Heiress for Hire (33 page)

Look out Romeo. Danny Tucker wasn't going down without a fight.

Amanda hid a wince behind her hand. Great. Just what she wanted. Danny driving her home, alone, without Piper as a buffer between them.

Every minute of every day was torture, time to be suffered through until she could take the pieces of her broken heart and limp to New York. Maybe there she could find a masseuse to release the kinks of tension locked all over her neck and shoulders from walking around squeezing her muscles tight. Men on Viagra couldn't be stiffer than this.

She spent all her time trying to absorb the sight and smell of Piper and the house, the yard, and the view of the corn stalks waving under the blue sky. The kid was probably starting to wonder why she was sniffing her all the time. While next week couldn't get there soon enough to suit her sanity, at the same time she couldn't imagine that she would never see Piper or Danny again.

Basically, she was a freaking mess. And in no mood to be alone with Danny.

So after Piper left with her grandparents, Amanda just wanted to get it over with. It was a ten-minute drive. Danny and she would ignore each other, she'd hop out of the truck, and that would be it. The next day was Saturday, so she'd spend the weekend packing and then Tuesday Piper started school. She'd hang around to see how the first day went, then she was leaving for New York. With her paychecks from Danny, she had purchased a one-way ticket for seventy-nine dollars, after thoroughly searching for the lowest fare.

Another positive result of her time in Cuttersville—she now knew how to make a budget and how to search out lower prices. She'd gotten rather fond of popping in to Wal-Mart and buying ninety-nine-cent nail polish.

Which reminded her of exactly how much crap she had to pack. She needed to get home to the gray house and start shifting through it.

Too bad she couldn't seem to find Danny to let him know she was ready to go home.

The door to his bedroom was closed. She knocked. Nothing.

Then she heard the shower. Damn it. He was taking a shower. He was naked. And wet. Not a good place for her thoughts to go.

They went to an even naughtier place when the water shut off. She could just step into the bathroom. She doubted he had locked the door. That wasn't Danny Trusting Tucker's style.

Then again, barging in on a man she had turned down for marriage wasn't her style. A man who was horrified by the thought of her money. Or at least, it had never been her style in the past. She had usually let the men do the chasing. They chased, she sort of ran, eventually they caught her, then the sex was so-so.

With Danny, the sex had been phenomenal. Both physically and emotionally satisfying. And that had only been a quickie.

Just think what they could do if they had some time to really work on it.

Not that they did. Because she was leaving. Both today and on Tuesday.

The bathroom door opened.

Danny was wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. Nothing else, but a few water droplets running down his chest. His wet hair was sticking up, and his finger smoothed over it as he came to a sudden stop.

"Oh, sorry. I forgot my clean clothes in my room."

"Uh-huh." Danny was a really bad liar. She had the sudden feeling that his little stroll across the hall looking like a woman's wet dream was no accident. She crossed her arms over her chest. Stupid traitorous nipples. She was going to tape the damn things down if they didn't behave themselves. "You did this on purpose, didn't you?"

"Did what?" He widened his eyes. "I'm sorry if I'm keeping you waiting, but I really needed a shower. Been working, you know," he added, like she had no idea he had spent the day in the sun on the tractor.

Of course, he wouldn't know that she'd spent half the day sneaking peeks out the window at him.

"I'll just get dressed while you grab the dog. We can leave in a minute." Danny's arm reached right past hers, and his damp skin brushed hers. "Excuse me."

"What?" He was invading her space again, and he smelled clean and sexy, like soap and straw.

"I'm just trying to get into my room to get my clothes. I can't open the door with you standing there."

"Right." Amanda meant to move, but somehow her feet didn't do anything. They were like Quebec, determined to be independent.

"Unless you don't want to go home." Danny leaned closer to her. A drop from his hair landed on her arm and rolled. He picked up her hand and sucked the water droplet off her wrist. "Do you want to go home?"

There were so many ways to answer that. Most would be lies.

She didn't want to go back to the dwarf cottage and count the

Heiress for Hire pennies that would be lying in her hallway. She didn't want to listen to the woman in the mirror crying when she felt like doing the same thing herself. She didn't want to lie alone in an empty bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if she were doing the right thing.

Wondering if it were too late for her and Danny. Wondering if there was a her and Danny, or if she had somehow imagined the whole thing. Nothing about this summer quite seemed real, and neither did a future in New York seem real.

Her father had given her four thousand dollars, and she could make that last now that she understood some basic means of cutting costs. But she had no real desire to spend money, his or hers or anyone's.

And she didn't want to walk away from a naked Danny.

"I…" She cleared her throat.

Danny's hands stroked across her waist, played with the fabric of her floral skirt. His lips brushed across the top of her head. "Stay tonight. Forget about everything else… just let me hold you. Let me love you. Just for here, now."

"What about the money… leaving… Piper?" It was a token resistance. She was already curling her fingers into the fabric of his towel.

"Don't think, sweetheart. Just feel."

He kissed her, and she couldn't resist. Didn't try. His hands were gentle, his mouth firm but reserved, waiting for permission. So she gave it to him by throwing her arms around his neck and opening her mouth for him.

She could feel it when she was with Danny. The difference between him and all the other men she had kissed. He loved her. It was there, in the way he held her. It was there, in the way he sighed, and in the dark brown of his eyes.

"I don't want to go home." Not now, not ever. But she would start with now.

Danny paused for a second, his lips on Amanda's neck. She was willing to spend the night with him. He wouldn't read anymore into that than the obvious. She wanted to have sex with him, and it would be enough for him. He would take what she could give while she was still here, and he would make tonight last as long as was humanely possible.

"Good." He breathed in the scent of her, a soft, fruity smell that reminded him of bubble gum. Amanda always had lotions and glosses and powders on her, and while the scents were enticing, he wondered what she would smell like with nothing on her, just bare flesh. ,

Pushing the straps of her pink shirt off her shoulders, he traced the line of her clavicle bone with his lips, going lower and lower until he reached her breasts. The shirt was stretchy, and he skimmed it down over her, happy to see she wasn't wearing a bra.

Danny loved Amanda's breasts, the way they were perfect round globes with tight cherry nipples on top. He had never gone for chesty women, always feeling a little startled by them. They were distracting in their disproportion, and he wound up studying them in fascination instead of actually doing anything with them.

Generally speaking, a woman wanted a man to do something with their breasts besides gawk at them.

With Amanda, that was easy to do. She was so long and lean, with no soft edges for a man to grab onto. Except for her breasts. They begged to be touched.

He pulled one taut nipple into his mouth and rolled his tongue over it. She gave a soft little cry that went straight to his groin. Using his thumb, he stroked one nipple while he sucked the other, feeling desire heating up every inch of his body from the inside out.

Flicking his damp hair out of his eyes, he pulled back. Her skin was dewy from his tongue and his hair, and she had pink splotches where his beard had chafed. He wanted to look at her, to savor her, to prolong the night that he knew was really good-bye.

Amanda reached out and tugged at his towel. "You don't need this, do you?"

"Nope." He was surprised steam didn't come out of there when she opened the towel. He was feeling pretty damn hot and humid.

With a flick of her wrist, she tossed it to the floor. "There. Now you should probably take my clothes off too." She gave him a saucy smile. "I don't want to wrinkle this skirt."

"I wouldn't dream of wrinkling your skirt." Danny reached for her, but she turned around. "Where you going? Let me unzip it for you."

"The zipper's in the back." Hands braced on the wall, she tipped her head over her shoulder. "See?"

The position brought to mind all kinds of interesting thoughts, and Danny went for the zipper with trembling hands and a dry mouth. He wasn't sure if it was the quality of the skirt, or the force of his jerk, but the zipper went down smoothly in one clean motion. The sides of the skirt slid apart and dropped lower on her hips.

Danny ran his hands over her waist, behind the fabric, and gave the skirt a push. It fell down, and he almost went blind. "Holy shit."

It wasn't the back of panties staring at him. It was the string of a thong, surrounded on both sides by her creamy, tight ass. "Oh, honey, that's a beautiful thing."

Amanda gave a throaty laugh and stepped out of her skirt. But she stayed facing the wall, which gave him the opportunity to stick a hand on either side of that thong and squeeze. "You did that on purpose," he whispered, skimming his thumbs over the curve of her cheeks.

"Who, me?" Her breath caught when he moved his hands around to the front of her panties and cupped her.

His erection pressed against her backside, and he gave a little thrust, her warm skin giving a little under the pressure. "Yes, you. Now let's get that shirt off of you."

Pulling her hands farther up, until they were over her head but still pressed to the wall, Danny took the bottom of her shirt and tugged up. It caught a little on her breasts, then gave with a little bounce. In the blink of an eye, he had Amanda naked expect for that scrap of white lace and her sandals. The rest of her was gloriously bare, and pinned against the wall, ass pointed enticingly toward him.

"Turn around," he said, determined to go slow, no matter what his body thought about pushing that lace string aside and sinking inside her.

She didn't turn or pirouette, but sort of rolled herself across the wall until she was facing him, her arms still over her head. One knee bent a little and her chest rose and fell as she gave hard, urgent breathes. Then she licked her lips, slowly, wetting from one side to the other.

Danny forgot slow. He closed the space between them and sucked that pouty bottom lip into his mouth, his body colliding with hers and shoving them both back against the wall. He kissed her hard, his hands grinding her against him. A rational part of him thought maybe he was being too rough, but Amanda gave a low moan.

"You're so hard, it feels so good," she whispered.

Her eyes were glazed, her cheeks flushed, her lips shiny, the stickiness of her lip gloss smeared over both their mouths.

"Come here," Danny said, wanting to get her in the bedroom before he took her against the wall.

Not that there was anything wrong with that.

But he wanted more. He wanted slow. He wanted to taste her, right between her thighs, sinking his tongue inside her while she squirmed.