A Date With the Other Side

Praise for the novels of
Erin McCarthy

“I had no idea that a book could be so steamy and still so laugh-out-loud funny!”

—Lori Foster

“Will have your toes curling and your pulse racing.”

—
Arabella Magazine

“ writes this story with emotion and spirit, as well as humor.”

—
Fallen Angel Reviews

“Both naughty and nice… sure to charm readers.”

—
Booklist

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty

The man gave a whole new meaning to the words
rise and shine
.

Shelby stood with her hand still on the doorknob to the blue bedroom, the one where the ghost of Nanny Baskins resided, and took a long lingering look at the sleeping male form on top of the white eyelet spread.

The naked man, mouth dropped open on a soft snore, his black hair sticking up, had one hand on his bare broad chest. The other was slung carelessly on the pillow. He didn’t look familiar, not a single bare inch of him.

Gran had forgotten to tell her that she’d let the room again.

Yet Shelby couldn’t help being a tiny bit intrigued by this tenant. It wasn’t quite 9 a.m. yet, and he may have been sleeping, but his thingamabob was ready to start the day with a bang.

“Hey, Shel, you gonna let me in or not?” came Brady’s undulating teenage voice. “Bad enough you made us do this at the crack of dawn, but now you won’t let us in?”

Shelby started to back up, bumping Brady and his girlfriend Joelle as she retreated, still keeping one eye on that bed. Or an eye on what was on that bed, anyway.

It had been so long since she’d seen a man naked, she’d almost forgotten what they looked like. Besides, her ex-husband had never looked like
that
sleeping. She might not have left him if he had.

“Sorry, Brady, we’ll have to move on to the next stop on the tour.” She tried to keep her voice down so she wouldn’t disturb Naked Wonder.

Brady didn’t take the hint. Tossing back his blue hair, he rolled his tongue stud around. “Huh?”

Shelby wondered if kids were still dyeing their hair Easter egg colors or if Brady was sadly dated. Fashion came late to Cuttersville, Ohio. Sort of like getting a flyer in the mail after the sale is over. Cuttersville was always late for the sale.

So even if Brady was way out of style elsewhere, in this town he was a rebel. He was also her cousin, which was why she was letting him take the Haunted Cuttersville Tour at nine in the morning free of charge.

“Shh,” she ordered, flapping her arms in her white tank top, giving herself a whiff of her deodorant. “I’ll explain in a minute, back up.”

With a little luck, she could get the door closed before…

“Who the hell are you?”

Too late.

Shelby shot Brady and Joelle, who were straining to see around her, warning looks. Then she closed the door in their faces, leaving herself alone in the room. With him.

Turning around, she said with a smile, “I’m Shelby Tucker. It’s nice to meet you.”

The man was sitting up, and he’d pulled the eyelet spread over his lap, but he hadn’t taken into account that eyelet spreads by nature are full of many holes. Small and large, affording her interesting glimpses of golden skin and dark hair. Not the comforter of choice for preserving modesty.

Once she forced herself to look up into the dark eyes of Gran’s new tenant, she decided modesty didn’t suit him. There was something authoritative in his inquiring stare, a brisk calculating gaze that swept over her without moving.

“Well, Shelby Tucker, is there a reason you’re in my room or do I have to guess?”

He’d shaken the sleep off pretty quick. He’d caught her name on the first try.

“You can guess if you really want to. But I doubt you’ll guess right.”

If she had expected him to smile, he disappointed her. An eyebrow rose. “This isn’t going to require me to call the police, is it?”

Shelby nearly snickered. Men in Cuttersville just didn’t talk like that, and it amused her that he sounded so patronizing, his accent so flat and city-like, when he was buck-naked wearing nothing but her gran’s coverlet.

“Why would we be
required
to call the police? Gran just forgot to tell me you were here, that’s all.” The doorknob rattled with vigor behind her. Shelby slapped the palm of her hand on the door. “Knock it off, Brady!”

Naked Man leaned back on his hands, stretching his arms out and giving her a great view of his broad, muscular chest, without a single hair growing on it. Geez, did he wax that thing? Men with black hair tended to be hairy, in her experience, which, granted, was limited to glimpses of whoever was swimming in the lake, not from any personal knowledge. Yet this man was satin smooth.

The new position forced the eyelet spread up in the air below his waist. Shelby fought a hard-earned battle not to look. She lost. It just wasn’t every day a naked man with a hard-on was presented to her, and she might never get another peep. Of this man, anyway. Surely she was going to see another erection sometime in her lifetime. She was only twenty-six, and what did it matter that her divorce had gone through nearly three years ago now and in all that time the closest she’d come to sex was watching the horses mate?

He was still hard. As a rock. That was the only reason for the spread to be sticking up like that, unless it was his knee she was looking at. The spread hooked him through one of the large holes when he shifted. Nope, that was no kneecap, no siree.

“So, since you insist on being obscure, is your gran my landlady, Mrs. Stritmeyer?”

“That’s right.”

“What does that have to do with you standing in my bedroom while a teenager with blue hair pounds on my door?”

He really was sharp. He’d had only a twenty-second glance at Brady, while half asleep on top of it all.

“I’m giving my cousin Brady the Haunted Cuttersville Tour. I think he’s trying to scare Joelle so he can take her off behind the barn and comfort her.”

Shelby heard an outraged female gasp from behind the door. Oops. That might put a dent in Brady’s plans.

The naked guy’s head fell into his hands and he rubbed. “I don’t even want to know who the hell Joelle is.”

While he woke up alert, in all areas, he sure didn’t have the best of manners.

He fixed her with a frown. “And if this explanation is going to take any longer, can you tell me where I can get my hands on some coffee?”

“The explanation is over. I told you—I’m giving the Haunted Cuttersville Tour.” Shelby tucked some hairs that had fallen out of her loose ponytail and wondered if she should warn him that he was about to cut off circulation to a vital area, with the way he was now completely poking through the eyelet hole.

He made a sound of disgust.

She decided to let him figure out his predicament on his own. “And you can get coffee at the diner, but you’ll have to get dressed for that.”

Boston Macnamara squinted at the woman in front of him. He felt like he’d fallen into a damn rabbit hole. Somebody back in Chicago needed to die for this.

One day. He’d been in this podunk town for all of twenty-four hours and he hated it. Every dusty, tired, tobacco-spitting inch of it.

And the bitch about it was he didn’t even know what he had done to Brett, his boss, to be inflicted with the painful punishment of inspecting the plant here in Cuttersville, home of nothing. If he didn’t know what he had done, he couldn’t fix it. If he couldn’t fix it, he couldn’t get the hell out of here, and he was going to be forced to deal with country enigmas like Shelby Tucker on a daily basis.

Intolerable.

Having forgotten that he was naked, too busy trying to translate her vague remarks, he glanced down at himself when she made a reference to needing to get dressed. And choked. Holy shit, his dick was caught like a bird neck in a plastic bottle ring. He was surrounded by white lace, the material stretched taut, his skin an alarming shade of tomato red. It didn’t hurt, but it looked dangerous.

Swallowing hard, he tried not to panic. He needed this part of him healthy, for more than one reason. He looked up to see Shelby Tucker struggling not to grin, her arms crossed over her white tank top.

“Need some help?” she had the nerve to ask.

“No.” He tugged a little at the bedspread, hoping it would pop loose without further interference.

It didn’t. Damn. Hoping Shelby wasn’t looking, knowing she was, he stuck his leg up trying to block her view while he used his finger to get between him and the fabric and wiggle it a little.

“Don’t pull so hard, you’ll rip it,” she said. “It’s nineteenth-century lace from Belgium. My great-great-grandmother brought it over as part of her trousseau when she married Otto Stritmeyer. Gran will kill you if you rip it.”

Boston, who had been on the verge of doing just that to free himself, let go and glared at her. Did she expect him to just keep it there indefinitely? Walk around trailing a bedspread between his legs?

“While your family history is fascinating, I’m sure, I don’t know how you expect me to get it off unless I pull it.”

Shelby rocked back on her feet, sticking her hands in the pockets of her denim shorts. They weren’t that short, but he had a nice view of firm, tanned thighs. Overall, her appearance was what he would politely term
earthy
. No makeup, just smooth golden skin everywhere, a narrow waist, and healthy breasts, which were clearly visible in her white tank top.

Her hair looked like a pile of brown fur on the top of her head, sun-kissed wisps escaping the inadequate rubber band and tumbling around her cheeks. Big brown puppy-dog eyes were set above sharp cheekbones and pale shiny lips.

Not his type of woman at all.

That was confirmed when she spoke again. “Well, if you just give it a minute to shrink down, you should be able to get it off no problem.”

There wasn’t a single woman of his acquaintance who would have just tossed that remark off to a total stranger. He didn’t like it. Especially not since, by all accounts, his morning erection should have passed by now. He strongly suspected the reason it hadn’t was her.

Apparently women in Cuttersville didn’t find it necessary to wear a bra. It must interfere with tossing hay or participating in watermelon seed-spitting contests. Whatever the reason, she was responsible for his boner hanging on way longer than necessary, and decreasing his chances of ever producing children with each passing second.