Explosive Alliance

Paige tugged her around in front and looped both arms around Kirstie, mother and daughter a mirror image of blond hair, glasses and wide eyes. "We thought it might be better if one of us drives her for a while."



Safer.



What was wrong with the world that the kid couldn't ride the bus with her friends?



"Going with Mom's cool. You probably get to sleep later, huh?"



"Nope." Kirstie watched him unload with obvious resentment.



Hey, kids always liked him. He was a pal. Tossing aside his military-green duffel, he knelt in front of her. "How about I take you up for a ride in the plane after we're done with work today?"



Kirstie squinted, her resentment double blaring. Yeah, kid, you're gonna have to pick.



Carry the grudge—whatever the hell the reason—or get your flight. Standing, he backed up to give her space, the seed planted. "Think about it while you're at school and we can talk more later."



Paige's pretty lips mouthed, "Thank you." Then she leaned to face her daughter. "Run and get your lunch box off the counter, punkin, or we're going to be late."



After the kid sprinted up the stairs and out of sight, Paige turned back toward him, the muggy wind playing with her hair that refused to stay constrained in a red rubber band.



Memories of their kiss from the day before, a kiss they'd never been alone long enough to discuss, hung in the air between them. Better to face it head-on and get the subject past.



Paige toyed with a drooping branch overhead. "About that kiss—"



"—that we shouldn't—" He stopped. "What?"



She waved for him to continue. "You first."



"No, you go ahead."



"Really, I'd rather hear what you have to say."



She deserved his honesty. Bo flattened a hand to the roughened bark. "I was going to say that we shouldn't spend time alone together, well, other than in the plane, of course."



"So the haystack offer has been rescinded?"



She had to be kidding. Please, sweet Lord, let her be joking. "Were you seriously thinking about it?"



Paige scuffed the toe of her tennis shoe through the mud. "Tough to think about anything else with you around."



"You were actually considering an affair with me while I'm here? Under this roof? With your brother lurking behind every corner? Forget the whole damn danger factor of him taking a shotgun to me, I owe him the common courtesy of not—" He thumped himself on the forehead. A guy wanted to do the right thing and then the fates had to twist it all around to bite him on the butt. "Are you trying to make me crazy?"



"Sheesh, this isn't going the way I planned." Releasing the droopy branch with a snap that rained leaves on her head, she perched a hand on her cute round jeans-clad hip—heaven help him. "No, Bo. I'm not offering a thing other than more of your theoretical discussion to clear the air. I figured if we talked about this attraction analytically, it would be easier to laugh and move on."



"Then you really are nuts." Cold-shower alert.



Without thinking, no surprise around Paige, he swiped a leaf sticking in her hair. She instinctively backed away, caught herself and stopped. Still the telling flinch shouted a reminder.



Yeah, she wanted him, but it scared the hell out of her. He was starting to understand the feeling. All the more reason to keep his pants zipped around her. If only he could seal off temptation as securely.



A week later Paige secured the blanket under her daughter's chin, strains of guitar music drifting up through the bedroom window from the front porch. Only seven days since Bo moved in and already his presence filled her life as surely as his music filled the air—



country tunes tonight, soft and low enough to soothe a child to sleep.



Or romance a woman.



Her legs folding under her, she sat on the edge of Kirstie's bed, resting back against the antique white iron headboard. Paige nudged tiny glasses to the center of the end table, right beneath the Strawberry Shortcake nightlight, and swung her feet up onto the giving comforter. She patted her daughter's back and allowed herself to listen anonymously.



Kirstie snuffled under the red-and-pink sheets with a shuddering breath that testified to another uneasy journey into sleep. Night terrors had revived over the past week, not that the child seemed to remember anything when she woke. But the mumbled word Daddy relayed plenty.



At least it seemed Kurt couldn't be even indirectly blamed for the break-in. An inventory showed missing bottles of Ketamine, indicating a drug-related vandalism. Lightning rarely struck twice. Right? And on the off chance it did, they'd installed a better security system and sturdier locks.



Brushing her fingers over whispery blond curls, Paige studied long lashes resting on a cherub cheek. She could stare at her child for hours like this, amazed at the miracle, awed and humbled by the responsibility of caring for this little life. How could Kurt have taken so lightly what he owed his daughter? Would Kirstie fear trusting men because of how very far her hero father had fallen?



Heaven knew, her own trust had been shaken, enough so she was scared to jump on a sure thing. Sheesh, she had a hot guy under her roof, a guy who actually didn't seem to go for the anorexic, Hollywood type. And anytime he so much as passed the butter—or reached to touch her hair—she scampered back like a scared rabbit.



A scared and very sexually frustrated rabbit.



She'd forgotten there were things far more intimate than a kiss when it came to living in the same house with a non-relative male. Although Bo slept in a guest room next to her in the rambling old farmhouse, there was something about the way his undeniably masculine footsteps vibrated through the hardwood floors and up through the soles of her bare feet in the morning. Even her delft-blue bedroom reminded her of his eyes, her space no longer a sanctuary.



And the way he pulled a chair out for her at the dinner table stroked at her femininity left pretty much untended these days. The way he also pulled out the chair for Kirstie touched Paige's heart, also left untended of late.



Her daughter had settled into wary acceptance of Bo's presence over the past week. A flight, followed by sing-a-longs with his guitar went far in softening up her stubborn daughter until dire predictions of measles, meningitis and ring worm—yuck—slowed.



Life was settling into a near-normal routine. She even found herself looking forward to this time of day when Bo went outside and played the guitar for himself. At first she'd thought he did it to loosen up his hands, then she'd once spied his eyes slide closed as the music took hold of him. Were his eyes closed like that when he kissed her?



A chilly breeze ruffled the curtains and raised goose bumps on her arms. Country ballads gave way to something faster she didn't recognize but found to be no less appealing. Yes, they were settling into a routine with plenty of intimacy—but absolutely no kissing.



Wise. Safe. She was fine, damn it. She wasn't yearning for unwise and dangerous.



Was she?



Staying upstairs when she desperately wanted to walk down only proved he still had an effect on her. If anyone else played, she would join him on the porch and ask to listen. No more hiding. She wouldn't cower under her quilt like a kid. She would go outside like a grown-up, even risk a little chitchat.



But it would be a cold day in hell before she mentioned kissing again, much less ideas of where those kisses could lead.



Damn, but he was freezing his ass off out here on Paige's wooden porch swing, avoiding the torture of trying to sleep while she snoozed one wall away.



Did she sleep in a nightshirt? Pajamas? Sleep pants and a T-shirt maybe? Or something silky. Or nothing at all with silkier skin to explore. He'd envisioned her in each one and found them all beyond appealing.



Winds kicked up, dropping the temperature another ten degrees or so and rustling the oak tree across the yard. Who'd have thought it could get this cold in May? At least if the lowering temps continued into the night, the freeze would knock out the mosquito population.



"What's that you're playing?" Paige's voice drifted over his shoulder.



Bo glanced back. Hell, he hadn't even heard her coming. He continued to pluck along the strings, waiting for her to join him on the double-seater while Kirstie's swing on the oak twisted in the wind. "I was working on a tune for Cupcake. She seems to like nursery rhymes and poems. I thought she would enjoy hearing one or two of them set to music."



She took her seat beside him, close but not touching, a stack of paperwork clasped to her generous chest. "That's really thoughtful."



"It's fun." He pulled his eyes off her br**sts and back onto the star studded sky. "She's a great kid."



"I think so, but I accept I might be biased." She lowered the folder to her knees. "Do you mind if I hang with you out here while I go through these?"



What was she up to now? He never knew with Paige. "No problem. Do you have a music preference?"



"Whatever you want to play is fine."



His fingers picked up where he'd left off on the tune for Kirstie, night bugs echoing like a quirky back-up band. Paige stayed quiet as he plucked through the piece while the wind carried the scent of fresh-mown grass and Paige's flowery soap. He enjoyed how she just let him play without needing a running commentary. He enjoyed a lot of things about her, which made it tough to keep his no-kissing, no-touching rule for the past week.



Living in the same place crammed more getting-to-know-each-other time into a few days than he would normally have in a month of dates. Along with information he would never find out through dinner and a movie, even dinner and a movie followed by sex.



He'd discovered she refused to share her newspaper with anyone who crinkled the edges or creased the pages in the wrong direction. She was a fastidious neatnik around the house, picking up any crumb she or Kirstie spilled, but would step over Vic's same pair of discarded socks for four days running in an admirable refusal to be anyone's maid.



She needed three alarms ringing successively before she rolled out of bed every morning, a fact that tortured him on a daily basis through the wall as he was forced to wake up early and think about her lying in bed wearing a nightshirt or sleep pants or satin.



Or nothing.



All of that should have made his head explode. Except he knew she overslept because after working all day she often stayed up late curled beside Kirstie to soothe away nightmares. When she read the paper, her eyes filled with sentimental tears over who-knew-what. And while she walked over Vic Jansen's socks, she never said a word about how ratty those socks were. She'd confided to Bo they'd been a present from Vic's daughter shortly before the little girl drowned.



No wonder the guy was overprotective of the females in his life, and this woman with her roughened hands and soft heart more than deserved some pampering.



Bo stopped playing and rested his guitar against the porch railing, then shrugged out of his leather flight jacket. "Here. Wear this. It's cold out tonight."



Teeth chattering, Paige stared at Bo's jacket that would carry his musky-scented heat and reminded herself about the cold-day-in-hell resolve. "I'm fine, thanks."



He skimmed a finger up her chilled arm, raising fresh goose bumps that had nothing to do with the cold now. "Really?"



No, but rejecting the jacket would be a telling move. She'd come out here to prove a point. She set aside her paperwork and slipped her arms into the sleeves. Oh, yeah, definitely still warm and spicy smelling.



Bo tapped the edge of the folders on her lap. "What's that you've got there?"



"Mail. Billing stuff for the clinic. Some paperwork from my attorney in Charleston."



"Attorney?"



"There are so many things to take care of when someone dies, especially when they die in a pile of trouble." She tried to laugh, but it lodged in her throat. "I don't want to think about all of this right now."