when rather than if. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Let me spell it out for you. No kissing. None. You’re not kissing me. I’m not kissing you. I’m not asking. I’m not doing. Nada.” Good. She’d sounded resolute. Strong. No hint there that she desperately wanted to taste him, touch him, and likewise feel his hands and his mouth on various and sundry parts of her.
Another one of those looks that tightened every cell in her body into acute, aching awareness that she was a woman. “That’s too bad. Just kissed is a good look on you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Breathe. She needed to remember to breathe…and not kiss him…or take her clothes off. Work. Renovation. The matter at hand. “Now, to borrow one of your phrases, we’re burning daylight. What do you need for me to do?”
“Since you just told me it’s off-limits—” his glance zeroed in and lingered on her mouth, and the wanton fire inside her flamed a little hotter, higher, brighter “—I guess we’ll skip to the second item on the list.” A tsunami of turn-on assaulted her. One look. One moment of innuendo and she was wet, her nipples were hard and her clit ached.
“I need you to get on your knees…” He paused deliberately, and it was a small wonder she didn’t spontaneously combust at the implication of her on her knees, his fly undone, his dick in her mouth. At this point he could probably talk her through an orgasm…which had never happened before but seemed totally one hundred percent plausible right here and now.
“…to scrape paint off the baseboards.”
So much for her orgasm.
HE WAS HOISTED on his own petard, as his Grandpa Stillwell had been fond of saying. Beau had deliberately saddled Natalie with the most menial, uncomfortable task at hand. However, he hadn’t counted on the effect of her on her knees, bending over, her tight, round ass thrust in the air.
“You know, if you make your stroke a little longer and smoother, it’ll be better for you. Slow it down a little, baby girl, or you’re going to wear yourself out before you even get started.”
She looked back over her shoulder at him and he’d asked for it, he’d taken it there, but it was such a sexual look it slammed him in the gut.
Her cell phone went off in her purse, shattering the moment. She scrambled to get up off the floor, and he automatically scooped up her purse and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, her fingers glancing against his ever so briefly, but still rousing.
“You’re welcome.” Dammit to hell, every time they touched it was as if someone had yanked a rug out from under his feet.
She pulled out the phone and answered. “Hi, Mom…No, it’s fine…I’m just working…I know…Right…Maybe sometime next week…No, I don’t want Miguel to think I don’t love him…No, I know it’s important that he knows he’s important to me.”
Who in the hell was Miguel? And why’d her mother have to remind her that he needed to know he was important and that she loved him? He’d assumed, based on their conversation and the way she’d kissed him, there was no boyfriend in the picture.
“I’m just busy,” she said.
Ignoring Beau, Natalie knelt down again and started scraping, propping the phone between her ear and her shoulder. Beau heard her mother’s voice faintly over the line. He couldn’t hear her words but he picked up on the gently remonstrative tone. He had no difficulty in discerning a Southern mama guilt trip, having been on the receiving end several times, most of the time for good reason.
“Look, Mom, I hate to cut this short but I see my appointment parking their car up front and I don’t want to be on the phone when they walk in.” The next part came out in a rush. “I’ll see you next week. Love you.”
She ended the call and shot Beau a look where he stood propped against the staircase. “Don’t say anything,” she dared. “I know it was a lie, but you don’t know my mother. Once she starts…”
Beau grinned. “You’ve met my mother? I totally understand.” For a moment they both shared a laugh, her expression unguarded. The laughter died and he found himself looking into her motor oil-brown eyes and wanting…more. More than a kiss, more than her naked beneath him—although that would be damn nice. He had a hankering to know Natalie Bridges. What did she do when she wasn’t busy aiding and abetting the attachment of ball and chain? And who the hell was Miguel?
“Who’s Miguel?”
She went back to scraping, following his directive with a slow, smooth rhythm that put him in mind of her hand on his…Hell, who was he kidding? Her simply breathing seemed to put him in mind of her hand—or some equally stimulating body part—on his cock.
“My newest ‘brother.’ My parents foster kids. Miguel arrived last week and I haven’t gotten out to meet him yet. I know. My parents are great, but they’re…different.”
Yeah, he’d be in much better shape to think about her parents than the slide of her smooth, soft hand against his hard…“Where do they live?”
“West of Nashville. They’ve got a farm with a big garden, chickens, ponies, a rambling farm house, and it’s just crazy there.” She shook her head, a sweet smile lifting the corners of her delicious mouth. “Always crazy. I can’t tell you how many times I’d go to bed at night only to wake up and find a new sister in my room the next morning.”
“It sounds—”
She rocked back on her heels, scraper in hand. “Chaotic. Total chaos. I lived for the times I could go to my grandparents’ house. Memaw and I would sit on the porch swing at night and she’d tell me stories.” She radiated a sweetly vulnerable nostalgia that tugged at him. He had an instant image of her as a pigtailed little girl curled up beside her grandmother. “The other kids would go over in twos or threes, but Memaw always insisted that when it was my turn, I was the only one allowed over. She knew I needed that alone time. And it made me feel special.”
He nodded, sharing an understanding from his own childhood. “Nana, my dad’s mother, and my mother got along about like oil and water, but Nana always made banana pudding when I came over. It’s my favorite. She’d make a separate dish just for me and add extra bananas and vanilla wafers to it.” He hadn’t thought about Nana’s pudding in years. He shook his head. “So is Shelby your biological sister or your foster sister?”
She set about scraping again, her hair falling forward in a wavy curtain of brown and red. “Foster.” She pushed her hair aside and slanted a glance his way. “And the answer to the next question that inevitably comes is, I don’t have any biological siblings but I have twenty, well, twenty-one now with Miguel, siblings. And, no, they didn’t all live there at once. The house is usually at full capacity with ten. But most of us come back for holidays and special occasions.” She looked back down. “And they are all great, and I do feel guilty that I haven’t met Miguel yet. You can’t imagine Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’d have to see it to believe it.” Both tenderness and exasperation marked her tone.
Paint flecks peppered her hair. “Are you trying to take me home to meet your mother already?”
Teasing her was too much fun. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “My mother
