Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) (18 page)

“I’ll be discreet.” He pushed her back into the darkness, his hands memorizing every curve of her body, first outside, then inside her clothes. He slipped his tongue into the nook behind her ear, and she sucked in her breath while his fingers moved along her inner thigh, under the skirt. The closeness of his fingertips was causing her to ache and throb, and she moved her thighs toward his hand.

“God, I’ve wanted you,” he whispered into her neck.

Her heart soared. This was what she’d always wanted—Adam crazed for her, Adam touching her, Adam desiring her body. She knew she was supposed to keep business separate from her feelings toward him, but right now she couldn’t separate anything. She held his hair as he kissed her neck, and arched her back to give him better access. His fingers moved her panties to one side, and she gasped and arched farther, just as a sharp beam of light came crashing into the hangar. Vaguely, Paige could hear the crunch of tires on gravel.

“Adam? Paige?”

A door slammed.

Adam lifted.

Paige scrambled upward from the table and pushed her skirt back down. This wasn’t the kind of discovery fantasy she’d had in mind.

But dang, that whole kiss had been a fantasy.

“We’re here, Amanda,” she called in a shaky voice.

CHAPTER 17

Paige heard Adam bite off a few swear words and break his fall against a cluster of old paint cans, then quickly work his jeans back in place. He ran his hands through his hair, whispering a steady stream of curses under his breath.

“How’re you doing?” Paige walked out into the light so Amanda might focus on her. “How was dinner?”

Amanda was trying to see around her shoulder into the darkness, frowning, but Paige kept walking toward her, shading her hand over her eyes to block the headlight beam. “We were looking for some old movies for you,” she said to distract her.

“For
me
?” Amanda looked around again.

Paige waved hello toward the car, and the headlights snapped off.

“Yes, did you say you didn’t get a chance to see
Last Road to Nowhere
? That’s what we were looking for. We, um . . . didn’t find it.” She ran her hand down her hair to make sure it wasn’t all over the place, just as Adam emerged with the box in his arms. He looked disheveled and sexy and slightly dazed.

“We were only able to find these eighties movies.” He cleared his throat. “Not sure if that’s your thing?”

Amanda frowned at them both, looking around the hangar with suspicion. But then her face softened as she saw Adam holding the box.

“You were finding those for me?”

“We were,” Adam said.

“Can I see them?”

“Box is heavy. I’ll carry them into the house for you.”

As he continued his trajectory past her, the car turned off and Bob stepped out.

“Sorry, Adam. Amanda didn’t know where you were. We saw your dinner dishes half-eaten, and she got worried.”

Adam threw Bob a glare as he continued marching across the meadow, box on his shoulder, but Bob just swallowed a smile, gave Paige a wave of apology, and crawled back into the car.

“Let’s go see what movies Adam found,” Paige said, grabbing the lantern off the floor and putting her arm around Amanda. “You might like some of these.”

Once back at the house, Paige watched Adam and Amanda go through the VHS tapes and pick out those she’d like to see. Amanda kept calling the tapes “vintage,” which made Adam laugh.

“Your grandfather probably had some old record albums out there, too,” he said, inspecting each of the tapes.

“Really? Vinyls?” Amanda’s eyes grew wide. “Can we go find them?”

“Sure, we can look. His taste might have leaned more toward country, but I think he might have had some jazz and rock, too.”

“Let’s go look!”

Adam smiled. “How about during the day? It’s dark out there right now. Paige and I had a hard time.”

He glanced at Paige but then quickly cut his eyes away.

Paige could hardly look at him, either.
What had that been?
That was lunatic lust that had been released there in the hangar. Adam kept glancing at her, then rubbing his hand over the back of his neck as if he wasn’t sure what had just happened himself.

But as far as Paige was concerned, that was
hot
. And he was hot. And she wanted a repeat. Or at least a finish.

Adam had been everything she’d always fantasized he’d be—aggressive, passionate, unstoppable. She watched his hands move the dishes off the table and thought about how he’d moved them over her body, how they’d cradled her breasts, how they’d cupped her behind, how they’d explored as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

He glanced up at her again, seemingly asking what she was thinking, but Amanda said something, and he turned away.

He and Amanda eventually found the old VHS player under one of the sheets in the darkened living room, tucked a few more sheets into the upholstered crevices so they could sit on a couch and face the old television, then Adam brought a few lamps into the room and tested them.

“Better?” he asked.

Amanda nodded enthusiastically.

He came back into the kitchen to clear away the dishes, and she followed behind him while he complimented her on her cooking.

“I used to cook all the time at home,” she said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Adam turned on the sink. “You’re welcome to experiment with whatever food you want here. Just tell me what you need from the store.”

“I bake, too.”

“No kidding?”

Paige left them to continue their conversation and went to gather her bags. She wanted to leave them like this. Adam looked so happy, and Amanda’s face had softened into pleasant surprise when she’d realized that Adam was interested in something she could do.

Paige wanted more of Adam herself—
definitely
—and more of his hands, and more of that mouth, and more of those kisses. But she also wanted Amanda to have what she needed from him.

“I should go,” Paige announced from the kitchen door when she had everything assembled.

Both Amanda and Adam looked up with identical expressions.

“No!” Amanda said. “We want you to watch the movie with us.”

Paige glanced at Adam, who nodded, although he still seemed unable to completely meet her eyes.

“Just one movie,” Amanda said.

“One?” Paige laughed. “How many are you planning on watching?”

“Maybe three. But stay for the first one. Your pick.”

Adam lifted his eyebrows and gave her a slight grin.

She stared back at these two people she was coming to care for—with their identical begging eyes and hopeful smiles—and dropped her bags. She knew her heart was approaching a danger zone. She knew she might get hurt. She knew she was becoming too attached. But she’d be careful.

Very careful.

“Okay, just one,” she said.

The next morning, Paige rubbed a crick in her neck and opened her eyes as she struggled to figure out where she was. When she blinked a few more times, she was able to peer through the dim lighting at draped white sheets, pine wall paneling, and a blackened television. Her head was on a pillow propped on a rolled couch arm. She got up on her elbow and looked around. Adam’s living room.

But where was Adam?

And where was Amanda?

And what time was it?

She pushed off the blanket that had been laid over her and padded out to the kitchen area, where daylight fully assaulted her eyes. By the way the sun was coming through the window, it looked as though it could be nine or ten a.m. Amanda’s coffee accoutrements were stacked along the kitchen counter.

Against the back of the coffeemaker was a note on an index card:

Made enough for the three of us. Had to lead a ride today. Enjoy.—A

There was one cup left. Still warm. Paige poured, added the creamer and sugar just the way she liked it, and leaned against the counter, wondering where Amanda was. As the taste swam through her senses, she sighed at the richness of Adam’s coffee and glanced again at his note.

She wanted, of course, to think about business. She needed to call her mom. She needed to do her asanas. She needed to get at least four more things checked off her remodel list today and recruit a few strong men to help her haul the heavy two-by-fours and gazebo roof up the hill. She expected the pieces on the noon ferry.

But, instead, her eyes kept drifting to the note. She was intrigued, for one, that this was Adam’s handwriting—this scratchy, up-and-down, almost-out-of-control writing. She thought about how out of control he’d been last night in the hangar and realized how much she’d loved that—
she
did that to him. Paige Grant. She’d made Adam Mason lose his mind. It had been what she’d wanted as soon as the first teenage hormones had flooded her body, and now it was playing out as the most amazing adult fantasy.

She took a sip of coffee and pondered her decision not to talk about that summer with him. Maybe they should. To clear the air. She didn’t believe he’d started those fires. But she should tell him her part in talking to her mom and George about seeing him at both scenes, and how that might have been the conversation that truly got him sent away. She’d been telling the truth that night she’d sat with George and Ginger at the Mason dining table—Adam
had
been there—but her point had simply been that the fires could have been started by many others besides her, so she shouldn’t be singled out and blamed. She hadn’t done it. Certainly, Adam would now understand those were the knee-jerk reactions of a teenage girl, and she truly hadn’t meant to get him in so much trouble? Besides—did he still think
she
started those fires way back when? How could he kiss her like that if he believed that about her?

Yes, she should probably talk to him.

But, then again, they weren’t starting a relationship here, and she didn’t want him to think she thought they were.

Adam was not a long-term kind of guy, and he was ready to bolt off this island with Amanda as soon as he could. He didn’t want any messy involvement with Paige. She got that. She’d just enjoy his hands on her and their temporary friendship while they did business together. She didn’t have much hope of Adam selling to Dorothy Silver anymore—MacGregor almost seemed like a done deal. But with Adam’s help, maybe she could make the wedding work, after all. She’d continue with her plans. And she’d protect her heart.

That was a good plan.

She blew on her coffee and congratulated herself.

And tried not to worry that she got a strange, warm feeling in her stomach every time she glanced at the note and caught sight of that recklessly scrolled
A
.

Adam headed out with the dude group for their first bison run. They’d corralled them to this side of the island during the four-day trek, but now they needed to get them onto the ranch and into the pasture. Normally, Adam did it with a bevy of ranch hands, but when they could, they timed it with a dude group. Their guests got a kick out of the bison roundups.

But he was having a hard time keeping his mind on work today.

Damn, that had been hot last night. He’d been out of control. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that way. He’d probably been eighteen. It was a little embarrassing to be coming at Paige like an adolescent boy, but something about her wild spirit incited it. He had to admit, it felt great.

But he hadn’t thought through where it was going—was he going to take her right there, in a dusty hangar, against a piece-of-shit worktable? What the hell was wrong with him? Had his hormones gone awry? He’d had no condom. His wranglers were wandering the property. The dude group was about five hundred feet away. And he had a teenage daughter now, about to come home after dinner with his elderly friends. He must have lost his mind.

And what was going to happen afterward? Were he and Paige going to become friends who screwed every now and then? Not that he’d ever turned those down—the no-strings-attached relationships had always been ideal in his world, despite, or maybe because of, their lack of emotion—but Paige Grant? Helen’s
granddaughter
? The daughter of the woman who changed the course of his young life by having him put in jail? The girl who nearly became his stepsister one summer? The girl who the townspeople thought may have started the fires? And the woman he was now trying to wrestle property with? He’d truly taken leave of his senses.