Falling for the Guy Next Door (13 page)

Megan, curled
against the armrest at her end of the sofa, prodded his leg with
the tip of her booted foot. “So, have you got a name for me yet or
do you give in?”

His hand
instinctively closed around her ankle. Their eyes met and the
seconds dragged. His fingers spread up with a gentle pressure,
exploring the slender curve of her calf beneath the layers of denim
and the supple leather of her boot. Desire swelled his veins and a
moment later he filled his jeans a fraction too much for
comfort.

Her gaze had
turned a warm, sultry gold reflected from the firelight and,
perhaps, from another source of simmering heat. Was she thinking of
that kiss? Just before Christmas, when he’d stopped by en route to
Cape Town. An early Christmas party at the Three Jugs. Kate had
been appointed Lord of Misrule, some silly tradition dating back to
the Middle Ages that put a castle servant in charge of pranks for
the day, so far as he could tell. She’d strung a sprig of mistletoe
from the end of a stick and spent the night waving it above the
heads of unsuspecting couples.

One taste, his
slightly parted lips brushing over Megan’s, hitching on the corner
with stubborn reluctance to end the intoxicating rush to his blood.
If Kate hadn’t been standing over them, he doubted he could have
found the control to stop from crushing his mouth to Megan’s and
deepening that kiss until he’d had his full.

The arrival of
their coffees knocked him back to his senses. With a gruff laugh,
Jack completed the act of flinging her foot aside and accepted the
glass from Liam.
Friends. Just friends. Don’t stuff this
up.

He spread his
arm along the back of the sofa and glanced around the restaurant.
An elderly couple were just tucking into some sort of steamed
chocolate pudding and the group of lads at the other table each had
a pint glass of Guinness in the hand and one to spare. He noted
that someone had shuttered the windows from outside, which
suggested the storm had worsened.

“I don’t mean
to rush you,” he said when he saw Megan’s glass untouched on the
table, “but the storm doesn’t appear to be easing and we should
probably drink up and get out of here.”

“Then you’re
on a time limit.” Her voice was just a shade too husky for playful
teasing. Her gaze had definitely snagged on his lips.

She was
thinking about that kiss.

“It’s not
Kate,” he threw out, determined to focus on anything but that
temptation. Kate had mentioned once that her family was originally
from the peat mining district. Didn’t sound like the kind of place
that gave birth to blue blood.

Megan rolled
her eyes. “You’re not allowed to recite your way through the entire
town’s roster.”

“I don’t
intend to,” he assured her with a grin.

She scraped
her hair back from her face, her arms raised behind her head as she
twined the rich brown curls into a knot. The movement exposed the
slender length of her throat and pressed the mounds of her breasts
against the thin ribbed cashmere sweater. His body leaped to
attention and now his jeans were damned uncomfortable.

This was
ridiculous. He sipped on his Irish coffee and, by sheer force of
will, cooled his blood.

Megan reached
for her drink and folded one leg beneath her, sliding deeper into
the sofa. Her fingers twined around the stem of the glass, the rim
pressed to her lower lip as she gave him a contemplating look. “Why
is it that men are incapable of admitting defeat?”

“Because we
never lose,” he said with a broad wink and gave the matter his full
attention.

He hadn’t met
that many people in the town. Megan had hauled him along to a
family barbeque at the end of last summer…there’d been Kate, and
Harry, a policeman friend of theirs. An aunt and the twin cousins,
but they were all from her father’s side of the family and he
already knew that line descended from a pirate who’d gone by the
name of Captain Cork Squirrel. Megan had told him about the
great-great-dot-dot-great grandfather when they’d spent the
afternoon at the heritage site of the old fishing village. That
revelation had shocked him speechless and started Megan on this
game.

She beamed at
him. She thought she had him.

He ignored her
victory smile. There was Finn, their Irish friend who’d recently
demolished the local camping site to erect—that thought sliced
straight through to his answer. “Isobel.”

Her mouth
dropped. “Lucky guess.”

“Elegant,
poised and reserved,” Jack said. “The three marks of royalty.”

“What does
that say about the rest of us? Are we all babbling baboons?”

“Some of the
time,” he teased.

She pulled a
face at him, then a smile snuck over her scowl. “Frank’s got a pen
pal.”

Jack
spluttered up his mouthful of Irish coffee. “What?”

“It’s true.
He’s been corresponding with a farmer from the Valencia district,
Spain, for years. They both write regular letters to some European
agricultural magazine and that’s how they met.”

He wiped his
mouth and set his glass down on the table. “And he told you
this?”

“Last week,”
she confirmed, grinning. “I was next door with your uncle when Bill
brought the post. He said something to Frank about there being a
new one from Valencia. I thought Valencia was a woman and I wasn’t
going to let that go. It was like draining water through a sponge,
but he finally burst two days later.”

“Well, I’ll
be…” He shook his head in amazement, smiling at that glint of
delight in her eyes, not sure when he’d started shifting along the
sofa but suddenly her bent knee was grazing his thigh. His hand
came up to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, the back of his
fingers brushing the silken line of her jaw.

“You win,” he
murmured. “I’m officially shocked. In a good way.” Warmth unfolded
within his heart and sealed his veins. This woman was in his blood
and she was there to stay. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he’d
always carry a little part of her with him. “Thanks for telling
me.”

She held his
gaze, tilting her chin into his touch rather than out of it.
Familiar energy strummed the air between them like an old friend
growing less and less content to wait in the wings.

He couldn’t
keep away from Megan. He was drawn to her infectious smile, to the
source that lay within her wide, soft and welcoming heart. She was
content at the deeply planted roots of her life, not because she’d
settled for less but because she’d worked hard to shape her world
to fit.

Her house on
Bluff Drive was a prime example of how she balanced her
independence and occasional solitary instincts with the cramped
demands of her friends and family in the suffocating town. She
didn’t need to run away like that friend of hers, Lucy. She carved
her space into the foundations that grounded her and forged a path
that was distinctly hers.

Where his job
pushed him around the globe in search for the next perfect shot,
Megan brought the world to her with that brilliant, imaginative
mind.

He was drawn
to her naturally exuberant nature, to her open, friendly manner
that invited him to take a brief respite from his restless,
never-ending journey. No questions asked, no recriminations. He
could be gone for months and she welcomed him into the tight fold
of her friendship as if he’d never been away.

Yielding to
these surges of lust, even once, would signal the beginning of the
end of their relationship.

As much as he
wanted her, he didn’t want that.

He pulled his
hand away and stood. His head was in the right place, if not his
body. He wouldn’t screw this up.

And he
wouldn’t have. If they hadn’t stupidly braved the storm. If the
gale force winds hadn’t swept Megan off-balance almost as soon as
they stepped out the door.

She stumbled
off the low deck and landed in a deep puddle that soaked through
her coat and clothes. He tucked his head in, unsteady on his own
feet as he strode into the wind slamming in from the ocean. She’d
picked herself up by the time he reached her side, but he had to
grab her arm to keep her upright.

He squinted
into the distance. The steep flight of rock steps they’d have to
climb out of the cove to the parking was hidden behind the wall of
rain pounding down. They had no choice but to retreat.

No one was
leaving Smugglers Inn tonight. The second available room went to
the other couple and the group of guys would have to make do with
sprawling themselves over the sofas downstairs in the public
lounge.

Half an hour
later, stripped to his boxers and with his back to the fire Liam
had stoked into a blaze, Jack watched Megan emerge from the
bathroom and lost the battle with his head. Skin flushed from the
heat of her shower. Damp hair twisted into a knot at her nape. He
was instantly and acutely aware that it was his T-Shirt drooping
off one shoulder and skimming just above her knees. Her clothes had
been thoroughly soaked, as had his jeans and sweater. She was
wearing his scent. And possibly nothing else. Had her panties
survived the puddle? Just like that, he was hard, throbbing, and
there was nowhere to hide his erection.

Her gaze
flickered below his waist, then jerked high. She sucked in her
lower lip and pure, naked lust lurked in the sultry depths of her
eyes. Her chest rose and fell in quick succession as she took small
steps toward him. She opened her mouth, then closed it again on a
faltering smile as her gaze levelled to his chest and stalled.

Too much naked
skin between the two of them.

One bed.

Firelight
dancing across the shadows of the room.

The layers of
desire had been packing on thicker and faster each time he’d
coasted into town. His blood slowed to the consistency of warm
honey and pulsed with an urgency that drowned the whispers of
control he tried to summon. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. His
gaze touched hers, slipped to her gorgeous mouth and glazed across
the curve of her exposed shoulder.

A series of
thumps at the door broke the spell.

Jack blinked.
“Th-that—” He cleared his throat. “That will be Liam. I asked him
to bring up a hot toddy.”

“Okay, then.
Well, I’m just going to…” She glanced around the room, then turned
abruptly and padded back into the bathroom.

He shook his
arms out and rolled the tension from his shoulders. On his way to
the door, he swiped his damp sweater from where he’d hung it over
the top of the open cupboard and tied it around his hips to mask
his hard-on. This was going to be a long night.

Liam delivered
a tray holding two mugs of hot whiskey and a plate of dry crackers.
“Everything okay here? I’m off to bed now, but the buzzer at
reception comes through to my apartments.” He shrugged. “If you
need anything.”

“Thanks, we’ll
be fine.” Jack closed the door and set the tray down on the bedside
table.

Megan
reappeared with an armload of soggy clothes. She gave his nether
regions a pointed look.

“What?” he
challenged.

Her eyes lit
with laughter and her smile broke wide open. “If that sweater wets
through to your boxers,” she said, turning from him to pull a
rickety chair closer to the fire and draping her clothes over the
seat and back, “we’re going to be in real trouble.”

Hell, he’d
passed real trouble five minutes ago. Right now he was in disaster
management and just barely holding on.

He unwound the
sweater at his hips and tossed it over the cupboard door again. The
mattress sunk beneath his weight as he sat on the edge and ruffled
through the drawer of the bedside table. A bible and a deck of
cards.

A game of
solitaire might work, maybe bore him to sleep before he did
something stupid. He grabbed the pack, shook the cards out and
settled against the headboard. It was the bed or the floor. The
room had exactly one chair and that was currently functioning as
Megan’s clotheshorse.

He pulled his
legs up loosely, his arms resting over his knees as he shuffled the
cards mindlessly. Watching Megan fiddle around with her clothes was
a fulltime distraction.

“You should
call your uncle,” she said. “Let him know we’re stuck here.”

“I already
did.” He caught a glimpse of black lace before she arranged the
pair of jeans neatly over her bra. And panties? That seemed to the
question of the hour and he couldn’t shake it. “While you were in
the shower.”

She slid a
look of surprise his way.

“I’m not a
totally thoughtless bastard.”

“I never said
you were.” She straightened and came over to the foot of the bed,
folding her arms. She nodded at the deck of cards he was shuffling.
“So, what are we playing?”

“I’d suggest
strip poker,” he drawled, “but we don’t have enough clothes between
us to last past two hands.” His gaze roamed a little lower, to the
hidden junction of her thighs. He had no defence. The pull was
irresistible and he was weak. “Or would that be three?”

“Jack Marlin,”
she gasped. “Are you seriously asking if I’m wearing anything
beneath this T-Shirt?”

He glanced up
and saw humour glinting warm in her eyes. “Enquiring minds want to
know.” He grinned at the mock outrage spearing her brows.
“Curiosity being the forefather of progression and all that.”

“I’ll just
bet.” She tugged the spread loose at the foot of the bed and
climbed beneath the covers to sit cross-legged, facing him at an
angle from her side of the bed.

They hadn’t
discussed sleeping arrangements yet, and he guessed head-to-toe was
a good compromise. But then his mind took that one step further, to
thighs gliding past each other in the night, tangled sheets and
misplaced feet. He inhaled a deep breath and cursed silently.
Head-to-toe was a really bad idea.