A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(54)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Jessie gave him a withering look. He tucked it back in his pocket. Blue hair or not, Jessie loved Brady as dearly as she loved Shelby. Unlike Shelby, who was wont to hang back and let life pass her by, Brady’s flaw was trying to stir it up if it was too boring for his taste, which was a good deal of the time.

It was a definite that Brady would leave Cuttersville and test the waters somewhere more exciting, and Jessie was resigned to that. The trick was to see that he didn’t screw his life up before he graduated high school.

Brady pushed her copper flour canister over and vaulted onto her countertop. She didn’t even want to think about where the butt of his jeans had been before he’d sat them on her counter. Where she planned to fix dinner in a few hours.

“So you think Boston will really want to stay in Cuttersville?” Brady acted like no one sane would consider that.

“Men will do strange things for love,” Jessie told him, hoping she was right on this one. As sure as she was that Boston was the right man for her granddaughter, she didn’t want to be wrong and have Shelby hurt. “Besides, this is where his job is.”

“For a while anyways. Unless Amanda has her dad assign him here permanently. Then he’d have to quit his job if he wanted to go back to Chicago.”

“Except that would be manipulative.” Jessie headed for the refrigerator. If Brady was going to hang around all afternoon, she might as well feed him. The kid was a goat—he’d eat anything, and all of it in large quantities.

“Isn’t calling the TV channel manipulating?” Brady fiddled with a blue tip of hair.

It was possible. “If we didn’t call, someone else would have.”

Brady laughed and hopped off the counter. Next thing Jessie knew, he had her up in the air in a big bear hug. That was the injustice of being five foot two and having a grandson almost six feet tall and not even fully grown yet.

“Gran, remind me never to go against you.” He kissed the top of her head, messing up her combed-out bob haircut.

“You remember that,” she told him, unable to resist smiling and patting his cheek. “Now set me down, damn it.”

Chapter Seventeen

Boston had the nerve to follow her into her bedroom. Shelby was determined not to talk to him, but when he came up the stairs in the Yellow House and down the hall and right on into her room like he had a right, she whirled on him.

“Do you mind?” Lord almighty, the man was so annoying.

His eyebrow rose. “What? I’m just trying to help you.” Reaching out, he plucked a lacy pillow off her easy chair, which had been reupholstered in a pink floral chintz the summer she was sixteen.

She’d loved that chair and had requested this room in Gran’s house after her divorce solely for the pink chintz. Now Boston was fondling the pillow and she knew she’d never be able to sit there again without thinking of him. Remembering their night together.

The man was disturbing her peace.

The last thing in the world she wanted was to have him invading her own private personal space and cluttering it up with memories of him. When he left, which he would, and soon, she wanted to forget him. To shove him in a little box in her heart marked PASSION, USE SPARINGLY, and keep it locked for eternity.

“I don’t need your help.” Shelby bent and grabbed a duffel bag from under her bed, wondering if keeping the tour going was worth the dangers of spending the weekend with him.

Truthfully, though, she wasn’t doing it for the tour, which could fold and not really hurt her in the end. She had Danny to go back to, after all, or her gran would help her get back on her feet. The real reason she was agreeing to have cameras record her every move was because she was into masochism and wanted to spend this one last weekend with Boston.

Not having sex. Just being together.

Boston made a low growling sound in the back of his throat.

Whirling, she caught him staring at her behind, a feral gleam in his eye.

Shelby stuck the overnight bag behind her back, so her butt was covered with olive canvas.

“That just makes your br**sts stick out,” he told her.

Before she could finish a gasp, he moved to her dresser and started inspecting the objects scattered over it. Her fingers twitched with the urge just to grab everything he picked up right back out of his hand.

It was absolutely unbelievable to her that Gran had not said a single word in protest when Boston had followed her upstairs. Her grandmother had always been a stickler for Shelby not having boys in her bedroom. But then again, she was a grown woman and Gran had offered birth control advice.

“You’re very neat.” He said it like he was surprised.

Shelby went to her closet and pulled a couple of T-shirts off metal hangers and stuffed them in her duffel bag. “Why does that shock you?”

“You don’t exactly treat your clothes with reverence.” He nodded at the duffel bag.

The unmistakable feeling of a blush stole over her cheeks. “Some of us wear clothes to keep from getting sunburned and to show a measure of modesty, not to make a fashion statement.”

His lip twitched. “There’s functional and then there’s just ugly.”

Shelby wanted to get her bras and panties from the dresser, but there was no way she was doing that with him standing right there. She nudged him out of the way, opened her shorts drawer, and pulled out a pair.

“Of course, I’d be happiest to see you out of your clothes.”

Though his words sent heat rippling through her, she glared up at him. “Are you trying to talk me out of this?”

“Of course not.” He caressed the ceramic angel on her dresser. “I like seeing this side of you.”

“The one that’s griping at you? You see that all the time.”

“No, this softer side. Angels, antique perfume bottles, floral chairs, and a lacy bedspread.” Without warning, he opened the top drawer with one sharp yank. “I bet you have whimsical panties, don’t you?”

Somehow instinctively he’d picked the one drawer Shelby didn’t want him in, and she refused to let him see the satin push-up bras and barely there panties shoved to the back. Moving slowly so as not to alert him, she scoffed. “You’ve seen my panties. They’re cotton and I’ve never thought of cotton as whimsical.”

She started to pick out her biggest, softest, most faded pair when Boston’s big hand slid past hers. Those hands with the sprinkling of dark hair on the backs of them shifting through all her underwear disturbed her. That seemed nearly as intimate as sex.