All of Me (22 page)

“It’s so damned easy for you to say. You have no idea what it’s like. You’ve never even been in love.”

His accusation hurt, but it was true. “You’re right. I’m the interloper, the stranger, the misfit. Story of my life. No one
wants to hear what I have to say. I don’t belong.”

He drew an audible breath. “That’s not what I meant.”

She turned away from him, hugged herself in the cold, and walked out onto the dock. He was the damned Magic Man, and he didn’t
even realize it. Yeah, so life had taken his wife, kicked him hard in the balls, but he’d had something Jillian had never
had.

Love.

A lump formed in her throat. No one had ever told Jillian that she was loved. At least not that she could remember. Not her
mother, not her father, certainly not her stepmother, and there’d been no grandparents. No man had ever said the words to
her. She told herself she didn’t care, that it didn’t matter, that she didn’t need that kind of messy emotion in her life,
but it was a lie. She wanted love more than anything. Wanted it so much that she kept putting herself in situations where
she’d never get it, stacking the deck against herself in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Suck it up. Get over it.

“Hey,” he said.

Jillian did not turn around, but she heard him clopping across the wooden deck with his three-legged crutch walk. “Yeah?”

“Let’s go inside. I’m freezing my ass off.”

The petulant part of her wanted to tell him to go inside, that she didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody. But she hadn’t
become a great prosecutor by holding on to resentment. The sensible part of her that knew how to make a plea bargain, the
part of her that was shivering
her
ass off replied, “Okay.”

They went inside together.

But once they were in the cottage with the door locked and the moonlight safely hidden behind the curtains, Jillian didn’t
know what to say or do next.

Tuck propped his crutches in the corner of the foyer and shrugged out of his coat. It was still early, Jillian realized as
the Bavarian cuckoo clock mounted near the fireplace struck nine.

They looked at each other. The smell of wind and lake and pine trees flared in the short distance between them. She was looking
at his lips and he was looking at hers and …

“You are not going to kiss me,” she said.

“No.” He leaned closer.

“It would be stupid.”

“Agreed.” Tuck was so close now that their lips were almost touching.

“We’re strangers.”

“But roommates.”

“Strange roommates,” she murmured.

“Very strange.” He ran the back of his hand over her cheek.

“We’re both in bad places in our lives.”

“Terrible.”

“We’re embroiled in a property dispute.” Jillian leaned toward him, closing the miniscule gap. “Kissing would be disastrous.”

“Catastrophic.” Tuck curled a lock of her hair around his index finger.

“I mean, where would we go from there?”

“Right.”

“We’re certainly not going to sleep together.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Never mind the sexual chemistry.”

“Yeah, forget all about that.” His palm was at the nape of her neck now, his fingers splayed through her hair.

Jillian kept telling herself,
No, no, no
, but all she could think about was that damned sex dream where Tuck had a starring role and how they’d been so ripe and hungry
for each other.

God, it was hot in here. Like the frickin’ Sahara Desert.

They were nose to nose. Her body was on fire, her blood boiling. Tuck’s cheeks were flushed. Jillian suspected her own were
as well.

“I’m going to step away from you right now,” she said.

“Me too.”

She didn’t move.

Neither did he.

Their chests were pressed together. She felt her nipples harden beneath the lace of her bra. Damn her anyway. “I thought you
were stepping off.”

“I am.”

“I’m waiting.”

“I’m going.” He didn’t move.

Her breath was chugging through her lungs as if she was a ten-pack-a-day smoker. “Good-bye.”

“See ya.”

Then he snatched her into his arms and kissed her so hard her head spun. He speared his tongue past her lips, and she just
let him. Not only let him, but parted her teeth and
encouraged
him to continue.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

His flavor filled her mouth, enveloped her, flooded her.

Unbelievably, impossibly, he tasted exactly the way he had in her dream. Through his taste alone, she could have identified
him blindfolded in a room filled with a hundred men. His fingers fisted in her hair, and he held her to him so tightly she
couldn’t move—didn’t want to move.

Tuck plastered his other hand to her fanny, pulling her up flush against him and grinding his hips against hers, giving her
full appreciation of his rock-hard erection.

Desire shot through her, stronger than before.

Break it off. Pull away. Stop this before it’s too late.

Ah, but his kiss was drowning out that prudent voice, dissolving any last shred of resolve she might have. She nipped his
bottom lip between her teeth.

He moaned low in his throat and maneuvered her against the wall, probably to keep himself from being thrown off balance. She
wished she had something more than a wall to stabilize her.

Tuck pressed his body into hers. Excitement shot blood through her veins at an alarming rate, and she hissed in her breath
as he branded her neck with his dangerously hot tongue.

The kiss was hard. Savage. Every muscle in her body twitched in response. Jillian was so sure it would be gentle, tender.
She didn’t mind that the kiss wasn’t what she expected. In fact, she liked the surprise.

His frantic tongue increased her desire for him. She cupped his face with both hands and kissed him back just as fiercely
as he kissed her.

Tuck grunted, running his hand up underneath her shirt, his palm skimming her belly.

If Mutt hadn’t picked that moment to come bounding in through the kitchen, a fast-food wrapper in his mouth, Jillian couldn’t
say what would have happened next.

But Mutt did come in and with his oversized tail wagging, wedged himself between Jillian and Tuck, breaking them apart.

“Someone’s jealous,” Tuck panted.

“Looks like that same someone’s been rummaging in the trash,” Jillian said breathlessly, her lips still tingling.

They stared at each other, and suddenly it all felt so wrong when seconds ago it had felt so right. She thought of all the
reasons they couldn’t be together, the least of which the fact that he was still hung up on his dead wife.

Tuck shoved a hand through his hair, looking sheepish. “About what just happened …”

“Big mistake.” She rushed in to say it before he did.

“Huge.”

“Gigantic.”

“Monumental.”

“Enormous.”

“Epic.”

Jillian stepped away from him, tugged down the hem of her sweater. “This can’t happen again.”

“Gotcha.”

“I mean it.”

He raised his palms. “Completely hands off.”

She knelt to scratch Mutt’s ears and willed her heart to stop pounding. She felt rather than saw Tuck hobble away.

She raised her head. “Tuck?”

He turned, looked at her. “Yeah?”

“It’s nothing personal, you know. You’re a great guy. I’m sure of it.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Queenie.”

“Why do you call me that?”

A smiled curled his lips. “Because you look so damned regal. So untouchable.”

“The Ice Queen,” she said, thinking about what her fellow lawyers said about her.

“Oh no, Queenie,” he said. “You’re regal as hell, but try as hard as you might to convince people otherwise, there ain’t nothing
cold about you.”

“S
O
J
ILLIAN IS
T
UCK’S
temptress, huh?” Evie said to Ridley when they got home from the Rusty Nail just after ten o’clock.

“Yes, but don’t tell him that I told you about his vision quest. He’d be upset. He didn’t like telling me that he’d had a
sexual fantasy about someone other than Aimee.”

Evie unbuttoned her blouse. “I like her, but she’s nothing like Aimee.”

“Is that good or bad?” Ridley asked, trailing her from the kitchen into their bedroom.

“I’m just saying she’s not Tuck’s normal type.” Evie stripped off her blue jeans and paraded over to the toilet.

It still threw Ridley for a loop when she went to the bathroom in front of him. It wasn’t that he minded. He liked seeing
her naked anytime he could. He’d just grown up in a family that was very private about their bodies. When they’d first hooked
up, the uninhibited way Evie shed her clothes both thrilled and shocked him. He wondered if they were going to have issues
over nudity when they had kids or if becoming a mom would change her. Did he like the idea of her changing, or not? Honestly,
the whole baby thing unnerved him. He wanted one, yeah, but the reality of it had him quaking in his boots.

Ridley stepped to the sink and wet his toothbrush. “Tuck believes she’s a jinx.”

“That’s because you told him she was.” Evie peeled off several squares of toilet paper.

“Hey, go easy on that stuff,” he said. “With what the fertility treatments are costing us, we gotta cut every corner.”

“Ridley, are you seriously suggesting that a couple of extra squares of toilet paper are going to put us in the poor house?”
She flushed, then came over to elbow him away from the sink so she could wash her hands.

Sometimes it bugged him the way she encroached on his space, and he had to remind himself she grew up in the second position
in a family with four kids, while it had been just him and his older brother. She was accustomed to having to jockey for everything
she got in life, while Ridley, as the youngest of two, had pretty much had everything handed to him.

“You know, I was really prepared not to like her.” Evie lathered her hands with peach-scented liquid soap. Little orange bubbles
floated in the air between them. Ridley noticed how small and yet incredibly strong her fingers were—all that kneading and
chopping and slicing. “And not because of all that jinx stuff. But you know what? I actually think she might be good for him.”

“You’re not worried he’ll fall for her and she’ll hurt your brother?” Ridley mouthed around his toothbrush, and kept brushing
long past the point he was ready to rinse, waiting for Evie to move away from the sink.

His wife dried her hands on a peach-colored towel. “Honestly, I don’t think he could get any worse than falling into Salvation
Lake on the anniversary of Aimee’s death. And she is so not Tuck’s type—he likes them petite and sweet. I don’t think there’s
much danger he’ll fall in love with Jillian.”

Ridley spit and rinsed. “So you did see the sizzle. There’s megawatt sexual tension between those two.”

“Oh yeah, they’ve got chemistry, but that’s good. Hot sex is all he needs right now. The man’s been celibate for two years.
He could do a lot worse than Jillian as his transitional woman, but I’d hate to see her get hurt.”

“I don’t know,” Ridley mumbled, feeling decidedly uneasy. “From everything I know about vision quests, she’s either a temptress
whose going to be his ruination or she’s his destiny.”

“You’re reading too much into that vision stuff.”

“Don’t discount what you can’t understand.”

Evie sank her hands on her hips. “Did you do a vision quest when you met me?”

Ridley shrugged. His wife had that pick-a-fight look on her face and a pugilistic set to her shoulders. “Did you lock the
back door?” he hedged.

“You did!”

He shook his head.

She advanced on him.

Grinning, Ridley backed up until his butt hit the bathroom wall. She looked so beautiful all naked and fiery eyed. “Come on,
tell me. What did you see?”

“I saw a woman with the most amazing red hair.” He reached out to twist a lock of her hair around his thumb. “And she was
passionately whipping up a batch of the most delicious biscuits. I could taste them in the vision. Buttery, light, and flaky.
I knew a woman who could make biscuits like that had to be an angel. I fell instantly in love.”

“With me,” she whispered.

“With the biscuits. You were just a side bonus.”

“Ridley James Red Deer.” She playfully swatted his shoulder. “What an awful thing to say to the woman who’s going to be the
mother of your children.”

“Well, if that’s the case, shouldn’t we be working on making babies instead of standing here talking?” He snaked a hand around
her waist and lifted her up into his arms.

“My big strong Indian brave.” She sighed into his chest.

He took her mouth, kissing her firmly yet tenderly, letting her know just how much she meant to him. Things had been a little
tense between them lately, and he wanted to sweep all that pressure away and just enjoy sex the way they used to before all
the fertility treatments and ovulation charts.

Evie let loose a needy moan, and he carried her into their bedroom. His tongue swept her sweet, sweet mouth as he laid her
down on the soft mattress. Blood rushed pell-mell to his cock, turning him to stone. God, he was hard for her.

She tasted so good. Better than the awesome biscuits she baked. He loved how petite she felt beside his bigness, how smooth
she was to his roughness.

Two people couldn’t be more opposite. He was a Native American man from the mountains. She was from an educated urban family.
He’d gone to school on a reservation. She’d trained in Paris. While he was learning to hunt and fish and live off the land,
she was speaking French and turning the simplest ingredients into elaborate meals. She was bossy; he was born to help. She
was direct; he was oblique. She was fire. He was water.

And yet, in spite of their differences, they made it work. Who knew? Maybe it worked because of their differences. They had
their ups and downs, sure, but they never got bored.

She wound her arms around his neck, and a shiver shot down his spine. His fiery woman made him burn. She peered into his eyes
with a look that was pure Evie. “Take me, big man.”