Falling for the Guy Next Door (7 page)

She opened her
to eyes to see Jack had moved around to the other side. He leaned
forward against the door, not climbing in. Giving her some space to
get it together? Or battling his own demons? She brought her gaze
from him on a sigh, wishing she could truly hate him, plain and
simple, without the backlash of sympathy and understanding. He’d
lived a solitary, nomad’s life since the age of seven. That wasn’t
a bad habit one could break, easily or otherwise. That’s why she’d
never been mad at him for leaving, only ever for the way in which
he’d left.

It was a good
five minutes before Jack climbed in, started the engine and
navigated the Land Rover from the parking field. The threat of
weeping had subsided and she’d more or less bound her wayward
emotions. God alone knew what all the fuss was about. Tomorrow
would make it Day 5 and she’d eat every page of her current
manuscript if Jack was still in the vicinity of Corkscrew Bay by
mid-morning.

She snapped
her seatbelt into the buckle, tucked one foot beneath her backside
and turned her shoulder into the seat so that she faced him. The
reminder that he’d be out of here soon and it was anyone’s guess
when—if—he’d be back, eclipsed everything else that had happened
this evening. Megan drank in his profile, committing every shaded
hollow and shadowed ridge to memory.

Once they were
on the narrow lane that skirted the town along the base of the
cliff, he glanced at her.

“You’re not
lily-white pure yourself, you know.” His voice was a deep rumble
that spread through her with the warmth of a compliment rather than
the jibe that it was. His gaze went to the road. “No matter how
much you want me, you needed one too many glasses of wine to blame
before you’d allow yourself to give into it.”

Wasn’t that
the truth. To be fair, she felt stone-cold sober right now and if
he gave the slightest indication, she may well pounce anyway. “I
didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I take my
sexual encounters short, spicy and honest,” he said, eyes glued to
the road as they began the ascent up Bluff Drive. “If you need a
get-out clause before we hit the sheets, then that’s one doubt too
many for me.”

“No doubts,”
she murmured. Short? Yes. Honest? Maybe. Spicy?
Huh!
It was
the huh part that flustered her hormones all over again. “Just a
little confusion as to how mad I was at you.” She settled forward,
moving her gaze from Jack to the windshield. Down, girl. No hope of
pouncing or being pounced on tonight. Jack’s sense of honour may be
screwed up, but it was his and he always stuck to it.

H
e was either a saint or the dumbest male on the
planet. Jack tossed the photograph he’d been staring at onto the
pile and scooted up from the floor. He was supposed to be pulling a
portfolio together for
Art de Natique
and that was going
nowhere fast. One half of his attention was on next door and the
other half was hard-wired to the semi-erection he couldn’t get rid
of.

Megan’s alarm
had gone off at six-thirty, a piercing cock-a-doodle-doo, and like
an idiot his body had immediately tuned in to the fact that she was
waking up in bed less than two feet away from him.

If not for a
very flimsy wall, their headboards would be touching.

From there, it
was just a short hop down memory lane to feel her satin-soft skin
slide over him in a slow, kittenish stretch as her eyes fluttered
open on a drowsy groan. Warm fingers trailing across his chest as
she rolled lazily onto her back. A long, shapely leg tangled in the
sheet she’d taken with her. The firm mound of one breast exposed
between the white folds of the sheet, peaked with a pebbled,
sensitive nipple that sent a rush of fresh desire straight to his
groin.

Maybe he
should move his bed back in here.

He glanced
around the stark guest bedroom—one armchair he’d brought up from
downstairs and a wobbly bookshelf—seriously considering it. Because
another night of sleeping beside Megan, give or take a wall, and
he’d be seriously reconsidering the noble intentions that had kept
him on the wrong side of her front door last night.

No, not the
wrong side. That kind of thinking was a shove down the slippery
slope, the one that landed him right on top of her, in his bed or
hers, it didn’t matter… Jack gave an irritable grunt. Damn it all,
when it came to Megan, he was like a plane circling in a holding
pattern and he knew exactly what the problem was.

He had a
handful of friends sprinkled around the globe and plenty of lovers
littered along the way, but he’d never blurred the lines.

With Megan,
the lines weren’t just blurred; they were non-existent. Their
friendship was founded on flirtatious teasing and had simmered
hotter with each visit.

The sound of
Megan’s front door banging drew him toward the open window. He had
to pick his way over the photos strewn across the floor, the task
that should be occupying his head instead of the
testosterone-induced clutter.

The sight that
greeted him on reaching the window wasn’t much help.

Not at
all.

Megan, skimpy
white shorts riding up her backside, balanced on one leg with the
other raised level with the porch, her foot propped against the
edge for support. She stretched forward with the supple grace of a
ballerina, her torso bent double along that golden thigh by the
time she was finished. She grabbed her ankle and perked her cute
butt high while she worked a calf back and forth to warm up the
muscle. As she straightened, her breasts bulged close to spilling
from a body-hugging tank top. She changed legs, flipped her
ponytail off her cheek and spread out over the opposite thigh.

“Aw, come on,”
he muttered under his breath.

He was walking
on eggshells around his own damned cock and his neighbour had taken
up erotic aerobics in the front garden. “You have got to be
kidding.” His eyes turned skyward, but of course they didn’t stay
there.

Her top slid
even lower the second time around. She came up again, gave an
ineffectual tug to the bodice, then dipped a hand inside to cup one
breast back into her bra. His jaw dropped. There might have been
saliva. His blood was definitely panting.

Why was she
off limits again?

She raised her
arms and linked her hands high above her head, arching her back and
jutting out her breasts in a feline manner designed to drive a man
wild. Her head went back and she’d started to roll it from her left
shoulder to her right, when her eyes met his and startled wide.

Okay, so that
performance hadn’t been for his benefit.

He leaned out
the window with his forearms resting on the ledge. “Morning
there.”

Her cheeks
tipped in a hot blush. She dropped her arms and shook them out.
“How long have been gawking at me?” she demanded.

Long enough.
She’d been doing the stretching, but he was all warmed up and not
looking for a fight. “Sleep well?”

“Like a baby.”
She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and turned to jog down
the path and through the gate she always left open.

He watched her
pert backside bounce to the rhythm of her stride until she
disappeared around the bend at the end of the drive. His gaze moved
to the blue expanse of ocean as he contemplated his options. Leave
Megan the hell alone. And leave Megan the hell alone.

“I am so
screwed.” He pushed away from the window, dragging his hands
through his hair.

Maybe he was
approaching this problem from the wrong angle. Their friendship
didn’t need to end gracefully; it deserved to go out on a big bang
for old time’s sake.

Megan wasn’t
going to be the girl-next-door for very much longer. She’d wanted
first option on 21a, and he’d give it to her as soon as the
contract arrived from his lawyer. He didn’t know her financial
position, but he’d set the sale price back four years to what he’d
paid for the place. He knew she wanted to restore the house to its
whole again, and he’d do his damned best to help her make it
happen.

Meanwhile, he
had a little free time on his hands and a hot soon-to-be-ex
neighbour to fill them.

When that
didn’t sit quite right in his chest, he knew he was deluding
himself. That argument might have worked initially, but since then,
he’d gotten to know her. He’d gotten to care. However
unintentionally, he’d already unearthed the kinks in his
tried-and-tested philosophy when it came to Megan Lane.

He refused to
risk hurting her again.

But damn,
there had to be more than one alternate angle to come at this. He
never gave up this easily when it came to looking for the perfect
shot

Fragments from
her outburst last night came back to him.

I’m entitled
to enjoy a fling without your preconceived notions making me feel
worse than shit.

I never
expected more than a couple of nights from you.

I thought once
we’d burned through the passion, we could find a way to go forward
without too much baggage.

Maybe it was
time he listened to the woman. She wasn’t a child and she seemed to
know exactly what she wanted. And how she wanted it. She even had a
strategy to conclude their fling in an amicable fashion.

He couldn’t
find a single flaw to argue against. His grin came out before he
recalled the obvious hitch: Megan was royally pissed at him.

He was waiting
for her on the porch when she pulled up in her car forty minutes
later. She must have jogged the two miles into town to collect it.
He jumped the hedge and strolled around her side of the house.

“Hey,” he
called as she climbed out, “I could have given you a lift in.”

“I was going
for a jog anyway.” She clicked the door closed and leant against
it. “What time are you leaving?”

“For
where?”

“Oh, you
know.” She shrugged, those expressive eyes narrowing on him. “The
Serengeti plains? The Amazon rainforest? The Republic of
Congo?”

“Tempting, all
of them.” He grinned, taking a step closer to her. “But my
immediate plans don’t extend beyond Smugglers Inn. This evening,”
he added succinctly. “Join me?”

“Yeah, right.”
She folded her arms, inadvertently—he guessed, given her
tone—swelling her breasts practically out of her low cut Lycra tank
top. “Because that worked out so well for us the last time.”

“It wasn’t all
bad,” he reminded her. The romantic setting of the
eighteenth-century Inn, tucked away in a sea-battered cove, had
lured them to their downfall faster than a smuggler chasing a case
of contraband rum.

In his
defence, they’d been trapped in a cosy room for the night, a winter
storm battening down the hatches outside and heat crackling off a
log fire inside.

Her mouth
opened in protest, then closed without a word. Some of the fire
left her eyes. Her lips softened a fraction. She was thinking about
relenting, but not without an inner struggle.

“It’s only
dinner,” he said, recalling all the unresolved shit between them.
He could at least attempt to go after her with more finesse than a
hormonal teenager. He didn’t want another one-night-stand that
ended in disaster. For what he had in mind, he’d need a couple of
weeks of long summer afternoons and even longer summer nights. “You
need to eat.”

“Only dinner?”
A frown pulled her brows and tugged at the edges of her mouth. “It
smells like a truce to me.”

Amusement
quirked his mood. “Would that be a rosy scent or skunk?”

“Things have
been a bit crazy between us lately.” Laughter fed into the creases
of her frown. “Okay, dinner, but not tonight. I’ve already got
plans.”

Any plans that
involved Kate, Finn or Isobel was always an open invitation along
the sentiment of, ‘the more, the merrier.’ He waited another
heartbeat, but there was no offer forthcoming. His amusement dried
up. “Intimate plans?”

She rolled her
eyes. “None-of-your-business plans.”

He took a deep
breath to push down the wave of anger he had no claim to. “I
disagree. After the way you came on to me last night—”

“After the way
you turned me down flat last night,” she cut in, her voice cool and
even, “why don’t we just agree to disagree?”

“A lot went on
before I turned you down and none of it was flat.”

“You know what
I mean.”

His jaw
clenched. They’d gone from lazy summer nights of endless pleasure
to Megan dating another man in zero seconds. How the blazes had
that happened? He rubbed his jaw. Pushed a hand through his hair.
“Do I look like a man who knows what you mean?”

Green flashed
in her eyes as she wrenched her body away from the car. She threw
her hands up, then shook her head on a long-suffering sigh.

“You know
what? You—me—” She brought her hands down to her side and stalked
off in a huff. Halfway to the kitchen door, she spun back around,
pointing a finger in his direction. “You look like a man who
doesn’t know what he wants, Jack. That’s what.”

His gaze raked
over her, starting at that plush lower lip, over the Lycra imprint
of her breasts and down onto the best set of legs in the South West
Peninsula.

“Oh, I know
what I want.” He didn’t hold back the hunger and need that
thickened his blood and heated his gaze. She’d have to be a blind
stone to miss the desire pulsing off him. She could go on that
date, but she’d do so with her eyes wide open on what was waiting
at home. “I’m just considerate enough to think twice before I take
it.”

“And I’m
not?”

“I never said
that.”

Fists curled
at her side. “You didn’t have to.”

There were a
good couple of yards between them, but he took a further step back
and put a hand out. What had her so riled up now? He’d never
accused her of taking— Wait, had she been serious?