Hot For You (21 page)

Most of the time Maddie was a level-headed person, but get a little whiskey in her and she became daring to the point of personal endangerment. But the four women had been best friends since they met at Girl Scout camp in junior high, and Maddie knew they wouldn’t let her do anything life-threateningly stupid.

They’d actually encouraged her to let her hair down, to start her Month of Maddie—her annual month-long celebration of her May birthday—off with a bang. They knew the past year had been rough on her and insisted Maddie deserved a break.

A little over a year ago, Maddie’s six-year marriage had ended in disaster when her ex-husband, Serge, left her for another man. She’d spent a good eight months grieving the loss of a friend and partner who had loved her well—if not always with as much passion as she might have hoped for—and only recently emerged from her despair pit.

She finally felt ready to celebrate being single, to flirt and banter and maybe kiss a sexy stranger on the beach after the bonfire burned low. This singles camping trip was going to be the start of a new Maddie, one who wasn’t afraid to reach out and touch someone, even if that someone wasn’t going to end up being long-term relationship material.

She was turning thirty in three weeks, for goodness sake. She couldn’t afford to let any more time slip through her fingers. She needed to start enjoying herself, and put her dreams of home and hearth on hold until she met the right guy.

But now, everything was ruined.

Jamison Hansen—childhood friend, womanizer, drop
-d
ead delicious firefighter, and a man who smelled so good he shouldn’t be allowed within fifty feet of the ocean for fear his yummy man-scent might attract sharks—was here.

Three months ago, that would have been bad news. Jamison had always treated Maddie like a little sister, someone he was in charge of pestering to her wits’ end while keeping her safe from danger in all forms, including men with amorous intentions. In the old days, he would have cramped her style; now, he was going to ensure she suffered three days of misery while being forced to watch Jamison flirt the panties off of at least one, if not more, of the single women on the trip.

Knowing Maddie’s luck, it would be one of her friends, and she’d have to endure a play-by-play description of Jamison’s legendary lovemaking skills the entire trip back to Georgia.

Because Jamison
would
be getting action this weekend, there was no doubt about that. The man was the Casanova of Summerville, Georgia, a professional smolder-wielder who had bedded half the women in their hometown, leaving a string of broken hearts in his wake. He was also the man who had almost kissed Maddie last February, when an unexpected eruption of mutual attraction had nearly led to a friendly hug becoming something more.

Since then, Maddie had done her best to avoid Jamison, but the fire station
was
right across the street from her bakery. Maddie couldn’t help running into him at least once a week, often enough for his full lips, strong hands, and delicious man-scent to remain in her thoughts and continue to pop up in fantasies so naughty they made her blush just thinking about them.

It was awful. She had never been attracted to Jamison growing up, and she certainly didn’t want to be attracted to him now. Even if he weren’t the wrong kind of guy—one more interested in conquest than commitment—he wouldn’t be an acceptable man to lust after. He had already locked lips with Maddie’s sister, Naomi. Sure it had happened over a decade ago, and Naomi was marrying Jamison’s brother, but any amount of sister-making-out was too much. Jamison was off-limits. Nothing was ever going to happen between them.
Ever.

Maddie’s head knew that, but her libido did not, a point proven when Jamison turned and their eyes met, sending a shiver of awareness sweeping over Maddie’s skin, raising gooseflesh on her arms and legs despite the eighty-five degree heat.

Jamison didn’t look much happier to find his weekend of fun crashed by a childhood friend than she was, but his look of displeasure only lasted a moment before he smiled and leapt down from the truck bed with the agility of a jungle cat to prowl across the pine-needle covered ground toward her.

“What are the chances, huh?” Maddie said, determined to have her first—and last—words with Jamison for the weekend over as quickly as possible. “Guess we’ll just have to try to stay out of each other’s hair.”

Jamison crossed his arms, one side of his lips lifting in a smirk. “Is that your subtle way of telling me not to interfere while you’re trying to hook up?”

“No,” Maddie said, rolling her eyes. “That’s my blunt way of saying I’m not here to cramp your style, and I’m sure you’ll extend me the same courtesy.”

Jamison inclined his head, casting a glance behind Maddie to where her friends were unloading the van. “So I guess that means those three are off-limits?” he asked in a low voice.

“If you want to go home with all your man parts intact, yes,” Maddie whispered, flinching when Jamison laughed.

Even his laugh was sexy, a sensual expression of mirth that showcased even, white teeth and that delicious neck Maddie knew smelled better than fresh bread, lavender-scented candles, and a pan of recently fried bacon combined.

“Got it.” Jamison winked at Maddie before lifting a hand to the women behind her and backing away with a husky, “Good day, ladies,” that triggered a sigh from one of the weaker members of the company.

Maddie spun back around to find out which of her friends had become tangled in Jamison’s smolder-web to find Shelly and Dawn leaning against the van with slightly dazed expressions and Piper wiping drool from her chin.

“Are you drooling?” Maddie asked, glaring at the athletic brunette she knew Jamison would have made a play for if Maddie hadn’t made it clear that her friends were off-limits. “Tell me you aren’t drooling, Piper Youngman.”

“Who was that?” Piper asked with a grin, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “I like.”

“Me, too,” Shelly added with a sigh that stirred the fuzzy blond curls falling into her face. “But you can have dibs, Piper. Since you drooled and all.”

“No, she cannot have dibs.” Maddie propped her hands on her hips. “Jamison is off limits.”

Dawn’s pierced eyebrow rose. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? Back off ladies. Studly’s already spoken for by the birthday queen.”

“No, it’s not like that,” Maddie said. “I just—”

“And what the birthday queen wants, the birthday queen gets,” Piper interrupted, lifting her hands into the air. “I withdraw my claws. Pounce away, sister.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “I am not going to be pouncing anyone, especially Jamison Hansen.”

“But that’s the whole reason we’re here!” Shelley’s full lips pushed into a pout. “This weekend is for pouncing. It’s like Virginia is for lovers except it’s a weekend instead of an entire state.”

“Jamison is my sister’s fiancé’s brother,” Maddie explained. As non-residents of Summerville, her friends weren’t privy to the intricate details of her and Jamison’s relationship. “It would be like incest.”

“No, that’s when you marry a cousin or something,” Shelly said. “I know because my stepsister married her first cousin. She lives in Arkansas, but they went to Tennessee to get married because it’s legal to marry your first cousin there.”

“That’s it,” Dawn said, frowning as she pulled her shiny blue-black hair into a low ponytail, showcasing the mermaid tattoo on her upper arm. “I’m officially divorcing Tennessee as my birth state. I mean, what is the world coming to when something is illegal in
Arkansas
but not in the Volunteer State?”

“Tennessee is simply
volunteering
to perform a cousin-marrying service other states won’t,” Piper said as she grabbed her pack from the van and swung it onto her back. “I think you should be proud of them. Love is love, after all.”

“As long as you don’t have inbred children,” Dawn said, while Maddie shook her head, wondering how this conversation had gone so far astray.

“But I think you should go for him, Maddie,” Dawn continued. “He’s yummy and he was looking at you like he already had you half-naked in his mind.”

Maddie scoffed, ignoring the way the thought of being undressed by Jamison—mentally or otherwise—made her skin prickle all over. “You’re crazy.”

“I am not crazy,” Dawn said. “I’m thirty-two years old, unreasonably excited to be away from my precious children, and dangerously horny, but not crazy.”

Dawn and Piper both had kids—Piper two boys she had full custody of after her ex took a job overseas, and Dawn a nine-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl she’d been raising alone since her husband ran off with his secretary four years ago. Both of them needed this singles retreat every bit as much as Maddie did, but they had insisted Maddie was the queen of the weekend.

They were sweet friends, such sweet friends Maddie promised right then and there not to do anything to ruin their good time. She wasn’t going to let Jamison’s presence spoil her fun, or anyone else’s.

She managed to keep the promise right up until her third Jack and Coke, when skinny dipping suddenly started to seem like a good idea, and skinny dipping with an old friend an even better one.

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