Turn Left at Sanity, page 8
“God, give me patience,” Emmylou muttered under her breath. She started counting slowly to ten, but Lydia wasn’t finished yet.
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“Joe’s got a sex problem she’s helping him with.” She glanced around the assembly and then grinned. “Not that I couldn’t have cured him a lot faster.”
Emmylou smiled over gritted teeth, feeling every one in town stare at her. Lydia had trapped her in her own lie.
Surprisingly, Olive came to her aid. “She doesn’t need to sleep with the man if she doesn’t want to. He’s so sweet on her, he’ll stick around given half a chance. Don’t you worry about that.”
Emmylou shot her aunt a grateful smile, and talk moved to the committee which was forming to find another buyer for the sanitarium. Naturally, she was asked to join the committee and she agreed. She’d moved back here out of loyalty to her gran, but now that the town was threatened, she realized how much she loved it.
Somehow, she was going to help save Beaverton.
The town’s young doctor, who’d done a residency at the local hospital and liked Beaverton so much he decided to stay, was also appointed to the committee in his absence. Of all times for him to take a holiday, Emmylou thought, when they could really use his calm good sense. Maybe Dr. Gord Hartnett even had some ideas, or connections.
She barely listened to the rest of the meeting.
She wondered how she was going to keep Joe hostage without his knowledge. Sure, he was going to have car trouble between now and Wednesday morning, but how on earth was she supposed to stop him from finding alternative transportation?
Her skin felt hot and cold as she relived the steamy kisses they’d shared. Maybe Lydia was
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right. She should seduce the man and keep him naked and so busy that he’d forget all about work.
Except she was nothing like her female ancestors. She’d never specialized in the erotic arts. When Lydia and Olive and the rest of them used to talk technique, she tuned them out. She was bored by sex long before she was old enough to think about doing it. Somehow, that boredom had never lifted. Oh, she liked sex fine, but you had to be careful or it could lead to huge complications. Messy, emotional ones she didn’t want.
She had to admit, though, that there was something appealing about the idea of seducing Joe—or in letting him think he was seducing her. Yes, that was it. Maybe she could give him a little encouragement. Enough that he’d want to stay to get her into bed. He wouldn’t be the first B&B guest who’d tried.
Since the interrupted bingo night continued once the meeting was over, Emmylou was able to talk to Gregory Randolph without anyone noticing. Once she’d obtained his promise to pay Joe’s car a visit before five Wednesday morning, she walked home alone. The air was sweet-scented and quiet, the stars bright in the clear sky.
When she entered her own garden she sa-vored the pleasant sense of coming home. What they were planning to do to Joe—make sure his car was disabled and so force him to stay—was wrong. She accepted that. But saving the town was right. Feeling unsettled, she strolled through her garden and let the scents of jasmine and rose soothe her. The Queen Elizabeth, a mass of soft
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pink smudges in the fading light, drew her in, so she had to lower her face and breathe in the fragrance. Beside it grew a very nice Honor, its blossoms white as the moon, its scent so light she had to close her eyes and concentrate. How much honor was she demonstrating, she wondered, stroking a satin petal, sabotaging one man’s business in order to save her home?
Chapter 8
The light wasn’t on in Joe’s window, and Emmylou had a momentary pang that he’d gone to bed early in order to make a crack of dawn start in the morning. Then she realized that the office light was still shining and he was illumi-nated like a man on a TV screen. His face was drawn in concentration and he was pecking away at his computer keyboard.
That man needed desperately to loosen up.
She entered through the kitchen door and then went to the office.
As she’d suspected, Joe had his head bent over the computer. He was tapping away and si-multaneously talking on his cell phone, thanks to a hands-free earpiece she’d only ever seen on TV. No one in Beaverton needed their hands free while they talked on the phone.
But then no one here was a big shot. No one here would want to dig up other people’s property in the name of feline hygiene, either.
She’d planned to offer him some cocoa, but
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since he was already communicating in two places at once, she decided to go ahead and make it anyway. Maybe cocoa wasn’t the fastest route to seduction, but she had to work within her comfort zone.
When she came back a few minutes later with two steaming mugs, he was still tapping away but mercifully no longer on the phone.
“Hi,” she said from the doorway.
As he raised his head, she almost felt his effort to lift the weight. He was tired.
“Hi yourself,” he said, closing the file and spinning her chair until he faced her. “Do you need your office back?”
“No. I brought you some cocoa.”
“Thanks.” He took the proffered mug from her, put it on the desktop, and rose to stretch.
Oh, he was nice. His shirt clung against elongated muscles and she found herself wanting to follow the lean lines with her fingertips.
Before he could look down and catch her ogling his body, she shifted her attention to look out the window. As though there were anything of interest out there. A dark garden, a couple of floodlights that she’d placed to illumi-nate the garden and the parking area.
One of the floodlights outlined the shape of Joe’s car, the one he’d be driving off in tomorrow.
She saw a slight movement between the pink rhododendron bush and the wisteria. At first she thought it was Mae West rustling the branches, then a much larger, man-sized shape emerged.
Hell’s bells, she’d arranged that Gregory Randolph was going to tamper with Joe’s car, but did he have to do it now?
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She’d assumed some quiet sortie in the middle of the night, not that he’d walk into her yard at 10:15 to vandalize a guest’s vehicle. She should have been specific in her instructions, but really, didn’t everyone know that car vandalizing was best accomplished between the hours of midnight and dawn? Probably, Gregory had an early start in the morning and wanted to be in bed at a reasonable time.
If Joe kept working in her office, he’d see Gregory. She’d never bothered with drapes in this room, and now she wished she had drapes, blackout curtains, California shutters, layers and layers of stuff to block the view. Well, she couldn’t do that, so she’d have to get Joe away from the window.
“Why don’t we take our cocoa into the front room? It’s a lot more comfortable.”
He sipped from his mug, then licked the line of chocolaty foam from his upper lip. “This is great. Thanks. But I’m waiting for an e-mail to come in. I should probably stay right here.”
If he was trying to be polite and get rid of her, she was going to have to act as dumb as the man out there getting his vandalizing tools ready. He hadn’t even bothered changing into all black clothes, but was tromping around in the white T-shirt and jeans he’d worn to the bingo hall.
Didn’t the man have any respect for the profession he was temporarily entering? Or at least his victim? Never mind the victim’s hostess, who was about to have a panic attack.
“Okay.” She smiled brightly. “While you’re waiting, maybe we could sit right here and get to know each other better.”
And please, Gregory, be fast with that car be-
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fore she had to resort to her pediatric dental history.
Joe was nobody’s fool. His eyes narrowed.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, Emmylou. Isn’t it kind of late to be getting to know me?” He didn’t say so, but his tone implied that she could have gotten to know him intimately if she’d gone to bed with him last night. Typical male.
She tried for an expression of hurt disbelief.
“But you said you’d be back.”
“It’s hard to say. I hope to be.”
Oh boy. Things must really be moving along if he felt ready to leave and not come back. Probably he had other harmonious, happy communities to destroy this week. Given a month, she bet he could devastate an entire state.
“Well, we could start getting better acquainted now. You never know when circumstances will throw us together again.” Like a dead car tomorrow.
He glanced at her and raised his brows a little. “Okay. I’ve got a few minutes now. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. But I enjoy your company. It’s been nice having you in the house.” She was grasping at straws here and she knew it. How long could she drag out a pointless conversation?
She thought about Lydia and Olive and took hope.
The trouble with that theory, of course, was that both Olive and Lydia were female. Joe didn’t preamble but got right to his point. “Look, Emmylou, you said you’re not a casual sex type and I respect that. Since I’m leaving in the morning . . .”
She let her natural annoyance bubble. Okay,
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if he didn’t want a pleasant conversation she could easily work up to a fight. No trouble at all.
“So you’re saying what? That a conversation with a woman is pointless unless it ends in sex?”
He pushed out his lips, stalling for time like a debater sensing a verbal trap. “No. I’m not saying that. Exactly. But when a woman’s young and beautiful and I’m incredibly attracted to her, then every conversation leads closer to sex, sure.”
“But that’s absolutely ridiculous. What if I were your doctor or your accountant or some other professional?”
“I’d let you take my temperature and do my taxes, but unless you were married, I’d still be trying to have sex with you. It’s life.”
“What if I were a nun?”
Nothing on his face smiled, but his eyes did that wonderful crinkle thing at the corners.
“Then we would not be having this conversation.” He looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Don’t you feel that way? I mean, assuming you find me attractive . . . ?”
She thought of the way she melted when he kissed her. “You know I do.”
“Then don’t you think we’ll end up more frustrated if we keep talking and it doesn’t go anywhere?”
“Well, last night would have been too soon, but now . . .”
Now, what? He came up with an answer for her. “Now I’ve passed the Miss Trevellen School of Larceny and Good Manners?”
She laughed aloud. Out of her peripheral vision she could see that Gregory Randolph had the hood up now on Joe’s car. How long did this
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disabling business take? She was in a cold sweat, gulping her cocoa like it was courage-giving whiskey.
Greg was bent over the open hood of the car, his white T-shirt gleaming against the darkness.
Please let him get the job done quickly.
A computerized ping broke the strained silence in the office, and Joe said, “Ah, my e-mail.”
He started to turn his chair around to his computer, which faced the window, which looked out on a man screwing with his car.
She had to stop him. No time to think. She stuck her foot out and stopped the chair midtwirl.
“Emmylou, I need to get that,” Joe said, an edge to his voice.
“But I need you,” she said, hoping that her voice sounded husky with passion and not strained by panic.
He opened his mouth, no doubt to tell her to get a grip, or at least wait until he’d read his e-mail. She couldn’t let that happen, so she launched herself at him, sloshing cocoa mug and all.
“Whaa—” he managed before her lips clamped over his.
Blindly, she managed to get her mug onto the desktop so her hands were free, then she plunged them into his hair, making a human vise to keep his head from turning. She opened her legs around his and snugged up tight onto his lap.
It was a move born of desperation, and if he pushed her off him, which she was pretty certain he’d do, she’d end up sprawled on her butt all over the rug, and when he turned around, he’d view more than his e-mail.
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She expected to go sailing through the air and hit the rug ass-first. She expected outrage when he caught sight of Greg out there messing with his car. What she hadn’t expected was that after a startled second of total stillness, Joe would kiss her back.
Oh, not just kiss her, but make love to her mouth.
His passion exploded around her and in her, sparking her own. She nipped at his lips, grabbed the back of his head to pull him closer, felt his mouth so hungry on hers, on her skin, his hands in her hair, on her neck, racing over her back.
“. . . want you,” he said and the echo of those words played over and over in her head. Want you, want you, want you . . .
Heat began to build in the three-point trian-gle of nipples and crotch. If Dr. Beaver was right, she had a dandy little electrical circuit running between those three hot spots.
He moaned with hunger, or maybe that was her—hard to tell over the pounding of her heart.
He pulled at the buttons on her shirt, fumbling open the top one and then the second, while she waited in a fever of impatience. She forgot why she was doing this, forgot everything but the fact that she needed this man and she needed him now. He got the rest of the buttons undone, not smoothly but fast, then pushed the sleeves down her arms to her wrists and stopped, so she ended up with her arms bound behind her, a circumstance he seemed to enjoy.
With some wriggling she could easily free her
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arms, but he looked so pleased with himself she let well enough alone.
“I like you in this posture,” he explained with a devilish glint in his eyes. The fatigue had van-ished and he pulsed with energy. “Your breasts thrust forward, and your busy hands still. No bread baking, flower arranging, cookie cooling.
All you can do is sit there and let me touch you.”
At his words, she shivered, and he grinned at her then ran his warm hands up her stomach, traced the front of her bra, and slid them around behind her to the fastening. In a second her breasts were free. Since her arms were stuck in her blouse, the silk and elastic of her bra ended up stretched across her upper chest, but Joe didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, honey,” he said, gazing at her breasts for a long moment.
She felt naked, exposed, helpless. With her arms back like that, her chest was pushed forward, right into his face.
“Annnnyyya,” she said, when he lifted a breast and brought his mouth down to kiss the tip. Her head fell back of its own accord so she would have overbalanced and fallen on her head if Joe hadn’t slipped an arm around her back to steady her.
He sucked at the swollen nipple, flicked back and forth with his tongue, and generally teased her until her entire body felt lust-engorged and needy.
He sucked gently, and she pulled herself upright, anxious to press her torso more firmly against his wonderful, magical mouth.
When she did she let out a cry that had noth-
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ing to do with passion. Gregory had abandoned his tools and was standing there in front of the raised hood of Joe’s car, staring at her with his mouth hanging open.
Since she remembered well enough watching Joe from the garden, and thinking he looked like someone on TV, she knew she must look like the star of a porno flick. but she hadn’t planned on acting out Emmylou Does Joe for an audience of one.
Fool! Bad enough Greg was an utter failure as a criminal. Did he have to be a Peeping Tom?
Since she couldn’t use her arms, she jerked her head frantically, hoping he could interpret Get the job finished and get the hell off my property from a couple of head jerks.
“Did I hurt you?” Joe raised his head from her breast and already she missed the gentle sucking that was driving her wild.
“No,” she said. “I’m loving it,” and to prevent any more conversation, she stuffed her nipple back into his mouth. By keeping her eyes closed, she was able to ignore the goings-on beyond the window and concentrate on the far more immediate goings-on in her nervous system.
His tongue was working magic on her and her bound hands only added to the intoxica-tion. She wanted to touch him and couldn’t, wanted to bring him pleasure as he was bringing her pleasure, but she was helpless. As she struggled to free her hands she only succeeded in wiggling her torso, which was thrust unnaturally forward.
There was a very nice bulge beneath her lap, and her hands itched to have access. Since that was denied her, she made do with rubbing
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against him—her splayed legs allowing her to nudge her neediest parts against the enticing ridge. Her skirt was up around her thighs, and her thin panties allowed her to feel everything: the denim of his jeans, the hard line of metal teeth, all of which got in the way of what she wanted to feel.
“Open your zipper,” she begged.
He hesitated only a second then slipped a hand between them. She hoisted herself up onto her knees and heard the slide of zipper, felt him fumble a bit, and then felt the edge of his penis nudging at her. He guided it, rubbing at her through the silk panties. She sighed with pleasure as he rubbed back and forth over her clit, the silk scraping lightly between them.
Of course, this wasn’t at all what she’d had in mind when she’d come in with an innocent cup of cocoa, but somehow she knew that the kisses between them would never have been enough.
Her breath was coming fast, her heart pounding. She was so close. She wanted to grind herself down on him. If her hands had been free, she’d have pulled her panties aside and impaled herself.
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