Rock-A-Bye Rescue. Karen Whiddon

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СКАЧАТЬ you could make us lunch.”

      “How can you even think of food? My stomach is in knots.”

      “So I get nothing in exchange for fixing your generator and providing you with power?” For the first time, she heard a teasing note in his tone that did as much to calm her as any distraction she could think of.

      She tried for a similar lightness, even though her voice remained strained. “I guess you’ve earned some soup. Maybe a sandwich, too, if it means you’ll stop growling at me like a hungry bear.”

      “Grrr!” he replied with a droll smirk, but the low rumble from his throat was far more sexy than it was intimidating. “I’ll stop growling at you if you promise to stop aiming shotguns at me and bringing up my less-than-noble past.”

      She twitched a grin. “Deal.”

      He placed a hand at her back to steer her inside, and while the gesture was minor in the big picture, a warm sense of reassurance flowed through her. Dean was here. He was competent, confident and in control of the situation.

      Wow, I’ve sure done a one-eighty with regard to him in the last hour, she acknowledged as she headed inside with him.

      She led him into her kitchen, where she took out a container of homemade vegetable soup, some cold cuts and condiments. “The bread is over there.” She pointed toward her counter.

      “In the bread box?” he asked, opening the wooden storage. “Imagine that.”

      She chuckled at herself. “Hmm. Yeah.” Then with a playful grin, she tipped her head. “I’m ingenious that way. Guess where I keep my cookies?”

      He faced her with an expression of exaggerated intrigue. Raising one dark eyebrow, he opened the drawer in front of him. “Cookies? You have cookies?” He moved to the oven and the dishwasher, opening each in turn, then moving closer to her. “Am I getting warmer?”

      She chuckled at his playfulness. She remembered his sense of humor from their earlier acquaintance. His ability to make her laugh had been one of the things that first drew her to him. Along with his dark good looks. And his bad-boy image.

      “Colder.”

      Despite her direction, he moved closer to her, checking more drawers. When he reached her, he grabbed the hem of her sweater and flipped it up to bare her midriff. “Are they in here?”

      With a startled gasp, she swatted his hand away, smoothing the sweater back into place. “Dean!”

      “I don’t know about you, but I think I’m getting warmer.” He edged closer, crowding her personal space. He tucked her hair behind her ear, allowing his crooked finger to brush her cheek. “What do you think, Lila? Am I warmer? Are you?”

      “Dean, I—” The rest of her sentence snagged in her throat when he leaned in to steal a soft kiss. Her head spun dizzily, and a flash of heat raced through her blood. Desire coiled in her belly, and her most intimate places throbbed with longing. Warmer? Oh, yes. In an instant, he’d managed to set her on fire.

      He placed another breath-stealing kiss on her lips, then stepped back, snapping his fingers as if inspired. “The cookie jar!”

      With a puckish smile, he crossed the floor to the opposite counter where her whimsical Kermit the Frog cookie jar sat. When he lifted the lid and spied the peanut butter cookies she’d made yesterday, he crowed, “Score!” He gobbled a cookie down in two bites, wearing a smug look. “The cookie jar. You can’t fool me, you minx.”

      Lila pressed a hand to her belly, where a host of butterflies flapped furiously. “Gee, I thought that one would stump you.”

      Outside, another loud snap echoed through the woods, and a stiff wind whistled through her eaves. The haunting noises were enough to spoil the brief moment of levity. Reminded of her situation and the looming threat to Eve, Lila’s muscles tightened again. Moving stiffly, she took a pot from her lower cabinet and set it on the stove. “So...soup? It’s vegetable beef.”

      The soft shuffle of his feet across her hardwood floor was her only warning before he stepped close behind her and set his hands on her shoulders. Her flinch spoke for itself. She was all wound up and ready to shatter.

      “Soup is fine, but I can heat it myself.” His low murmur and warm breath near her ear didn’t help calm her. If anything, it stirred her pulse to a fevered pitch.

      She bit her bottom lip, still damp from his kiss, and tried to center herself. “What happened to me needing a distraction?”

      His fingers dug into her shoulder muscles, kneading...tantalizing. “Yeah, a distraction would be good. You’re as tight as a drum.”

      Her hands shook as she pulled the lid off the soup and dumped it in the pan to heat. She closed her eyes as he continued massaging her shoulders. The deep strokes felt divine, and she had to brace her knees to keep from melting into a puddle of goo. The hypnotizing massage was muddling her thoughts. Fueling the lust in her core. I should stop him...

      Instead, she prayed he’d never quit. If she died now, she’d die happy. A small moan of bliss slipped from her throat as she let her head loll forward, giving him better access to the stiffness in her neck and upper back. Hussy! her conscience hissed.

      He chuckled softly, and his hands moved up her nape into her hair. “If you keep making sexy noises like that, I’m gonna have to kiss you again. This time, for real.”

      Finding the air in her lungs to speak was difficult, but she managed to rasp, “Dean, I can’t... I don’t want...”

      His hands stilled, dropped from her arms, and she almost wept for the lost contact. She turned to face him, ready to defend her choice, while at the same time regretting her hesitance. Damn Carl and the pain he’d caused her! This reluctance was his fault, his legacy.

      “What don’t you want? Me?” Dean ran a finger along her cheek, and she shivered. “’Cause I don’t believe that. That’s not what your body is saying.”

      He stood close enough for her chest to brush his, for her to have to tip back her head to meet his gaze, for her to note that his bister eyes grew even darker when he was aroused. What was darker brown than bister? Zinnwaldite? She gave her head a shake. Who cared? Wasn’t it enough that they were intently focused on her, that she could read his desire for her in those dark, brooding depths?

      “Okay, I’d be lying if I denied feeling something for you, but...” She wiggled loose of his grasp with a defeated sigh and stalked to the living room, stewing. “I followed my heart in the past and got burned. This time, I have to listen to my head.”

      She heard the clomp of Dean’s boots as he crossed the floor, sensed him moving up behind her.

      “Are you telling me,” he asked, “that there is a this time?”

       Chapter 5

      The road was slick. Really slick. Wayne already knew that, thanks to the transport van crash, but keeping the piece-of-crap SUV he’d hot-wired on the road was harder than he’d imagined. He’d picked the SUV thinking it would have four-wheel drive, that it would СКАЧАТЬ