Читать книгу Maverick Millionaires - Joss Wood - Страница 15

Six

Rory loved the Cap de Mar beach house. Shortly after her arrival, she claimed one of the smaller guest rooms, partly because it had an excellent view of the U-shaped bay and mostly because it was a floor below and a long way from the massive master suite.

She pulled on a bikini, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and, walking barefoot, she set out to explore the house. As Mac had said, the living areas, sitting and dining room and the kitchen were all open-plan, leading onto a massive balcony filled with comfortable chairs and daybeds either under the balcony roof or under umbrellas. Tucked into the corner of the balcony was a huge Jacuzzi and she could easily imagine sitting in that tub watching the sun go down.

It was mid-afternoon now, Rory thought, resting her elbows on the railing and looking down into the sparkling pool below her. In a perfect world she’d like to take a swim, lie in the sun and then sit on the beach with a glass of white wine in her hand and wait for the sun to paint the horizon in Day-Glo colors. That, she thought, would be a wonderful end to a rather difficult day...

Rory saw a movement out of the corner of her eye and saw Mac step out of his bedroom through the doors that led straight onto this balcony. He’d shucked his jeans and shirt and pulled on a pair of board shorts. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt. Why should he? He had a torso to die for.

The rest of him was pretty spectacular too.

Rory huffed out a sigh. She had to corral her overexcited hormones. Speaking of hormones, she’d been caught flat-footed at Mac’s suggestion they postpone sleeping together. She hadn’t expected Mac would let his arm get in the way of pleasure, or that he was humble enough to admit he was in pain and needed some time.

Mac, barefoot, walked over and gestured to the cove. “Nice, isn’t it?”

“Gorgeous,” Rory agreed. “It almost feels like we are part of the beach.”

Mac half smiled. “That was the intention when I designed it. I wanted to bring the outdoors in.”

“You designed this?”

Mac sat down on a daybed and leaned back, placing his good hand under his head. His biceps bulged, his shoulder flexed and the rest of him rippled as he swung his legs up onto the cushions. “Yeah.”

She remembered something about him and architecture, about studying it in college. When he was dating Shay, he’d just completed some business courses and Rory had been super impressed that he’d managed to study and still play for the Mavericks. He hadn’t needed to study further; he was earning enough with his salary and endorsements that, if he invested it properly, he could live comfortably for a very long time.

This wasn’t living comfortably, Rory thought, looking around. This was living large. An island home on a secluded beach translated into big-boy money. She recalled what Troy had said about him and his friends investing in property and businesses, and her curiosity had her asking, “How many properties do you own? How many businesses do you have?”

Mac looked at her from below half-closed eyes. “Enough.” He yawned and dropped his arm to pick up a pillow and shove it behind his head. “You want a statement of my assets and liabilities, Rory?”

Rory flushed. Okay, admittedly, she had no right to ask him that; they weren’t lovers. They weren’t even friends. And she’d rather die than ask any of her other clients such a personal question.

“Kade, Quinn and I have our own projects but a lot of our assets are held together in a partnership, and all the assets we share have to generate an income, this house included. It’s our rule. If it doesn’t make money, we ditch it. That is why we get to use this property but, for the most part, it’s rented out. Not so much during the summer months because it’s so damn hot and it’s hurricane season.”

Rory darted a quick look toward the endlessly blue horizon. “Hurricanes?”

“They happen,” Mac replied. “They aren’t that bad. A lot of wind, a lot of rain.”

“Super,” Rory said drily.

Mac shifted in his seat and winced when he moved his injured arm, trying to find a more comfortable position.

“Did you take your painkillers and the anti-inflammatory pills?” Rory demanded.

“Yes, Mom, that’s why I’m feeling so damn sleepy,” Mac murmured. He waved a hand toward the house. “Food and drinks in the kitchen. I asked our rental agent to arrange for someone to stock the place. I’ve also arranged for someone to come and clean and do laundry a couple of times a week. Otherwise we’re on our own.”

On our own was a phrase she did not need to hear.

“Okay,” Rory said, watching him fight sleep.

“Jeep in the garage. Keys in the kitchen. San Juan is thirty-five minutes away, north. Casinos, restaurants five minutes away, south.” Mac yawned again. “Make yourself at home.”

“Will do,” Rory said, but she doubted he’d heard her because he’d drifted off to sleep. He still had a frown on his face as she moved an umbrella closer to him so he could sleep in the shade. Her thumb moved over the creases on his forehead and she wondered what was making him worry. Their deal to buy the Mavericks franchise, his injury, being alone with Rory in this house?

She might have her fair share of problems but Mac had his too.

He wasn’t always who she expected him to be, Rory admitted. Sure, he could be overconfident about his abilities and about the effect he had on her, but he was also honest enough to admit that their attraction was a two-way street. She affected him just as badly. She didn’t know Mac well, not yet, and because he was so damn reticent, she probably never would. But she did know he wasn’t the arrogant jerk he’d been ten years ago. He was ambitious and determined, but he wasn’t selfish. He was smart and loyal and, yes, infuriating.

It was a surprise to realize that she liked him. A lot. And that liking had nothing to do with his masculine face and sculpted muscles.

There was a great deal more to Mac McCaskill than his pretty packaging. Dammit.

With every conversation they shared he shattered another of her preconceptions. If they continued these conversations, she’d start to like him a little more than she should, and there was a possibility she would feel more for him than lust and attraction.

She couldn’t let that happen. She would have to try to ignore him, try to avoid him. Because falling in lust with him was one thing, falling in like with him was another.

Falling in love with him would be intolerable.

So she simply wouldn’t.

* * *

A week after landing in San Juan, Rory and Mac watched the sun go down in the small fishing village of Las Croabas. She was full to bursting from demolishing a massive bowl of crab seviche. She was relaxed and a little buzzy. The single glass of wine couldn’t be blamed for that, she thought. No, it was a combination of the spectacular sunset—God was painting the sky with vivid purples and iridescent oranges—and the equally magnificent man who sat opposite her, hair ruffled by the balmy evening breeze.

A lovely sunset, a rustic restaurant, a really hot guy with a girl eating dinner...they could be an advertisement for romance, Rory thought. There would be no truth in that advertisement. Mac hadn’t laid a finger on her since they’d arrived in Puerto Rico and he hadn’t kissed her again. Truthfully, she hadn’t given him any opportunity to do either as she’d made a point of spending as little time with him as she possibly could without shirking her duties.

But a girl had to eat, and over dinner she’d intercepted a couple of intense looks from him, which made her think he’d catch her if she decided to jump him.

Which she wouldn’t. But the will-he-won’t-he anticipation was, admittedly, very hot and incredibly sexy.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Mac said.

That sounded ominous, Rory thought. “What is it?”

“There’s a hurricane on the way.” He lifted his seviche-filled fork to his mouth.

“A big one?” she squawked, half lifting her butt off her seat and whipping around to inspect the horizon. It was still cloud-free. Shouldn’t there be clouds?

Mac shrugged. “Big enough.”

“How big is big enough?” Rory demanded. How could he eat? A natural phenomena was about to smack them in the face. “When will it arrive? Should we evacuate? Are there bunkers?”

Mac sent her a puzzled glance. “It’s a hurricane, not a nuclear bomb, Rorks.”

“You’re not giving me any information!” Rory wailed. She tried to recall what she’d read about preparing for a hurricane and, unfortunately, it wasn’t a lot. Or anything at all. “Don’t we need to put boards up or something?”

“I’ve arranged to have some guys come over tomorrow to put the boards up. Stupid, because I could do them if it wasn’t for this arm!”

“I’m sure I can do it,” Rory bravely suggested. She didn’t know if she could but she thought she should offer.

Mac smiled at her. “No offense, Rorks, but it’ll take them a couple of hours and it would take you two weeks.”

“Why do people always say ‘no offense’ and then go on to offend you?” Rory grumbled.

“How often have you wielded a hammer?”

Rory lifted her nose at his smirk. “I pound in my own hooks to hang pictures.” Well, she had once and had lost a fingernail in the process. Troy then banned her from using tools. He’d fixed her cupboard door, replaced the broken tile in her shower, fixed the leaky pipe under her sink. Troy also changed the tires on her car, made a mean chicken parmesan and removed spiders. He’d be her perfect husband if he only liked girls. And if she was even marginally attracted to him.

“Liar,” Mac said cheerfully.

His ability to see through her annoyed the pants off her. Actually, the way he looked, his deep voice, his laugh—all of it made her want to drop her pants, but that was another story entirely. “Tell me about the hurricane!”

Mac dug his fork into his salad. “I’m not sure what you want to know. There’s a hurricane approaching. It’ll probably hit land around midnight tomorrow night. There will be wind, rain. We’ll be fine.”

Rory scowled at him. “You are so annoying.”

Mac’s lips twitched. “I try.” He dumped some wine into their glasses, picked hers up and handed it to her. “Drink. We might as well enjoy the gorgeous night before we die.”

Rory rolled her eyes. “If you’re going to be a smart-ass, there has to be some smart involved. Otherwise you just sound like an ass.” She took the glass from his hand, looked into his amused eyes and sighed. “I’m overreacting, aren’t I?”

Mac lifted his glass to his lips, sipped and swallowed. “Just a little.” He sent her another quick, quirky smile. “We’ll be fine. If I thought we were in danger, I’d be making arrangements to get you out of here.”

Rory nodded and took a large sip of her wine. Okay, then. Maybe she could cope with the hurricane. She glanced at the sky. “Tomorrow night, huh?”

Mac lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip. He lingered there, pressing the fullness before moving from her lip and drifting up and over her cheekbone. She watched as his eyes deepened, turned a blue-black in the early evening light. Rory tossed a look at the beach and wished she could jump up from the table and walk—run—away.

She’d been doing that for the last week, finding any excuse to avoid him. She left his presence when she felt the spit drying up in her mouth, when she felt the first throb between her legs. Because Mac spent most of his time shirtless, she’d spent a lot of time walking away from him. She’d run to the beach, run on the beach, had started canoeing and snorkeling again. She’d also taken a lot of cold showers.

She was so pathetic.

“You can’t run off in the middle of a meal,” Mac told her, his eyes dancing.

Rory lifted her nose and tried to look puzzled. “Sorry?”

“You’ve been avoiding me, running away every time something sparks between us,” Mac said conversationally, dropping his hand from her face and popping an olive from his salad into his mouth.

“Uh—”

“You’re not alone. Every time you do therapy on me, I have to stop myself from grabbing you and kissing you senseless.”

Rory groaned and dropped her chin to her chest.

Mac twisted his fingers in hers. “Your hands touch me and I inhale your scent—you smell so damn good—and my brain starts to shut down. It’s not just you, Rory.”

Rory picked up her glass and sipped, trying to get some moisture back into her mouth. “Ah... I’m not sure what to say.”

“Avoiding each other makes it worse. It’s driving me crazy. I barely sleep at night because I want you in my bed.” Mac’s voice raised goose bumps all over her skin. “What are we going to do about this...situation, Rory?”

Rory touched the top of her lip with the tip of her tongue and her eyelids dropped to half-mast. Couldn’t he see the big fat take-me-now sign blazing from her forehead in flashing neon?

She blew out a breath and sent him a rueful shrug. Mac seemed to have a hard time taking his eyes off her mouth. He was enjoying the anticipation, too, she realized when his gaze slammed into hers, his eyes hot and filled with passion.

“How the hell am I supposed to resist you?” he demanded.

Rory rolled her shoulders and gripped his wrist.

“I don’t do relationships,” Mac growled.

“I don’t either,” Rory softly replied. “But I can’t stop wondering whether we’ll be as good together as all the kisses we’ve shared suggest.”

Mac shot up and with one step he was standing in front of her and pulling her to her feet. Keeping his injured arm hanging at his side, he used his other arm to yank her into his hard chest. His mouth slammed against hers. His tongue slid once, then twice over her lips, and she immediately opened her mouth and allowed him inside. He tasted of wine and sex and heat, and Rory pushed into him so she could feel her nipples touch his chest through the thin fabric of their cotton shirts. She sighed when his erection nudged her stomach, and she linked her hands at the back of his neck to stop herself from reaching down and encircling him. Kissing in a public place was one thing, but heavy petting was better done in a more private setting.

“You taste so damn good,” Mac muttered against her lips, his hand sliding over her butt. “And you feel even better.”

“Kiss me again,” Rory demanded, tipping her head to the side so he could change the angle of the kiss, go deeper and wetter.

“If I kiss you again I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stop,” Mac replied, resting his forehead on hers.

“Who asked you to?”

Mac half laughed and half groaned. “You’re not helping, Rorks.” He stepped back and pushed her hair, curly from the humidity, from her eyes. “Let’s take a step back here, think about this a little more. Make damn sure it’s what we want.”

Rory glanced down, saw the evidence of his want and lifted an eyebrow. “We both want it, McCaskill.”

“Yeah, but what we want is not always good for us,” Mac said, suddenly somber. He picked up her hand and rubbed the ball of his thumb across her knuckles. “We’re here for a little while longer, Rory. I don’t want to muck this up. There are consequences.”

“I’m on the pill and I expect you to use a condom.”

“Noted. But those aren’t the consequences I’m worrying about.”

Rory cocked her head. “Okay, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t want either of us to regret this in the morning, to feel awkward, to feel we’ve made a colossal mistake.” Mac looked uncharacteristically unsure of himself as he tugged at the collar of his white linen button-down shirt. “Taking you to bed would be easy, Rory. Making love to you would be a pleasure. In the morning we’re both still going to be here. You still need to treat me and we have to live together. I don’t want it to get weird between us.”

Those were all fair points. “Anything else?”

Mac looked around them, frowned and rocked on his heels. “We’re flying under the radar here but if just one person sees us, snaps a photo—we’re toast. If it gets out that you’re my physio, or that we’re sleeping together and you are my ex’s sister, it’ll be news.”

She hauled in a sharp breath. Wow, she hadn’t even considered that.

“The media will go nuts and you’ll be at the center of it, like Shay was,” Mac added.

The thought made her want to heave. She’d never felt comfortable in the limelight and couldn’t think of anything worse than being meat for the media’s grinder.

“They will wonder why you—the best physiotherapist around—are treating me and why are you doing it in secret. They’ll dig until they find out the truth,” Mac said.

Rory dropped her head to look at the floor.

“Are you prepared to risk all that, Rory? Can you deal with the consequences of the worst-case scenario?”

“It won’t happen.” Rory bit her bottom lip.

“Probably not, but what if it does? Can you deal?”

“Can you?” Rory demanded. “You have more to lose than I do.”

“Yeah, don’t think that I haven’t realized that,” Mac muttered, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb. When he opened his eyes, she saw the ruefulness, the touch of amusement, in his gaze.

“Yet I still want you. I’m really hoping to get over it,” he added. His tone invited her to help him break the tension, to get over this awkward, emotion-tinged moment. He picked up his wineglass, drained the contents and looked at his empty glass. “See, you’re driving me to drink.”

Rory bumped her wineglass against his. “I feel your pain. You should try living inside my head.”

Mac dropped a quick, hard kiss on her mouth. “Help me out and be sensible about this, Rorks. I’m relying on you to be the adult here because I have little or no sense when it comes to wanting you.”

Well, that comment didn’t help!