Heiress for Hire (Cuttersville #2)(59)
Author: Erin McCarthy

So after Piper left with her grandparents, Amanda just wanted to get it over with. It was a ten-minute drive. Danny and she would ignore each other, she’d hop out of the truck, and that would be it. The next day was Saturday, so she’d spend the weekend packing and then Tuesday Piper started school. She’d hang around to see how the first day went, then she was leaving for New York. With her paychecks from Danny, she had purchased a one-way ticket for seventy-nine dollars, after thoroughly searching for the lowest fare.

Another positive result of her time in Cuttersville—she now knew how to make a budget and how to search out lower prices. She’d gotten rather fond of popping in to Wal-Mart and buying ninety-nine-cent nail polish.

Which reminded her of exactly how much crap she had to pack. She needed to get home to the gray house and start shifting through it.

Too bad she couldn’t seem to find Danny to let him know she was ready to go home.

The door to his bedroom was closed. She knocked. Nothing.

Then she heard the shower. Damn it. He was taking a shower. He was naked. And wet. Not a good place for her thoughts to go.

They went to an even naughtier place when the water shut off. She could just step into the bathroom. She doubted he had locked the door. That wasn’t Danny Trusting Tucker’s style.

Then again, barging in on a man she had turned down for marriage wasn’t her style. A man who was horrified by the thought of her money. Or at least, it had never been her style in the past. She had usually let the men do the chasing. They chased, she sort of ran, eventually they caught her, then the sex was so-so.

With Danny, the sex had been phenomenal. Both physically and emotionally satisfying. And that had only been a quickie.

Just think what they could do if they had some time to really work on it.

Not that they did. Because she was leaving. Both today and on Tuesday.

The bathroom door opened.

Danny was wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. Nothing else, but a few water droplets running down his chest. His wet hair was sticking up, and his finger smoothed over it as he came to a sudden stop.

"Oh, sorry. I forgot my clean clothes in my room."

"Uh-huh." Danny was a really bad liar. She had the sudden feeling that his little stroll across the hall looking like a woman’s wet dream was no accident. She crossed her arms over her chest. Stupid traitorous ni**les. She was going to tape the damn things down if they didn’t behave themselves. "You did this on purpose, didn’t you?"

"Did what?" He widened his eyes. "I’m sorry if I’m keeping you waiting, but I really needed a shower. Been working, you know," he added, like she had no idea he had spent the day in the sun on the tractor.

Of course, he wouldn’t know that she’d spent half the day sneaking peeks out the window at him.

"I’ll just get dressed while you grab the dog. We can leave in a minute." Danny’s arm reached right past hers, and his damp skin brushed hers. "Excuse me."

"What?" He was invading her space again, and he smelled clean and sexy, like soap and straw.

"I’m just trying to get into my room to get my clothes. I can’t open the door with you standing there."

"Right." Amanda meant to move, but somehow her feet didn’t do anything. They were like Quebec, determined to be independent.

"Unless you don’t want to go home." Danny leaned closer to her. A drop from his hair landed on her arm and rolled. He picked up her hand and sucked the water droplet off her wrist. "Do you want to go home?"

There were so many ways to answer that. Most would be lies.

She didn’t want to go back to the dwarf cottage and count the

Heiress for Hire pennies that would be lying in her hallway. She didn’t want to listen to the woman in the mirror crying when she felt like doing the same thing herself. She didn’t want to lie alone in an empty bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if she were doing the right thing.

Wondering if it were too late for her and Danny. Wondering if there was a her and Danny, or if she had somehow imagined the whole thing. Nothing about this summer quite seemed real, and neither did a future in New York seem real.

Her father had given her four thousand dollars, and she could make that last now that she understood some basic means of cutting costs. But she had no real desire to spend money, his or hers or anyone’s.

And she didn’t want to walk away from a naked Danny.

"I…" She cleared her throat.

Danny’s hands stroked across her waist, played with the fabric of her floral skirt. His lips brushed across the top of her head. "Stay tonight. Forget about everything else… just let me hold you. Let me love you. Just for here, now."

"What about the money… leaving… Piper?" It was a token resistance. She was already curling her fingers into the fabric of his towel.

"Don’t think, sweetheart. Just feel."

He kissed her, and she couldn’t resist. Didn’t try. His hands were gentle, his mouth firm but reserved, waiting for permission. So she gave it to him by throwing her arms around his neck and opening her mouth for him.

She could feel it when she was with Danny. The difference between him and all the other men she had kissed. He loved her. It was there, in the way he held her. It was there, in the way he sighed, and in the dark brown of his eyes.

"I don’t want to go home." Not now, not ever. But she would start with now.

Danny paused for a second, his lips on Amanda’s neck. She was willing to spend the night with him. He wouldn’t read anymore into that than the obvious. She wanted to have sex with him, and it would be enough for him. He would take what she could give while she was still here, and he would make tonight last as long as was humanely possible.

"Good." He breathed in the scent of her, a soft, fruity smell that reminded him of bubble gum. Amanda always had lotions and glosses and powders on her, and while the scents were enticing, he wondered what she would smell like with nothing on her, just bare flesh. ,

Pushing the straps of her pink shirt off her shoulders, he traced the line of her clavicle bone with his lips, going lower and lower until he reached her br**sts. The shirt was stretchy, and he skimmed it down over her, happy to see she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Danny loved Amanda’s br**sts, the way they were perfect round globes with tight cherry ni**les on top. He had never gone for chesty women, always feeling a little startled by them. They were distracting in their disproportion, and he wound up studying them in fascination instead of actually doing anything with them.

Generally speaking, a woman wanted a man to do something with their br**sts besides gawk at them.