Best Man for Hire (Entangled Lovestruck) (Front and Center) (10 page)

“I think I already mentioned my sister is the consummate city slicker,” she continued, curling up with her right hip eased up off the sofa. “I’m surprised she even agreed to come on this trip, what with there being no skyscrapers or bagel shops near our condo.”

“Hawaii’s not her scene?” he asked, tearing his eyes away from the lovely curve of her hip to hustle into the kitchen. He pulled the pie out of the fridge and glanced over his shoulder to see her balled up on the sofa with her feet tucked under her looking small and tired. Grant felt his gut twist. He sliced an extra large piece for her, arranging it on a blue plate his sister had given him the last time she’d cleaned out her cupboards. He sliced himself a piece, too, and grabbed two forks from the drawer.

“Hawaii isn’t really Janelle’s scene, though it’s definitely more palatable than, say, a deserted mountain cabin in the woods,” Anna said. “I think this trip was just a good excuse for her to be far away from her ex-husband for a little while.”

Grant returned to the living room with the two pie plates. He handed one to Anna and sat down beside her. “Was he abusive?”

Anna seemed to hesitate, and he wondered if she was protecting her sister or just choosing her words carefully. “Janelle was very selective about the details she shared from her marriage. I don’t think he hit her, but I do think he was emotionally abusive. He cheated on her, but that wasn’t all of it. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was always something off about him.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. Like he had secrets, maybe. Besides the affair, I mean. Something he was up to that none of us knew about. He was very controlling with Janelle. He used to listen to her phone messages, demand to know where she was every minute of the day, sometimes even had her watched.”

Grant frowned. “Those sound like signs of abuse.” He watched a flash of regret cross her face and wished he’d chosen his words more carefully.

“I hope not,” she said softly. “He seemed like a nice enough guy when she introduced me, and then I got so wrapped up in planning their wedding that—” She frowned, looking down at her pie. “Maybe I missed something.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“That’s just it—I
should
have. I was clueless about the problems in my parents’ marriage as a kid, and then I failed to see everything wrong with Janelle’s husband when he was standing right in front of me picking out cummerbunds and honeymoon destinations.” She laughed, but it was a dry and bitter sound. “Christ, I didn’t even notice Mac and Kelli’s engagement was a sham. How clueless can one person be?”

He looked at her carefully, knowing it was important not to say the wrong thing here. “Anyone with eyes could look at Mac and Kelli and know they were in love. They were the only two people on earth who didn’t notice.”

“Still, it’s a pattern. Don’t you see? With that many strikes against me when it comes to judging relationships and character, I shouldn’t be allowed to pick out my own toothbrush, let alone a life partner.”

“Anna, none of that is your fault. Your parents, your sister—they made their own decisions. You can’t go around penalizing yourself for other people’s relationship missteps. You’re not to blame here.”

She looked at him over a forkful of pie. “This from the guy who won’t stop blaming himself for my centipede bite.”

Grant frowned, not sure how they’d gone from talking about her issues to his. He sensed there was more to her story, something she wasn’t telling him yet. He wanted to push, but he needed to redirect the conversation onto safer turf. “Are you doing okay? You need me to get you some pain pills or some water or anything?”

“I’m fine, Grant. She looked at him oddly, slicing the side of her fork through her hunk of pie. “How about we both agree to make an effort to stop blaming ourselves for shitty things that happened to other people?”

Grant swallowed a mouthful of pie, trying to get it past the lump that had formed in his throat. She was getting too close for comfort here, so he nodded at her plate. “Sure thing. What’s in this anyway? Did you really make that with the coconut that hit me on the head?”

She looked down at the pie, then back at him, tilting her head to the side a little. “It’s good, huh? Coconut and lime juice are the main ingredients, but there are macadamia nuts in the crust.”

“It’s amazing.”

She was studying him in earnest, probably aware that he’d just changed the subject, but she didn’t say anything. The silence stretched between them for a little while, but Grant didn’t rush to fill it. Let her do the talking.

“I still can’t believe my sister found you rubbing papaya on my butt with your fly down,” she said at last. “What are the odds?”

“Apparently slightly better than the odds of her showing up five minutes earlier and finding us in a much more compromising position.”

“Good point.” Anna set her fork on her empty plate and pushed the plate aside on the end table. “That wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as the time Janelle and I were both in middle school and had a crush on the same boy. She was in sixth grade and I was in eighth, but the boy was a seventh grader. Fair game for us both, right?”

“All’s fair in love and war and junior high.”

“Exactly. So anyway, we were at this school party hoping the boy would ask us to dance instead of sitting on the far side of the gym making paper airplanes with his buddies.”

Grant grinned, remembering how he and Schwartz used to do the same damn thing before they discovered girls a year or two later. “Seventh grade boys are not known for their romantic prowess and emotional perception.”

She laughed. “I’m not sure they change much even with fifteen or twenty years of experience. Anyway, I suddenly got a migraine. I ran to the bathroom thinking I could stay there in the quiet with the lights out and maybe it would go away. I also had to pee, so I was sitting there with my Hello Kitty underpants around my knees, when all of a sudden I felt nauseous.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. I threw up all over my underwear. My favorite ones.”

Grant grimaced, though he secretly felt a little flattered she was open enough to tell him such an unflattering story. “What did you do?”

She rolled her eyes and shifted position on the couch. “While the idea of going commando can be sexy and titillating at age twenty-seven, it’s the most horrifying idea in the world for a twelve-year-old girl wearing her prettiest, shortest, pink skirt.”

“I can imagine.”

“I sat there and cried for awhile. Eventually, Janelle came in and found me.”

“Uh-oh.” Grant took his last bite of pie and set the plate aside, trying not to feel horribly sorry for twelve-year-old Anna in her state of despair. “Don’t tell me she went back out and told the boy?”

Anna shook her head and smiled. “Definitely not. She helped me clean up the mess and gave me her sweatshirt to wrap around my waist. Then she called our mom to come get us and led me out the side door so we could wait for her to give us a ride home.”

“She left the party, too?”

“Yep. Neither one of us got to dance with the boy. Eventually, I heard he grew up and married a guy he met at the dance that night. They’re living happily in Seattle with two kids and a potbellied pig.”

Grant laughed. “Sounds like a good happily ever after for all involved.”

“Pretty much,” Anna said, but her expression was a little wistful. She twisted her hands up in the afghan. “So how about you?”

“What about me?”

“Got any good stories? Embarrassing ones or sibling stories, take your pick. Or both. That works, too.”

Grant thought about it a minute. What was he willing to reveal to her?

He thought about childhood antics with his brothers, he and Schwartz pantsing each other and learning to make armpit farts while Mac looked on with stoic irritation. He thought about his first year in college when Schwartz saved his ass at a frat party when he fell out a window throwing water balloons and needed six stitches on his forehead. He thought about the stupid mistake he’d made that night at the bar in California—

He clamped his brain down tight on that line of thinking. He didn’t want to share any of that.

You’ll bare your junk to this woman, but not your soul?

Grant cleared his throat and shrugged. “I had some leave a few months ago and did a surf trip with some buddies in Mexico.”

“That’s right, you visited Mac and Kelli the same time I did. I can’t believe we never crossed paths.”

“It’s too bad,” he said, trying not to picture himself twined in a hammock with a bikini-clad Anna, tipsy on tequila and Mexican sunshine. “Anyway, I took a little Spanish in college, so I was trying to show off one night after I walked into the ladies’ room by mistake. I told the bartender I felt
embarazada
. Embarrassed, right?”

“Sure, that makes sense.”

“Only it doesn’t. Embarrassed in Spanish is
vergüenza
.
Embarazada
means pregnant.”

Anna burst out laughing, and Grant laughed along with her. He loved the way her eyes lit up and how she threw her head back, exposing the pale column of her throat. He thought about planting a trail of kisses from the hollow right below her chin and leading down her sternum, over her collarbones, peeling back the lacy cup of her bra, and—

“Grant?”

“What?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

She folded her arms over her chest, a gesture that made her small breasts press together high and soft and round in the scooped neckline of her dress. Grant ached to slide his tongue into that perfect hollow between them, but Anna was talking again.

“Two days ago I would have mistaken that look for the politely attentive expression of a man engaged in friendly conversation.” Her eyes were locked on his in a familiar dare he’d begun to recognize. “But now that I know there’s a deliciously filthy-mouthed sex machine lurking under your Boy Scout exterior, I’m inclined to think that’s the look of a man having dirty thoughts.”

Grant swallowed and considered arguing. But hell, she’d called him out fair and square. What did he have to lose?

“I can’t fault your powers of observation,” he said slowly. “Or your bluntness.”

She grinned and wriggled her feet forward on the sofa, tucking them under his thigh. “You keep saying that—how you admire my blunt nature—but you could do it, too, you know.”

“Be blunt?” He shook his head. “Not my style.”

“Sure it is. You just need practice.”

“Practice?”

“Yes. I notice you pause a little bit before you say anything. Like you’re thinking about what you really want to say, then editing it to give a response you think is more appropriate. It’s endearing, really, but that’s gotta get old for you.”

Grant thought about it for a minute. It wasn’t easy, since he kept getting distracted by the warmth of her bare toes beneath his thigh and by the fact that the angle of her knees gave him a view that almost went straight up her dress. If she’d just move her ankle to one side—

“I have an idea!” she said, jumping up so fast Grant nearly fell over. “We’re going to give you a little bluntness training.”

“Bluntness training?” he echoed, already missing the feel of her shins pressed warmly against his leg and the sight of her bare thigh barely concealed beneath the hem of her dress.

“Yes,” she said, dragging one of his dining room chairs over to a spot beside his stove. He watched her climb up on it and stood up to catch her in case she toppled.

“Anna, what on earth—”

“Got it!” she said, wrestling the nine-volt battery out of the smoke detector. She jumped off the chair and padded back toward the sofa, leaving Grant to stare mutely after her. “I promise I’ll put it back in just a few minutes.”

“What are you—”

“Get ready, Boy Scout. I’m going to need your tongue.”

Chapter Nine

This is probably a really dumb idea
, Anna thought as she dropped onto the sofa beside Grant. The pain in her butt was totally gone, replaced by something warm and tingly that probably had nothing to do with the drugs they’d offered at the hospital.

Grant was looking at her like he suspected her pain meds were making her loopy, which was possible. But it was also possible she just wanted to have a little fun with this guy while she could. Breaking through his Boy Scout facade to reveal his inner sex beast earlier had been hot as hell. She kinda wanted to see it again if she could.

Besides, she had a hunch there was more to Grant Patton than he let anyone else see. Something behind his careful veil of perfection. Maybe this was a way to peek behind it.

“Okay, we’re going to do a homemade lie detector test,” she said, tucking her bare feet beneath his thigh again and pressing her knees together so she didn’t give him an inadvertent peep show. “One that involves some mild electrocution.”

Grant raised an eyebrow and stared at the battery in her hand. “I’ve used polygraphs before in counterintelligence work. I don’t recall anything about electrocution.” He frowned. “Or tongues. Why did you say you needed mine?”

“Patience, Boy Scout. We’ll get to that. First, tell me some of the physical signs that someone’s lying or talking about something that makes him uncomfortable.”

“Increased heart rate,” Grant said automatically. “Fidgeting. Failure to make eye contact. Dilated pupils, rapid breathing, sweating.”

“Okay, good. I’m going to ask you some questions. If I see you hesitate or I think you’re not being totally honest about your answer, you have to lick the battery.”

“Lick the battery?”

“Didn’t you do this as a kid?” She turned the battery over in her hand, tapping the end with the tip of her finger. “You touch your tongue to the two contact points on a nine-volt battery and it gives you a mild shock. Not enough to kill you, or even hurt that badly. It’s just a jolt. I’m not totally sure how it works, but it seems like a good deterrent against fibbing and half-truths, don’t you think?”

He was staring at her with an incredulous expression, but there was amusement in his eyes. “Did the doctor say anything about centipede venom getting into your brain?”

“Come on, Grant. It’ll be fun.”

“Electrocution usually is. You’re aware that since I’m trained in recognizing the signs of lying, I’m also trained at disguising them in myself.”

“Sure, but why would you? The point is that we’re training you to speak your mind. To be blunt, which is something you want to work on. What’s the point in faking it?”

He seemed to consider that a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough. So how about positive reinforcement?”

She wiggled her toes beneath his thigh. “What did you have in mind?”

“Some sort of reward system. For when I reply with the requisite amount of bluntness, of course.”

“That sounds fair. What do you want?”

“It’ll depend on the question, I suppose.”

The predatory gleam in his eye was enough to leave her squirming in her seat, but she nodded. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Okay, first question.” She thought about it a moment, trying to come up with something simple but not too simple. “What’s the last dirty thought you had?”

He hesitated a moment. His hands were clasped in his lap like he was working hard to keep them to himself. At last he nodded toward the front of her dress. “I thought about licking that little hollow spot between your breasts.”

A shudder of pleasure arced through her, but Anna forced herself to nod impassively. “You hesitated a little on that one, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt since your answer was good. No punishment necessary.” She clenched the battery in her fist and wriggled her toes under his thigh again, loving the solidness and warmth of his body touching hers.

“And my reward?”

“What would you like?”

“A kiss.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, which seemed a more suitable response than climbing into his lap. “I thought we decided to keep things professional between us since we’re working together and all.”

“That pretty much went out the window the second you got on your knees and ordered me to talk dirty. Kiss me, Anna.”

He didn’t wait for her to come to him. He unclasped his hands and slid one around the back of her head, pulling her against him. His lips touched hers, and Anna held her breath, waiting to see if this would be an innocent peck or something more.

There was nothing innocent about it. The kiss was long and slow and deep, and by the time it ended, Anna was seeing pinpricks of light in her peripheral vision.

“Okay,” she said, a little breathless as she scooted back on the sofa. Lord, the man could kiss. Anna swallowed. “Next question. Does my sister have better boobs than I do?”

“No.”

His response was so forceful and automatic that Anna sat back a little. He was either completely sincere, or smart enough to know better than to answer honestly.

“She’s got a full cup size on me,” Anna pointed out.

“Size isn’t everything. Yours are perkier and have a nicer shape. They’ve got more dimension around the sides, more fullness through here. Plus they look spectacular when you ditch the bra, which is something bustier women seldom do.”

Anna blinked, taken aback. “You’ve spent a lot of time studying breasts.”

“What man hasn’t?”

“Studying
my
breasts.”

“What man wouldn’t?” He reached for her again. “I’ll take another kiss now.”

His lips were on hers before she could protest—not that she planned to. His mouth was warm and soft and so goddamn good at what it was doing. His palm slid up her back this time, then veered to the side to graze the edge of her breast. Anna shuddered under his touch, urging him to keep sliding, to cup her breast in his palm.

When he released her this time, every inch of Anna’s body was tingling. Grant held her gaze, looking deliciously smug.

Anna licked her lips. “Let’s try a tougher one now. Give me one piece of constructive criticism on my fellatio technique.”

Grant snorted. “No.”

“Afraid I can’t take it? Come on, surely there’s room for improvement somewhere. Maybe a little more suction or some hand work or—”

“No,” he repeated, more forceful this time. “There’s not a damn thing I’d change about the way you—” He cut off there, and she watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, fishing for the right word. “Performed,” he added at last.

“Lick the battery,” she said, holding it out to him.

“What the hell for? I didn’t lie.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But you did hesitate to say the word blowjob, so that violates the rules of bluntness training.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Do I get to see this rule book at some point?”

“Lick it,” she said, thrusting the battery at him again.

He started to argue, then shrugged. “I make it a policy never to say no to a woman who issues an order like that.”

He leaned forward, not hesitating even a little the way she and Janelle used to as little kids daring each other, “Do it!” then “No,
you
do it.” He wrapped his hand around hers, holding it steady as he stuck out his tongue and touched it to the contact points on the battery.

Grant didn’t flinch.

He drew back and nodded at her. “There you go.”

She frowned down at the battery. “Is this thing dead?”

“No.”

“Did you get a jolt?”

“Go on. You try it.”

She lowered her tongue to the metallic prongs. A metallic zap coursed through her mouth, and she jerked her head back. “Yeowch!”

He grinned. “Guess I don’t need to replace the battery in my smoke detector. You’ll have to come over every few months and check it with your tongue. I’ll take my reward now.”

“Your reward?”

“This,” he said, capturing the hand that wasn’t holding the battery. Before she knew what was happening, he’d drawn her hand to his mouth. His breath was warm on her palm as he uncurled her fingers and slipped his tongue into the junction between her index and middle finger. He stroked the webbing between the digits with such aching softness, Anna moaned aloud. He continued to lick her there, teasing the delicate skin with a few more strokes as he gripped her wrist with one hand. At last, he released her.

Anna sat back, pulse pounding in her ears, nerves screaming between her legs. Grant held her gaze, unblinking.

“You’re not the only one who can do oral innuendo,” he said.

“No kidding,” she murmured, staring at his mouth. She wanted it everywhere. Well, a few places in particular.

Instead, she cleared her throat. “Okay, next question. Ever cheated on a girlfriend?”

Something dark flashed in his eyes. It was gone in an instant, and she might have imagined it entirely.

But something told her she hadn’t.

“No,” Grant said, his voice firm.

She reached for his wrist and pressed two fingers against his pulse. Steady, not too quick, though what the hell did she know about his normal heart rate? She touched a hand to his face, trying to ascertain whether he was warm or sweaty, but hell, it was a warm day in Hawaii. Who wasn’t sweaty?

“Dilated pupils are also a sign of arousal,” he said, causing her to drop her hand from his face. “In case you planned to ding me for that.”

“Next question,” she said, pretty sure there was something more there, but not wanting to dwell on it or bother with the punishment or reward. Part of her wanted to ask about the brother in the photos. About why she’d never heard more about him, and why Grant had such a haunted-looking photograph of the man.

But something stopped her. Something made her bite her lip, then opt for a softball.

“Name something your mother cooks for family dinners that you pretend to like because you want to be polite but secretly you can’t stand it.”

“Brussel sprouts,” he said. “And lima beans. And shit-on-a-shingle.”

“Your mother serves you something called shit-on-a-shingle?”

“My mother flies fighter jets and knows how to operate a grenade launcher,” Grant replied, his voice tinged with pride. “She didn’t spend my childhood making cutesy-sounding recipes from
Better Homes and Gardens
.”

Anna grinned. “Your mom is awesome. She wore a shoulder holster to my first wedding planning meeting with your sister and Sam. You get a pass on that one.” She flipped the battery over in her fingers, trying to think of something she knew might make him uncomfortable. A subject that had made him uncomfortable before.

She stopped fiddling with the battery and looked at him. “Why don’t you want to be the best man in your sister’s wedding?”

“I don’t like standing up in front of crowds.”

There was no hesitation in his answer, no physical signs of discomfort. Still, she knew he was lying. She could sense it.

What else was he hiding?

“When you’re doing your spy-catcher work, do you sometimes know someone’s lying even though you can’t prove it?”

“All the time.”

She nodded. “You either need to lick the battery on the best man question, or tell me the real reason.”

He stared at the battery in her hand a moment, then met her eyes. “I’d like to lick it.”

His voice was so molten, so suggestive, she almost forgot she needed to press harder to get the answer. To dig a little deeper. There was something there, she knew it, but the tip of his tongue grazing the top of the battery was enough to send her thoughts skewing in a different direction. They could come back to that later.

Grant sat back and stared at her. His pupils were inky and his expression was so predatory she shivered. “Any more questions?”

Anna licked her lips. “Just one.”

“What’s that?”

She swallowed, taking a moment to consider her words. They’d agreed to keep things professional, but weren’t they well beyond that now? How much did it really matter, anyway?

Anna took a steadying breath. “Do you want to fuck me?”

“No.”

“No?” A wave of disappointment sloshed in her belly, but she tried not to let it show on her face.

Grant slid his hand over her knee, claiming it, as his gaze held hers. “Right now, I don’t want to fuck you. What I want to do is make love to you so fiercely you forget your own name.”

Anna dropped the battery. She felt it thunk against her anklebone, and it probably hurt, but she didn’t feel a damn thing. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t blink. All she could do was stare into those gray eyes and nod.

“Okay.”

Her acquiescence was probably irrelevant at this point. Not that Grant was the sort of guy to take her without consent, but with every nerve in her body screaming consent in a shrieking harmony of hormones, it was pretty damn obvious she wanted him.

He stood up and moved his hands under her. Before she could ask what he was doing, he’d scooped her into his arms and was carrying her down the hallway toward his bedroom.

“Grant, I can walk.”

“Of course you can. I’d just prefer to carry you at this moment.”

His chest was huge and muscular, and his arms were flexed with the effort of holding her. She knew this sort of caveman behavior shouldn’t turn her on, but she was so wet from wanting him that her thighs felt glued together.

He turned the corner and took four steps to the bed. He tossed her backward, and she flailed for a moment, struggling for a graceful landing. Grant was on her in an instant, his eyes locked with hers as he grabbed the hem of her dress and tugged it upward. She raised her arms like an obedient girl, breathless with heat and the sheer power of him. He flung her dress aside and claimed her mouth, kissing her with a ferocity that left her moaning against his lips.

When he drew back, his eyes were molten. “I want to make you come until you can’t stand.”

She could only nod as he reached for the waistband of her panties. She wasn’t wearing a bra—thank God for that—and he stripped the lacy thong from her and grabbed her legs. Shoving her thighs apart, he sank to his knees beside the bed. He caught her by the hips and pulled her roughly to the edge of the mattress.