Jill Shalvis - Messing With Mac

“So is she here?” She tossed her head, flipping her hair artfully around her face. “Or are we all alone?”

“Look…” He wracked his brain for her name. “Liza-”

“Uh-oh.” She affected a pout, and before he could stop her, she cupped his face in her hands. “You’re scowling. Didn’t your momma ever tell you that would give you wrinkles?”

Now she rested her body against his, making sure to rub up against the vee of his jeans like a cat in heat. “Or maybe you don’t care about wrinkles. Men never do, they don’t need to. Your laugh lines are sexy.”

Curling his fingers around her wrists, he pried her off him and held her away. “Okay, that’s enough-”

“Liza!”

Liza didn’t flinch at her sister’s voice, just stuck out that lower lip even further as she turned to face Taylor, who came out of the building, looking sophisticated and elegant as ever, even with her eyes flashing.

“Hey, sis.” Liza sidled back up to Mac. “Look what I found.”

“Stop torturing my contractor.”

“Oh, Taylor, but he’s so gorgeous. Can I keep him?” Mashing her breasts against Mac’s arm, she batted her lashes at Taylor, who looked immune. “Pretty please?”

“Knock it off.” She wore a loose and flowing white skirt, a bright red top and wide-brimmed straw hat. And looked good enough to eat.

Mac was suddenly starving. He separated himself from Liza, not an easy feat. Taylor was looking at him again, and he still didn’t have a clue to what she was thinking.

“What do you need, Liza?” she asked her sister.

“You aren’t going to even invite me in, show me around?”

“That’s not why you’re here.”

Liza tried sticking her lower lip out further but Taylor didn’t budge or soften her expression. “Money,” Liza muttered. “I need money.”

“Try asking your mother.”

“She’s your mother, too.”

Taylor just stared at Liza, not giving an inch.

“Well, she’s so damn tightfisted, what’s the point?” Liza muttered.

Taylor lifted a brow, apparently agreeing with that assessment, but she shook her head. “I have nothing to give you.”

“You never have anything to give.”

Taylor closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry about the times I wasn’t there for you when I could have been. But the truth is, now that I might want to help, I can’t. I just can’t.”

“Yeah, whatever. It’s no skin off my nose.” With one last lingering look at Mac, she spun on her heels and stalked off.

“Liza.”

Liza didn’t look back, just let herself out of the gate where she faded into the noon crowd on the streets.

Mac expected Taylor to spin on her heels as well, heading back into the building. Or toward her car. Instead, she just stood there, lost in her own world.

Eyeing her with wariness, he stepped closer. “Your sister is…interesting.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. Her eyes were filled with annoyance, temper and a good amount of heat. “She’s the baby of the family, and I’d say a spoiled rotten brat, but what she really is, is a woman-child desperate for attention.”

“That was no child.”

“No, you’re right, she’s twenty-one, old enough to know better. Did she…bother you before I got out here?”

“No.”

“Did she…sexually harass you?”

Mac let out a bark of laughter at that. “Yeah. And I’m going to sue over my good honor.”

“I’m serious, Mac.”

“I’m going to live.”

“Yes, but…” She looked at him. Looked at the sky. Then back at him. “Mac…”

A disparaging sound escaped her. “I’m trying to say I’m…”

Mac cocked his head, studying the uncomfortable Taylor with curiosity. “You’re trying to say…what?”

“I just wanted to…” She held her breath, then let out a huff and turned in a slow circle while Mac waited.

Something was sticking in her craw, but what, he had no idea. Unless…oh yeah. She was trying to apologize. What was so interesting about that was that she looked as if she might choke over it. “Problem?” he asked, suddenly feeling like smiling.

“No. I just wanted to say…”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry. ” She glared at him as if this was all his fault. “I’m sorry if Liza came onto you and made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry you had to deal with her on the job. It was unfair and…and…”

“And you’re sorry.” He grinned now, because who would have known she could look adorable. “That was pretty tough, huh? Using the s-word?”

“It’s even harder with you laughing at me,” she said, adding a look of daggers.

“Oh, no, I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.” But he kept on grinning, which pretty much made smoke come out her ears.

Her eyes were twin pools of fire. And her body language, hands fisted on her hips, shoulders back, head up… Battle ready, she was, no doubt.

Call him sick, but he liked it, he liked to see her temper flare, though he was quite certain he’d be risking certain death to admit such a thing to her. “I don’t suppose you’d try to say it again, so I can watch you squirm some more?”

“You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“Yep,” he told her back as she stalked off. “I’ve definitely heard that one before.”

Stopping, Taylor slowly turned back to face him.

She’d barely been able to resist the urge to put her hands on her hips and stomp her feet like a child at the sight of Liza snuggled up to him, but that would be churlish, even childish.

And certainly she had amused him enough al ready.

But nobody laughed at her, nobody.

And yet there he stood, hair blowing in the breeze, eyes lit with good humor-at her expense-his long, lean, rangy body relaxed as can be.

That even now she could look at him and feel a spark, feel a need to launch herself against him and hold on tight, really burned.

“Watch your pretty sandals there, Princess,” he said, pointing to where she stood, which was next to his hose. The water had started to pool.

That it was still morning didn’t matter in the summertime heat of Southern California. She hadn’t even realized how hot she was until the chilled water lapped over her toes.

She eyed the hose. Eyed Mac.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said in a warning tone that cooked her goose all the way to finish.

“Oh, I’m thinking about it.” She’d do more than think. Very carefully she set her hat down on the grass. She loved that hat and didn’t want it to get wet like Mac was going to. He was going to get very wet.

“Taylor,” he said in that low, gruff, thrillingly sexy voice.

But not only did no one laugh at her, no one told her what to do.

Ever.

Before she knew it, she’d picked up the hose and turned it on him, hitting him full in the chest.

The water was cold, which, she supposed, explained his yelp. Or it might have to do with the fact she lowered her aim just a bit.

The sound that escaped him now was a definite growl, a growl that signified an upcoming battle.

Half horrified, half exhilarated, she continued to hold the hose on him and stepped closer.

It knocked him back a step, and a group of people who’d come out of the ice-cream shop across the street whooped and hollered.

Mac ignored them, grinning a wholly evil grin at her that made her hesitate a moment.

Which is how he tackled her to the patch of grass behind her, holding her down with his big, warm, strong body sprawled over hers.

She couldn’t believe it, but he’d gotten the best of her. Her, Taylor Wellington, a woman no one got the better of, ever.

Thankfully the wood fence across the front of her property, while mostly decoration, was high enough to now block them from view of pedestrian traffic, so she didn’t have to think about that humiliation.