Hard Irish (12 page)

He frowned.  Now what?  She could wait three months and he had a good night kiss in mind for tonight.  Still, a guarantee on a kiss at some point was better than no guarantee.  And a wager didn’t mean he couldn’t talk her into one on his timetable.  “You’re on.”

“Okay.  Mr. Anything-but-anchovies, what do I like?”

He studied her a minute, thinking.  “You like your salsa extra hot, your beer extra cold.”

“Anyone could guess that,” she cried, rolling her eyes.

“Not finished yet.  You like extra whipped cream, extra fudge topping and just a pat of butter won’t do.  There’s more but...”  He raked his gaze down her body and back up.  He had a feeling her sensual side had a few extras to it, too.  “Am I wrong?”

“I decide when,” she muttered and marched out of the room.

“Hey.  What about the pizza?”

“Read my mind.”

“Sa-weet.”

An hour later he wondered how he’d missed the thin and crispy crust option.  It wasn’t bad, but on a scale of one to ten he’d rate it a four.  He liked crust he could sink his teeth into, not something that disintegrated the moment he put it in his mouth.  After five pieces he hadn’t even scratched the surface of his hunger.  Next time he’d have to proceed with caution on the pizza front.

As for the triple-X cheese bread, it was thick and chewy, and definitely not a first date food.  What she was doing with her tongue and all of that stringy cheese had him on his knees.  Well, practically on his knees.  At the moment he didn’t dare stand or kneel.  His jeans were a bit too tight for any movement.  They sat side-by-side on her soft-as-a-bed couch.  He could feel the heat of her body, smell her citrusy coconut scent, and imagine licking every inch of her honey tanned skin.  All it took was a heartbeat for her to transport him from an invalid on the couch to steamy-sex-in-the-sun.

Hell, he shifted his good leg to ease the pressure of his fly.  With his injured leg, straight out and propped on a pillow at the far side of an over-stuffed ottoman, he didn’t have a lot of spare room for a hard on.  And it was embarrassing as hell in some respects.  You’d think he was a teenager watching his first X-rated movie.  Spread out on the rest of the ottoman was the pizza and cheese bread boxes along with glasses of icy Coke on a metal tray.  He snagged his glass and took a long, thirsty drink.  Something had to cool his ass down.

“So what is your brother James like?”

Jared coughed and Coke fizzed up his nose.  Not the cool down he had in mind.  A napkin and several gasping breaths later he finally wheezed a response.  “What...do you...mean?”

“Just curious.  I’ve met Jackson and Jesse.  So wondered where James fit into the mix.  Is he older or younger?”  She grabbed a piece of cheese bread and paused for his answer.

Damn, how had James popped up already?  He sucked in air and prayed that this conversation didn’t go far.  He didn’t want his misleading white lies to keep growing.  “James is a lot like me.  Honestly, he is exactly like me.  We’re identical twins.”

She almost dropped the cheese bread she was about to bite into.  “Seriously?  That’s...just so cool.  Here I envied you your older brothers and you have one closer to you than anybody.  Do you like the same things?  I’ve heard that twins separated at birth end up following the same career paths and having the same likes and dislikes.”  She bit into the cheese bread.

He shrugged, trying to unknot his tongue from telling any lies.  He and James
had
followed the same career path—in construction.  The one topic he did not want to get near. “Some things are the same, but I’d like to think—”

A long string of cheese hung between her moist lips and the gooey bread in her hand.  She opened her mouth to nab more of the cheese and he lost his restraint.  He wrapped his finger around the far end of the cheese string, pulling it from the bread.

Her gaze shot to his.  He smiled a challenge as he leaned forward and slowly slid the tip of his finger into his mouth, catching the cheese string with his tongue.  Then he ate his way toward her mouth.  At the last inch, she stuck her tongue out and stole the last bit of cheese away and smiled like the cat that ate the canary, but was facing a bulldog.  He got the feeling she was seconds away from bolting.  What sort of number had her ex pulled on her?

He didn’t want her wary.  He wanted her eager and hungry.  But for the life of him he couldn’t gather the will to back off without at least tasting her lush mouth.  He closed the inches separating them and pressed his mouth to hers, easing his tongue across her partially opened lips.  Sweetness spiced with pizza.

That was it.  All he could consciously steal at the moment. He eased back and took a bite out of her cheese bread then retreated to his space.

She blinked at him.  “That was my cheese and my bread.”

“Yep.  And your hot mouth, too.  Mighty fine if I may say.” 

Her cheeks flushed.  “I thought we had a deal.  I got to choose when we kiss.”

“You do.  If you remember I specified a kiss like we had last night.  That means you on top of me.  My arms wrapped around you.  My hands in your silky hair.  And every inch of your hot body pressed hard to me.  Everything else is fair game in my book.  And next time we order pizza we don’t get thin and crispy.  I like having something to sink my teeth into.”  He let her know with a look that he wasn’t necessarily talking about pizza.

“You do?  I can call, Dessie.  I’m sure she wouldn’t mind running over quick.”  She bit into her bread and stood up.

He sank back against the couch.  Dessie?  Why the hell would—”

“Pebbles has a jar of  ‘teeth sinking’ gourmet dog biscuits, if you need—”

“A dog biscuit?”  Laughing, he snagged the waistband of Rocky’s jeans and tugged.  He couldn’t remember that last time he’d been so thoroughly put in his place.  It felt...great.  Off balance, she fell back into his lap.  He winced as he jarred his injured leg and her bottom pressed against his unmistakable erection.  “Seriously though, all joking aside.  You can feel my interest, so there is no point in denying that I want to get to know you a whole lot better than I do, but I don’t want you to be uncomfortable either.  So, tell me now.  Am I pushing too hard, too fast?”

She burst out laughing, a real heart-free laughter that came from a spirit unhampered by ghosts.  The naughty gleam in her eye made him realize what he had said. 

He actually felt heat flush his cheeks.  He wasn’t about to examine if he was blushing or having a hot flash at the idea of pushing hard and fast into her soft heaven.  “Let me rephrase that.  Am I making you uncomfortable? Before you answer, let me just say that I’d eat a dog biscuit if it means you’ll laugh like this again.”  

She stopped laughing and looked at him seriously for a moment. “I think that might be the-”

“Funniest thing,” he interjected.  “The funniest thing anyone has ever said to you, right?”  He interrupted because he had to.  If she had said “the most romantic” or “the sweetest” or “the anything” besides funny, he would have likely kissed her again. 

“Yeah,” she said.  “Funniest.  I so needed to laugh.”

Jared took heart.  She didn’t ask him to cease and desist as she levered up from his lap.  He leaned back into the couch and relaxed a little, having skirted the sensual edge of things enough for now.  “My mom has been known to say that love and laughter can heal all ills.  That and wringing her dishrag.”

“Just exactly how does a dishrag help?” Rather than bolt from the room as he suspected she was warring over, Rocky sat back down on the couch, albeit a little further away than before.  He picked up on the fact that talking put her at ease and he started talking, likely saying more about his mother to Rocky than he’d ever said to another woman.  “Maybe it would be better to call it her prayer rag.  Taking care of four growing boys, she spent a lot of time in the kitchen and given we were all hell on wheels.  Literally.  I don’t think there hasn’t been a bike, a skate board, a tractor, a motorcycle, a car, a truck or you name it that one of the four of us hasn’t crashed.  So she also spent a lot of time praying while in the kitchen and over the years the dishrag became her rosary of sorts.  That’s not to say that she couldn’t snap a mean wet towel at our bare legs when we got out of line.”  He laughed.  “But in general, to this day, whenever we see her with a dishtowel in her hands we know she’s praying for one of us.”

“You are so blessed.  My mom was different.  Very loving, but different.  She—” Rocky shifted her gaze to the end of the sofa, bringing to his attention an open book.  The name McKenna jumped out at him.

“Your mother’s a writer?”

Rocky nodded.  “Was.  Cancer took her from us about five years ago.”

Jared reached out and claimed Rocky’s hand from where it rested on her lap.  Her father in a coma.  Her mother gone.  Her ex an asshole.  Damn.  Life had thrown her some nasty curve balls.  Made him wonder what the fuck was his and James’s problem.  They’d had it relatively good, so why weren’t they out there passing it on, doing shit for kids, and helping others out?  The sick in his gut went soul deep.  He clasped Rocky’s hand like it was a lifeline.  “I’m sorry.  Tell me about your mom.  How was she different?”

She released his hand and retrieved the book.  Then she sat closer to him and held the book open for him to read.  “This might give you an idea.  She was passionate. She loved deeply, but she didn’t laugh often.  Sometimes melancholy and solitary went hand in hand with her.  While you slept, I was reading through some of her work to see if I could figure out what my father is trying to tell me.  He had a stroke last month and spoke his first words yesterday.”

“What did he say?”

“My mother’s name, Keira, then the words
unforgivable, stop, pray
.  Given how much my father loved my mother until the day she died, I can’t imagine there was anything unforgiven between them, anything he would say was beyond prayer.  The incident did prompt a startling revelation from our business partner, Patrick Brady.  Just before his stroke, my father gave him a box that my mother left for me to be opened on my father’s death.  Da made Patrick swear he wouldn’t give it to me before then, but the cat is out of the bag now.  Patrick was supposed to bring it to me today at the job site, but I left early with you.”

A spider crawled over Jared’s nerve endings.  He didn’t like the sound of secret boxes to be delivered after death.  Rocky was looking down at her mother’s book frowning.  Jared slid his thumb under her chin and lifted her gaze to his.  “Maybe that falling planter wasn’t the accident you think it was.  What if someone doesn’t want you to get that box?”

Her green eyes widened and her brow creased.  For the first time, she didn’t argue with him about the incident.  “Double that.  Pat also let me know that my father has ‘deliverable on his death’ papers for me at the attorney’s office, too.”

  Jared was glad Jesse had his back on this one.  There was a lot more beneath the surface than Rocky first indicated.  He wondered what else was out there lurking in the dark.
 

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

With a disgusted sigh at having failed, Rocky unfolded from a full Lotus, wondering if
another
cold shower would even help.  Yoga had failed.  Again.  Her senses were on fire.  Again.

She ached from the tips of her breasts to the soles of her feet.  Her long denied, simmering desire had bubbled into a full boil and it was all Dessie...and Jared’s fault.  The pocket guide had her imagining her back in his lap with his erection pressing not just against her bottom, but deep inside where she burned the most.  They were naked and she was riding him side-saddle, her back resting on the sofa’s armrest, her legs stretched out, and his tongue and fingers working magic with her mouth and her breasts.  Then before she could blink, she was straddling him, then before she could gasp, her back was to his chest, her head was on his shoulder and...

Dear God.  She was a mess.

She could be down there and they could be having the time of their lives.

But when all of his hot maleness came at her, only part of her wanted to meet him head-on and match him lick for lick.  The 99.9% part of her.  But another part of her, the damaged-by-the-past proceed-with-caution part of her, wanted to run.

It wouldn’t have hurt to have kissed him again.  He’d opened the door wide three hours ago when he’d stolen her cheese.  She could still feel his tongue brushing over her lips.  She fisted her hands and shut her eyes as the memory sent another tingle burning through her.  She wanted his tongue—everywhere.  She wanted to taste him—everywhere.

So why had she escaped upstairs to read more of her mother’s work?  Yes, it was important to read it but it wasn’t like she was going to solve the problem right that minute.  She’d needed the information her parents hadn’t want her to have until they were gone.

Still, she was ashamed to admit that she hadn’t been able to concentrate at all.  She’d known that before she’d made the excuse and left Jared.  She’d left him for a cold shower.  What kind of stupidity was that?

She’d left a hot man alone downstairs with water, pain medicine, Tylenol, pillows and sheets, so she could wallow alone in her room.

What was her problem?  Opportunity had more than knocked and she’d sat frozen on her ass, then ran fast the other way.

One kiss did not make a marriage commitment.

The world wouldn’t end if he kissed her again.  Tonight.  All she had to do was walk down the stairs...

Rocky didn’t give herself time to question.  She put her feet in motion and tip-toed downstairs, though marching would have fit her mood better.  She was still sane enough to consider that he might have taken pain medication and might be asleep.  Rounding the corner into the living room, she found the couch empty and searched the shadows for Jared, then gasped.

He stood at the French doors, looking at the backyard.  He wore only a pair of form fitting boxer briefs and the hard-shelled boot strapped to his leg.  His crutches were back at the couch, so he’d already gone against his brother’s advice to keep weight off of his injury.  Somehow that didn’t surprise her.