“Thanks for the help,” she told him as he came around to the driver’s side where she stood. “I don’t know how I would have done it without you.”
“No problem.” He stopped just inches shy of her. So close she could feel the heat coming off his body and smell the faint scent of beer and leather that clung to him. “Sue’s not usually like this,” he went on. “She’s just having a hard time. She’s been pretty torn up since Bert Wayne moved out and filed for divorce.”
“I know the feeling.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “You know what it’s like to have a cheating husband?”
“I know what it’s like to be alone. I’ve been that way most of my life.” Until now.
She had a home now. And she intended to plant roots and make friends.
Starting now.
“So you don’t have a husband, cheating or otherwise?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Not at the present time.”
“Girlfriend?”
She grinned. “No. How about you?”
“No girlfriend or boyfriend.”
“A wife?”
“I don’t have one of those, either.”
“That’s good.” The lust she’d felt inside the bar returned in full force and she forgot all about her vow to hold back and take things slow and… Permanent. Her nipples throbbed and heat flooded between her legs and she had the sudden urge to lean up on her tiptoes and touch her lips to his to see if he tasted half as delicious as he looked.
She leaned up and he leaned down and—
“The car is spinning,” Sue said from inside.
Holly froze, her mouth just inches shy of touching his, and licked her lips. “I, um, think I’d better be going.”
“Let’s go.”
“I thought I was driving her home.”
“Do you know where she lives?” When she shook her head, he ducked his head to glance in at Sue who’d tilted her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. She murmured something incoherent and whimpered. “I don’t think she’s going to be much help. I’ll drive.”
Holly handed him her keys and climbed into the backseat. She settled into the soft leather as Josh McGraw climbed behind the wheel of her Lincoln Navigator, started the engine and pulled out of the gravel parking lot.
The drive took less than five minutes, but it was the longest of Holly’s life. He was too close, too tempting, his gaze too disturbing every time he glanced in the rearview mirror and eyed her.
Awareness rippled along her spine and heat fluttered over her nerve endings. Her stomach hollowed out and a hunger, fierce and demanding, settled inside. It was one thing to watch him from afar, and quite another to have him just an arm’s reach away.
So close all she had to do was reach out and…
She wouldn’t. Not really. But in her mind’s eye, she leaned over the edge of the seat and touched the soft strands of dark hair that brushed his collar. Her fingers dipped beneath and grazed the hot flesh of his neck. Her palm trailed over the leather strap of his choker, tracing it toward the front. She undid the first button of his shirt. The hard muscle of his chest met her palm as she leaned over him and moved lower, down his rippled abdomen, around the indentation of his belly button to the waistband of his jeans. With a flick of her wrist, she eased the button open and urged his zipper over his erection. She tugged at the elastic of his briefs and slid her fingers beneath and—
“We’re here.” His deep voice drew her from her thoughts. Her head snapped up and her gaze collided with his. A fierce light gleamed in his blue gaze, as if he knew where her thoughts had almost taken her. As if he were already there, waiting and burning and wanting.
She cleared her throat and slid from the backseat as Josh climbed out of the car and went to help Sue from the passenger’s side.
It took fifteen minutes to get Sue settled inside her house before they finally climbed back into the Navigator, Josh back in the driver’s seat. He keyed the ignition, gunned the engine and pulled out of the gravel driveway. A few seconds later, they reached the stop sign at the end of Sue’s street.
“What are you doing?” she asked him when he just sat there, engine idling, as if he didn’t know which way to turn.
He stared straight ahead at the quiet expanse of road. “Wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
“If I should head back to the bar, or if I should head for the interstate and the nearest motel.”
The bar, her conscience whispered. The last thing she needed was to start the permanent phase of her life with a one-night stand.
Then again, a one-night stand was someone that you slept with and never saw again. This guy was obviously local. In a town this small, she would be seeing him again. And again.
A problem in and of itself.
Her head knew that and it started to send a warning south to all of the relevant body parts.
But then his gaze caught hers and there was no mistaking the heat that burned in the dark depths. Her breath caught and her body throbbed and the words were out before she could stop them. “I could use a good minibar right about now.”
2
JOSH MCGRAW’S hands actually trembled as he shoved the key into the lock after registering them at the Lone Ranger Motel, a clean but ancient establishment just outside the city limits. It had been a long, long time since he’d been this worked up. This hot. This hard. This…desperate.
The knowledge would have been enough to send him running for the next county if the circumstances had been different—if Holly had been any of the dozen or so “Juliets,” Romeo’s official organization of single women—who’d been in hot pursuit since he’d returned to town six months ago for his grandfather’s funeral.
Hell, they’d been after him even before then. Since he’d turned thirteen and played his first game of hide-and-seek with Dana Louise Shipley. Not the traditional version, mind you. The game he’d played with Dana had involved hiding a certain body part, and had caused quite a stir when the captain of the cheerleader squad had found them out behind the bleachers during a pep rally and let loose a scream. He’d been just one of the rough and tumble McGraw triplets—an unruly trio notorious for making noise and breaking rules—until damn near every female at Romeo High had gotten a glimpse of him naked. He’d gone from a troublemaker to a lovemaker in the blink of an eye, and he’d had a ready supply of females ever since.
The trouble was, where they’d once wanted a good time back in high school, they now wanted a walk down the aisle. Marriage. Forever.
Hell,
