Page 8 of Handling Skylar (Hope Parish #5)

“Take the next right,” I said over the roaring wind as it did whip the unsecured strands of my hair around my face like a silken cyclone. It was so worth it as I reached up and grabbed as much as I could to tame it.

The car slowed to take the turn onto my roughly paved road, lined with gorgeous magnolias.

The big-bodied natives resembling green dinosaurs scattered across the landscape.

Their large, thick, evergreen foliage and waxy leaves slowly danced with each puff of air.

Old, mature specimens cloaked in Spanish moss and icons to the South.

These were at the very end of their blooming cycle, the white flowers saucer-shaped, the lane still redolent with their lemony-sweet scent.

“Straight ahead,” I leaned over and shouted into Jake’s ear, the heat and scent from his big body enticing me to drift closer, but I resisted.

“Nice place,” he shouted back as he slowed even more, the insect and night racket now deafening as the wind died down.

With the settlement from the insurance company for my parents’ property, I netted a substantial amount even after the bank was satisfied. It allowed me to purchase this beautiful antebellum Cajun cottage and renovate and open the Blue Coyote Spa.

“I could have had something built from modern materials and settled quite comfortably into the place, but when I saw this house,” a medium-sized, nearly square dwelling with a front porch and a screened in back porch and high-pitched tin roof, “I was intrigued. When I had the opportunity to view it, I was lost, hooked and fell completely in love with the big rooms, tall ceilings and the porches…nuff said there.” We passed my wisteria engulfed mailbox, the pea-shaped flowers hanging in thick clusters of violet and pink, giving off a delicate fragrance and adding to the romantic atmosphere of my beautiful front yard.

Boone Outlaw and his very talented partner Savannah Finnegan had transformed it.

As soon as Jake stopped the car, he got out,- and I realized he was going to open my door for me.

That made me smile, and when he pulled the door open, he was quite aware of why I was smiling.

The trouble was he didn’t move and there was barely any room to get by him, but I think he was okay with that.

I was crowded to the side of the car while he enveloped me in his warm, male scent.

“This place is as pretty and charming as you are, Sky.”

I had to take a deep breath because in all the time I had known Jake, he’d kept his distance, been polite, but cool. I wondered what had changed. Why was he flirting with me? Was there a hidden agenda here, and was I playing a part?

“Are you flirting with me, Jake Sutton, when you have an almost fiancée sewn up and ready for white and a walk down the aisle?

“She is at that and you’re easy to flirt with. Never any pressure.”

“You’ve had enough of that I’d say to last a lifetime.”

“There you go again, pegging me like you’ve known me for years. I want to know all those secrets in your eyes, Sky.”

I took advantage of the silence to study him for a moment as his eyes roamed my face, that intense, brooding look back.

The feeling that he was two very different men struck me.

One minute he was the charming, smiling gentleman with enough bad boy to make it interesting, hell-bent on getting into trouble and having a good time; the next he was this closed, dark man who kept the door shut on the part of himself he didn’t want anyone to see.

I found myself wanting to know what was on the other side of that door.

A dangerous curiosity, I thought pulling myself back from asking more questions.

An owl called four round notes, then lifted off from the branches of a nearby cypress tree, its wide wings beating the air, barely making a sound.

The bayou was like its native son, hard, hot, shadowed.

The night like dark, heavy black satin, the air sultry with the deep primal scents of earth and water.

I shivered, the shudders delicious as they rippled through me, hardening my nipples and giving me an ache in my core that I was certain Jake could satisfy. Forceful, dirty talker.

I ached to get my hands, my mouth and my body on him. I had never felt this way before. I’d been physically attracted to a man, and I’d been mentally attracted, but Jake stimulated everything, all at once, simultaneously.

He boxed me in, his hands on either side of me, catching me by surprise and shuffled closer and closer, until we were almost touching. There was something in his eyes that was resistant and reluctant—forbidden.

“We both have secrets I’m sure,” I managed to say on a breathless whisper. “We both know this is wrong.”

“Why does it feel so fucking right then?” he drawled, his voice stroking over me like long, sensitive fingers.

I reached out and brushed the backs of my fingers over his jaw. “Because you need comfort, a place to rest instead of turmoil. I see that, Jake. But, this isn’t going to help. It’s only going to make it more complicated.” I went for truth to ward off the other, more dangerous feelings.

He lowered his head a fraction, his dark eyes shining as he homed in on my mouth. “Rationally, I get that. I don’t want to think right now.”

“Neither do I. But I’ve never been a stand-in for anyone or anything.”

“I’d never treat you like that.” He rested his forehead against mine, and I heard it in his voice. He’d gotten control. Thank God, because I hadn’t.

“I know,” I whispered.

He brushed his thumb over my mouth. “Sometimes circumstances dictate behavior. I’ve sacrificed enough to convention and towing the line. I’m heartily sick of it.”

“I second that. Frankly, it sucks.”

The gleam in his dark eyes pulled at me like a magnet. He laughed softly. “There it is again, that bold sass,” he growled, that clever, sexy mouth curling up at the corners.

“Well,” I said, more disgruntled than amused. “It does.”

The smile deepening, the magnetism pulling harder, he leaned a little closer. “Especially when you turn me on, all the way on.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re impossible and a first-class tease.”

“It’s not bragging if you can follow-through,” he said, wry amusement twinkling his eyes.

“You’re impossible.”

“Oh, no, sugar,” he teased, leaning in again. “Not impossible, but hard for sure.”

“All the way hard?”

Our laughter drifted away on the sultry air, and awareness thickened the humidity around us.

I felt my heart thump a little harder as I watched the gentleman fall away.

He looked intense, but it was a softer look than I had seen before, and when he smiled, it was a softer smile, a smile that made my breath catch in my throat.

Just when I thought we were out of the danger zone.

“If you like to see me laugh, I love to see you laugh ten times more. You light up the night,” he said, lifting a hand to brush at the wisps of hair on my cheek.

His fingertips grazed the corner of my mouth and stilled.

Slowly, deliberately, he hooked his thumb beneath my chin and tilted my face up as he lowered his mouth to mine.

Not smart, Sky, I told myself, even as I felt my lips soften beneath his.

I wasn’t strong enough to resist even though I knew I should have.

I wasn’t looking for complications and drama.

But I had found the one man in this town that would cause plenty because his shrew of a girlfriend would see to it that I did.

Jake Sutton was smart, wealthy and still Suttontowne’s golden boy, as controlled, organized and predictable as they came.

He had his life planned out perfectly, and I was that monkey wrench that he couldn’t help throwing into the mix.

But nothing I thought or did dispelled the fire that sparked to life as he tightened his hold on me and eased his tongue into my mouth.

His soft groan, deep in his throat as he tasted me, sounded like a man who had found something he’d been hungering for. Something he needed as deeply as sustenance and the simple things in life that we all took for granted.

A lost soul looking for a haven.

I wanted to be that haven.

I was afraid of him getting this close, because, once that barrier had been crossed, I couldn’t help responding to him.

To hell with consequences. To hell with what he would think of me afterward.

If I had the chance to make this man mine, I wouldn’t have to worry about the afterward.

I would make sure there was one. There was no other choice when he felt this good, tasted this good.

He raised his head, his stunned eyes capturing my equally stunned ones. “Damn,” he said softly, resealing his hot, hungry mouth against mine in a kiss that ravaged my soul. A kiss fueled by loneliness, by need, by a fever of want.

It went on for a while, until I was almost senseless, and the only thing that kept me upright was the warm steel of the car and his hot, hard body.

He tangled one hand in my hair, the other one braced against the car, deepening the kiss, pressing that wide, muscled chest against me, our hips meeting and flushing. There was no mistaking what I did to him.

“Jesus,” he ripped his mouth away and stepped back, panting, resting against the open door. “I’m going to break with tradition and not walk you up to that porch or hold the door for you while you get yourself inside. Because you should lock it. Against me.”

Catching my breath and trying to hold on to my own sanity, I nodded.

“Go, Sky. We’ll forget about this…lapse.”

“All right,” I said, bitter disappointment swirling inside. I had waited a long time to be with Jake. A little more would be bearable. We were written in the stars, stamped in the bayou mud, etched into rock and stone. All that screamed attraction, and it seemed inevitable.

But, I didn’t get too locked into the idea that it would last. Few things did.

I didn’t look back until I was inside and had the door locked up tight.

He stood there against the car door for a moment like he didn’t want to move, but eventually, he pushed off.

Throwing a tormenting look toward the house, he got into his car.

He still didn’t move, then the top came up and snapped into place.

I sighed softly when after another couple of minutes, he drove off. All I wanted to do was drag him inside.

But the hint of defensiveness and bitterness in his tone managed to touch me more than I would have anticipated.

It seemed that Jake always did what was expected of him and, to top it off, took on the burden and did his best, regardless of how he felt about it.

I longed to see him shrug off everything that he didn’t want to do for his heart’s desires—whatever they were.

Could one of them be me?

Was I ready to be the center of a town’s attention…again?