Sweet Home Carolina (25 page)

And she was letting him into her house, alone, just the two
of them.

What would she do if he reached for her once they were out
of sight?

Entering the dilapidated kitchen, Zack scratched any thought
of lovemaking. He wouldn’t take any woman on that cracked and filthy linoleum
or even on the aging Formica counter. He should have insisted that she come
back to her real house with him, where there were beds.

And Luigi.

Sighing, Zack set aside the fabric designs for the moment
and turned his professional interest to the architecture of the Craftsman
cottage. “The original built-in china cabinet is still here,” he said with
approval, running his hand over the painted corner cabinet in the large
kitchen. “I wonder what wood is under here?”

“You want the grand tour? It takes a lot of imagination to
see beyond the deterioration,” she said tentatively, as if she’d been laughed
at before for the suggestion.

He hesitated. Once upon a time, he and Gabrielle had bought
an old flat. He’d loved stripping off the paint to find the majestic mahogany
beneath. They’d breathed paint stripper and stain and sealers for a year. He’d
been young and foolish and deeply in love —

Love was an irrational emotion. He wasn’t going there these
days. Oddly, the thought saddened him.

“I know, it’s a dump.” With a shrug, Amy began laying out
the designs across the Formica.

He could hear the excitement leach out of her voice at his hesitation.
She was much too perceptive, this fascinating partner he’d acquired. Catching
her arm, Zack steered her toward the next room.

“It will take much work,” he suggested, gazing upward at the
sagging false ceiling, speculating about the antique crown molding that might
be hidden behind it.

He tried not to think too hard on how Amy fit next to him,
as if she were an extension of himself that he could draw closer anytime he
wished. What he wanted was sex. Perhaps he could steal a little kiss.…

As if she read his mind, or suffered the same frustrated
tension throbbing in him, she pulled free to grab a discarded two-by-four off
the floor. He admired the way her jean shorts shaped to her rounded bottom,
then ducked as she whacked the lumber against the sagging ceiling.

“I’ve been itching to do this,” she said with satisfaction,
pounding until it shredded and fell, filling the air with dust.

“You are mad! You will kill both of us!” He grabbed her
elbow again and dragged her toward the clearer air of the kitchen. “You must
hire professionals to do this sort of thing.”

“I can’t afford professionals. I’ll buy a mask and cover the
ceiling with plastic before I tear up any more, I promise. I just wanted to see
what was under there.”

She tried to shake free and return to the front room, but this
time, Zack didn’t let go. If she meant to be reckless, so did he. Instead of
pampering her like a precious princess, he pulled her tempting curves up
against him, catching both arms so she couldn’t wallop him with her timber.

“You will have to wait for the dust to settle before
looking,” he murmured, gazing into her eyes as they widened. Was that interest
or fear he saw there? Only a taste would tell.

He lowered his mouth to hers and licked lightly at her lips.
She gasped but did not retreat.

Her weapon fell to the floor as he deepened the kiss. He
hummed with gratification when she wrapped her arms around his neck and
caressed his nape. Her mouth and tongue were as hungry as his. All week, they
had been resisting this. Released from the torment, at last, he could not get
enough of her. Why had he thought he must protect her from what was so natural?

He raised her to her toes and crushed her against his chest,
needing to have all of her in his arms. She didn’t hesitate. Her hips moved
against his, inspiring more than hope with the rush of his blood southward.

This was neither the time nor the place, but there might
never be another opportunity. Zack slid his hand between them to cup the
fullness of her breast, and nearly expired in pleasure at her moan of pleasure.
That he had the power to make this willful, wonderful woman desire him
accelerated his demands.

He knew all the practiced moves to seduce a woman, but none
of them applied here. That this woman whose intelligence he respected returned
his desires fanned the fire of need burning within him. Amy wasn’t a cunning
seductress out to get what she could. Her hungry whimpers filled him with a
sense of satisfaction he hadn’t experienced in years. He would be the lover
she’d never had, the teacher she needed to free herself, and she could teach
him to be himself again. They were perfect for each other.

He claimed her mouth with his tongue, and she dug her
fingernails into the fabric of his shirt. He wanted to take her slowly, enjoying
every minute of her surrender.

He lifted her to the kitchen counter so he could open her
shirt buttons. She instantly took advantage to run her hands beneath his polo
shirt. Pure pleasure flowed everywhere her fingertips slid over his skin. He
almost dropped her at his body’s sharp ecstatic reaction when she tweaked his
nipples.

Unfastening her front bra clasp, he returned the favor,
inciting the aroused buds of her breasts. She cried out with an eagerness that
told him better than words how long it had been since a man had touched her in
such a way.

“Amy,” he murmured, kissing her cheek, her hair, then
working his way down her throat to his heart’s desire. “I have been wanting
this for so long. Tell me you are ready.”

She dug her hands into his hair and arched into him,
speaking without words.

Just as Zack closed his mouth upon her breast, a pounding on
the front door jarred them back to reality.

Willing the intruders to go away, he suckled, drawing her
sweet-scented flesh deeply into his mouth until she cried out with the pleasure
of it.

“Ames! Don’t make me walk through that grass in these
heels!” came a shout from the front porch, accompanied by more pounding.

“Mommy! We got creams!” a childish voice added.

Amy groaned and pushed Zack away. Her breast was still wet
from his mouth as she hastily fumbled with her bra. Panting, Zack returned her
to the floor and rested his forehead against hers while he brushed her hands
away, fastening the clasp with tenderness, then caressing the skin exposed at
the top with gentle fingers, sending further shivers of desire down her spine.

“Tonight,” he said roughly. “We will go out. You are
permitted dates, are you not?”

Amy was too terrified by what they’d done to answer. The
reasons she should say no were pounding at the door. The children didn’t need
to have their security torn in two when Zack left.
She
didn’t need her heart torn again. But despite all logic and
common sense, she wanted to say yes,
yes
,
please.

She tried to button her shirt, but her hands still felt the
heat of Zack’s hard chest, and her fingers wanted to curl into the soft nest of
hair she’d discovered there. He was all hard angles and wide, muscular planes,
and she desperately longed to explore a man who could lift her off the floor
without effort.

She ached in places she’d forgotten existed. She wanted Zack
with every ounce of hormones in her, and they were multiplying rapidly.

“We will do this, Amy,” he said decisively for her. “It is
just a matter of time. It might as well be tonight.”

“I can’t. I’m watching Flint’s boys tonight,” she said with
genuine regret as he pushed aside her shaking fingers and buttoned her shirt.
Before he could pose any further objections, she shoved away and raced for the
front door. She prayed the mess in the front room accounted for her rumpled state.

She finally figured out the front lock and opened the door
while Zack wisely remained out of sight. “Ice cream!” she cried, sweeping
Louisa up in her arms and stealing a lick of her cone before Jo could say a
word.

“Did you decide to destroy the place before you moved in?”
Jo asked, swinging into the room in heels and shiny capris topped by a fringed
halter. She gazed up at the hole in the ceiling, apparently not noticing Amy’s
frazzled state.

“I wanted to see if there was crown molding on the ceiling. Am
I late? Elise just left, and I thought I had time to look around.”

“Elise? Isn’t that Zack’s Bentley out there?”

Ha, as she’d suspected, Jo wasn’t completely innocent. Amy
frowned at her sister, but Jo wasn’t paying the least attention. She was
picking past the debris to the Art Deco staircase.

“He stopped by with the new designs.” She’d forgotten all
about them. How could she have forgotten the town’s entire future? He had her
head so turned around she didn’t know up from down. “We were spreading them out
on the kitchen counter. You want to see?”

“Is he decent?” Jo asked, arching an eyebrow expressively.
“If he is, he’s not the man I thought he was.”

Amy heard a cough from the kitchen and could envision Zack
choking on laughter. The rat. She hid her blush behind Louisa’s curls. “Your aunt
Jo is a naughty, naughty girl.”

Louisa nodded eagerly. “Bad girl,” she cried gleefully. “Go
to your room.”

“You’re raising a parrot, you know that, don’t you?”
Grinning, Jo stepped over fallen plaster, diverted from the stairs by the cough
in the kitchen. “You decent in there? Coming through!”

If Amy hadn’t already spent a lifetime enduring her
extroverted sister’s embarrassing behavior, she would have sunk through the
floor right now. Instead, she followed resolutely, wondering what she could
possibly have been thinking to let one little kiss get so far out of hand.

She ought to be steering a wide berth around her boss
instead of inviting him inside an empty house, out of sight of the world.

Amy Warren, you did
that on purpose
, she scolded herself. She wasn’t a teenager anymore.

But some small part of her reveled in discovering her newly
rebellious streak. She’d been the Good Girl for far too long.

“You’ll have to drive a Ford truck if you want to sneak
around with my sister,” Jo said jovially upon locating Zack in the kitchen.

He leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his broad
chest, looking as if he wore plaster dust in his hair every day. “I do not need
to sneak,” he countered. “If I wish to have a business conference with my
executive manager, I have every right to do so without being accused of
sneaking.”

He was
protecting
her, Amy realized in admiration. Of course, he was probably accustomed to
cheating wives and that sort of thing, but still, it was sweet.

“See there,” she said in satisfaction, setting Louisa down
on the counter, “I’m a fancified business executive and get to make decisions.
You’ll have to quit treating me like your waitress.”

Jo laughed. “You are talking to the Queen of Wrong Choices,
folks. Don’t give me that guff. I’ll take the kids to church tomorrow.
Lightning won’t strike if you two don’t show up.”

Amy wondered if it would be counted as first-degree murder
if she took the two-by-four to her sister’s extravagant blond hair and dented
her scalp a time or two.

Zack grinned in appreciation. “Wrong choices?” he inquired,
deftly avoiding all the verbal pitfalls Jo opened to go after the safe one. The
man was a first-class conversation manipulator.

“You and Amy can have a long talk about all my faults
tomorrow. For now, I have to drag her out of this house to feed our starving
kids while Flint and I play hooky for a while.” She glanced at the display of fabric
designs with disinterest. “These will return the mill to operation? Ugly.”

“We’ll make them red and add sequins for you, Jo.” Amy
carefully stacked the sheets of valuable historical designs, some of which
hadn’t seen the light of day in a century or more. She wanted to study them
when she had a chance. “You’re welcome to join us for supper, Zack. Where’s
Luigi? I can feed him, too. I’m just firing up Flint’s grill.”

Since they’d closed the café’s dinner business, she’d been
fixing meals up at the house. She had to break that habit by next week, when
strangers moved in. Where would Zack live then? Or would he be gone now that
he’d accomplished what he set out to do?

He accepted her invitation to the cookout with a devastating
grin.

Amy didn’t know whether to be relieved or afraid. After what
had just happened here today, perhaps he ought to go down to Asheville and seek
his own kind.

From the heated look in his eyes, Zack had marked her as the
kind he sought. She didn’t know how she should feel about that. She was a
one-man woman, wasn’t she?

Remembering how he’d made her feel, she briefly closed her
eyes and admitted the truth. She would take Zack any way she could have him.

She, Amy the Proper and Emotionally Suppressed, was ready to
embark on an
affair
.

“Mommy, doorbell!” Josh chimed in company with Jo’s
doorbell, running to join Amy and Louisa in the kitchen. He’d been playing
upstairs with Flint’s boys but must have decided to check on the progress of
supper.

Amy nervously brushed her hands off on a towel. “Why don’t
you take Louisa outside on the swings? I’ll be right out in a minute.” She
headed down the open hall of the cabin’s cathedral-ceilinged front room. Flint
and Jo needed wide open spaces for the boys and their music, or their house
would probably bust at the seams, she reflected.

If she concentrated on the familiar, she wouldn’t have to
worry about seeing the man with whom she had become much too intimate this
afternoon. She blushed just thinking about what they had done, and how they
could have been caught doing it. But her breasts burned to do it again, and she
was wishing she owned sexier underwear. She brushed a wayward lock of hair back
from her heated cheek.