A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(24)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“What’s the matter? You should be relieved.” Shelby hooked the rocker with her foot and dragged it over to the door. She propped it under the doorknob and said, “You should get bricks for all the doors to keep them open.”

Did she not notice something? That they had been just about naked, on the verge of some very hot and sweaty sex, and now they were . . . vergeless? “I’ll do that,” he said wryly, forgoing his shorts and heading to the door in his boxers.

Not that Shelby noticed. She was already halfway down the stairs. “Oh Lord, it’s quarter after ten! Gran will be wondering where I am since I didn’t even take the car.”

“You’re going to walk home?”

“Sure.” She shrugged and stopped in the front hall.

“Absolutely not. I’ll drive you. Just let me get my pants on.” He turned back toward his bedroom.

“I’ll be fine. This is Cuttersville, not Chicago.”

“Serial killers and ra**sts live everywhere. Don’t you dare leave this house.” Boston had no problem picturing her strolling off without him. He shoved a leg in his shorts and hopped back into the hall.

“Alright.” She cocked her head at him from the bottom of the steps. “Why are you so grumpy?”

He buttoned his fly and jogged down the steps, feeling beyond grumpy. He felt downright pissed off. “How can you ask that? We were interrupted in the middle of something I was enjoying quite a lot, if you hadn’t noticed, and you don’t look the least bit bothered by the fact that we had to stop.”

Shelby flushed. “Oh, well, I am. It’s just I thought it might be our only chance to get out of that room for who knows how long, so I had to act and grab the door before it shut again.” She patted his arm. “But we can start back up where we left off.”

It felt suspiciously like she was consoling him. But he’d take what he could get. “Where?”

“Anywhere without a door. Like here in the hall,” she suggested innocently. “Of course, the front door could lock, so I suppose we’d have to prop that open.”

Boston sighed, all horny hope evaporating. “Shelby, I am not going to make love to you standing in the foyer with the front door open for anyone to walk by.”

“We could turn the light off. And nobody walks by here anyway except Mrs. Caruthers and her blind dachshund.”

Well, terrific. At least the dog wouldn’t see them. “No.”

“Then how about your car?”

An image of Harriet and Clyde Danforth in a rocking Chevy Nova leaped to mind. An involuntary shudder passed through him. “Absolutely not.”

Shelby pulled on the rubber band holding her hair back, adjusting it so her heavy hair lifted higher on her head. “I guess we’ll just have to wait, then. We’ll be better prepared next time with a cell phone, food, and a means to escape if it happens again. Stuff like that.”

“It’s not going to happen again.”

Disappointment crossed her face. “You don’t want to try again?”

It was gratifying to see she was finally acting like she’d enjoyed their time on the bed at least a little. “No, I mean we’re not going to get locked in again. It was just a coincidence that it happened twice.”

Shelby raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips like he was an alcoholic in denial. “Alrighty, then, if you say so. But I’m not setting foot in this house anymore without a cell phone, a bag of snacks, and a big old brick for emergency purposes.”

“We could go to your place.”

Her jaw dropped. “I live with my grandmother!”

It was on his tongue to suggest he could sneak in her window when he stopped himself. He was not a sex-driven teenager. He was only eight years away from forty and surely he could control himself.

Shelby reached up to fuss with her hair again, and her shirt slid past her waistband. That sliver of golden flesh had him doubting his control.

“Aren’t you going to put on a shirt?”

“No.” And while he took her elbow protectively and shuttled her into his BMW gently, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything else.

It didn’t matter. Shelby chattered the whole way to her grandmother’s, which was all of three minutes away. She hopped out of the car and waved him off, but he left his car running and got out, following her onto the porch.

After she had unlocked the door and opened it, she turned to smile at him. So sweet, so honest, so lacking in guile.

He was on her, moving so fast she let out a cry of surprise that he stifled with his mouth. He kissed her over and over again, until her hands fell slack and together they stumbled back against the front door, slamming the doorknob into the interior wall.

Somehow he’d inserted himself down her shorts, cupping her firm cheeks and grinding her against him.

The porch light went on, blinding him and sending him leaping back, feeling and probably looking guilty as hell.

“Sorry.”

Shelby clung to the door and pressed her wet lips closed. The bright fluorescent glow of the bulb over her head sent shadows across her pretty face. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”

“Well, good night,” he said, feeling confused and aroused and stupid. What the hell was he doing?

“G’night.”

Boston wasn’t behaving at all the way he did normally, he realized as he got back into his car. Forcing himself not to glance back at Shelby standing vulnerable and beautiful on the old white porch, he backed out of the drive. He was professional, driven, reserved. He held his personal feelings back. For the most part, he lived for his job and was solitary outside of work.

It had always suited him just fine.

But now he was distracted, his mind shifting away from work the minute he walked out of that plant. And right on to Shelby.

It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t anything special, just a little dust-covered unambitious local girl who needed a stylist to hack away half that hair.

But she was real, and honest, and giving, and the sexiest woman he had ever encountered in his life, and he was starting to think that he could tell himself otherwise, but deep down he knew she was very special.

Which meant he could not take advantage of her. He couldn’t offer her anything beyond a quick hot affair, and that wasn’t fair to Shelby. She deserved better. She deserved love, and he wasn’t capable of giving that.

Not to mention that this was her town, and if they fooled around, everyone would know. He would leave and it wouldn’t matter to him, but it would matter to her. People would talk about it here for a long time, and that was something he just didn’t want Shelby to have to endure.