A Date With the Other Side (4 page)

Oops. Her key fell in the lock and turned.

Since Boston clearly wasn’t home, she wasn’t going to worry about it. Workaholic like that, he probably would sleep on a couch in his office. Rumpled in his fancy dress clothes, mouth slightly open, arm up, and a sexy little rise and fall of his chest…

Hell, what was the matter with her? Fine time for her passionate side to pop up out of nowhere. Hadn’t that been the problem with her and Danny? Her nonexistent passion? She had always gone through the motions, knowing damn well she wasn’t exactly blowing his mind with her slightly elevated breathing and halfhearted hip thrusts. Since her divorce, no man had really caught her sexual eye, and she had concluded she just wasn’t a passionate person.

Until now. Until Boston. She’d felt more urgings today than she had in the past three years, and the man hadn’t even laid a soft, city finger on her. Maybe the conclusion she could draw was that celibacy was an unnatural state, and that even mediocre sex with Danny had been better than no sex, because no sex had made her lose her mind and lust after a pretty boy.

“Come on in, folks, and listen carefully for the mysterious sounds of the dead.” Shelby entered the narrow entry hall and stepped into the parlor on the left to allow room for her six guests.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Shelby jumped at the sound of Boston’s voice coming from behind her. Feeling a guilty blush steal over her cheeks, she turned. “Well, hi there, Boston. How are you?”

He was lying on the couch, damn him, just like her fantasy, only in her dreams he wasn’t scrunched on a Victorian chintz sofa too short for him, wearing a tight T-shirt and a scowl. The little wires dangling from his ears indicated why he hadn’t heard her knock, and he shifted the CD player off his lap, along with a laptop computer, as he sat up.

“Shelby, I asked one simple thing of your grandmother. That you not enter the house without my consent, and here I find you standing in my living room.”

The priggish tone set her back up. “That wasn’t the agreement! Gran said I couldn’t come in without knocking first. I knocked, you didn’t answer, then I came in.”

Let him dispute that.

His eyes narrowed.

Shelby became aware that the seniors had gone silent in the entryway, hanging on every embarrassing word. She was about to suggest they head on up the stairs, she’d be along in a minute after her argument with sexy city boy ended, when the pocket door to the parlor started sliding shut.

The seniors must be giving her privacy. As thoughtful as that was, she wasn’t having any of it.

“That’s alright folks, I’m coming on out.” Boston could wait. She couldn’t really abandon her tour-goers; she needed the money too much to risk alienation. Besides, she didn’t want to be closed into a room alone with Boston, even for a minute in broad daylight.

“The door’s closing by itself!” one of the seniors called out. She thought it was Ernie, given the gravelly bellow.

There were various startled gasps from others, and something resembling a scream from one woman.

“What?” She strode forward, reaching out to grab the door. It stopped sliding. She stuck her head out a ways, and saw that indeed, all six adults were standing in the hall, none in touching distance of the door.

They gaped at her. “Must have been the wind,” she said, trying to push the door back open.

It pushed back.

Shelby pushed harder.

The door gave a hefty shove, sending her sailing back into the parlor, fearing for her head getting caught in the door. It slammed into the wall and she heard the click as the pocket door’s little click latch was turned.

“What the hell?” Shelby grabbed the door, rattled it, tried to turn the lock back. Nothing budged.

Boston nudged her, startling her into a yelp. Jesus, she hadn’t even seen him come up behind her, she was that freaked out.

“I’ll get it.”

His ample muscles rippled as he gripped the door and tried to move it. Shelby hadn’t noticed all that bulging when she’d seen him that morning. Of course, her eyes had been glued to another bulge. Now with that faded navy T-shirt straining, she had a great shot of biceps.

Scooting back so she wouldn’t impede his pushing, she observed that he was wearing jeans. Not butt-huggers, but just enough room there to provide fuel for her imagination without giving it all away. He had an expensive black leather belt, and still wore his pricey watch, but he was barefoot. Even so, he looked out of place in Cuttersville, in the White House’s nineteenth-century parlor with fussy lace curtains.

“Whoever locked this door, I suggest you open it immediately. I’m not amused,” he called through the door as he struggled with it.

Shelby thought he sounded a hell of a lot like her third grade teacher, Mrs. Gunther. Except Mrs. Gunther had more whiskers.

There was silence for a moment, then came a woman’s voice, hushed with awe. “None of us have touched that door. But we all saw it shut on its own.”

“Bullshit,” Boston said, bending over to run his finger along the doorframe and shaking the door violently.

Like that was going to do anything. Shelby called out, “Hey, Ernie, try the door from your side.”

The click lock turned back, unlocking the door. Or so Shelby thought.

When Boston pounced on the door and shoved, it still didn’t move. “What the… ?” He locked and unlocked the latch again and nothing moved. “It’s stuck or something.”

Wary gaze floating around the room, Shelby ignored the renewed swearing of Boston and the lock rattling of Ernie and waited for a ghost to vaporize before her eyes. She wanted out. Oh, Lord, she was scared all of a sudden. And cold. Maybe the ghost was projecting that on to her. Maybe the ghost was
in
her.

Shelby screamed and launched herself at Boston’s back. When she crashed into him and his nose crunched against the pocket door, he said, “Ow, dammit! Get off of me.”

There was something every woman dreams a man will say to her.

Her irrational fear disappeared as quickly as it had risen. Replaced by embarrassment that she’d pressed her breasts against his hard back like a bimbo coed in
Scary Movie
.

“Sorry. Something walked on my grave there.” She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms.

Ernie called out, “Door won’t budge from this side.”

Boston rubbed his nose. Shelby rolled her eyes. Like it hurt
that
much. She’d been skipping the Krispy Kremes lately, so he could stop acting like a truck had plowed into him.

“Does your grandmother have a key to this door?”

“I don’t know. I never knew it locked before. I could call her and see. Or we could just toss you out the window into the petunias.”

His eyes lit up. “The windows. Good point, Shelby. We can climb out the window.”

He shoved aside lace, unlocked the flimsy brass locks that had been tacked on the frame of the old window next to the sofa, and grimaced. Boston wiped his hand on his jeans, and Shelby wanted to laugh. Mr. Clean didn’t like a little dust and lead-paint chips on his hands.

Then he shoved, giving her a mighty nice view of his back and shoulders straining. The window didn’t open. Boston shoved again. And again. Until Shelby was bored with watching him, even that little jerk his cute backside gave each time.

She listened to him swear and move on to another window.

“There’s nothing wrong with this window, I don’t know why it’s not opening. It doesn’t look painted shut.”

“It’s not. There’s no air-conditioning in this house and every single window opens.”

“Then why the hell won’t they open?” He pushed so hard his foot slipped on the hardwood floor.

She sank to the floor and crossed her legs. “Don’t you think we should call Gran?”

“Just let me try the rest of these.”

Sure, let him get all sweaty. She leaned against the wall and called out to her seniors’ group. “Folks, it looks like I’m stuck. I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel the tour and I’ll refund your money.”

There was some grumbling and concerns for her safety for about thirty seconds, then they abandoned her, their footsteps echoing in the front hall, the door slamming shut behind them. With them went her grocery money for the month.

Shelby allowed herself a sigh. Sometimes a girl couldn’t catch a break, and if she were a believin’ sort, she’d think the spirits were trying to tell her something. Not that she did believe. But if she did, she wished they’d make their desires more obvious.

Because right now they either wanted her to starve to death or be driven to insanity by the stubborn, fastidious, control-freak Boston Macnamara. Neither of which she could claim to be her immediate goals in life.

“Got a phone?” she asked him, sure his cell phone was close to his body in a place of deference. Like next to his heart or in a pocket alongside his third leg.

Boston stopped pushing the last window and turned around, breathing a little harder than normal. She hoped he wasn’t going to go postal on her, and throw a lamp through the window. But he just relaxed his shoulders and dug deep in his pocket, confirming its importance in his life to her. He flipped it two feet to her.

“This is unreal,” he said.

“So is this phone.” Shelby caught it and studied the cracker-size cell phone. She shook it. Tossed it from hand to hand. “Is this thing real? It looks like a kid’s toy.” And it was metallic blue, showing a whimsical side to Boston she never would have guessed.

“Yes, it’s real. Don’t you have cell phones in Cuttersville?” He turned and tried the window again.

“There’s not much business here that’s pressing enough to require instant communication. And if I broke down in Gran’s old clunker, it would only take two minutes before someone I know would stop and help me.” Shelby pressed random buttons trying to find something resembling
on
. “And it’s rude of you to keep implying that we’re hicks. Don’t they teach manners in the big city?”

Boston watched Shelby double-fist his phone, eyes narrowed, lip bit in concentration, and he felt annoyance all over again. “I don’t have manners? Who walked into my house without an invitation?”

“That’s different,” she said without looking up. “I came for the tour.”

Then her eyes lit up as she figured out how to turn his phone on, and started dialing, making a face as she left a message on her grandmother’s voice mail. He bet her grandma had a cell phone.

Boston wiped his hands on his jeans and tried to ignore the fact that Shelby’s knees were slowly falling apart, and that her denim shorts were pulled taut right between her thighs, hugging her body. He also didn’t want to notice that the shorts had wide leg holes, and he could see right up them, past lots of golden skin to a flash of red panty. Hot red. Candy apple red. Cherry red.

Clearly the lack of air circulation in the enclosed room, and the irritation of being stuck in a room for no logical reason, had him irrational. Reduced to basic human instincts. Air. Water. Sex. Lots of sex. With Shelby Tucker.

“Mom, I can’t get ahold of Gran. I’m stuck in the parlor of the White House and I need you to go get Gran’s key.” Shelby rolled her eyes as she listened for a second. “It is not my fault. I didn’t do anything! And I’m sorry that you have chicken on the grill, but I’m your only daughter and I’m going to die of suffocation, starve, or burst my bladder if you don’t get here.”

There was a pause and Boston didn’t harbor much hope for rescue coming in the form of Mrs. Shelby’s mother.

“And maybe you can ask Dave to bring his ladder or something, and he can try and open the windows from the outside if you can’t get the door open.”

Another pause. “I know! Geez.”

*

Then Shelby moved the phone away from her ear and glared at it. “How do you turn this thing off?”

Boston stepped over to her and held his hand out. She was kind of cute when she was annoyed, but she also looked like, if given provocation, she could ram his phone up his nose. “Do you really have to go to the bathroom?”

She nodded, placing the phone in his hand with warm fingers. “I think it’s just psychological, though.”

But her knees squeezed back together tightly.

And he felt the incredibly ridiculous, male urge to comfort her, reassure her that he would get her out of there, beating the door down with his bare hands if he had to. He had never dated women who needed or wanted protection. He dated women who did Pilates and earned six figures without breaking a nail or a sweat.

Shelby didn’t look like she needed protection either. But he felt the urge nonetheless and it disturbed the hell out of him. He was in Cuttersville solely for the purpose of getting back out, and it was not supposed to affect him. He liked the way he was, no change needed in his life.

Still, after rattling the door lock without luck for the eleventh time, he paced in front of Shelby. “I know what you mean. I’ve been sitting in here for an hour working, totally comfortable, and now that I know I can’t open the windows, I feel like it’s ten degrees hotter.” He picked at his T-shirt just thinking about it. It was at least eighty in the parlor.

“You can take your shirt off if you want. I don’t mind,” Shelby said.

Boston stopped pacing. That sounded… suggestive. Or wishful thinking on his part. He glanced at Shelby. A faint pink was creeping up her neck. Definitely suggestive.

“Sorry, that didn’t sound right.”

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it,” he lied. If there was one thing he was good at, it was lying to soothe other people. Half his job consisted of soothing clients. Only none of them were cute in denim shorts, and soothing had never sounded so appealing.

Damn, he needed to get the hell away from her. “Is someone coming to try the windows? Can’t we just call the fire department or something?”

Shelby looked broadsided by his idea. “I never thought of that. It’s not an emergency or anything, but they sent guys out to help Dody Farnsworth unlock her car when she left the keys in the ignition and shut the door. I’ll call them and they should be able to get us out one way or another.”

Then she grinned at him. “I guess that’s why you get paid the big bucks, huh?”