JENNIFER LABRECQUE - Barely Behaving

“Actually, I have very little experience with women sitting around naked. Nice or otherwise.” If she wanted to play the bad girl, he’d play her straight man.

Niall propped his arm against the fence and really looked at Tammy Cooper—a much safer proposition now that she was fully clothed. Bottle-blond hair just this side of brassy—he’d known from when she jumped up earlier she wasn’t a true blonde. Sky-blue eyes with a hint of wariness beneath all the makeup. Gauzy, white shirt with a plunging neckline and the provocative thrust of dusky nipples. Bare midriff with a gold navel ring—he had no clue why that was such a turn-on but it was—above low-slung jeans. Bare feet with a toe ring. Very sexy. “However, I hardly think that naked qualifies you as a bad girl.”

She tilted her head, her hair sweeping against her shoulder. She smelled like coconut and her golden skin glistened with suntan lotion. “Did you miss the three husbands I mentioned?” A thread of tension ran through her laughing banter.

No. He hadn’t missed her obvious attempt to warn him off. Instead of off-putting, he found it intriguing. “Duly noted.” Niall, known for his congeniality, discovered a perverse pleasure in arguing with her. “I thought you were very nice about Gigi. You didn’t throw a screaming fit when she surprised you.” Mia damn well would’ve and Cissy, the Realtor, had certainly maintained her distance. “Instead you laughed.”

His comment coaxed another laugh and a one-shouldered shrug, which did incredible things to the low neckline of her blouse, which in turn did incredible things to his breathing. She had a nice laugh—warm, throaty, sexy. Hell, she turned simple breathing into a sexy experience.

“Tiny Mite the Attack Dog was funny.” Her husky voice stroked through him, firing all those impulses inside that hadn’t fired in a long time—perhaps ever. He and Mia had shared a healthy sexual relationship but he’d never experienced this kind of reaction to a woman before. And it wasn’t just because he’d seen her naked. She exuded an innate sensuality that brought to mind sweat-slicked bodies and hot, sticky sex.

Inside her house, the phone rang. She stepped away.

“I’ll try and keep Gigi in my yard.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She winked at him. Deliberately. Provocatively. “And I’ll let you in on a secret. Even bad girls like to laugh.”

He didn’t think he’d forget it anytime soon.

INVITING NIALL Fortson over for dinner was the neighborly thing to do, she reasoned as she rubbed fresh, pungent garlic and black pepper over two thick steaks. It had nothing to do with his sense of humor, his chocolate brown eyes or the heat tremors he’d set off with a single handshake. Well, maybe it had a little to do with that, but mostly it was a matter of being neighborly. She knew all about moving into a neighborhood without a friendly welcome. It was the pits.

The man traveled light, she’d give him that. It was a small moving van and it hadn’t taken him long to unload. He’d carried in a Nautilus machine with apparent ease when she’d returned from the grocery store earlier, which explained his nicely muscled shoulders and arms.

She washed and dried her hands. She was being weird and neurotic to be so nervous about inviting him into her space. For sweet pity’s sake, it was a house, not some inner sanctum. Before she could change her mind again and weenie out, she slipped out the back door. Tammy crossed the yard to his front door and rang the bell.

Sharp, staccato barking erupted on the opposite side of the door. “It’s me. From next door.”

Surprisingly, the barking stopped. Within seconds Niall opened the door, a towel in one hand. “Hi.” A welcoming smile lit his eyes and set off an internal heat wave. “I just got out of the shower,” he added with a charming note of self-consciousness.

That visual image left her nearly breathless. She didn’t have to close her eyes to imagine hot water sluicing over his bare, male, hair-roughened body. Droplets of water clinging to his broad chest, the flat planes of his belly, the jutting line of his…

She’d been good way too long. She’d focused on her business and her house. Now she was in close proximity to a decent man and she felt like a nymphomaniac turned loose on a football team. Overwrought, oversexed and out of control.

She tried to focus. Where were they? Oh, yeah. Him. Just out of the shower.

“I see.” Damp footprints glistened against the dark hardwood floor. Niall’s wet hair stuck up as if he’d just toweled it. He’d traded in jeans and a T-shirt for a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. There was a disquieting intimacy and eroticism in his bare feet, with their masculine sprinkling of hair. There was also something inherently sexy in his tousled hair, the scent of male deodorant and warm, damp skin. “Is this a bad time?” she managed to ask.

“No. Not at all.” Gigi danced around Tammy’s legs. “Back off, Gigi,” he ordered with a shake of his head. He glanced at Tammy, his brown eyes full of laughing apology. “She likes you. Unfortunately, Gigi is obnoxious around anyone who is the object of her affections.”

“She’s fine.” Tammy found the little dog’s outgoing cuteness disconcerting—she didn’t ever want to feel attachment to an animal again—but not obnoxious.

Niall stood aside. “Come in if you’re not afraid of the boxes and the beasts.”

Tammy stepped into his house, past his male, fresh-showered scent. “I came over to offer dinner. Nothing fancy. Just steak, salad and potato.”

“How fast can I say yes?”

For an instant she thought he might scoop her up and kiss her, he looked so excited at the prospect of food. And there were worse things that could happen. He had a nice firm mouth and that intriguing scar on his upper lip.

She’d been pretty sure Niall wouldn’t turn down her invitation to a hot meal. Exactly what kind of invitation would he turn down, if any?

“That was fast enough. Why don’t you come over in about half an hour? We can wash down some chips and salsa with cold beers before dinner.”

“Cold beer?” Niall looked like he’d died and gone to heaven.

“Yep.” And if he looked any sexier, with his tousled hair and hint of a five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw, she couldn’t be held accountable for her actions.

“Hot salsa?” His voice held a ragged edge.

She swallowed hard, her breath as ragged as his tone. The connection between food and sex had never been so achingly apparent. “It’s the only way I like it. The hotter, the better.”

“I’ll be over as soon as I change and clean up a bit. I need to find my razor.” He ran a hand along his jaw and offered a rueful smile.

“You’re fine.” Unshaven and undressed would be even finer.

“It’ll get better once I unpack.”

She’d been so caught up in Niall she hadn’t paid any attention to the house. Now she openly looked around. To the left of the door, the Nautilus machine sat in the middle of the dining room beneath a wrought-iron chandelier. In the den, to her right, a worn bookcase stood sentinel to an equally worn sofa, a scarred coffee table, a floor lamp that reminded her of the one at Pops’s house, and half a dozen moving boxes. He owned some butt-ugly furniture, that was for sure.

“You travel pretty light.”

Niall shrugged and his expression tightened. He jerked a thumb toward the den. “This was stuff from my days in vet school.”

Hmmm. She’d bet a dollar to a donut the ex in Oklahoma was parked on a much better-looking sofa.

“I’d offer you a tour, but I’m sure you’ve seen the house before.”

“Actually, I’ve never been inside. An older couple lived here before. They moved out a few months after I moved in. I’ve lived next door for less than a year.” She didn’t mention it had taken almost the whole seven months she’d lived in the house for the neighbors to accept her. Tammy wasn’t sure whether they’d been disappointed or relieved when time had proven she was just another home owner, not a wild orgy hostess. The fact of the matter was, Tammy was a bit of a loner. Olivia was her only visitor, except for the time her brother Marty had stopped in to borrow twenty bucks to buy a bottle of booze.