A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(9)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Clearly the lack of air circulation in the enclosed room, and the irritation of being stuck in a room for no logical reason, had him irrational. Reduced to basic human instincts. Air. Water. Sex. Lots of sex. With Shelby Tucker.

“Mom, I can’t get ahold of Gran. I’m stuck in the parlor of the White House and I need you to go get Gran’s key.” Shelby rolled her eyes as she listened for a second. “It is not my fault. I didn’t do anything! And I’m sorry that you have chicken on the grill, but I’m your only daughter and I’m going to die of suffocation, starve, or burst my bladder if you don’t get here.”

There was a pause and Boston didn’t harbor much hope for rescue coming in the form of Shelby’s mother.

“And maybe you can ask Dave to bring his ladder or something, and he can try and open the windows from the outside if you can’t get the door open.”

Another pause. “I know! Geez.”

Then Shelby moved the phone away from her ear and glared at it. “How do you turn this thing off?”

Boston stepped over to her and held his hand out. She was kind of cute when she was annoyed, but she also looked like, if given provocation, she could ram his phone up his nose. “Do you really have to go to the bathroom?”

She nodded, placing the phone in his hand with warm fingers. “I think it’s just psychological, though.”

But her knees squeezed back together tightly.

And he felt the incredibly ridiculous, male urge to comfort her, reassure her that he would get her out of there, beating the door down with his bare hands if he had to. He had never dated women who needed or wanted protection. He dated women who did Pilates and earned six figures without breaking a nail or a sweat.

Shelby didn’t look like she needed protection either. But he felt the urge nonetheless and it disturbed the hell out of him. He was in Cuttersville solely for the purpose of getting back out, and it was not supposed to affect him. He liked the way he was, no change needed in his life.

Still, after rattling the door lock without luck for the eleventh time, he paced in front of Shelby. “I know what you mean. I’ve been sitting in here for an hour working, totally comfortable, and now that I know I can’t open the windows, I feel like it’s ten degrees hotter.” He picked at his T-shirt just thinking about it. It was at least eighty in the parlor.

“You can take your shirt off if you want. I don’t mind,” Shelby said.

Boston stopped pacing. That sounded . . . suggestive. Or wishful thinking on his part. He glanced at Shelby. A faint pink was creeping up her neck. Definitely suggestive.

“Sorry, that didn’t sound right.”

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it,” he lied. If there was one thing he was good at, it was lying to soothe other people. Half his job consisted of soothing clients. Only none of them were cute in denim shorts, and soothing had never sounded so appealing.

Damn, he needed to get the hell away from her. “Is someone coming to try the windows? Can’t we just call the fire department or something?”

Shelby looked broadsided by his idea. “I never thought of that. It’s not an emergency or anything, but they sent guys out to help Dody Farnsworth unlock her car when she left the keys in the ignition and shut the door. I’ll call them and they should be able to get us out one way or another.”

Then she grinned at him. “I guess that’s why you get paid the big bucks, huh?”

He laughed. “Not big enough yet, but I’m working on it.”

Shelby snorted. “Bigger than me.”

“The Haunted Cuttersville Tour doesn’t have you living in the lap of luxury?”

“No, just in Gran’s Yellow House and that’s charity because we’re related.”

“Then why do you do the tour?” He didn’t think it sounded like a whole lot of fun, tromping gawking tourists through houses day after day.

“Because it pays better than anything else I’m qualified to do, which is nothing. Cuttersville High trained me to do exactly what I did, become a farmer’s wife. Only I didn’t stay a farmer’s wife, and I’m not book smart, so I won’t go to college and torture myself.” She shrugged. “I could get a job at the factory, I guess, but I’m not ready for that. Too . . . restrictive.”

Boston had heard of people like Shelby. Had even met one or two. He just couldn’t fathom how their brains functioned so differently from his. His entire life was consumed by his career and its success. If he stopped moving, stopped pushing and shoving and striving, he wasn’t sure what in the hell would happen. He thought it was possible he would melt.

“So why don’t you move to Cincinnati or Columbus and get a better-paying job?”

That earned two eyebrows shooting up under her wispy brown bangs. “Because my family is here. I belong here. I’ll never leave.”

That said, she picked up his phone again and dialed.

“Jessie, we can’t do that.” Carl Hagan gave her a stern look and crossed his arms. “I’m sending John and Howie out to the house.”

“And after all I’ve done for you, not even a simple request is being respected.” Jessie crossed her arms right back. When she had gotten a frantic call from Susan, Shelby’s mother, moaning about Shelby in trouble again and burned chicken, Jessie had called her own voice mail and heard the message from Shelby. Shelby was trapped with the hunk—rich hunk—Boston Macnamara. Gee, what a shame.

Sounded like the ghosts were on her side in this match-making business, because she knew for a fact that the door to the parlor didn’t lock, hadn’t in thirty years, and that every one of those windows should open.

Four or five hours trapped alone together could only be a good thing for Shelby and Boston. But Carl was acting like he was going to race the whole fire department out there and bust things up before it even got interesting.

Carl was only ten years her junior, and twice her width, but she had babysat his shiny backside once upon a time while Hitler was racing around Europe, and she’d be damned if he was going to pull professional rank over her.

“Shelby called and said she’s trapped, Jessie. We can’t ignore her!”

“She’s in the parlor, not a cave, for crying out loud. Just for a little while, that’s all I’m asking for.”

Jessie pulled out a couple of twenties and waved them in John and Howie’s direction as they walked past to their nonemergency truck. Both men stopped and looked at her in interest. “Just take a little detour on the way, boys, a little stop over at the Burger King, and get yourselves some dinner. An hour, tops, then you can go rescue Shelby. But if you break one of my windows, you’re replacing it, Carl.”