Fool for Love (12 page)

"Oh right." She got up but kept
her firm grip on his hand as she led him across the hall to the other bedroom.
"I put them in here earlier so they wouldn't rush you when you came
in." Janey opened the door to a room outfitted for pets. Each one had a
bed with his or her name embroidered on the cover, and the beds circled the
small room. Right away he noticed they were all special needs animals. One had
no ears, and another was missing a tail. A third sat stoically, watching Joe
with an intimidating intensity. The dog's wise eyes zeroed in on the firm hold
Janey had on Joe's hand, and right away, Joe understood that he needed to win
over the German shepherd if he had any hope of a future with her.

"This is Sam." Janey released
Joe's hand so she could pick up and cuddle a white ball of fluff. "She's
blind, but you'd never know it. She gets herself around using all her other
senses." Janey lowered herself to the floor, and the others rushed in to
vie for a spot on her lap. Except the German shepherd. He continued to stare at
Joe. "We found Dexter," she said of the cocker spaniel, "missing
his ears. I don't even like to think about how he lost them."

Joe sat down next to her. "Why didn't
they bark when they heard me come in?"

"Since they've all been abused, they
tend to keep quiet so as not to attract any attention until they know the
visitor is friendly."

Sam, the white fur ball, left Janey's lap
to take up residence in Joe's, giving him a thorough sniff and a friendly lick.

"I'll never understand how anyone
could harm a helpless animal," Joe said.

"Neither will I. We see far too much
of it, even out here on the island where you wouldn't think people would be
capable. The summer folks have been known to leave their dogs behind when they
go home. I found Muttley starving and malnourished by the side of the road up
at the Northeast Light about a year ago. His tail was all bloody and
infected." Shuddering at the memory, she stroked the brown and black
mongrel.

Joe noticed how the dog shied away from
her first tentative stroke before settling into the caress.

"He still thinks he's going to be
hit. He prepares himself for the blow and seems surprised when it doesn't
happen."

"Poor baby." Joe reached out to
pat him, but the dog turned away from him.

"He might take awhile to warm up to
you, so don't be hurt by that."

Joe smiled. Could she be any more
adorable? "I won't. What's the story with the general over there?"

"Oh, that's Riley. He's large and in
charge."

"No kidding." Joe was quite
certain the dog hadn't blinked once since they came into the room. "He
looks like he wants to rip my heart out."

Janey laughed. "He's probably a
little jealous. He never did care for David."

"I like him already."

She smiled at him, warming him all the way
to his bones. "Riley, come say hi to Joe."

As the dog dragged himself forward using
only his front legs, Joe realized he didn't have any back legs. "Oh, God,
what happened to him?"

"He was hit by a car and left for
dead. Doc Potter was able to save him, but no one wanted a two-legged
dog."

"So of course you brought him
home."

"I had cared for him for weeks by
then. He was already mine."

"How can you afford them all?"

"Well, Doc squares me on vet care and
meds, so it's really just food. I worry about what I'll do when Doc retires and
a new vet comes to town. They need a lot of care, especially Pixie." The
Jack Russell terrier licked her hand and plopped down in her lap, bumping
Muttley onto the floor. "She has a persistent skin infection that makes
her itchy and miserable, but it doesn't stop her from acting like she's queen
of the roost."

Joe reached for Muttley and was honored
when the dog gave him his belly to scratch. "You could always go to vet
school and then you wouldn't have to worry about affording their care when a
new vet comes to town."

"I told you," she said,
"that ship has sailed."

"No, it hasn't. And don't tell me
you're too old. You're only twenty-eight. Give me a break."

"But—"

Riley edged closer to Joe and sniffed his
leg. "You won't know if you don't apply."

"How would I ever afford it?"

The question proved she'd at least
considered the possibility. "Didn't your parents offer to give you the
money? I believe David convinced you that the two of you shouldn't be so in
debt to them, which was flat-out ridiculous, if you ask me."

A black cat with one eye wandered into the
room and rubbed against Janey, vying for some attention, which of course Janey
gave her. "None of you like him, do you?" she asked in the small
voice that rattled him. It was
so
not her, and it pained him to see her
questioning herself in the wake of the David disaster.

"We often didn't like the way he
treated you."

"Why did it take seeing him with
another woman to open my eyes?"

"You loved him, Janey. You don't have
to apologize for that. Not to me, anyway."

"Was he always bad? Deep inside where
it matters most, do you think he's always been a bad person, and I never
knew?"

"Aww, honey, I can't answer that. All
I can say is if I'd been fortunate enough to spend years with you, I would've
considered myself the luckiest guy in the world."

"You really mean that, don't
you?"

"Of course I do."

"How did I not see that you felt that
way about me? It's like I've been walking around with blinders on all these
years, and when they were finally ripped off this week, I found out that David's
a scumbag and you're…"

"What? What am I?"

Her clear blue eyes shifted to meet his.
"I'm not sure yet, but I want to find out."

Joe reached over to tip up her chin to
receive his kiss.

Riley growled a low warning.

Janey laughed and patted the dog.
"Easy boy. It's okay. He's one of the good guys."

Joe decided that was, without a doubt, the
best compliment he'd ever received.

Janey raised Joe's right hand to her lips and pressed gentle
kisses to each of his abused knuckles. She ached when she thought about how
he'd injured his hand and how out of character it was for him to hit someone.
"I wanted to do this earlier when I got to my parents' house and saw your
hand all swollen and bruised."

"That would've shocked them,
huh?"

"Just a little. Well, except for
Maddie. She knows. About us."

Joe gasped. "Oh, my God, Janey! If
she tells Mac—"

"She won't. She promised me."

He released a long rattling deep breath.
"He'd kill me. You know that."

"After everything that happened, I
had to talk to someone."

"And it had to be
her
? Your
insanely protective older brother's fiancée?"

"We've become very good friends, and
I knew she'd understand."

"I don't like it, Janey. I don't want
any trouble with him. We go back too far, and with his wedding right around the
corner…"

Anxious to quell his worries, Janey
straddled him, pressing him into the back of the sofa. "I trust her to
keep it quiet, or I wouldn't have told her."

"People will think I took advantage
of you—"

She silenced him with a kiss that, like
most kisses with him, quickly spun out of control. "If anything,
I
took advantage of
you
, and we both know that."

"That's not how it'll look to other
people, especially Mac, because he knows how I've felt about you for years.
He'll think I jumped you the first chance I got."

"When it was quite the other way
around."

"He'll never believe that, Janey.
Never."

"Then let's keep this between us for
now. No one else needs to know until we're ready for them to know."

"And what is this that we're keeping
between us? What would you call it?"

"Fun." She kissed him.
"Exciting." Another kiss. "Passionate." This time, she ran
her tongue between his lips. "Delicious."

Joe's fingers combed through her hair,
anchoring her for another desperate kiss. Tongues tangled in a violent,
exhilarating battle that sent pleasure darting from her breasts to her core.

Janey pulled her lips free and pressed
them to the pulsating nerve in his cheek. "Is it later yet?" she
asked as she turned her attention to his neck. The tremble that rippled through
his big frame filled her with a sense of her own power.

His fingers ventured beneath the hem of
her tank top. "Mmm, definitely."

"And have we talked about everything
we need to talk about?"

"Not even close."

She rolled the tendon that joined his neck
to his shoulder between her teeth.

He jolted, gasped and his fingers dug into
her hips, holding her tight against his erection.

"Will it keep?" she whispered.

"I suppose it'll have to." He shifted
his hands to her bottom and stood, accommodating her weight effortlessly.
"Because this won't."

In a cacophony of claws on hard wood, her
menagerie followed them to the bedroom.

"Are we going to have an
audience?" he asked, setting her down next to the bed.

"Come on, guys." She shooed the
animals from the room, closed the door and turned to him. "Alone at
last."

The whining protests from the hallway
reminded them they weren't completely alone.

"Whatever do you plan to do with
me?" he asked.

Smiling at his playfulness, she sashayed
over to him, shedding her top on the way. There was something about knowing
he'd loved her from afar for so long that had Janey also shedding inhibitions
that had plagued her relationship with David. She'd often found it difficult to
be free and unguarded around him because she never seemed to have his undivided
attention. That wasn't a problem with Joe.

His hands slid from her ribs to cover the
lacy bra she'd worn with him in mind. Judging by the hot gaze he directed at
her breasts, the bra had done the trick. "You're so beautiful, Janey. So
incredibly sexy."

She raised his shirt and trailed her
fingers over the ridges of muscles on his abdomen. "So are you. I can't
believe you cover this six-pack with a shirt. That ought to be a crime."

He snorted with laughter. "I'll keep
that in mind."

"Just keep your shirt off, and I'll
be happy."

"Mmm, I want you to be happy."
Lowering her to the bed, he kissed the plump flesh that spilled from the top of
the push-up bra.

"I'm feeling very happy at the
moment." Janey squirmed under him, itchy with desire and need and
something else that tightened in her chest, demanding she not ignore what he
made her feel. She tugged the shirt over his head and massaged his shoulders as
he worshiped her breasts through the bra. He got rid of her shorts, leaving her
in just the bra and a matching thong.

Watching his eyes darken with awareness
when he saw the thong made her laugh.

"You're out to give me a heart
attack, aren't you?"

She fluttered her eyelashes at him.
"Would I do that to you?"

"Uh-huh. I do believe you
would." His talented lips went to work on her belly, and as his tongue
flicked into her belly button, Janey discovered a new erogenous zone.

She clutched his hair, her heart hammering
when she realized where he was heading. That he
liked
to do that was
still a bit of a shock to her, and he seemed to
really
like it. Just the
thought of it made her skin heat with embarrassment and nervousness.
"Joe…"

"Relax, honey."

Despite his softly spoken words, Janey
trembled as he spread her legs and settled between them.

She closed her eyes and tried to control
the trembling, but it only intensified when he tongued her through the silky
thong. A low moan exploded from her chest as the sensations became almost
painfully intense. Keeping up the pressure with his tongue, he slid a finger
into her. After just a few more strokes of his finger and tongue, a scorching
orgasm stole her breath.

"So beautiful," he whispered as
he kissed his way to her lips. "So very, very beautiful."

Janey focused on drawing air into her
heaving lungs as aftershocks reverberated through her body.

While she recovered, he got rid of the
rest of their clothes and came back to join her, covering her body with his.
Infused by his warmth, Janey floated on a cloud of satisfaction.

"You aren't going to sleep on me, are
you?" he asked. She could hear the laughter in his voice as he throbbed
against her leg, letting her know he was very much awake.