Exclusively Yours (7 page)

Detoxed.

The low pitch of Joe’s voice drew her attention to where he stood talking to Kevin. They were talking about something on Kevin’s ATV, and she watched them through the corner of her eye, trying not to be obvious.

A skill Joe obviously hadn’t mastered. Kissing her in front of his family? What was that about? Hell, he shouldn’t have been kissing her at all. Not that she really minded, but still.

What did it mean? The man had spent an entire night alone with her in a secluded cabin and kept his hands to himself. Now, with his mother and Terry in the audience, he felt a pressing need to plant one on her?

If she’d thought it strange her body instinctively remembered the
locker position
, it was downright disturbing to learn her libido had a memory like an elephant when it came to Joe’s kisses.

As soon as his lips had touched hers, her neck had tingled in anticipation of his mouth moving south. Then her nipples got all perky because they were the next step on the journey.

After that…well, the warm and fuzzies kept moving on down until Bobby’s camera had interrupted. But all through the burned hot dogs and chip crumbs, her mind kept wandering back to making love with Joe.

It had taken a few tries to get it right, but practicing hadn’t exactly been a hardship. Whitesnake blaring from the Granada’s speakers. The sweet tang of Boone’s Farm on Joe’s lips. Their laughter when an elbow or a foot hit the car horn.

And then, the doing of
it
. How every single time he would
always
pause at some point and, with the restraint causing his muscles to twitch, he would stare down into her face and say, “I love you, babe.”

“Stop staring at my brother’s ass.”

Busted.
Unable to do a damn thing about the flush blooming on her neck and cheeks, Keri glared at her former best friend. “Where’s my brownie?”

“I ate it while you were making out with Joe in front of his nieces and nephews. Oh, and our
parents
.”

“Ah, the darling of the Drama Club takes center stage again.” She’d made out with Joe and one kiss was
not
his definition of making out. “Are you going to take cheap shots at me the whole time?”

Terry shrugged. “You can leave any time.”

“I have a job to do.” And if she didn’t do it, she’d have no job at all.

Terry rolled her eyes and walked away, which was fine by her.

“Pack it up!” Leo bellowed, and everybody moved.

When everything had been bungee corded back onto the four wheelers, it was time to don their gear. Thankfully, Keri managed to get her helmet buckled herself so she was spared Joe’s knuckles brushing her jaw.

She climbed up onto her seat, then held her breath as Joe settled between her thighs.

“Hold on, babe!”

Keri gripped the handholds molded into the passenger box, but once they started down the hill, she started sliding. It wasn’t the first time since they left the campground she’d found herself pressed up against him, crotch to ass and breasts to back, but it was different this time.

He’d kissed her. Kissing, which would, if left unchecked, lead to more kissing, then necking, and then…

The machine leveled out at the bottom of the hill and she scootched her way back into her seat. It didn’t help. There just wasn’t enough room to get the kind of space she was looking for.

Determined to distract herself before she did something stupid, like forget his family was behind them and go for the reach-around, Keri tried to concentrate on the scenery.

Trees. More trees.

Oh look!

A tree.

Then he hit a bump and the machine bounced, bucking her right back to where she’d started—plastered up against Joe. Her helmet smacked his—again—and she let go of the handles to wrap her arms around him, her palms pressed against the flat of his stomach.

The ATV stopped so fast their bodies jerked and Joe did some kind of sideways hop to get off the machine. “You want to drive?”

“No.”

“Slide forward. It’ll be fun.”

With a pronounced sense of foreboding, she did as he said. Anything had to be better than having his ass between her thighs.

Really.
Bad
. Idea.

If he’d taken thirty seconds to consider the ramifications of
her
ass resting between
his
thighs, he might have just given her the machine and walked all the way back to the campground.

“What do I do?” she asked, and he tried to focus on the fact he’d just made himself a passenger on seven hundred pounds of machine the driver didn’t know how to operate.

“Uh…push on the throttle with your thumb, but—”

Their helmets smacked as the ATV surged forward so fast she almost wheelied. Keri made a choked yelping sound while he yelled at her to stop over the roar of the engine and grabbed the handholds so she didn’t dump him off the back.

Just as suddenly, the machine stopped and he yanked his head to the side to save them both another whack to the helmet. “You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say
gently
.”

Laughter and whistles from the back of the pack made her stiffen against him. “I can’t do this.”

Joe turned and waved the others by, not missing Terry’s dark glare at the side of Keri’s helmet or the kids’ snickers.

Kevin, who was riding drag, pulled up alongside them and stopped. “You want me to hang back?”

“No, we’re just gonna take it slow.” When his brother gave him a
yeah right
look, obviously not referring to their speedometer, Joe ignored him. “See you back there.”

He gave the rest of the family a good head start, mostly to let the dust settle, then set about trying to guide her through driving while maintaining as little physical contact as possible.

She got the hang of it pretty quickly, though, and once the fear of injury passed, his mind was free to take their proximity, add the fact they were alone, and come up with the sum total of trouble.

Ever since that impromptu, very public kiss, he’d been thinking about doing it again. Maybe with a little more finesse and a lot fewer spectators. The question was whether or not Keri would let him. The first time had been a sneak attack, but she hadn’t slapped his face or cursed him out afterward.

When they came to a well-shaded intersection, Keri pulled the machine to the side of the trail and shut it off. “My thumb hurts.”

He laughed while she climbed off and removed her goggles. “That’s normal. Everybody’s does at first, but then you get used to it.”

When she slipped off her helmet, he could see how much she’d enjoyed herself.

He hadn’t been exaggerating in the restaurant when he told her time had been pretty damn good to her. Decked out in that little black dress with killer heels and her make-up just so, she’d been a hot number. But out here in the woods with trail dust smudging her face and helmet hair and a big-ass grin, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

It was dangerous, looking for the young Keri who’d loved him in her eyes, but he could see her. Inside the polished stranger lurked the girl he’d wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

“Can I drive all the way back?” she asked, and he stifled a groan.

All the way back to the campground with her shifting her weight between his legs?
Oh, hell no
. He’d never make it without coming in his pants like a teenager. “Sure.”

Since the cooler packed with water bottles had gone on ahead with the family, they stood around for a couple of minutes while Joe thought about working up the nerve to kiss her again.

“Why did you kiss me?” she asked suddenly, her gaze like an interrogator’s spotlight on his face.

“Glitch in the space-time continuum, I guess. Old habits die hard and all that.”
Chickenshit
.

“Okay.” She nodded, but he didn’t think she looked as relieved as she was going for. “Because, you know, we’re not teenagers anymore. And we’re practically strangers.”

“Sure.” He was practically a stranger who knew just where to touch her to make her squirm and beg for him to…
Dammit
. “You ready to head back?”

He had to get away from her, even for a few minutes. There was no way in hell he was going to survive two weeks of this.

She was pretty sure she had everything. A folding chair lifted from Lisa’s campsite. A flimsy yet festive wrap to accent her black tank suit. Towel, water bottle, and the paperback legal thriller she’d picked up at LAX. With her hair pulled back in an elastic band and sunscreen liberally applied, she was ready.

Joe stood and gave her a low wolf whistle when she stepped out onto the porch. “Damn, babe.”

“Save it, Kowalski.” But she still felt the blush. Recovering from the day’s close contact was taking longer than she’d thought. “And stop calling me babe. We’re not teenagers anymore.”

“Can’t help it. I see you and think
babe
. Always have.”

Sure, he’d always called her babe, but that was back before she was trying—and failing—to keep some kind of professional distance between them. “Can you at least not call me that in front of your family?”

“Can I call you babe when we’re alone?”

“Can I stop you?”

He shrugged. “Probably not.”

It was the best deal she was going to get and, truth be told, she didn’t mind it quite as much as she let on. “Fine.”

“If you want to head down, the kids will be waiting at the pool’s gate because they’re not allowed to go in until an adult shows up. I’ll be down after I get changed. You might want to rethink the book, though.”

“I’m going to sit by the pool, relax, read my book and watch the kids swim.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Fifteen minutes later, the paperback had swelled to
War and Peace
proportions, her chair was upside down, she was involuntarily in the pool, and Steph was using Keri’s sopping wet wrap to snap the back of Danny’s thighs.

She’d given up trying to keep track of who wasn’t supposed to be running, who wasn’t supposed to be diving and who wasn’t supposed to be drowning whom.

There was shouting, shoving, splashing, screeching and it was impossible to keep all five of them in her line of vision at one time.

Keri hauled herself onto the side of the pool just in time to hear, “Fore!” The shout was followed by a splash and mini-tidal wave.

“No diving!” she shouted. “No running, no screaming and, for God’s sake, Brian, let your brother come up for air!”

She heard Joe’s laugh before she saw him, and turned to see him and his brothers coming toward the gate. While normally she might take a second to appreciate the sight of three tall, rugged Kowalski men in nothing but swim trunks, her libido was as frazzled as the rest of her.

“I thought you weren’t going in,” Joe called.

“I wasn’t. But then Joey tried to drag Brian into something called the tandem cannonball of doom, which didn’t sound good. So I went over to break it up and one of the other demon spawn—no offense, Mike—ran by and bumped into me. I tripped and ended up in something called the triple cannonball of doom, which is
not
as fun as it sounds.” She paused to take a breath. “And that was
after
my book got wet.”

Joe was laughing so hard she was surprised he could breathe, but Mike put two fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle.

In the blink of an eye, all five kids were sitting on the edge of the poll, innocence blanketing their devious little faces.

“Two through six,” he called to the kids. “Go.”

It took Keri a few seconds to realize they were mumbling the multiplication table. “Does that really work?”

“You bet. Two through six is a warning. Seven through ten’s pretty serious. Rarely do we need eleven and twelve.”

“If this is their usual punishment, they must be
great
at math.”

Mike grinned. “Straight A’s across the board, every one of them. Well, not Bobby yet, but he got all E’s in kindergarten.”

“You’re kidding.” Keri used her hand to wipe water from her face since her towel had already been doused. “Evil
and
smart. Scary.”

She took advantage of the lull to right her chair and hang her wrap and towel over the fence. Her book she set in a sunny spot to dry. She’d just reached a good part, dammit.

“Six times twelve is seventy-two!” the kids yelled in unison.

“Take it easy on Keri,” Joe warned. “She’s soft.”

Without thinking, she planted her feet and shoved him in the pool. The shouting, shoving, splashing and screeching resumed. It wasn’t quite as bad until Kevin tried to get her into a tandem cannonball of doom. The ensuing underwater wrestling match between Joe and his brother got the kids
really
wound up, until Mike had to resort to whistling again.

Finally, wet and exhausted and with a tinge of sunburn, it was time for Keri to drag her worse-for-wear belongings back up the dirt road. She made it as far as Lisa’s site before she unfolded her chair and dropped into it.

“You have my undying respect and admiration,” she told the boys’ mother, who only rolled her eyes and opened the grill. “Seriously. I don’t know how you do it.”

“They were loving, adorable babies. Sucked me in while they were young.”

Keri smiled and let her eyes drift closed. She should get up and head to the cabin. Take a shower and get dressed. Find some bottled water. But it was cool in the shade and Lisa was humming and she couldn’t bring herself to move. Just a few more minutes.