McCarthys of Gansett Island Boxed Set Books 1-3 (8 page)

“Thank you.” Her heart suddenly felt too large for her chest, her skin too tight for her body, her lungs compressed from the effort to draw air. To think that ten hours ago, she’d never met him and now he was feeding and bathing her son with the same care he’d no doubt show his own child. She couldn’t process it.
 

As she held Thomas, Mac cleaned up the mess around the high chair and restored order to the kitchen. Even though he was tall and broad shouldered, he moved with an easy grace. Rippling muscles under a snug T-shirt had Maddie licking her lips and remembering what it had felt like to kiss him. He bent over to wipe the baseboard and his shorts tightened over his taut rear end. Infused with heat that made her skin tingle with desire, Maddie looked away.

“I need to make a quick phone call,” he said when he was done. “And grab a shower. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Maddie skimmed her lips over Thomas’s soft, damp hair. “We’re fine.”

Mac withdrew his cell phone from his pocket. “Be right back.”

She imagined he probably had a girlfriend in Miami waiting to hear from him. The thought filled her with irrational jealousy. Tiffany’s warning came rushing back to her. Before she could get too mad with herself for being stupid
and
jealous, Mac returned and stashed the phone in his backpack. He approached them, casting a downward glance at Thomas, who was beginning to doze off. “He’s so cute,” Mac whispered, smoothing the baby’s fine blond hair into place. “And so good.”

“He really is.” Unnerved by the intimate whisper and the natural, gentle caress he’d bestowed upon her son, Maddie kept her eyes on Thomas. “If I had to go it alone, I definitely got the right kid.”

“Why are you? Going it alone, that is?”

After a long awkward pause, she finally ventured a glance up to find his cool blue eyes trained on her. “That’s, um, a long story.”

He flashed that irresistible grin. “Good thing we’ve got all night. You can talk to me through the window while I’m sleeping on the deck.”

Before she could tell him she didn’t talk about Thomas’s father—with anyone—Mac grabbed his backpack and shut the bathroom door behind him.

Maddie closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart and mind. Nothing good would come of the crush she could feel developing. His attention toward them was temporary, and she needed to remember that. She couldn’t let Thomas get attached to a man who wouldn’t be around in a few days. The bottle fell from Thomas’s slack lips, and he snuggled in deeper. Normally, she’d transfer him to his crib at this point, but she feared she might drop him. She hated to admit Mac might be right about something.

While she waited for him to help her, she kept her eyes closed and listened to him singing Sinatra in the shower. Smiling for the umpteenth time that day, she floated on an unusual cloud of contentment with her baby asleep in her arms and a sexy guy singing in her shower.

Mac opened a bottle of shampoo and breathed in the scent of summer flowers that had captured his attention each time he’d been close to Maddie. Immersed in the fragrance, he imagined her reclined in a field of wildflowers with a daisy tucked behind her ear and a come-hither smile directed at him. In his fantasy scenario, she was relaxed and untroubled. She gazed at him with none of the usual bitterness. He’d like to see her like that—carefree, happy, content.

Just the idea of it sent a surge of desire darting through him that settled in his groin. “Why her?” he whispered urgently into the shower’s steady flow. “Why now?” Nothing in his past history with women had prepared him for the day he’d meet one who made him want to step off the treadmill for a closer look, to find out what might be possible.

Maybe it was because the women he usually dated always wanted something from him. When they discovered he’d never been married and had enjoyed a successful professional life, he became doubly appealing to them. Roseanne had been the latest in a long string of women who’d used him to gain a leg up. They used him, he used them and no one got hurt. The hassle-free arrangements had always been just fine with him.

Now he’d found one who needed everything but wanted nothing from him. Yet he wanted more of her, especially now that he’d experienced the soft sweetness of her kisses. He wanted to do things for her because she’d never ask him to the way others always did. The more he gave, the more Maddie would protest, and the idea of fighting with her filled him with anticipation rather than the usual dread of the unfortunate confrontations that ended the arrangement du jour.

When it came right down to it, she wasn’t even his type. He tended to go for women who were confident in their sexuality, who gave as good as they got in bed and walked away when it was over without pretending they’d fallen in love. None of those qualities applied to Maddie. Thanks to her remarkable figure, she’d no doubt had a difficult time with men and sex, and if Janey was to be believed, guys had taken advantage of her and then blabbed about it.
 

The thought of what she must’ve endured filled Mac with white-hot rage that would’ve frightened him if he’d been in his right mind. Thanks to fatigue that lingered like a wet blanket, he clearly wasn’t thinking straight. Mac McCarthy didn’t get “involved.” The word wasn’t even in his vocabulary. So what was he doing in her shower? Or bathing her son? Or tending to her every need? What the hell was wrong with him?
 

Let’s face it
.
Sex with her would definitely not be the usual no-strings deal I prefer
. The realization caused his burgeoning erection to wither and roused him from the shampoo-scented dream state he’d slipped into. He returned the bottle to the rack and ran a razor over his face before stepping out of the shower. When he heard a sharp knock on the screen door, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went out to answer it.

Glancing at the sofa, he noticed Maddie had dozed off with Thomas in her arms. The sight of them tugged at his heart and made him forget for a second that he was on his way to the door. A second louder knock got his attention.

“Mr. McCarthy?”

“Right. Come in.” Mac swung open the door to admit the delivery guy from the Beachcomber who’d brought the dinner he ordered before his shower. “Just put it on the table.” Mac found his wallet, grabbed four twenties, and handed over the cash. “Keep the change.”

“Wow, thanks.”
 

Mac saw him take a measuring look at Maddie and Thomas on the sofa and then at him in a towel before he headed out the door.

“Did you seriously just answer my door wearing nothing but a towel?” Maddie asked in a sleep-roughened voice.

“Yeah, so?”

“Oh my God.” She struggled to sit up while accommodating the sleeping baby. “It’ll be all over town in less than an hour that I’m doing Mac McCarthy. That’s
just
what I need.”

Mac wanted to shoot himself for being so stupid. Needing a second to figure out how to handle this latest challenge, he leaned down and took Thomas from her. Even though he was careful, his fingers still brushed against her breasts, causing her to pull back from him.
 

“Sorry.” He walked Thomas into his crib and settled a light blanket over him. Before he left the room, he combed his fingers through the baby’s hair. “Don’t be in any rush to grow up, buddy. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
 

Steeling for a fight, he returned to the living room and stopped short in his tracks. “I’m sorry,” he said, moved by her tears. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“Why would you? No one in this town has ever thought anything less than the best of you.”

“I’ll make sure people know exactly what’s going on here.”

Her uneven burst of laughter surprised him. “Gee, thanks. That’ll make it
all
better.”

He sat next to her on the sofa. “I’m really sorry. It never occurred to me—”

“What’s done is done. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.”

Mac had no idea what to say to that, so he thought it best to keep quiet.

“Someone told you, didn’t they?”

The soft, weary tone to her voice went straight to his heart. “I don’t believe it.”

When she looked up at him with caramel eyes still damp with tears, the need to offer comfort overtook his better judgment. He slipped an arm around her and brought her head to rest on his shoulder.

At first she resisted, but he resisted right back. “I don’t believe a word of it,” he said more forcefully this time as he buried his fingers in her soft, thick hair to keep her head right where he wanted it.

“Why? Because I didn’t fall at the feet of the almighty Mac McCarthy at the first opportunity and beg him to have sex with me?”

“For one thing.”

The teasing comment earned him a genuine burst of husky laughter, the sound of which was so sexy and so appealing that the breath seemed to get stuck in his throat on its way to his lungs.

“So I’ve dented your ego, then, huh?”

“Very badly,” he replied in a grave tone as he combed his fingers through her hair. He kept waiting for her to tell him to stop, but she didn’t.

“I’d apologize if I didn’t think the dose of humility was good for you.”

So the bitter, world-weary Madeline Chester could also be quite witty. The discovery, on top of all the others, made his heart race. “I’d say the least you could do to make it up to me is to have dinner with me.” He gestured to the bags on the table. “What do you say?”

“What’s on the menu?”

“I was jonesing for a lobster, so I asked Libby to send over a couple.”

Maddie stiffened against him.

“What?”

“It’s ripping through town right now that Mac McCarthy is half-naked in my apartment and buying me lobster. They’ll be speculating about what he’s getting in return.”

“Maddie . . .”

“Let’s just eat.” The laughter of a moment ago was replaced by sorrow. “They’ll say what they’re going to say no matter what I do. The truth is never a consideration where I’m concerned.”

With his finger on her chin, he urged her to look at him. “I never meant to cause you any trouble.”

“You started causing me trouble the second you stepped in front of my bike.”

“The only part I regret is that you got hurt.”

“Stick around. You’ll grow to regret a whole lot more than that.”

“Is that an invitation?”

She drew back, horrified by the corner she’d painted herself into. “
No!
”

“Sounded like one to me,” he said in a playful tone, leaning in to close the distance between them. He could no more fight the magnetic pull than he could avoid taking the next breath.

Her expression shifted from wariness to fear. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” he whispered.

“Because nothing can come of it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You make me want to prove you wrong.” He brushed his lips over hers, gratified by the gasp that escaped from her tightly closed mouth. “Kiss me the way you did before.”

“I w-was asleep. That doesn’t count.”

Her stammer drew a small smile from him. “You’re right. It doesn’t. This one does, though.” Ignoring the press of her hand against his chest as well as the way her eyes widened in shock and maybe dismay, Mac fitted his mouth over hers and sank into the satiny softness. He moved his hand from her arm to cup her cheek but kept his lips still against hers. He’d made the first move. Now it was up to her.

Mac thought he’d go mad waiting for a sign, a signal, anything to tell him she wanted more. Just when he was about to give up, he felt her uninjured hand on his neck and the first tentative brush of her tongue against his bottom lip.

Green light.
 

Mac devoured her with sweeping thrusts of his tongue into the sweet depths of her mouth, steeped in her addictive flavor. At first she seemed too taken aback by his ardor to respond, but when her tongue finally tangled with his, meeting him thrust for thrust, Mac fought off the urgent need for more.

Many minutes later, he pulled back from her, breathing heavily, feeling more spent by one sensuous kiss than he normally did from the full act. Opening his eyes, he found hers fixed on him. Unable to process all he saw, he took the coward’s way out by burrowing into the smooth column of her neck and pressing hot, open-mouth kisses to her heated skin.

“Mac.” She sounded as breathless as he felt.
 

“Hmm?” At the base of her neck, he found a sensitive tendon and rolled it between his teeth.

She cried out.

“Sorry.” Mortified by his overwhelming reaction to her, he rested his head on her shoulder and tried to regain control.

Her fingers sifted through his hair in a soothing caress that made him want to stay right there for a long, long time.
 

“It didn’t hurt,” she said after a charged moment of silence.

“No?”

She shook her head, and her fragrant hair brushed against his face, sending another surge of hot-blooded lust to his lap.

Encouraged, he ran his tongue lightly over the same spot on her neck.

A shudder rippled through her. “I don’t want to be what you expect me to be,” she said softly.