The man who’d starred in Joe’s nightmares for weeks after Sofia left, stared at him with bewilderment for two beats, then a flicker of sympathy for another, before his guard came up and his face went expressionless.

So many thoughts jostled for domination in Joe’s brain it felt like his head had exploded and his hair had caught fire.

What was the man from that video doing in MacKenna’s house?

Did that mean…? That Joe had been so caught up with his broken heart and dented pride he’d just assumed MacKenna had stumbled onto his fiancée’s intended infidelity and recorded it? That MacKenna knew the guy in the video, and she’d set up the whole thing?

An icy dousing of shock flushed away the sudden heat of anger. For a moment, he flashed back in time to opening the door to his home and finding a nearly empty wardrobe, a cleared out bathroom counter, and a note left on his pillow that said: I’m sorry, I don’t love you and I never did. The wedding is off; please don’t contact me. Sofia.

He’d sat in shock for hours until the house grew dark and silent around him. Eventually he’d roused enough to open his laptop and check Sofia’s Facebook profile, where she spent most of her spare time. Her relationship status had changed to “single.” He switched back to his profile and stared at the words “in a relationship.” Not anymore. Though instead of updating his non-relationship, he read his e-mails and stumbled across one from Invercargill Bridal with an attached video. Curiosity got the better of him, and he’d watched every bit of the five minute thirty-two-second footage of Sofia proving how much she didn’t love him.

“Joe, please. It’s not Reid’s fault.”

MacKenna’s hand clamped on his forearm—as if that could restrain him if he’d really intended to thump the shirtless prick. Reid? Was that his name? Joe eyeballed the bigger man. Oddly, it was the idea that MacKenna was fucking this guy that raised his blood pressure more than the idea that she’d set him up back then. She had, as he’d pointed out earlier, done him a favor as far as Sofia was concerned.

His gaze flicked between MacKenna and Reid, and the other man’s smirk raised Joe’s blood pressure all over again. And against all logic. Reid was likely a victim of the tiny blond bombshell’s overpowering sex appeal and a brainless robot in the whole affair. A small part of Joe couldn’t blame him—if he had access to MacKenna’s bed every night, he’d be a brainless robot, too.

“You? And him?” The words gushed from him even as he snapped his teeth together to cut off any further questions. Like how long they’d been sleeping together.

“It was my idea, Joe, not his,” MacKenna said. “I asked him to be a honey trap for Sofia.”

Thankfully, she’d misunderstood his outburst. Reid’s smirk, however, transformed into a toothy smile.

“I think your doctor friend is trying to figure out how often we bump uglies,” Reid said.

MacKenna cut Joe a sharp look. “Were you?”

Absolutely. “Of course not. It’s none of my damn business who you bump uglies with.”

For feck’s sake, Joe. Stop running yer gob. He cleared his throat and shrugged off her hand that still rested on his forearm.

MacKenna’s eyes narrowed to slits of seaweed green. “No, it’s not. But FYI, because contrary to what you think of me, I don’t play games; Reid and I are just friends.”

Friends. Just grand. Their familiarity in each other’s company indicated they knew each other well. They had a shared intimacy, whether as lovers—as the green pit of jealousy in his gut suggested—or as friends, as MacKenna insisted. He tried to grind the pit in his gut away, reminding himself again that he wasn’t interested in the woman, but the stubborn thing remained.

“Friends with some pretty amazing benefits,” Reid said. “Right, sweet cheeks?”

MacKenna’s lethal gaze swiveled past Joe to where Reid continued to smirk. “Like a roof over your head and paid employment, all of which could change in an instant if you keep continuing down the trying-to-piss-me-off road.”

“I’m officially tired of this conversation, carsick from your ‘road,’ and about to puke on your upholstery.” Reid held up the coat hangers again. “Black or tan?”

“Black. Now go back to your room, get ready, and leave.”

Reid stepped back into the room he’d appeared from—his room, Joe deciphered from MacKenna’s outburst—without sparing him another glance.

Before Reid shut the door his brow crumpled into a sharp V. “Mac, I can stay in tonight if you want.”

Because he didn’t trust Joe to be alone with MacKenna? He studied Reid’s face as he, in turn, studied MacKenna. And Joe saw nothing in the man’s gaze other than a concerned, deep affection. Joe had let himself get distracted by MacKenna’s closeness and his undeniable flare of attraction toward her. The one thing he’d learned in his years as a GP—often the first call for patients unless they were direly ill—was people stretched the truth. Or as Gregory House, the arsehole doctor from the TV series, had succinctly put it: everybody lies.

Before Sofia—or BS as he liked to refer to it in his mind—he’d honed his skill of picking up the little tell tale signals from patients when they weren’t being straight with him. This skill must have dulled during the time he’d been in love, since Sofia’s lies had come as such a shock. But with MacKenna and her relationship with Reid?

“It’s cool, Bean,” MacKenna said gently. “Go wow the ladies.”

Reid shut the door with a laugh. MacKenna crossed to the pattern making table and picked up a remote, turning down the music. Then she faced him, raising an eyebrow in question.

“He loves you,” Joe said.

“He does,” MacKenna agreed. “And I love him. He’s my family, as is Laura, who lives upstairs in the bedroom next to mine.”

“And he works for you?”

“Best damn machinist I’ve ever met. I’m lucky to have him.” MacKenna cocked her head. “You’re wondering about his part in the video I sent you?”

She folded her arms across her chest, emphasizing the swell of her breasts beneath the sloppy wool sweater—which he now suspected was probably one of Reid’s. The thought didn’t make Joe feel any friendlier toward the guy, because he had the daft notion of wanting to see MacKenna wearing one of his sweaters…and nothing else.

“I asked him to help that night, and he did, as a favor to me,” she continued. “Trust me, he didn’t sleep with Sofia, and he never would’ve left the pub with her.”

After the video clip ended with Sofia caught in a bathroom mirror stuffing panties into her handbag, he’d just continued to stare at his laptop screen. He’d wondered, briefly, if Sofia had ended up sleeping with the guy in the clip. He’d crashed on a mate’s couch the night she’d gone out, ready to get up with the guys at 3:30 a.m. to watch the All Blacks play in London. When he’d arrived home Saturday morning, he met an unusually distracted fiancée, but he figured her mood was due to being neck deep in last-minute wedding details.

MacKenna jumped up to sit on the table, swinging her Ugg-boot-covered feet. “You weren’t even meant to see that footage; it was a back up plan if Sofia didn’t break your engagement like I told her to. But then I heard through the grapevine that you and she were still together. I knew you’d never believe me if I just told you what I’d seen, and Reid insisted that sometimes a guy needed to be punched in the nose by reality in order to shatter his rose-colored glasses.”

“Why didn’t you send the e-mail anonymously? I’d never have known it was you.”

Her green eyes met his and locked. “I couldn’t. You deserved better than an anonymous e-mail. That’s not who I am.”

No, he was beginning to see it wasn’t—that she wasn’t who he’d always thought.

He crossed to the table to lean against it, a foot from where MacKenna sat. The flowery-lemony scent of her grew stronger, curling around him, pulling him into her orbit. He kept his arse pressed to the table edge and his gaze fixed on the industrial sewing machines lined up along the opposite wall. He swallowed hard, consciously avoiding taking another trip back in time to when he’d lashed out at her. “You never told me any of this when I turned up at your shop four and a half years ago.”

She pressed her lips together in a thin line and tucked her hands under her thighs. “You were already suffering. I figured it was better for you to blame me a lot than hate yourself a little.”

His heart gave a little twinge as it thudded against his rib cage. He pushed away from the table and stood in front of her, palms planted either side of her hips, her denim-clad knees awfully close to the family jewels.

But she didn’t raise her knee. No. She lifted her gaze to his, and at that intimate distance, close enough to see the tiny flecks of gold in her irises, close enough to catch the whiff of raspberries in her fast little breaths, he could no longer deny he wanted to be in her personal space. Wanted to dominate that personal space and kiss her so desperately he cursed himself ten times over for being a stupid, gormless git.

It was a Hallmark moment. Her looking at him, with wide eyes and a parted mouth. Him looking at her, needing to taste the fullness of her slick bottom lip but knowing he’d want to continue kissing her until he’d miss the last ferry—and that wouldn’t be the worst of his problems. The problem was one kiss wouldn’t be enough.

He asked a question instead. “Why would you do that for a complete stranger?”

Steel doors immediately slammed down in her gaze, her lush mouth thinning. “For the same reason you’re asking me to interfere in your sister’s life, I’m guessing. You don’t want someone to go through something so painful if you can prevent it by speaking up.”

Back to why he’d paid MacKenna a visit in the first place. He straightened and got out of her personal space before he kissed her anyway, and to hell with it.

“You’ll do it, then?” he asked, pacing away from her and spinning back. “You’ll make my sister, Kerry, a wedding dress but talk her out of using it?”

“Whoa.” A time-out, T-shaped hands and a frown from MacKenna. “Back it up. You want me to what?”

That’s right, he’d gotten distracted by Reid’s appearance and hadn’t explained his masterful plan. “Go through the motions of making Kerry her dream dress—consultation, first fitting, etcetera—and work your anti-matrimonial magic while you’re doing it. Convince her to break off the engagement, or at the very least, delay the wedding indefinitely. I’ll pay for your time, of course.”

MacKenna hopped off the table, Ugg boots thumping on the floor. “Anti-matrimonial magic? I’m not a magician, and that’s a bloody big favor to ask.”

He’d thought more along the lines of a spell-binding witch, but anyway… “Do this and I’ll consider us even Steven.”

“I won’t do it. It’s cruel.”

“Crueler to let her marry a man she barely knows.”

“I’m sure he must be a good guy if your sister wants to marry him.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Joe said and rolled a shoulder. “We haven’t been introduced.”

She went all hands on hips. “Shut the front door. You mean you haven’t even met your sister’s fiancé, and you’re trying to break them up? That’s a douche move.”

In other circumstances, he’d agree. A feckin’ douche move. But when he thought about this Aaron guy dimming the light and laughter in Kerry’s eyes, taking advantage of her open, trusting nature, bullying her into forgoing bloody steak, for Christ’s sake. Joe’s gut folded in on itself.

“The guy’s already trying to have a say in what she does and doesn’t do. I know Kerry. She’s never tried to hide one of her boyfriends from the family before. Can’t you see there must be something fishy about him if she’s nervous about my reaction to her getting married?”

“Or maybe she knew you’d overreact,” she said. “She’s a grown-ass woman who can make up her own mind.”

You mind our Kerry because you’re the eldest. He could hear his mam’s voice ring in his ears. She’s the only sister you’ll ever have, and your job—your only job—is to keep her safe.

It didn’t matter whether he was fourteen or thirty-four, or that Kerry was a grown-ass woman. His job, as her big brother, was still to keep her safe.

“It’s not a terrible thing to give her an outsider’s perspective and to make her think about waiting a while before she jumps into the deep end. I’m scared—bleedin’ terrified, MacKenna—that Kerry’ll be hurt worse than I was.”

Yeah, it was a low blow, even for him. But playing the emotion card was working. MacKenna’s gaze softened, and her fists slid off her hips.

“She’ll murder you in cold blood if she finds out what you’re up to.”

“She would,” he agreed. “But she won’t guess anything’s up; I told her you think I’m a complete wanker.”

With a huff of either amusement or agreement, MacKenna strode past him to the front door and yanked it open. “I do.”

Joe took his time strolling over, the icy wind blowing in from the street cooling his jets, so to speak. “Saying ‘I do’ already, Mac? Seems a bit premature.”

She rolled her pretty eyes at him. “As does you calling me Mac. Only people I like call me Mac, and I really, really don’t like you. Now get out. I’ll think about taking on your sister as a client.”

He got out, but he strolled back to his car with a smile on his face. He’d be calling her Mac soon enough.

* * *

A week after Joe’s arrival on MacKenna’s doorstep and the subsequent about-to-kiss-then-abort-kiss moment, which she’d probably imagined, Mac paced the hardwood floor of Next Stop, Vegas. She paused at a long, lacquered table, upon which sat artfully arranged mannequin busts displaying quality costume jewelry, along with two pairs of her most popularly ordered wedding shoes—and once again made minute adjustments to their position.

She sniffed at the crystal vase of fresh white roses delivered by a local florist every week then moved on to the two full-sized mannequins clothed in a couple of her gowns for hire in the window display. She straightened the slight train on one, which must’ve been nudged by an earlier client when she moved toward the row of gowns on a rack along the far wall. Mac smiled, her gaze skimming over the hire-gowns. She had such an abundance, she couldn’t display them all at the same time. Next to it was a separate rack of gently worn, on-consignment gowns that clients with a slightly bigger budget but who still couldn’t afford an original MacKenna Jones design could choose from.

Every bride deserved a dress to make her feel beautiful, no matter what her budget. That was the party line she trotted out to her assistants, Maddy and Laura, to Reid, and to whatever design school student on work experience they had temping for them at the time. What she really meant was: If you’re crazy enough to believe you’re gonna love one man forever, you might as well mark the occasion of your public declaration of insanity by looking fabulous.

“Boss? You okay?”

Laura appeared in the archway between the shop front and the changing room and fitting area. Dressed like Mac was, in a slim-fitting, tailored white shirt and charcoal-colored pencil skirt, Laura twisted the knotted blue scarf at her throat. Unlike Mac, Laura kept the sleeves of her shirt rolled down to hide the silvery cutting scars of her troubled teenage years from sight—at least she did during work hours. In private, those scars were Laura’s badges of honor. The scared but tough street rat had grown into a survivor and one of Mac’s closest friends. Not so close that Laura knew about the whole Joe thing, though.

Mac pasted on her everything’s fine smile to counteract the frown crumpling her manager’s face. “Just a little tired.”

“And nervous about meeting this client?” Laura looked over her funky blue-rimmed glasses down her nose at Mac. “Because that’s like the third time you’ve rearranged the accessory table.”

Not much got past Laura, which made her a huge asset to Next Stop, Vegas.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mac said, giving her reflection a quick once-over in one of the shop’s mirrors. “Haven’t you got work to do, employee?”

Laura gave a soft snort—then, “Wowza! Is that this morning’s client and her fiancé?”

Sure enough, outside the plate-glass shop windows stood a woman glaring up at Joe, who stared down at her with what Mac suspected was his I’m not budging counter glare.

“Kind of.” Mac squished a grin as the brunette—her profile a feminine version of her big brother—squared her shoulders preparing for battle. “That’s my client, Kerry Whelan, and her pain-in-the-ass brother, Joe.”

Just then, Mac’s new client’s pain-in-the-ass brother flicked a glance away from whatever lecture he endured, and looked at Mac. Familiar, amused, and with the beginnings of an intimate connection, Joe’s gaze only lasted a two-second beat, but it set heat unfurling deep inside her that caused her knees to wobble. Just a little bit.

Mac squared her own shoulders—the sooner she got this meeting over with, the sooner she could figure out a way to live with her conscience after doing what she’d somehow agreed to do. Plant some seeds of doubt, she told herself firmly. That’s all. And if nothing grew in that fertile soil, then Joe couldn’t blame her for not trying.

Laura’s laughter from beside Mac made her jump.

“What?” She tore her gaze from Joe—looking annoyingly delicious in the same stone-colored jeans he’d worn to the rugby game at Holly’s, but this time teamed with a dark blue cable-knit sweater, which made his eyes look even more bedazzling than usual—and elbowed her friend in the ribs.

Laura took a side step out of further elbow range.

“You.” She giggled again. “Now I know why you’re so nervous. You’re lit up like Guy Fawkes Night after that smoldering little exchange. Is that the Joe who came around the other night and got all snarly with Reid?”

“You two are such gossips.” And Mac wasn’t lit up like anything; she was just…trembling. Her hands were trembling, and her stomach felt as if she’d inhaled a few fluttery insects. Sheesh.

“Yep. So is he that Joe?” Laura was relentless. “The Joe who’s put you in a cat-in-a-room-full-of-rocking-chairs mood for the past week? Joe, the one you keep changing the subject about whenever Reid tries to get you to talk about him?”

Mac sighed and folded her arms, tucking her trembling fingers into the crooks of her elbows. “Yeah, he’s that Joe. Now shut up; they’re coming in.”

Gone was Kerry’s belligerence as she swept past Joe who held the door open. Her eyes sparkled as they lit on Mac standing awkwardly in the center of the shop.

“You must be MacKenna,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve lusted after your gowns ever since I saw one in a bridal show—they’re incredible, and oh, forgive me, I’m nattering on like a fangirl.”

“Thank you, and no, you’re not,” Mac said. “It’s lovely to meet you, too.”

And strangely, it was. Kerry had an energy, a charismatic aura that immediately made Mac feel at ease. Even with her big brother looming behind her as he shut the shop door and strolled to Kerry’s side.

“Just how many years have you dreamed about getting hitched?” Joe asked mildly then switched his hot gaze to Mac.

That look was anything but mild, and in fact appeared loaded with a combination of emotions that felt like a bomb ready to explode.

Kerry rolled her eyes. “Ignore my brother, the matrimonial grinch. He doesn’t believe in love and happily ever after.”

Another thing Mac and the Grinch had in common, then. But she wouldn’t admit that straight out of the gate. Finesse, that was the key.

“He obviously hasn’t found the right person,” Mac said coolly—but she didn’t dare look at Joe while she said it.

“Exactly what I’ve been telling him. The eejit.” Kerry hooked her arm through Joe’s.

The move gave Mac a quick flashback—Joe, standing in her shop with another beautiful woman clinging to his arm—but there was nothing proprietary or smug in Kerry’s gesture, just easy affection and the knowledge that her brother loved her enough to put up with the teasing insult.

“I prefer the term ‘sensibly skeptic.’”

Joe grinned down at his sister with a return of that easy affection. It ramped up the buzzing in Mac’s stomach. Throwing up her morning bowl of bran flakes over her trying-but-not-trying-to-impress high-heeled black pumps wouldn’t make a good first impression.

Growing up an only child, Mac had always envied her friends with brothers and sisters. She couldn’t imagine having someone in her life who would always have her back. At least, not counting Holly, Reid, Kaitlyn, and Laura. But having great friends wasn’t quite the same as having a person who’d been raised in the same house with the same parents and had the same neuroses she had.

“You’re staying, Joe?” she asked.

Kerry sighed. “Yep, he is. I hope you’ll make this as painful as possible with lots of talk of lace, sweetheart necklines, strapless bras, and the like.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Mac gestured to the archway behind them. “Follow me.”

She led them past the boutique’s sectioned-off dressing room and the open space opposite, which contained three comfortable armchairs facing a bank of full-length, angled mirrors and a low pedestal for the bride-to-be to stand on. The room beyond the fitting room was where she did all her consultations for made-to-measure gowns. MacKenna opened the door into the consultation room and stood aside so Kerry and Joe could enter.

Bolts of fabric lined one wall—silks, satins, organza, tulle, and other luxury fabrics in shades of white and cream. Sample books of swatches of other colored fabrics sat on the shelf beside them for clients who wanted something other than the traditional or for bridesmaid dresses, which Next Stop, Vegas could also provide. On the other wall, Mac had pinned up sketches and photos of previous gowns she had made. At one end of the small room was a comfortable couch and chairs, before which sat a huge coffee table loaded with more sample books of fabrics, sketches, and bridal ideas.

Joe headed for an armchair and slumped into it, his glazed expression identical to many fathers of the bride who’d had the misfortune to be dragged into wedding gown shopping. Kerry, on the other hand, looked like all her Christmases had arrived at once. She buzzed from sketches to fabric, touching, examining, and firing nonstop questions at Mac the whole time.

“What sort of wedding are you thinking of?” Mac asked as Kerry oohed over a selection of lace. “Small and intimate?”

Before Kerry could answer, Joe barked out a laugh. “Not if our mam has any say in it. It’ll be in a packed church in front of a priest for our Kerry, with all the clan getting pissed on Da’s beer afterward at the reception.”

Kerry’s enthusiastic smile slipped a notch, and her eyes narrowed at her brother sprawled on the armchair, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling in a picture of utter boredom. He’d done nothing but make sly innuendos from the moment Mac and Kerry had started talking.

“Will your man be wearing a suit, then, Kerry? Cover up that ink, eh?”

“Are you sure you need four bridesmaids?”

And when Kerry made a throwaway comment about “only getting married once,” Joe’s cynical grunt had his sister’s mouth pinching into a tight bud.

“Kerry, why don’t you have a look through these designs, and make some notes about what you like and don’t like?” MacKenna guided Kerry to the sofa and handed her a folder and a notepad and pen. “Joe and I will go into my office to discuss payment.”

“We will?” Joe slumped farther into the chair, propped one foot on her coffee table, and folded his arms.

“Yes, we will. Right now.”

In case the man was dense enough to miss the I’m about to stuff this bolt of white organza down your throat if you argue tone in her voice, Mac crossed over to where he sat and knocked his foot off her coffee table.

“Move your ass,” she mouthed with her back to Kerry.

Joe stared up at her for a beat then slowly uncoiled from the chair and stood. Even in her five-inch heels, she still found herself nose to collarbone. Mac clenched everything south of her belly button in order not to take a giant, wobbly step backward. Or a half step forward, to press her lips against the strong column of his throat and the pulse bumping rapidly there.

Crap—she was losing bucketloads of brain cells by the second, sniffing up some pheromone-enhanced scent of his cologne with an undertone of riled-up male. She made a tactical retreat and whirled away, reaching the door before she risked checking to see if he’d followed.

He hadn’t.

Instead, his gaze appeared to be fixed squarely on her…butt. Which caused a number of little chain reactions inside her, none of them professional, and none of which she wanted him to know about. Damn, she wished she’d kept her thick puffer jacket on this morning.

“Are you coming?” She injected as much command into her voice as possible, hoping the tremble in her vocal chords would be neutralized.

Kerry flipped a page in the folder and scribbled something on the notepad. Joe gave his sister one last glance and strode across the floor. Mac opened the door so fast she nearly yanked off the handle, and she shot toward the opposite side of the hallway into her office-cum-storage room.

She headed straight for the sound system that piped music throughout the shop—classical for some clients, schmaltzy ballads for others, and for those with a glimmer of humor, her selection of tongue-in-cheek, eighties rock. She raised the volume of Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” and faced Joe. He’d followed her into her office and leaned against the closed door, all bad attitude and rumpled hair sticking up on one side since he must’ve shoved his fingers through it at some point in the last thirty seconds.

“Billy Idol, really?” he said.

“You want your sister overhearing the conversation we’re about to have? About how you’re behaving like a complete ass?”

“You’re doing little to destroy this delusion of hers.”

Feet moving of their own accord, Mac stomped over to him. “You can learn a lot about someone in a short amount of time, and I’ve learned this about your sister already—if you push her too hard too fast, she’ll dig in her heels. So back the hell off for a bit. You’re too heavy-handed.”

His jaw bunched, and suddenly he wasn’t leaning against the door anymore—she was—with Joe’s big hands still clamped on her arms, which was how he’d twisted her around and pinned her.

“Heavy-handed, am I?”

Deeper and rougher than his usual silky tone with a hint of Ireland, his accent came out in force. It wasn’t the voice of a doctor with a charming bedside manner, but the voice of a man who could walk through the rougher parts of Dublin with confidence.

“Yes.”

The word came out high-pitched like a chick’s peep because his grip had loosened on her arms. Both his thumbs stroked over the curve of her biceps, and, dear God—she couldn’t for the life of her stop a delicious shiver from skimming down to her toes. Oh. And the shiver made a couple of pit stops at her nipples along the way.

Her breath shuddered out on a gasp. Even though she knew how to break away from a man by inflicting enough pain to ensure he wouldn’t grab her again, Mac couldn’t do anything but curl her toes and stare at the working of Joe’s Adam’s apple.

She licked suddenly dry lips. “You, ah, need to use a gentler touch.”

“Do I, darlin’?”

The mean streets of Dublin had left his voice, and a new tone appeared. One she’d never heard from him. One that a tiny corner of her heart recognized with a skittering jump, conjuring up a fantasy of a stone cottage on a lonely, Irish cliff top, the sea roaring below and a man whispering Irish endearments in her ears.

His hands skimmed up her shoulders, and one finger traced the line of her jaw, coming to rest in the cleft of her chin. “That’s how you expect a man to handle you, no doubt. As if you were made of spun glass, and a kiss that was anything but gentle would shatter you.”

“A kiss won’t shatter me.” That didn’t make sense, but then nothing did when she could barely hear his words over the pounding bass and the pounding thrum of blood firing through her veins.

“Are you sure now? Because I’m not wantin’ to be gentle.”

He dipped his head and brushed his lips along the path his finger had taken a moment before. A total contradiction of his words. Mac’s stomach dropped in a giddying free fall, and her hands—which had found their way onto his hips—bunched in the soft wool of his sweater.

“Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?” she said.

When she’d meant to say, “I need you to kiss me, fool.”

Apparently, his diagnostic powers were good because he figured out what she needed, and he cupped one big hand behind her neck, lowering his mouth to hers. Warm, firm lips teased hers, not quite a kiss, more testing for reaction as he drew back a fraction, waiting for her to broach the hairbreadth of distance between them again. And with a ragged inhale, she did, parting her mouth slightly to draw him in deeper. If she was going to kiss Joe, then, dammit, it was going to be a good kiss. A grand kiss.

A not gentle, not polite, not going to stop thinking about it for days kiss.

He moved his mouth over hers, catching on to her intention to taste as much of him as she could. Soft, drugging kisses that caused a glimmer of smugness to appear for an instant, a half-formed thought of not gentle, my butt—then the fingers of his other hand splayed around her throat and his lips sealed to hers, the slide of his tongue against hers dragging a moan from her chest and a tingling tug deep within her core.

He backed her against the door, keeping her in place with the hard planes of his body. Every inch of his body.

Mac released his sweater, her hands travelling up the broad planes of his back to play over the hard-packed muscle there, her nails digging in for purchase as he took the kiss from gentle to combustible. His fingers slid into her hair, palming her head in the perfect position for him to plunder her mouth—and there was no other word, much as what remained of her brain cells cringed at using it. He plundered, demanded, stole the damn breath from her lungs until she clung to him with soft, whimpering moans.

Joe broke the connection, feathering one last kiss along her jawbone. She was gratified to hear she wasn’t the only one with breathing issues, and judging by the press of his arousal into her upper belly, he’d been affected by their kiss as much as she had.

“You’re wearing my lipstick,” she blurted as he took a step backward. She slumped for a second against the door, her legs undeniably wobbly.

“And you look like a woman who’s been well and truly kissed.”

He ran a thumb over his mouth, and the corresponding tug from her budded nipples made her knees weak all over again.

“Shattered, if I might be so bold as to say,” he added.

The man must be delusional, not to mention arrogant, if he thought she’d admit how much he’d rocked her world in the past few minutes. How kissing Joe Whelan ranked up there in the Top Ten Kisses of Mac’s life—okay, the Top Three Kisses.

She forced her shoulder up in a half shrug. “It was a nice enough kiss, and we both needed to vent some frustration.” She strode over to her desk and tugged a tissue from the box, holding it out to him, giving it a little jiggle when he made no move to grab it. As if she were waving a white flag of surrender—but oh no, she wasn’t.

Steeling herself, because having Laura walk in on them with Joe’s mouth still smeared with Sinful Sunset wasn’t an option, Mac crossed to him, intending to wipe off the crimson lipstick remains. He caught her hand before the tissue made contact, his thumb giving her wrist one soft stroke before he released her and plucked the tissue from her fingers.

He wiped his mouth with the tissue and dropped it into the trash container beside her desk. Without denying their kiss was anything more than simple frustration, he parked his very fine butt on the edge of her desk.

“Name your price.” Then, with a wicked grin, he added, “For Kerry’s dress, I mean.”