nearly killin' me. I just thought you weren't the kind of woman who would appreciate my givin' in to it.”
“You might be surprised,” she heard herself say, the words coming directly out of the desire that was again mounting within her just at being so near him, smelling his aftershave, listening to his very masculine voice, looking at him....
“Predictable? Was that one of those things you're supposed to be?” he said with a laugh. “Bill Snodgrass is way...
way
off the beam on that score.”
Cal took her glass and his, along with the bottle, and set them all on the mantel. When he came back he lay down on his side in front of her, braced on one elbow, and smiled up at her, raising his free hand to clasp the back of her neck and pull her down to him.
He kissed her. Full on the mouth. Parted lips. Hungry right from the start, as if no time at all had passed since they'd been on the fifty-yard line.
Then he wrapped his arm around her and rolled to his back, bringing her with him so that she was stretched out on her side, half on top of him, half not.
It struck Abby as amusing that they'd both gone along talking and pretending to be civilized and in control when just beneath the surface was that smoldering, primitive passion that needed little encouragement to erupt.
But erupt it did as Cal rolled once more so that Abby was on her back with him above her, to the side, one heavy thigh across hers, the bulging hardness of his desire pressing insistently at her hip.
But he didn't do anything about it. He just went on kissing her, playing circle games with her tongue in a way that seemed as if he were working to keep things from getting out of hand too quickly.
Just don't stop,
Abby thought.
Whatever you do, just don't stop this time....
She had her arms around him, her palms flat against his broad, hard back, and she did what she hoped was a sensual, suggestive massage there, holding tight even as she did. She kissed him in return the whole while, matching each thrust of his tongue with one of her own until he pulled away.
He rained delicate kisses from her chin to the sensitive spot behind her ear, down the side of her neck to follow the V opening of her dress, stopping tantalizingly short of her cleavage, leaving her moaning quietly when he did, afraid he might be stopping for good.
“Tell me what you want, Abby,” he whispered in her ear, his breath a hot burst there as he nibbled her lobe.
“I want it all,” she whispered in return, feeling very daring to say it.
“You're sure? I want you to be sure.”
“I've never been more sure about anything in my life,” she said, sounding a little desperate because that's how she felt—desperate to finally make love with this man.
Cal chuckled, a devilishly delighted sound as he recaptured her mouth with his in yet another kiss that was wide-open and hungry.
This time it was his hand that followed the edge of her neckline, only it didn't retreat when he encountered the deepest point of the V. Instead he found the button there and unfastened it. Then the next. And the next.
It was such a great idea that Abby did the same thing with him, pulling her arms from around him to unsnap his shirt. But snaps were easier than buttons, and she managed to have his shirt open and pulled free of his jeans before he'd gotten very far with her dress.
Still, she was too eager for the feel of his skin to wait before sliding her hands inside his shirt, smoothing her way up his solid sides to hard pectorals, where small male nibs were kerneled much the way her own nipples were within the lacy confines of her bra.
But Cal was in no hurry. Even after he'd undone the buttons all the way to below her waist, he didn't reach inside or lay it open. Instead he trailed a hand to her waist outside the dress and only raised that hand at a snail's crawl from there to cover her breast through the fabric.
It felt good anyway, and Abby arched into his big hand, drawing her head backward, away from his kiss without even thinking about it.
Cal didn't miss a beat, placing tiny kisses on her throat as he finally eased his hand into her dress, even into the cup of her bra, covering her bare nipple with his leathery palm.
A sigh of pure pleasure escaped her, but it was short-lived as he began to work his wonders with a hand that knew just how much to squeeze, how much to knead, how much to tease with the lightest of touches.
Abby yearned to be rid of the confinement of clothing—his and hers—so she slipped her own hands up over Cal's shoulders to ease his shirt completely off, eager to feel her bare breasts against his chest, his whole bare body against hers.
But he wouldn't be hurried. He took his time, exploring one breast, one nipple, then the other. He stopped kissing her to look down at her body, to marvel at her very sheer, very lacy, very sexy underwear before finally reaching around to unhook her bra and push her dress off her shoulders, leaving her only in scant bikini pants.
The denim of his black jeans suddenly seemed like armor against the tender flesh exposed to the cool evening air, and Abby forgot all inhibitions to find the snap of the waistband of those jeans and pop it open.
The zipper nearly spread on its own, so fierce was the pressure of his burgeoning body behind it, so Abby trailed her hands around to the base of his spine, urging his jeans downward from there.
But apparently Cal had lost the will to keep things slow because he shed the jeans himself in a hurry, tossing them aside before settling back beside her where he kissed her as he slipped off her panties, too.
Then he lifted his mouth from hers, braced on one elbow and looked down at her again, letting his eyes travel the length of her naked body.
“You're so beautiful,” he said.
But Abby wasn't thinking about how she looked. She was drinking in the sight of him. The glorious, hard, masculine perfection of his honed male body dusted in candlelight.
She wanted to touch him so badly that her hands ached with the need. She wanted to learn the feel of every inch of that sleek skin over exquisite bones, over tight tendons, over steely, bulging muscle....
She reached for him, sliding only one palm from his wide shoulders down his chest to his flat stomach, to his hips and around to that incredible derriere.
But Cal seemed far more enthralled with her body than with anything she was doing to him. He leaned over to kiss her again as he rediscovered her breasts, kneading more firmly now, tormenting her nipples with tiny tugs, rolling the pebbled crests between tender fingertips.
His mouth stayed on hers just briefly, though, before kissing a path to her breasts, before taking her nipple fully in the warm velvet wetness of his mouth. Flicking his tongue against it. Suckling. Nipping. Driving her wild with a whole new wave of desire that was a tight cord stretched from her breasts down through the very center of her to that spot between her legs that cried out for him.
As if he could hear that cry, he finally let one of those miracle hands trail down her rib cage, down her stomach, lower still, finding that spot with the gentlest of touches, teasing, urging her to open like a rosebud to the marvel of his caress until she knew she couldn't last much longer without the fullness of him inside her.
So great was her need that it gave her the courage to reach below herself, to find the long, hard length of him, to explore it, to do a little teasing of her own so he'd know the same urgency she knew.

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