Taming Tess, page 6
"Look here, St. John,” she lobbed back at him. “Maybe if you hadn't stranded me in the boonies..."
"Boonies? Stranded?” He snorted. “I left you sleeping in a warm bed and..."
"You looked in on me while I slept?” A strangely pleasant sensation tickled her ribs.
"And the phone number of the local cab company.” He plucked the sticky note off the table and flapped it in her face. “Here."
She snatched the note from his fingers and flung it aside. “Their fleet of one is getting a new transmission."
"Is that my fault? Does that give you the right to trash my home?” He squatted and started scraping toast remnants off the floor.
"I didn't trash your house,” she protested, surveying the top of his head for bumps and stitches. “I made a bit of a mess. I'll clean it up later. Just drive me to town so I can get my car."
He reared up before her with a palm full of blackened crumbs. “You expect me to drive you to town ... now?"
"Yes. Now. I want my car, and I want it tonight."
He shook his head and headed for the sink. “It's late. I'm hungry, and I'm tired."
"And I've been stuck here all day.” She trailed him, perusing the contours of his close-fitting jeans for tears and dried blood.
"Your keys inside the house?” he asked as he brushed his hands off over the wastebasket under the sink.
"Of course."
He nudged the cabinet door shut with a perfectly working knee and faced her. “It's dark and they've turned off the power to The Castle."
"I'll use a flashlight."
"A flashlight? With your phobia about the dark?"
"I don't have a phobia,” she insisted. “I just don't like the dark."
He stared at her.
"Okay,” she said. “Just take me shopping. I need clothes and toiletries."
He brushed past her, giving her a good chance to sniff for hospital antiseptic. “Get out of bed before noon tomorrow and I'll drive you to your car. You can shop all you want then."
She wheeled after him. “I didn't sleep till noon. And I refuse to wait until tomorrow for a change of clothes. I've been in this shirt of yours twenty-four hours straight."
He did a strange little stutter step, then opened the fridge, bent, and peered inside. “Looks like you cleaned out at least one thing today, Princess."
"Don't call me Princess,” she muttered, distracted by his backside waving in the air as he pushed condiment jars about the refrigerator shelves. She'd admired that narrow-hipped tush countless times during the renovation, even daydreaming about cupping those buns—
He straightened and caught her staring. “What are you looking at?"
She blinked at him, feeling every bit the petty thief caught with her fingers in the cookie jar. If he didn't stop staring at her, the heat blossoming in her cheeks would turn into a full-blown blush. And, hell, she never blushed.
But she would now ... if he kept staring at her ... if she didn't answer him. Damned thing was, she couldn't think of anything to tell him but the truth.
"When you weren't home by dark, I called your fire-starting cousin's house looking for you."
"It wasn't Raymond's cigar that started the fire."
"Whatever. His son said you were at the hospital. I was looking you over for injuries,” she finished, figuring that was truth enough.
A smile played across Roman's lips. “Why Princess, I wouldn't have figured you for the maternal type."
She let the Princess reference slide this time. But maternal? Her? Never in a million years, especially not where a contractor with a butt you could bounce a quarter off was concerned. And certainly not with a man whose eyes sang soul mate to a woman who intended to never marry.
Tess folded her arms across her chest and lifted her chin at him. “Don't get a swelled head over it, St. John. My only concern was that you might not have told anybody you'd left me here, and I'd be stranded until Penetti's Cab Company repairs its fleet."
His smile fled and he growled, “In that case, I don't imagine the fact I haven't had any supper yet means anything to you."
* * * *
"It's this or nothing, Princess,” Roman muttered, the giant letters of The Bargain Mart bathing the truck windshield and Tess’ face in harsh light. It suited the grousing she'd done over his truck's lack of air conditioning and his stopping on the way at the drive-through for a burger and fries. It highlighted her pouting lip—that full lower lip with its slight cleft at midline. Damned if that lip didn't just beg to be touched.
"This is the only place open this late where you can get clothes and stuff,” he added.
"Then make like a gentleman and open my door,” she shot back at him.
The woman was jerking his chain. Like Ms. Used-to-five-star accommodations wasn't capable of opening her own door. How could he have mistaken for one second this woman's selfish need for concern? Back at the house when he'd caught her eyeing him up and she'd said she was looking for injuries, he'd liked it. He'd liked that she cared. Too bad it turned out she didn't, right?
Because of the little crease he'd seen pinched above the bridge of her nose when he'd caught her checking him out. That line had had worry written all over it. It just hadn't occurred to him that her concern might not be for him.
He sucked the last traces of burger juice from his fingers, balled up its empty wrapper, and raised an eyebrow at her. “Open your door? I thought you were a die-hard woman's libber?"
She glared back at him. “Men who use women's lib as an excuse not to open a lady's door are clods who didn't open doors before women's lib."
He stuffed the burger wrapper into his empty drink cup, opened his door, climbed down from the truck, traipsed around the front bumper, and opened her door. She headed for the store. He headed back toward the driver's side of the truck.
"I need you with me,” she called over her shoulder, the oversized T-shirt swinging back and forth across her tight, little derriere.
"What? The automatic doors don't open fast enough for you?"
She didn't slow. She just held up her arms and kept marching toward the store, barking out, “Do you see a purse? No, you don't, because my purse and credit cards are still in my house."
He groaned and headed after her, her with the kind of hip movement even a shapeless T-shirt couldn't hide. Sweat slid down his spine. At least the store would be air-conditioned.
He tossed his paper cup in the trash receptacle in front of the store. Inside, she strutted past the shopping carts. Good. That had to mean they wouldn't be there long. Right?
She headed straight for the clothing section and stopped first at a rack of skimpy undergarments. She selected panties made of a slick looking fabric, their high-cut leg openings trimmed with wide bands of lace. She tossed them at him with a flippant, “They aren't silk, but they'll do for now."
"Maybe if you took only one pair instead of three, they wouldn't be too heavy for you to carry,” he said, fumbling to grip the panties by their hangers—to keep his fingers out of her pants.
She gave him a smirk and moved on to a rack of filmy nightwear. His cock twitched. There was only one thing worse than lying in his bed thinking about her asleep in the room above his in his T-shirt and that was thinking of her asleep in one of those frilly contraptions.
Okay, there was another thing worse. Thinking of her asleep in nothing at all. But right now, he needed to deal with the effect those lacy nighties she fingered was having on his deprived male parts.
He plucked a full-length nightgown from the clearance rack and held it up. “How about this one?"
She eyed the nightgown with distinct disdain. “Polyester may suit your type of woman, but it's not my style."
"What you mean, my type of woman?"
"The marrying kind."
"As opposed to your kind?"
The big brown eyes narrowed at him, looking wounded. Then she blinked and the sharp edge of her voice sliced through the refrigerant-cooled air between them.
"Yes, St. John. As opposed to a woman like me who chooses career over marriage—a woman who isn't about to hide her talents behind a husband's ego."
She flicked aside the slinky nightgown and moved on, grumbling, “Is it too much to ask for something in cotton?"
"How about your mouth wrapped up like a mummy's?” he muttered under his breath.
She glanced back at him, an odd look in her eyes. “Guess I can make do with your oversized shirts for the time being."
It took all he had to stifle a groan. She in his tee. Why did she have to look so damn cute in his shirt, her little tits tenting the cotton threads, the oversized neck allowing it slip off her shoulder as she slept? He should never have looked in on her this morning. She'd looked like a helpless waif and a pixy all rolled into one. Too bad he knew she wasn't either.
By the time the fifteen minutes to closing announcement crackled over the PA system, she'd found herself a lace-trimmed cotton camisole among a bevy of what she considered necessities, and he was beginning to feel like an overloaded coatrack.
"Come on,” he urged. “They're closing."
She held up two shorts and crop top sets. “Which color best suits me?"
The pink set made him think of cotton candy ... and about nibbling the sweet confection off her body.
"The gray set,” he snapped.
She smiled slyly. “I think I'll take both. After all, it's not like I'm paying for them."
"I'm paying for basics,” he called as she traipsed off toward the front of the store. “Just the basics."
She didn't answer. He followed her. At least she was headed in the direction of the cash registers.
But she ducked into the cosmetics department. Shoulders drooping, he followed as she piled herbal this and pomegranate that onto the clothes already in his arms.
"You don't need all this stuff,” he grumbled as he eyed the bottles and jars identified as deep cleansing lotions, skin softening creams, and pore tightening astringents.
"Trying to save money, St. John?"
"I could remind you that most people don't have trust funds to fall back on. I should point out that, in the real world, money doesn't grow on trees—that I work hard for the dollars you are so cavalierly spending."
"Cavalierly?” She hitched one mink-brown eyebrow onto her high, flawless brow.
"Besides...” He put his face close to her scrubbed clean one with its sun kissed cheeks and bare, burnished lips. “You don't need that gunk, because you're beautiful without it."
* * * *
He'd called her cosmetics, “gunk". She'd concede what the discount store sold wasn't the best line of products.
But what stayed with Tess long after she'd left Roman signing the credit card receipt at the checkout wasn't the gunk part of his comment. Nor even his lecture about money. What she couldn't stop thinking about was that he'd called her beautiful ... without make-up.
Tess lay on the lumpy bed in the bedroom above Roman's, the warm glow of the Winnie the Pooh nightlight casting soft shadows across the slanted ceiling. In the city, a woman didn't step outside without her face made up. Hell, women in her circle didn't leave their bedroom suites without their noses powdered and lips lined. A chore for a woman who liked to jog in the mornings. She had to either apply make-up twice or sneak out of the house without her father catching sight of her, at least until she'd bought her own condo and moved out.
"A lady,” her father had too often lectured, “does not appear in public in disarray."
To him, disarray meant anything less than a face lathed with enough make-up to crack should it display anything other than Stepford wife placidness or so much as a hair out of place. Tess couldn't remember ever seeing her mother without the requisite helmet hair. She couldn't picture her father touching her mother's sprayed-to-brittle-perfection hair, either.
Roman St. John, on the other hand, was a man who would run his fingers through a woman's hair. Oh, yeah. He'd thread his long, thick, blunt-tipped fingers through a woman's hair, all right. Tess dozed off thinking how Roman could cup a woman's head in his broad palm and caress her from head to toe without giving a single thought to whether or not he mussed her hair.
If only she dared let the contractor with the bed big enough to share with a wife run his fingers through her hair ... and over her body.
* * * *
The thump on the ceiling above his head woke Roman. But, when he lifted his head from the pillow, all he heard was the low peel of distant thunder and the wind whistling under the eaves. A branch of the hundred-year-old Norway pine scraped the north side of the house. He really must find time to prune that thing back.
He yawned and rolled over, too sleepy to give further thought to what had hit the floor in the bedroom above his. Even the flicker of heat lightning burning between the slats of the window blinds elicited little more from him than a sleepy blink. But the yelp underscoring that flash sent him rolling for the light on his nightstand.
Click. Click. The light switch turned between his finger and thumb, but no light came on. The power was out.
Upstairs, his unwanted houseguest shrieked.
Retrieving a flashlight from the nightstand drawer, he jumped out of bed, sprinted up the steps, charged into Tess’ room, and drove his shin into something—something that yelped and cursed him. The next thing he knew, he was hitting the floor with an “Oomph!” and the flashlight was rolling off under the bed.
He groaned. “You really like to hurt me, don't you, Princess?"
"You're the one who came charging in here without knocking,” she groused from somewhere in the vicinity of the doorway.
He rolled onto one hip and located her with the teetering beam of the flashlight. She sat on the floor between him and the half-open door, rubbing her shoulder, the smooth fabric of the newly purchased camisole like a second skin across her flat stomach ... and the irregular rise of her navel.
She had a ring in her belly button. He could see it outlined by the pale, thin fabric. A navel ring. He should be appalled, squeamish at the very least.
But he wasn't.
No. That hidden treasure teased him, made him want to touch the ridge it formed in the pliant fabric—to trace a fingertip along its semicircle and across Tess’ pierced belly button. It made him want to taste the cool circlet with his tongue.
To taste her.
The muscles low in his groin gave a little yank. Tess would laugh her audacious ass off if she knew how much she tempted him.
He rolled onto his backside and drew a leg up in front of himself in case his misbehaving body revealed too much against the smiley-face pajama bottoms.
"You okay?” he managed without sounding like a man in lust.
"You ran into me. What do you think?"
Her cryptic tone planed some of the edge off his desire. He leaned back against the brace of his arms and sighed. “I heard you scream. I came up here to see what was wrong."
"I didn't scream,” she protested. “I never scream."
"Okay. Fine. I heard a noise and came to investigate,” he retorted. “What are you doing on the floor in the dark, anyway?"
"That ridiculous nightlight of yours burned out. I was making my way to the switch for the overhead light."
She glanced over her shoulder at the wall switch by the door. But it was her fingers worrying the thin strap of the camisole she'd purchased tonight that, much to his chagrin, held his attention. He'd like to show her what to do with that frail strap holding up the front of her camisole. He'd like to peel if off her shoulder and let the camisole fall to her waist, exposing her firm little breasts. He'd like to roll her tight nipples between his fingertips then suck them hard into his mouth. But of course, he wouldn't touch Tess if she were the last woman on earth.
"Sounded more like you fell out of bed,” he pressed.
She blinked. “Just turn on the light and leave me alone."
"Can't."
Her fingers tripped against the narrow strap of the camisole, sending it over the crest of her shoulder. The front of the camisole caught on her high, round breasts. “What's the matter, St. John, fingers out of joint because I made you carry a few things through The Bargain Mart for me?"
He tore his gaze from the sliver of fabric drooping down her arm—from the lacy edge of the camisole clinging to the rise of her breast and the thin, pliant fabric molding to her dark, pebbled areolas.
Be careful what you wish for.
"My fingers work just fine,” he muttered. Among other things, he silently added, acutely aware his blood pooled in a dangerously low place. “The power is out."
Her eyes lifted at him, wide and ... apprehensive? Then she looked away again, muttering, “In that case, you can leave, but the flashlight stays."
Her and her fear of the dark.
"If you're thinking of leaving the flashlight on all night,” he said, “forget it. The batteries won't last."
"Ooh,” she simpered, her dark gaze now anything but frightened. “Should the frail, little woman beg the big, strong man to stay and protect her?"
Where was the superglue when a man needed it?
"I thought maybe you hurt yourself. So shoot me."
She rolled her eyes.
Yeah. Superglue for her mouth and a blindfold for those eyes. That's what he needed.
"I have a kerosene lantern downstairs,” he muttered, silently lamenting that he was incapable of being cruel enough to leave her with a flashlight that would burn out. “I'll get it for you."
She hugged her knees up against her chest—that utterly feminine chest he'd already mapped with his eyes. “Fine."
"Stay put,” he ordered, levering himself onto his feet, trying to figure out what it was about the way she hugged herself that didn't quite match the fight that had blazed in her eyes. “I wouldn't want to trip over you again."
"Just go get the lantern, St. John."
He sighed and took a step toward the door just as a volley of thunder punched the air. Tess skidded backward on her butt into the door with such force the door slammed shut. He stopped in front of her.
