Joss Wood - Maverick Millionaires

“How often have you wielded a hammer?”

Rory lifted her nose at his smirk. “I pound in my own hooks to hang pictures.” Well, she had once and had lost a fingernail in the process. Troy then banned her from using tools. He’d fixed her cupboard door, replaced the broken tile in her shower, fixed the leaky pipe under her sink. Troy also changed the tires on her car, made a mean chicken parmesan and removed spiders. He’d be her perfect husband if he only liked girls. And if she was even marginally attracted to him.

“Liar,” Mac said cheerfully.

His ability to see through her annoyed the pants off her. Actually, the way he looked, his deep voice, his laugh—all of it made her want to drop her pants, but that was another story entirely. “Tell me about the hurricane!”

Mac dug his fork into his salad. “I’m not sure what you want to know. There’s a hurricane approaching. It’ll probably hit land around midnight tomorrow night. There will be wind, rain. We’ll be fine.”

Rory scowled at him. “You are so annoying.”

Mac’s lips twitched. “I try.” He dumped some wine into their glasses, picked hers up and handed it to her. “Drink. We might as well enjoy the gorgeous night before we die.”

Rory rolled her eyes. “If you’re going to be a smart-ass, there has to be some smart involved. Otherwise you just sound like an ass.” She took the glass from his hand, looked into his amused eyes and sighed. “I’m overreacting, aren’t I?”

Mac lifted his glass to his lips, sipped and swallowed. “Just a little.” He sent her another quick, quirky smile. “We’ll be fine. If I thought we were in danger, I’d be making arrangements to get you out of here.”

Rory nodded and took a large sip of her wine. Okay, then. Maybe she could cope with the hurricane. She glanced at the sky. “Tomorrow night, huh?”

Mac lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip. He lingered there, pressing the fullness before moving from her lip and drifting up and over her cheekbone. She watched as his eyes deepened, turned a blue-black in the early evening light. Rory tossed a look at the beach and wished she could jump up from the table and walk—run—away.

She’d been doing that for the last week, finding any excuse to avoid him. She left his presence when she felt the spit drying up in her mouth, when she felt the first throb between her legs. Because Mac spent most of his time shirtless, she’d spent a lot of time walking away from him. She’d run to the beach, run on the beach, had started canoeing and snorkeling again. She’d also taken a lot of cold showers.

She was so pathetic.

“You can’t run off in the middle of a meal,” Mac told her, his eyes dancing.

Rory lifted her nose and tried to look puzzled. “Sorry?”

“You’ve been avoiding me, running away every time something sparks between us,” Mac said conversationally, dropping his hand from her face and popping an olive from his salad into his mouth.

“Uh—”

“You’re not alone. Every time you do therapy on me, I have to stop myself from grabbing you and kissing you senseless.”

Rory groaned and dropped her chin to her chest.

Mac twisted his fingers in hers. “Your hands touch me and I inhale your scent—you smell so damn good—and my brain starts to shut down. It’s not just you, Rory.”

Rory picked up her glass and sipped, trying to get some moisture back into her mouth. “Ah... I’m not sure what to say.”

“Avoiding each other makes it worse. It’s driving me crazy. I barely sleep at night because I want you in my bed.” Mac’s voice raised goose bumps all over her skin. “What are we going to do about this...situation, Rory?”

Rory touched the top of her lip with the tip of her tongue and her eyelids dropped to half-mast. Couldn’t he see the big fat take-me-now sign blazing from her forehead in flashing neon?

She blew out a breath and sent him a rueful shrug. Mac seemed to have a hard time taking his eyes off her mouth. He was enjoying the anticipation, too, she realized when his gaze slammed into hers, his eyes hot and filled with passion.

“How the hell am I supposed to resist you?” he demanded.

Rory rolled her shoulders and gripped his wrist.

“I don’t do relationships,” Mac growled.

“I don’t either,” Rory softly replied. “But I can’t stop wondering whether we’ll be as good together as all the kisses we’ve shared suggest.”

Mac shot up and with one step he was standing in front of her and pulling her to her feet. Keeping his injured arm hanging at his side, he used his other arm to yank her into his hard chest. His mouth slammed against hers. His tongue slid once, then twice over her lips, and she immediately opened her mouth and allowed him inside. He tasted of wine and sex and heat, and Rory pushed into him so she could feel her nipples touch his chest through the thin fabric of their cotton shirts. She sighed when his erection nudged her stomach, and she linked her hands at the back of his neck to stop herself from reaching down and encircling him. Kissing in a public place was one thing, but heavy petting was better done in a more private setting.

“You taste so damn good,” Mac muttered against her lips, his hand sliding over her butt. “And you feel even better.”

“Kiss me again,” Rory demanded, tipping her head to the side so he could change the angle of the kiss, go deeper and wetter.

“If I kiss you again I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stop,” Mac replied, resting his forehead on hers.

“Who asked you to?”

Mac half laughed and half groaned. “You’re not helping, Rorks.” He stepped back and pushed her hair, curly from the humidity, from her eyes. “Let’s take a step back here, think about this a little more. Make damn sure it’s what we want.”

Rory glanced down, saw the evidence of his want and lifted an eyebrow. “We both want it, McCaskill.”

“Yeah, but what we want is not always good for us,” Mac said, suddenly somber. He picked up her hand and rubbed the ball of his thumb across her knuckles. “We’re here for a little while longer, Rory. I don’t want to muck this up. There are consequences.”

“I’m on the pill and I expect you to use a condom.”

“Noted. But those aren’t the consequences I’m worrying about.”

Rory cocked her head. “Okay, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t want either of us to regret this in the morning, to feel awkward, to feel we’ve made a colossal mistake.” Mac looked uncharacteristically unsure of himself as he tugged at the collar of his white linen button-down shirt. “Taking you to bed would be easy, Rory. Making love to you would be a pleasure. In the morning we’re both still going to be here. You still need to treat me and we have to live together. I don’t want it to get weird between us.”

Those were all fair points. “Anything else?”

Mac looked around them, frowned and rocked on his heels. “We’re flying under the radar here but if just one person sees us, snaps a photo—we’re toast. If it gets out that you’re my physio, or that we’re sleeping together and you are my ex’s sister, it’ll be news.”

She hauled in a sharp breath. Wow, she hadn’t even considered that.

“The media will go nuts and you’ll be at the center of it, like Shay was,” Mac added.

The thought made her want to heave. She’d never felt comfortable in the limelight and couldn’t think of anything worse than being meat for the media’s grinder.

“They will wonder why you—the best physiotherapist around—are treating me and why are you doing it in secret. They’ll dig until they find out the truth,” Mac said.

Rory dropped her head to look at the floor.