If Joe’s heart got any lighter, it’d explode out of his chest like a lovesick cartoon character—even though that was anatomically impossible.

Mac was here. In his house.

Because she…because she what?

He strode into his tiny living room to light the fire. She missed him? She wanted to spend time with him? She still had the itch for mindlessly hot sex that he could conveniently scratch for her? He heard her tentative footsteps entering the cottage behind him. If she’d only wanted to scratch an itch, there were men back across the Foveaux Strait who’d be happy to oblige. Easier than a one-hour ferry trip for a clandestine hook up.

He snatched up the box of matches, using the opportunity to sneak a glance over his shoulder at her scoping out his kitchen.

Clandestine. Sneaking around. Calling herself by her roommate’s name. Dressing like a university student with her skinny, ripped jeans—admittedly giving him a grand view of her very fine arse—hiking boots, huge celebrity-style sunglasses, and her hair yanked up so high on her head it looked as if she were giving herself a makeshift face-lift. A subtle but effective disguise for anyone on the island who didn’t know her well.

Or maybe he’d read the situation completely wrong.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

Peering at the couple of family photos pinned to his fridge, Mac jerked her shoulders up near her ears. She still hadn’t removed her jacket, though she’d kicked off her boots and shoved the sunglasses on top of her head. For a moment, she really did look like a slightly insecure student, one who’d agreed to go to her male professor’s digs and now found herself out of her depth.

“Southern Seas B&B. Just for the night.”

His jaw bunched, and he turned his face back toward the fireplace, striking a match and setting it to the stack of kindling he’d readied that morning. A more isolated place to stay she couldn’t find, unless you counted one of the Department of Conservation overnight huts dotted along the Rakiura Track.

“No one in Oban knows you’re here.” Not a question but a statement of fact.

“No.”

Why her admission should rub him the wrong way, he didn’t know. It was completely bonkers to be irritated. He didn’t want West and his crowd of mates to give him hell about her. He especially didn’t want Ford on his case since the connection with Holly’s favorite cousin would likely raise his protective side and lead the big mechanic to not-so-gently inquire why Joe was fooling around with his future wife’s family member.

“I’m not embarrassed to be seen with you,” she added gently. “I just didn’t want to complicate a simple thing by feeding Oban’s gossip machine with the wrong idea.”

Complicate a simple thing. The phrase stung like alcohol poured on a wound. Even with all her subterfuge and dancing around it, Joe had taken one look at her frozen in his center’s parking lot, and hope had made a pitiful, girlish leap inside him.

Mac hadn’t been able to stay away. Mac missed him enough to make the first move this time. Mac felt the same bone-deep pull toward him as he felt toward her.

All bollocks.

She missed the sex; that was all. Just the sex. And granted, it was the best sex he’d experienced in years. Perhaps ever. Nope, not going to say ever.

The kindling flames danced higher, and he positioned small pieces of firewood where they, too, would burn. He was pretty damn sure she’d enjoyed herself, too. If sex was all she was here for, he’d be happy to say nothing about his stupid, girly feelings and oblige her.

“It’s a fair call.” He rose to his feet. “I wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea either.”

Especially you, his ego prickled. I wouldn’t want you to guess a part of me had hoped you were here to spend the weekend, here to dig past the superficial to see if we had unrealized potential together.

He was such an eejit.

She might be hiding from both her own feelings and his, but he recognized a direct hit by the crumpling of her forehead and the slump of her shoulders. Muscles strained in her neck as she shifted a sideways glance toward the kitchen behind her.

“You mentioned chicken?” she asked.

As mildly as he’d nonverbally agreed that they’d have meaningless, unemotional sex at some point that evening. Bloody amazing but meaningless, unemotional sex, his mind added when her gaze zipped down to hover intently at the level of his fly.

“Are you hungry?” He arched his hips forward, stretched his arms above his head in a man, I have a crick in my back from all the doctoring today.

Her eyelids fluttered down to half-mast, and a pulse beat butterfly wings in the hollow of her throat. “I could eat.”

Mac’s gaze skipped from his groin to his hairline, to a spot near to his left shoulder—anywhere but meeting his eyes.

Joe prowled out of the living room into the kitchen, where she leaned against his dining table, knuckles pale against her lightly tanned skin as she gripped the edge beside her hips.

“I could eat, too.” He stopped directly in front of her so his gray-sock-covered toes nudged her candy-pink-striped-sock-covered ones.

The woman went all out when getting into character, and instead of a further twinge of irritation, the cuteness of her wearing distressed denim and smelling of grape bubble gum gave him a twinge of a different sort. One that suggested what little appetite for food he had could wait for another couple of hours.

“Or I could do other things.” He gave a strand of her sky-high ponytail a soft tug.

“What sort of things?” She tipped her head back, and met his gaze. Boldly. With shag me senseless on the curve of her mouth and in the gleam of her eyes.

“You want me to talk dirty to you, MacKenna?”

Oh, he could tell her all the things he planned to do her sweet, curvy body, starting with peeling her out of her clothes and tasting every inch of her right here on his dining table. But he’d much rather show her.

Actions speaking louder than words, and all that.

Her cheeks sucked in, her breasts rising in a jagged inhale. “I do like the sound of your voice. Not so much what comes out of your mouth but your accent. You could describe taking out my appendix, and I’d still find it hot.”

“I’m glad there’s something about me you approve of.”

“Perhaps I’ll discover more.” She arched a little away from him. “When you keep your promise of a chicken dinner.”

Joe blinked at her, thoughts jumbling in his head with chaotic speed. “I thought you were only here to shag my brains out?”

The corner of her mouth quirked up. “How about food first, shagging later?”

Now he was thoroughly confused. She wanted a normal, man cooks woman dinner evening? Not just a quick tumble in his sheets. She needed him, but maybe she was beginning to like his company a little, too.

And why that should start his heart floating again, he didn’t want to acknowledge.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

* * *

While Joe basted more marinade on the roasting chicken breasts, Mac stood alongside him at the counter slicing cucumber for a salad. She slanted him another glance as he frowned into the oven and slapped on more marinade. The man took cooking as seriously as he probably took a medical procedure. He’d already made one joking comment about the width of her cucumber slices.

But since he’d crowded behind her, giving her a taste of his big body pressed to hers as he leaned over to examine her technique, she’d forgiven him. Though the question remained, reverberating around in her head. Why didn’t she just take him up on the offer of hot sex, right then and there? Making dinner together suggested an intimacy, a familiarity that they didn’t really have.

Joe slid the baking dish back into the oven and shut the door. “Have you heard from Kerry?”

She hesitated making the next slice. “No. I left a message on her answering service, but she didn’t call me back.”

“Me either. It’s like she’s blocking my calls.”

“Can you blame her? She’s probably worried you’ve forgotten your Hippocratic Oath.”

Joe grunted, a neither confirming nor denying grunt that he planned some dark, doctoral dismemberment of his sister’s fiancé.

“I thought she might’ve talked to you.” He folded his arms, distracting her with the bulge of his biceps under the soft wool of his sweater. “Remember our deal? We still need more opportunities for you to knock some sense into her thick skull.”

“Nice way to talk about your sister,” she said. “And I tried. But she’s just as thick skulled as you are. And what if she’s not making a mistake? What if Aaron is the love of her life?”

The words exploded into the silence of Joe’s kitchen. Mac had no idea why she’d said them out loud. Love of your life was a phrase sappy romance authors or rom-com scriptwriters tossed around.

“You believe two people can fall in love in only a few months?” He tilted his head as if he were genuinely curious to hear her response.

“It happens.” Mac chopped another three slices of cucumber and dumped them into the salad bowl. Too damn bad if they were a quarter inch wider that Joe deemed acceptable. “To some people. Love at first sight, it’s a thing.”

A thing that had happened to her mum over and over. Something that wouldn’t help her argument for love at first sight working out for Joe’s sister because each and every time her mum had been convinced that the latest man was the love of her life, the man she’d grow old with. Three failed marriages, two hostile ex-husbands, and one baby-daddy who’d never gotten over the hurt of being cheated on. Mac was the product of that last disastrous marriage, when twenty-six-year-old, two-time divorcee Cheryl had taken one look at Dennis Jones working on a construction site and declared to her best friend walking with her that he’d be husband number three in six months’ time.

Joe pulled a face. “My parents would agree. It’s an unfortunate Whelan trait. Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

“Your parents are divorced?”

“No, they’re one of the exceptions in the Whelan family. They’re still married and still sickeningly in love. Unlike the other branch of the family tree who’re still married but who’d happily push their spouse down the rolling green hills of Ireland if there were a spiked pit at the bottom.”

“Ouch. It was fast for your parents, too?”

“Mam thought Da pinched her arse at the pub and dumped a pint o’ beer in his lap. We kids heard their cute meet story so many times growing up, we could’ve directed the scene for a rom-com.”

Mac laughed, though her stomach gave a little twinge of premonition.

“Da told his mates that fine young thing in the red dress would be wearing his ring before Easter.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “It was January sixth.”

She licked dry lips, remembering her twelfth birthday when her mum had announced she and “Uncle” Jerry were engaged. Uncle Jerry had arrived in Mac’s world at the start of the school year in February, and her birthday was in April. By July, Uncle Jerry was out, and Uncle Steve had taken his place.

“Did he make the deadline and propose?” She couldn’t imagine Joe’s dad being any less charming and easy on the eye than his son; therefore, she couldn’t imagine how any young woman could resist a full-force campaign to win her heart.

“Yep,” Joe said. “Rick Whelan had a ring on twenty-one-year-old Bess Doyle’s finger by St. Patrick’s Day in March.”

“And they’ve been married for how long?”

“Thirty-five years.”

“A success story by anyone’s definition.” Mac scraped the last of the cucumber into the salad bowl.

“Luck of the Irish,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it won’t skip a generation.”

Was he talking about luck in long-lasting love skipping Kerry and Aaron? Or himself?

“You and Richard?” he asked. “Was that a love-at-first-sight thing?”

“No.” She chopped one of the ripe tomatoes in half. “More of a slow burn that developed over time.” Her stomach flip-flopped, but since they were getting personal… “You and Sofia?”

His lips thinned and twisted to one side. “A terminal case of insta-love—or lust muddled up with love. I don’t know which. I was in love with a Sofia-shaped hologram.” He let out a dry huff of a sigh. “But the fallout afterward still hurt like a bastard. I was wrecked for months.”

Hearing Joe admit to emotional pain, when most men would rather snip off their tongues with her dressmaking shears before admitting their feelings, caused a tingly tightness to wrap around her vocal chords. She wanted to blurt out that she hated the thought of him hurting. That he deserved better than a hologram or a muddled-up, love-lust combo destined to fizzle out when reality dumped all over it. That he deserved someone who’d love him with single-minded intensity for the rest of his life.

But she kept her lips sealed tight because he wouldn’t want her sympathy, and it wasn’t her place to say things that could be misconstrued. They both knew they weren’t on the threshold of insta-love; they were just indulging in a little insta-lust.

Mac set down the kitchen knife. Maybe a little insta-lust was just what the doctor ordered to blast those negative memories aside. She crossed to him, rising on tiptoes to rest a palm over the steady thump of his heart. The other hand she snaked around his neck, weaving her fingers into his thick hair and using it to drag down his head.

There was no resistance as their mouths aligned, but Mac could’ve sworn his heartbeat punched harder against her palm. She sucked in a breath of anticipation, his warm, male scent drawing deep into her lungs and causing a full-body shiver that resulted in a light-headed sway toward him. Joe caught her against his chest and, in one swift move, lifted her onto the countertop. She squeaked in surprise, the sound immediately muffled by his mouth crushing hers. She looped her legs around his hips and held on for the ride, kissing him back with everything she had.

Good Lord, the man knew how to trigger all her erogenous zones with just a kiss. Had he learned that in Anatomy 101? His tongue flickered along the seam of her mouth, and she opened to him with a needy moan. The kind of moan he correctly translated as a demand for more—more hot, soul-searching kisses, more hands squeezing her butt, more of his good bits rubbing up against hers.

Fingers skimmed up her rib cage, tracing the underside of her breast before working between them to circle her nipple, already stiff and aching for his touch. Mac leaned back, pleasure streaking downward in a fiery arc as Joe teased the stiffened peak under the layers of cotton and her black satin bra. And yes, this time she wore matching black satin panties. Not that Joe seemed inclined to slow down to examine her lingerie choices since he was already working her top up her body.

No complaints from her. Mac uncoiled her arms from around his neck and let him flick her top away. Her bra soon followed, and his nimble fingers set to work on her jeans. She lifted her hips, and like magic, jeans, panties, and socks disappeared from her body. Joe’s clothes somehow vanished, while he managed to keep her at a fever pitch of arousal with heated kisses. Not only did the man have mad magician skills, he also had a talent for making protection appear from the back pocket of his chinos. Within seconds, he suited up and came back to her, settling perfectly between her legs, stroking her intimately until her eyes crossed and her breathing came in shallow, moaning gasps.

“Please.”

She’d forgotten, in the intervening week since he’d rocked her world, how she craved the heady sensation of his touch. How achingly full she felt as he moved inside her. How his smell dizzied her senses. She re-familiarized herself with the texture of his skin under her fingertips as she clung to him. He reminded her of everything she’d missed as he clenched his hands on her hips and guided himself home with one hard thrust.

He seated himself deep within her then freed her hips, using both hands to cup her jaw while he kissed her again. Mac quaked around him, bypassing turned on and heading for the home stretch as he gently rolled his hips, moving the delicious, hard length inside her to potent effect.

Joe released her chin, wrapping one arm around her back, the other grasping her hip so he could thrust into her deeper and faster. His kisses grew more desperate, her sensitized nipples brushing over his chest as he drove them both toward the finish line.

Breathless, frantic, needy—Mac clung to him as the first pulsations shimmered deep inside, and her toes curled tight. For one uncensored moment, his gaze locked with hers. No hurt remained in his clear-blue eyes. And there was lust, sure. But beneath that she saw something that didn’t gleam with lust’s hard shine. She swore this was a kindred recognition, a vulnerability. Mac tensed, nails digging into the flesh of his shoulders, shaking off the tendency to read too much into a man’s gaze moments before he came.

“All right then, Mac?”

Joe buried his face in her throat, his teeth closing gently on the flesh between shoulder and neck. He reached between them and found the exact spot where she needed to be touched, catapulting her into an orgasm so intense she screamed loud enough to scare every bird in Oban into the sky.

With a rough groan, Joe thrust inside her one more time, his big body shuddering uncontrollably. Mac closed her eyes and held on tight, thankful he couldn’t see her vulnerability. The first tendrils of love taking root inside her.

Tomorrow she’d scourge those tendrils from her soul before they spread out of control. But for tonight…

She stroked a hand down the damp, muscled planes of Joe’s back. For tonight, she’d let them curl around her heart and keep her warm.