Jane Linfoot - The Right Side of Mr Wrong

For crazy sakes don’t grin at her you fool!

The last thing he needed to look was welcoming, dammit.

She held her hand aloft, as if she were waiting for his smile before she let it fall, but Brando had stopped thinking about smiling, and instead had his eyes fixed on the hemline of her skirt, flirting in the buffeting wind.

Bingo!

A freak gust tore at the pleats and blasted them skywards. Before she had time to react, the air hostess skirt had twisted inside out, and was billowing, wildly, somewhere around her ears.

‘Nice one!’

Brando’s face cracked into an, involuntary smile. Just what a guy needed to brighten a dreary afternoon. Maybe there was a god after all. Stocking tops, delicious dark knickers, he had enough time to make out the pattern of the lace. He gave a nod of appraisal.

‘Twelve out of ten for that bottom – at the very least.’

A tug at the base of Brando’s stomach, and a constriction of denim in the groin area, indicated that the skirt wasn’t all that was rising.

Resist the urge to help a damsel in distress.

Given he would be leaving as-soon-as, there was no point in complicating the issue. He looked away. Next time he looked she was bent double, her arms wrapped around her knees, skirt firmly in place, feet solidly planted, but her body was gyrating.

She almost looked as though her feet were …

It took two blinks for Brando to know she was about to lose her balance, and one more for him to shoot across the grass, and grab hold of her before she crashed to the ground.

‘Watch out!’

It was a shout, but the helicopter blades spun his words away.

The fact that he’d ended up cradling her bottom in his crotch was incidental. The important thing was he had saved her the embarrassment of a face-plant. Her body jack-knifed against him, stiffened, then the warmth of her soft buttocks passed straight through her skirt pleats, and set his groin on fire.

‘Sorry about … ’

Damn. Now he was pulling her onto a huge hard-on, and the fact that he could feel her breasts folding onto his hands somewhere round her front was making matters worse. From the vibrations in her torso, she was obviously saying something. Still grasping her tightly he pressed his ear closer to her mouth, struggling to hear what she said over the roar of the engines. He was rewarded with a brush with a pillow-soft cheek, and a spiky jab in the eye from her specs.

‘What are you playing at?’

Was that what she was saying?

He couldn’t be sure. He tried to disentangle himself, but felt her lean into him. What the hell? She was pointing to her feet now, twisting, gesticulating, shouting words he still failed to grasp.

He looked down.

Lots of mud, all over her shoes. And those surely had to be eff-me shoes, if ever he’d seen them. And right this moment, his blood was all heading one place, making damn sure he was ready to oblige. Yes Siree!

He needed to get a grip here. A grip of the situation, rather than the woman would be useful. It took a moment to disengage his brain from his libido, then it hit him.

‘You’re stuck?’

She grimaced at him, stuck fast and unable to move with both hooker-high heels firmly impaled in his lawn.

Through the huge lenses of her glasses, her panicky eyes were smoky purple. And she smelled of summer. That was it. Summer.

Summer and sex.

‘Hang on to me!’

He dipped down, shivered as her hands closed around his head to steady herself, then he prised one foot at a time out of her shoes.

And not just any sex, hot sex.

His libido thrust into overdrive, and once more he made a valiant attempt to disengage it, as he wrenched her shoes out of the ground, stood up fast, and rammed them into her hand.

‘I’m just leaving … ’ He was yelling, but she shrugged back at him.

Jeez, he’d come here to get in the chopper, get the hell out of here, or better still, to wave the woman back to wherever she’d flown in from. So why wasn’t he pressing ahead and doing just that? He blinked away the miniscule twitch in his left eye. That tiny giveaway. His unfailing, gut-fuelled instinct kicked in.

‘Looks like this is the only way … ’

As he bent his knees, braced himself, and grasped hold of his air hostess, he saw her eyes go bright with surprise.

When the hell had she become his air hostess ?

Up close now, he clocked the strawberry curve of her lips as they parted in astonished protest, and knew he was on the right track. He swung her easily into his arms, and turned, and strode towards the house, with his jaw set. Whatever was happening to him, he was determined to shake it off fast.

* * *

Feet dangling.

Cheek rammed unceremoniously against the rocky shoulder of a man who smelled delectable, and seemed in no hurry to put her down.

Not quite how Shea had planned her entrance to Edgerton Manor.

Her heart was still pounding from the shock of being literally swept off her feet, but at least that had solved the immediate problem of how to cross the sea of mud and reach the house without damaging her shoes further.

‘You can put me down now, thanks.’

For a fleeting moment she was dizzied by the whole male proximity thing. She’d almost forgotten how it felt. Come to think of it, she’d never been man-handled like this. There was something appalling about the raw thrill vibrating through her. She didn’t have herself down as a sucker for caveman tactics.

‘I said you can put me down!’

She forced her eyes beyond the line of the sensuously stubbled jaw inches above her face, and caught a view of a ceiling as high as the sky, and the twinkliest chandelier she’d ever seen. When she looked back again, he was motionless, staring down at her, and her gaze locked onto slate-hard grey eyes and a quizzical smirk that made her stomach flip.

‘If you insist on putting your head in the wolf’s mouth, you can expect to get bitten!’ His growl was rough as bitter chocolate. ‘Your choice. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’

Before she had time to work out what he meant by that, the world swung, and he lowered her legs, setting her down gently. Then backed away.

So much for keeping a professional distance.

Shea wriggled, took a minute to wrestle her crumpled jacket into approximately the right places, smooth her box-pleats into order. Muddy feet, or muddy shoes? She went with the stilettos, and gained the immediate five inch boost she needed.

‘That’s more like it!’

She flicked a tentative smile at the guy who had retreated a pace or two, but was still watching her with chilling determination, a large dose of disdain and an even larger dose of mental undressing. And the way his eyes locked onto her boobs brought her nipples out to graze the inside of her bra cups. She gave a shudder, as she looked back at him. Her eyes took in a broken-down t-shirt which she already knew covered the hardest of bodies, jeans ripped through in places, and low-slung, pretty much to the point of indecency. She pulled herself up sharply for letting her gaze linger a second too long on the most indecent bit, chided herself for the shiver rush that zinged down her spine when she took in the size of things in that area, becoming more defined by the moment. She shuddered again when she remembered she might be slightly responsible for that.

Crikey! Shea didn’t know where this lusty inner woman had appeared from, but she needed to be slapped back into line, and fast.

‘And what an amazing chandelier!’

She flipped a random space-filler comment, and a sparkly smile in his direction, hoping to nudge a response, as she assessed him. Way too good looking for his own good, and everyone else’s, not that his threadbare appearance fooled her. Not only was there the flagrant mental undressing thing going on, but there was a super-arrogance to his swagger, the kind of major, understated confidence, that was only ever claimed by hugely successful men. Whatever promises had been made to her about his absence, the vagabond who studied her now, with that mix of veiled animosity and contempt, not to mention the double dose of white heat, had to be Brando Marshall.