Explosive Alliance

She dropped the folders to the porch and weighted them down with the end table to buy herself time to shake off thoughts of Kurt, which were threatening to chill her faster than the wind.



Paige straightened, forcing her clenched hands to relax. "Make me smile. With something funny, I mean."



"Well, damn." He gave her that bad-boy wink and flash of crooked teeth that made her smile without anything more.



"Thank you."



"Hey, I'm just getting started. When I was six—"



"So you were at the orphanage then?" She settled deeper into the swing and his coat. "St.



Elizabeth's, right?"



"Right. You're a good listener." He stretched his legs out in front of him, close to hers without touching, and tapped the swing into gentle motion. "Anyhow, when I was six, I got into some trouble."



"For what?" How much trouble could a six-year-old get into? Her mother-heart clenched at the possibilities.



"I put dish soap in the baptismal font, and when they cranked it up for morning mass..."



"Ohmigod."



"That's what Sister Nic said."



Her mama-heart clenched tighter at the picture of a grieving child no doubt acting out for attention. "What did they do?"



"I had to go to the chapel by myself and say a bunch of Hail Marys. Basically, I got a time-out to think about what I'd done wrong."



The tightness in her chest eased. "Appropriate."



"Yeah, and torture for a kid who really likes attention."



"The very reason you pulled the stunt in the first place."



"Spoken like a seasoned parent."



A parent whose child had nightmares and imagined illnesses. There went that Mother of the Year Award.



She set the swing in motion again with the tap of her toe, each creak, creak of the chain soothing her back into the moment. "What other stunts did you pull?"



"Released a couple of mice and garden snakes in the convent. Put a bra on a statue of St.



Francis."



"A bra?"



"Imagine my surprise when I went through Sister Esther Ann's drawers and found out she was a double-D."



She tried to hold back the snort. No luck.



"Then I poured fertilizer on the lawn so the dead grass spelled out hellfire." He continued to count down pranks with scarred fingers. "Spiked the punch with unconsecrated wine at nun-appreciation night so they all got schnookered."



Giggles bubbled up so hard they overflowed, probably much like those font bubbles.



"Okay! Okay!" She gasped until tears eeked out and her sides hurt. "I'm laughing. Don't think I can laugh any more without hurting myself."



He extended his arms and let them fall to rest on the back of the porch swing. "My work here is complete."



The heat of his arm scorched right through the leather of his jacket. Still the swing rocked with each nudge of his tennis shoe against the plank porch until the swaying assumed a slow lover's rhythm. Her eyes glided from his feet up his stretched legs. Thigh muscles rippled under well-washed denim.



Gulp.



She wouldn't flinch. Talk. Okay, swallow first, then talk. Paige yanked her gaze up to his.



"Did you make all that up?"



"Afraid not."



"You were a handful."



"Some say I still am."



Did he know his fingers toyed with her ponytail?



"Back to the schnookered thing. Right after that, Sister Nic asked me to turn the pages for her when she played the organ during mass." Blue eyes smiled at the memory. "I was such a screwup, I couldn't imagine she really meant me and I didn't know squat about music. I figured she wanted to embarrass me as payback for when she got tipsy off that punch, hiked up her habit and did the electric slide."



She let her head fall back to rest against his arm. "You are so bad."



"You're only just noticing? I must be slipping." He looped a lock of her hair around his finger and tugged. "At any rate, I thought for sure turning those pages would be the worst punishment yet because I'd ruin the whole service. But she said to watch for when she nodded, then turn the page. I did okay. Then I realized that sitting up there, I got plenty of attention from Sister Nic, and the whole congregation."



The vision of a young Bo in need of a mother's love cuddling up next to that wise old nun on a piano bench brought fresh tears to her eyes. "And your love for music was born."



"Pretty much. There were plenty of musical instruments and teachers around. I got free lessons that would have cost a mint anywhere else." He nodded toward his guitar. "By the time I was eight, I could 'Kumbaya' with the best of them."



"That's definitely a story to make me smile. Thank you for sharing it." The man was far more generous with parts of himself than she seemed able to manage. "Sister Nic sounds like a wonderful woman."



"She is."



"Is?" She'd envisioned an ancient nun dispensing that motherly love. "She's still alive?"



"Yeah, alive and kicking at seventy-nine, sneaking her smokes in a retirement home down in Charleston. That's actually why I call her Sister Nic—as in Sister Nicotine, since she used to slip out to the prayer garden for the occasional cigarette. She's really named Sister Mary."



"In Charleston?" She struggled to get the geography of his youth untangled. "St.



Elizabeth's was in South Carolina?"



He shifted on the swing, scratching along the back of his neck. Avoiding? "Uh, no. It was up in Chicago."



"So Sister Nic has family in South Carolina?"



"Not exactly."



Which meant she must have moved to be near him. Realization trickled through. She understood enough about retirement setups for nuns and clergy to know money was scarce enough that there wasn't much picking and choosing.



Unless it was privately funded.



By someone like Bo.



Oh, God, surely it was a cold day in hell, after all, because she was about to kiss this generous, funny, bighearted man.



Chapter 9



He saw the kiss in Paige's damp brown eyes even before she swayed toward him. After a week of living together, watching her, smelling her, getting to know this sweet, sexy lady, damned if he could will his sorry ass to move off the porch swing.



Bo cupped the back of her neck and met her halfway. Soft woman and softer br**sts gave against his chest until his libido shouted an enthusiastic ooh-rah. Yeah, he was a breast man. Every guy had his preference, even if he was smart enough not to let on, and he liked supple, giving... Hell, he just liked her.



She opened to him, moist and warm in contrast to the dry cold prickling around them.



The taste of lemon pie from dessert mingled with something he was coming to recognize as distinctly Paige, mind-blowing Paige, who resurrected every bad-boy inclination he'd worked to stifle for the past week.



"Hey, you," he whispered against her kissed-full lips. "I thought we weren't going to do that again."



"We aren't." She nipped at the corner of his mouth, her hands crawling over his shoulders and up into his hair to urge him back down again.



"We're not?"



She breathed the answer against him. "Nope."



"Then what are we doing?" He had to kiss her once, twice, fast again before he could let her answer.



Her arms looped around his neck as she arched more of that tempting fullness against him. "I don't know about you, but right now most of me is singing."



"I know a lot about singing." And, yeah, every nerve in him was shouting out a chorus while his pulse pounded percussion. He started to reach for her glasses so they could take this kiss to a deeper level...and paused. Things were getting out of hand fast, on her front porch for crying out loud, like he was a teenager.



His forehead fell to rest against hers. "Damn it, I swore to myself I wouldn't do that while I was here."



She stiffened in his arms. "Gee, thanks."



He palmed her back, skimming circles of reassurance even though he knew they couldn't take this any further. "You know why."



"Seems to me there were two of us doing that." Her hand slid around to splay against his chest, shadows smudging her eyes in the dim porch light. "Are you playing me?"



What the hell had he done to deserve that comment? He'd been damn near a freaking saint around her until now, all things considered. Well, a saint with mighty devilish thoughts about what she wore to bed each night and how much fun it would be to strip each item off, but he hadn't acted on the fantasies.



Time out.



He forced himself to remember the woman had more emotional baggage than a luggage terminal. "No games, I swear you're—"



"Never mind." She clapped her hand over his mouth. "It's a stupid question. If you are playing me, you wouldn't admit it."



He gripped her wrist and gently lowered her touch away. "I have done more than my fair share of things I'm not proud of over the years, but I'm not a liar." He linked his fingers through hers and held tight. "And I am absolutely telling the truth when I say I've never been as tempted as I am right now. Painfully so."



Her eyes widened right before her gaze fell...to his lap. He fought against the urge to groan until she looked up again, eyes wider. "Oh, my. Ouch."



"Yeah." Ouch about summed it up.



A smile teased along her pretty lips. "Gives total-package-with-bow-and-presents a whole new meaning."



Surprise jolted a short burst of laughter out of him. "The girl next door has a racy sense of humor."



An image of her in a cotton nightshirt with a silky red thong underneath blazed to life. He was so toast.



She eased out of his arms and slumped against the porch swing, hugging herself, his jacket swallowing her. "Don't let the glasses and wide eyes fool you. This girl next door has had to learn not to care what other people think. Anything I do these days is for my daughter or for myself."



Her words squeezed his heart tight in his chest. Hooking an elbow on the back of the swing, he stroked a stray hair from her brow, the satin of her skin gliding along his calluses. "You deserved better from life."



"Did I? Maybe. Maybe not." She angled her cheek into his hand. "Couldn't we just have a raging affair?"



God, was he ever tempted, more than he could remember being, but... "You deserve better from me."



Rolling her eyes, she sighed, "Heaven protect me from men who think they know what's best for my life." She pressed a kiss into his palm before gripping his wrist to ease his hand away. "Being the girl-next-door type sure does suck sometimes."



"Lady, I meant what I said. You are the hottest damned woman I've ever laid eyes on. But quite frankly, those wide brown eyes of yours scare the crap out of me." And wasn't that more truth than he'd even realized until the words fell out of his mouth? "Do you hear what I'm saying? You're not the kind I would just have an affair with."



More truth than he wanted to admit to himself, but the words were out there in the night air, porch light illuminating her shock. No mistaking it.



"Whoa, wait." She startled upright, rocking the swing. "You're not actually saying you want us to try—"



Was he? Hell, no. This wasn't a woman to mess with on any level if he wanted to look himself in the mirror in the morning with a clear conscience. "I realize that's out of the question. But if things were different, the past, the present, too—yeah, I would want to ask you out on a real date and not some half-assed groping on a porch."



He let himself spin out the fantasy date in the same way he'd spun other fantasies about her, not wise, but a small compensation for painful denial. "I would take you to dinner and talk to you, get to know you better. And sure, I'd start hoping that you would stay over for the night. But if not, that's okay. I could wait because we would be going out again."