Книга - Power Play

Power Play
Nancy Warren


Keep her hands to herself?Not easy for Emily Saunders, who's in Elk Crossing, Idaho, for a family wedding. She's double booked in the same hotel room with a sexy cop attending–of all things!–a hockey tournament. As a massage therapist, Emily's soon itching to soothe Jonah Betts's gorgeous muscles–both on and off the ice.Jonah can't believe his luck–a sexy single woman sharing his cozy room, albeit temporarily. Okay, her orange bridesmaid dress is a disaster and her family is convinced he's actually her boyfriend. He's ready to go along with it even as he makes his play….Until Emily is suddenly calling for a TIME-OUT! Will Jonah's fantasies be permanently iced?









“Your bed or mine?” Emily asked


Her eyes were big and glistening with passion.

“Both,” Jonah promised her.

And just like that the game ended. Slowly she slipped her nightie off her shoulders, leaving her exposed in all her beauty.

Leaning forward, he decided it was well time he joined in this seduction. He explored her mouth, teasing her lips, making her sigh. He let his mouth go all the places it wanted to go—the swell of her breasts, her nipples, which tasted like heaven.

When he nuzzled her belly, she giggled. “You should have shaved.”

“Next time I will….”

She sighed and Jonah felt the quiver of her skin beneath his lips. “I can’t believe you didn’t jump me the second we got into the room.”

“You have no idea how much I wanted to,” he murmured into her belly button. “How much I still do…”







Dear Reader,

Some things you just can’t make up! This book came about after an extremely memorable writing retreat in the Pacific Northwest. My friends and I booked in to a charming lodge to write. One of our rooms had bedbugs and we all had to move. They took away all our clothes and cases to be treated and, since the lodge was full, we got rooms they normally don’t rent out. The room that Emily ends up with is pretty much the room I had. Since I couldn’t sleep, I played the writer’s favorite game. What if?

I’m grateful to all my zany writing friends, especially the Duetters, who can always be counted on for laughter and support. A special thanks to Candy Halliday, who helped with the orthodontist background, and to Holly and A.J., who helped in many ways.

As far as I know, there is no Elk Crossing Lodge in Idaho, and if there is I have never been there. The location was entirely fictitious.

Hope you enjoy Power Play, my unique contribution to the FORBIDDEN FANTASIES promotion. As always, come visit me on the Web at www.nancywarren.net.

Happy reading,

Nancy Warren




Power Play

Nancy Warren







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


USA TODAY bestselling author Nancy Warren lives in the Pacific Northwest where her hobbies include walking her border collie in the rain, antiques and sports. She’s the author of more than thirty novels and novellas for Harlequin Books and has won numerous awards. Visit her at www.nancywarren.net.


To Bobby and Kathleen,

dear friends and fellow bedbug refugees.

Thanks for all the laughter and good times—

and for the picture of all of us

in our lost and found bin fashions!




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21




1


THE SCREAMS WOKE EMILY Saunders. Horror movie worthy shrieks of terror that had her jerking up in bed and panicking for a moment when she didn’t immediately recognize her surroundings.

She flicked on the bedside lamp, noting fuzzily that it was 5:07 a.m. The bed and the rest of the hotel room furniture came into focus along with her thoughts. Right. She was back in Elk Crossing, Idaho, in her room at the Elk Crossing Lodge.

For a second she wondered if the screams had been part of a nightmare. Her gaze drifted to the pumpkin-colored bridesmaid dress hanging in the unfortunately see-through bag. No wonder she was having nightmares. When her cousin Leanne had asked her to be a bridesmaid, Emily had said, “Yes, of course.” She always said yes.

But she really thought she might have plucked up the courage to turn down the honor of being a bridesmaid had she known about the dresses. Pumpkin—the color—was bad enough, but did the shape of the dress have to resemble the vegetable? Emily had worn some hideous bridesmaid gowns in her time, but this one really took the trick-or-treat candy.

She was about to flick off the light and try to get back to sleep when she heard more screaming. And it seemed to be coming from right outside her door.

Shoving her feet into her blue terry-towel slippers and grabbing the matching robe off the end of the bed, she picked up her room key and ran to the door. Touch it first, she reminded herself, wishing she’d bothered, for once, to read that “in case of fire” map taped to the back of the door. She didn’t feel heat, or smell smoke, but the commotion continued out there in the hallway.

Amid the screams she heard some soothing tones, and nobody seemed to be rushing for exits. Also, no fire alarm rang.

Curiosity had her cautiously opening her door.

The sight that met her eyes was—unusual.

A plump young woman, well-endowed and naturally not wearing a bra in the middle of the night, was jumping up and down as though the carpet of the hotel was a trampoline. She was the one doing the screaming.

“I saw them. Crawling everywhere. They’re on me. Eww. Eww,” she bellowed.

A much skinnier woman with long arms and legs, wearing a pink baby doll and nothing else, shrieked, “I felt something. I think they’re in my hair.”

And the pair of them were off, screaming, shaking their heads and bouncing like crazed groupies at a Jonas Brothers concert.

Emily stepped forward, wondering if they were on drugs of some kind.

A young guy in a hotel uniform was trying, with absolutely no success, to calm the women down. “Please, ladies, you’re waking the other guests.” He looked too young to wear a uniform and a sheen of sweat covered his upper lip.

An older, gray-haired couple who’d put overcoats and outdoor shoes on, stared, as stunned as she. They spoke to each other in soft voices. The woman caught Emily’s eye and shrugged in a “what do you do?” kind of way.

While Emily tried to recall what she knew of drug and alcohol poisoning, another door opened across the hall and a big, muscular, hairier-than-necessary man stepped out wearing nothing but boxer shorts with some brand of beer stamped on them. He was in his early thirties, she’d guess, with dark hair that stuck up on one side where he’d slept on it. His gaze took in the scene at once then snagged momentarily on the bouncing breasts.

“They’re crawling on me, they’re crawling on me,” the girl screamed again.

Emily snapped to the useless guy in uniform, “Call 9–1-1. These women need medical attention.”

Hairy Guy walked up to the girls, showing everyone in the hallway an excellent physique. Muscular, hard and drool-worthy, his near naked bod oozed testosterone and reminded her that she hadn’t had sex in far too long. “You don’t need 9–1-1,” he said in a low, bottom-of-the-gravel-pit voice. “You need an exterminator.”

Before her bemused gaze, he reached forward and plucked something from the plump girl’s shoulder. He held a flat black speck out on the edge of his finger. It was the size of a flax seed. He showed it to the flustered fellow in uniform.

“Bedbugs.”

By this time, more doors had opened along the corridor. A traveling salesman type yawned. “What’s going on?”

The couple in overcoats announced in unison, in horrified accents, “Bedbugs.”

The uniformed guy swallowed. Then looked up at the man in boxer shorts with appeal. “But the hotel’s full.”

“Not for long.”

Emily took a step away from the girls who were standing in shocked stillness. She didn’t blame them for looking so horrified.

Bedbugs? This was all she needed, on top of driving all the way from Portland to Elk Crossing for a wedding she didn’t want to attend with far too many of her family and friends asking nosy questions about her own continuing single status. This was the icing on the already hideous wedding cake. Decorated, she now recalled, with walnut-size marzipan pumpkins. And a tiny bride and groom perched on top, surrounded by faux fall leaves. No doubt by the actual wedding day, somebody would have thought to add a horn of plenty.

The thin girl lifted her arm. “I’m so itchy.” Even from across the hall Emily could see small red welts. And they were swelling.

Her irritation at the entire situation instantly changed to sympathy. “Let me see if I can find you some antihistamines,” she said.

Hairy Guy glanced her way and nodded in approval. Then he spoke to the two women, now both compulsively scratching.

“Go in the bathroom, strip off and shower in hot water. Hot as you can stand. Don’t put any of your clothes back on.”

He glanced at the hotel employee. “Get a female to bring them fresh towels and some clean robes.”

The guy nodded and trotted off. Fast.

With a hiccup and a “This is soo disgusting” the two women went back into their room.

“You,” he called to the useless guy in uniform who was already halfway down the hall. “You’d better get hold of the hotel manager.”

“This is not good,” Emily muttered, as she dug out her traveling medical kit. She’d had a tough enough time getting her family to accept that she wouldn’t be bunking down in some distant relative’s overflowing basement for the duration of the wedding festivities. Years of experience had taught her that she could manage her massive family if she stayed in a hotel. Wasn’t it exactly her luck to pick one with an insect problem?

She took the antihistamines over to the bedbug-infested room and knocked on the door. When the slimmer of the two women answered, wrapped in a towel, she held out the package. “Here.” She dropped the box into the girl’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks. I’ll take a few out and—”

“No, no. Keep them. They’re yours. Hope you feel better soon,” she said, and speedily retraced her steps back to her room.

Fifteen minutes had passed since she’d been woken. For a nanosecond she contemplated getting back into bed, then recalled the sight of that tiny insect on the guy’s finger.

She dashed to her bed and yanked down the covers, searching. Her sheets looked perfectly white. Nothing moving.

Her hair brushed her cheek and the slight tickle had her jumping and scratching at her face. No way she was getting back into that bed. Her sleep for the night was clearly over.

Her next stop was the bathroom where she stripped off and looked at herself from every angle. No bugs that she could see. No bites. She breathed a sigh of relief and stepped into the shower, running it long and hot and washing her hair and body twice over.

Her mom must never find out about the vermin, she resolved as water ran over her body. Unfortunately, her mom and dad were already in Elk Crossing mostly so her mom could support her sister, Emily’s aunt Irene, in marrying off her daughter. As close as the two women were, Em knew it was killing her mother to see Irene’s daughter, Leanne, get married first. Since Leanne was more than five years younger than her own very unmarried—as in didn’t even have a steady boyfriend—daughter.

Naturally, they were staying at wedding central. A place Emily had already decided she’d spend as little time in as possible for the next week. Not that she didn’t love her family, but all that wistful longing and those unsubtle hints were hard on a girl.

She inspected the towel on the rail and then shook it vigorously before toweling herself dry.

There was a knock on her door. Wrapping the damp towel around her, she opened the door to a sleepy-looking chambermaid. “We’re very sorry, ma’am, but you’ll need to vacate your room.” The girl—she doubted she was even out of her teens—held a large, green Rubbermaid bin in her hands.

“No problem.” As if she’d sleep there another minute. “Just let me get dressed and get my stuff.”

“Um. You can’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The girl stepped inside and shut the door. Then she peeled the lid off the bin. Only now did Emily see that across the lid in faded black Sharpie ink were the words: Lost and Found. Women’s.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’m real sorry. But we have to launder everything, and treat your cases, too.” She stuck a fake bright smile on her face. “I’m sure there’s something in the lost and found bin that will fit you.”

“But, I don’t have bedbugs. I’m sure my room is fine.”

“I’m only doing what the manager told me to, ma’am. We’re evacuating and treating this entire wing. You want I should call him?”

“No. No.” She understood that they had to contain the infestation, and fast. The last thing she wanted was to be the unwitting bearer of bedbugs to her cousin’s wedding.

She looked inside.

The clothes inside that plastic tub were the kind that if you forgot them at a hotel you wouldn’t care enough to go back and retrieve them. Faded track pants, ancient sweatshirts, a bright pink faux silk blouse from the seventies, old jeans, some workout wear, a floral housecoat. A handful of bathing suits.

Emily couldn’t help herself. She started to laugh. She saw herself showing up to today’s prewedding event, which was lunch and then some kind of craft project that involved making paper roses for the wedding. No doubt orange ones. When she imagined herself showing up in crumpled lost and found clothing, when her mother was always boasting about how successful she was, she laughed until she snorted.

The chambermaid stared at her as though she’d lost her mind, which only made her laugh harder. Finally, she wiped her eyes and thought: emergency shopping trip. “I’m going to need my purse.”

“Just your wallet. Leave everything else in the room. I’m really sorry, but we have to contain this.”

Stuff happened, Emily reminded herself. Then had a terrible thought.

“My bridesmaid gown. It’s in a plastic bag, it’ll be okay, won’t it?”

The girl looked doubtfully at the dress, clearly visible in its see-through bag and then back at Emily, as though wondering why anyone would want to save that gown. If it weren’t for the family thing, Em would agree with her.

“I know. It’s butt ugly, but if I don’t wear that dress down the aisle on Saturday for my cousin’s wedding, I might as well cross my name out of the family bible. You know what I mean?”

Fervent nodding. “I’ll ask the manager. He’ll know what to do.”

“Is the Elk Mall still the only shopping center in town? Oh, and I’ll need a list of other hotels.”

She’d last been in town a few months ago for a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Her mom had moved away from Elk Crossing before Emily was even born, but she’d dragged the family back so many times over the years that Emily knew the town pretty well.

While she was speaking, the young girl dug down into the bin and handed her a pair of black polyester satin pants, the pink polyester silk shirt and a fluorescent-green windbreaker with a tear in the pocket.

Emily looked at the crumpled garments hanging from her hand. “Can I at least wear my underwear?”

“No. Everything gets washed.” The girl sent her another sunny smile. “But these are all clean. We always wash them before they go in the lost and found.”

“That’s good to know.” Especially since she’d be going commando.

“Yep, Elk Mall’s still the place. It has a Wal-Mart now,” she added with pride. “And we’re finding you another room. We should have you settled in a couple hours. Your clothes need to be separated into washable and dry-clean-only piles.”

“I don’t want another room in this hotel,” Emily said in the pleasant but firm tone she used on her massage therapy clients who didn’t do their exercises. “I want a list of other local hotels.”

“Won’t do you any good. They’re all full.”

“Every hotel room in Elk Crossing is full?” This town was so insignificant it only appeared on regional maps, but she didn’t think it was that small. The wedding was adding a hundred people, tops, and most of them were billeted. “I don’t mind driving.”

The chambermaid shook her head. “Not a hotel room, motel room or bed-and-breakfast is left. Even the campgrounds are full. There’s nothing for fifty miles. It’s the Over-Thirties Hockey Tourney this week. They’ve booked everything.”

Emily pushed a wet curl back off her forehead. “Tell me you have some good news.”

“Sure. Your room’s comped. And we’re serving free coffee and breakfast in the restaurant.”

She sighed. As good news went, she hadn’t exactly won the lottery. “What time does Wal-Mart open?”




2


ONLY THE THOUGHT OF BEDBUGS got Emily out of her room once she’d forced herself to dress in the lost and found clothes. The polyester silk pants were too short, ending about three inches from her ankles, but making up in width what they lacked in length, so she’d had to use a safety pin to hold the waistband in place.

By contrast, the shirt was too small, and she was braless. Which was the only reason she finally slipped her arms into the bright green windbreaker.

Unable to resist, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror and tried to see the humor in the situation, but at the moment, she didn’t feel like laughing. She looked like a scarecrow that had been left out one winter too many. Loads of her family lived here in Elk Crossing and she had friends here. She had her pride, and her mother’s pride in her to think of. They simply could not see her like this.

The only plan she had was to hit Wal-Mart the second it opened, grab something and scoot into the change room. If she could do that, her vanity would be partly spared.

She opened her door and slipped into the hallway, casting one last look at her clothes, neatly separated into wash and dry-clean piles. Naturally, she’d brought her best clothes with her for the interminable wedding breakfasts, lunches, rehearsal dinners, stagette night and whatever other events her inventive relatives could come up with. When someone in her family got married, they liked to drag the thing out at least a week.

She made her way to the restaurant and found about a dozen refugees from her part of the hotel standing around drinking coffee, looking like a convention of hobos. As she entered, the hairy guy who’d diagnosed the bedbug problem glanced up and took in her outfit with interest. Something about his regard made her conscious of her underwearless state, which made her snappish.

Especially as he’d somehow snagged an oversize navy sweater and jeans. Apart from the fact that his jeans didn’t go much closer to his ankles than her satin pants, he could pass for normally dressed. She poured herself coffee from an urn and turned to him. “How did you score clothes that actually fit?”

He snorted and lifted the huge sweater. Apart from noticing the same gorgeous abs she’d sighted earlier, she saw a widely gaping fly and, since he was also going commando, she got the impression that his chest wasn’t the only place he was impressively hairy.

“I do up this zipper, I’ll be singing soprano for the rest of my life,” he informed her, and then dropped the sweater back in place. “Did you get bitten?”

“No. You?”

He shook his head. “Far as I can tell, it’s only the two women with bites.”

“Are they going to be okay?”

He nodded. “They took both of them to the clinic to be looked at, one of them had some kind of reaction, but they should be fine.”

She shuddered.

A waitress came out of the kitchen bearing a tray of Danish and fruit.

As she helped herself to a Danish, Emily asked the waitress, “What time does the Wal-Mart open?”

“Seven.”

“It’s going to be a long hour,” she muttered.

The traveling salesman type, wearing faded blue track pants that said Dancer across the butt, a red soccer jersey with a bleach stain on the chest and his bare feet stuck into sneakers, suddenly bellowed, while indicating his new outfit, “Would you buy insurance from this man?”

His comment broke the ice and as they all laughed, the bedbug refugees began trading stories and lamenting the bad clothing, bonding over the disaster.

By five to seven, Emily was in the shopping center parking lot, as close as she could get to the Wal-Mart entrance. The minute the doors were unlocked, she put her head down and ran for the entrance. Once inside, she headed straight for the women’s clothing section.

She found a simple black skirt and flipped through a rack of silky tank tops, almost weeping when she thought of the suitcase of her good clothes that was currently at the local dry cleaner’s mercy.

Naturally, the underwear was in a different area of the store, but she found the intimate apparel at last and was flipping through the bras when a voice said, “Can I help you with anything?”

“No, thanks,” she said, not raising her head, hoping desperately the woman with the vaguely familiar voice would move on.

She felt the warm air stirring around her, almost as though the woman’s breath was surrounding her as she stood rooted to the spot.

“Emily Saunders, is that you?”

Oh, crap. Her worst nightmare had just been realized. She raised her head and thought that in a list of the top ten people she would have wanted to avoid at this moment, Ramona Hilcock would have made the top three.

“Ramona!” she cried with false delight.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” the woman said, looking her up and down with barely disguised revulsion.

Ramona had been a friend of her younger cousin Leanne’s in high school. Emily remembered her as a gossip and president of the sewing club. She still sewed, and Emily was willing to bet, from the way the woman eyed her outfit as though storing every detail, still gossiped.

“You here for Leanne’s wedding?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Oh, good. I’m getting off shift early today, to attend the lunch. Of course, I only work here part-time so I can pay for the boys’ music and golf lessons. And it gets me out of the house.” Her gaze strayed to Emily’s outfit once more. “How about you? I think your mom said you have your own business? Things going okay?”

“Yes. Fine.”

She could tell Ramona about the bedbugs, which would explain the lost and found bin wardrobe, but then news would spread faster than an Internet rumor and she’d be staying on some distant relative’s couch by tonight. So she kept her mouth shut.

“You’re a masseuse, Leanne said.” Ramona uttered the word masseuse in a tone that suggested it was synonymous with rub and tug.

“Massage therapist,” Emily corrected. “I run a wellness clinic.” Before Ramona could say another word, she said, “Is there a place I can try these on?”

“Sure. Follow me.”

Thankfully, she retreated into the change room where she found everything fit. She paid and was released from Ramona’s clutches—until lunch.

Her clothes might not be up to her usual fashion standard, but they were bright and clean and, apart from the Wal-Mart, the local mall had an accessories store and a midrange shoe store. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but it wasn’t the mother of fashion. Still, she’d done her best, dressing up the black skirt with a bright scarf belt and hoping some cheap and cheerful costume jewelry would add enough pizzazz to the turquoise tank top.

And it was always nice to stock up on new bras and underwear at a good price, she reminded herself as she headed off to eat lunch and construct paper roses.



JONAH BETTS SLAMMED THE PUCK into the net, watching that baby fly home as if it had a homing device. The punch of puck against black net, the lighting up of the goal light were right up there with sex for truly sublime experiences.

He threw his gloved hand in the air, and his buddies skated over to congratulate him, their blades sawing the ice.

The Old-Timers Hockey League playoff week was one of the highlights of his year. He’d always had more than his share of energy and nothing challenged him more than hockey. He liked the scrape of steel blades on ice, the speed, the male camaraderie, the teamwork.

When the guys bashed him on the helmet, threw themselves at him, he laughed. So it was an exhibition game. Who cared? Tomorrow they’d be playing for real. And, as team captain of the defending champions, he planned to kick some ass.

After a pizza dinner and a couple of beers to celebrate the victory of the Portland Paters over the Georgetown Geezers he hauled his gym bag to his truck, tossed it into the back and headed back to his hotel. Bedbug Lodge. He didn’t think he’d been bitten and wondered idly how the two women who’d woken him so spectacularly at five this morning were doing now.

Since his gym bag had been in the truck, he hadn’t had to give it up to the fumigators. But he couldn’t leave it there tonight, not since he’d used the contents. He needed to take out his skate liners and let them dry, keep his equipment warm. He’d made a quick stop on the way to the rink to pick up some sweats, a new pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts and socks and underwear, so he was all set. Good as new. He hoisted his bag over his shoulder, grabbed his stick and hiked inside.

“How’s it going?” he said to one of the two harried front desk clerks.

He got a pathetically grateful smile. “It’s been a busy day. Thank you for your patience, sir.” The reply suggested to him that everybody hadn’t been as easy to deal with.

“So long as you’ve got a bed for me, I’m easy. Jonah Betts.”

“Even our computers have been overloaded today. But I managed to get you a room.” She glanced up. “Number 318. It’s the last one, I’m afraid. We don’t normally rent it out, and I’ve been instructed to comp the room.” She sighed, and he suspected she’d done a lot of that in the past twelve hours or so. “We are very sorry.”

“Not your fault.” He took his key, picked up his bag. Then turned back. “Why don’t you rent it out?”

“There’s a small leak in the ceiling, sir. But otherwise the room is very comfortable. Two beds, ensuite.”

“So long as there’s one bed and a TV, I’m good.”

She laughed, in relief, he thought. “Oh, yes. TV. Movies. Everything.”

He nodded acceptance. “Have a good one.”

He hoped there was a fridge in room 318 to keep his beer cold. He should have asked. He followed the clerk’s directions to the third floor and strolled along the corridor to the last door.

He opened it with his key card and walked inside.

A woman screamed.

His day had started this way. He really didn’t need the bookend.

He dropped his bag with a thunk and regarded the woman who was doing the screaming. Well, more like a cry of alarm. She’d stopped pretty fast and was glaring at him instead.

It was the woman from this morning. The cute one from across the hall. She wore pajamas so new they still had the creases from the package. Blue and manly looking, which only accentuated her woman’s body.

He noticed a mane of sleek brown, big dark eyes and a mouth made to whisper dirty secrets.

“Hi,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“I think you’ve got the wrong room.”

He looked down at his key card. Of course, it had no number, but the little folder did. “Weird that the key worked. I’m in room 318.” He checked the number on the door. Yep, 318.

She shook her head. “Not possible. I’m in 318.”

He glanced around the room. It was nice enough. Cozy, he supposed was the word, with two queen-size beds and not a lot of space for anything else. There was a small desk with a lamp, a dormer window looking over the woods behind the lodge, a partially open door into a bathroom and, incongruously, where the fourth wall ought to have been, a curtain made of white tarpaulin.

He walked across the room and pulled back the curtain far enough to see the buckets. There were half a dozen twenty-gallon plastic tubs, the kind that store pickles and condiments for industrial kitchens. The wooden beams above showed extensive water damage. Not quite the small leak he’d been told to expect.

“The girl who checked me in said they don’t normally rent this room because of the leaky roof,” he said, thinking that a new roof for this old lodge was going to cost a fortune.

“That’s what the young man who checked me in said.” She turned back to what she’d been doing when he’d come in, cutting the tags off an assortment of new clothes. “You’d better go back to the front desk and get another room.”

But his mama hadn’t raised any fools. If you didn’t count his older brother Steven. “They told me this was the last room.”

“Well, I was here first.”

“I’ll call down and get them to send someone up.”

She glared at him. She could patent that glare, it was so good. “What is the point? This room is taken.”

He’d never been in the army, but he knew that once you retreated from disputed turf it was tough to fight your way back. So he gave her his best smile, and it was usually pretty effective with women. “I’m sure it’s a simple clerical error.” He picked up the room phone before she could argue any more and asked for the manager to come up.

Fortunately, they didn’t have long to wait. The woman continued cutting tags off clothes, using a small, curved pair of nail scissors that clicked with annoyance.

They stayed like that, she snipping tags and he standing by the phone until a soft knock was heard. When he answered, a corporate-looking type in his fifties stood there with a bland, practiced, everything-will-be-fine smile. “How can we help you, sir?”

The manager’s smile wilted like week-old lettuce when the woman stepped up and yanked the door wide. “You seem to have booked both of us into the same room. I think we have a problem.”

And she was right. The manager, two front desk clerks and the computer all confirmed what he’d known from the moment that woman screamed. He and the lady in blue pajamas were both booked into the very last room in the hotel.

“But that’s impossible,” Emily argued. Emily Saunders, that was her name; he’d found out as they went through the bookings. “I can’t share a room with a strange man.”

“I’m not that strange once you get to know me,” he assured her.

She sent him a glance that suggested she didn’t find this setup remotely funny.

“I am very sorry, Ms. Saunders. There are simply no more rooms.”

“But I booked a single room. In advance.”

“Me, too,” he interjected.

“Naturally, your money will be refunded in full,” he promised them smoothly, which didn’t exactly solve the problem.

“What about the lobby?” she cried. “Isn’t there a cot, or a sofa or something he could sleep on?”

“All the cots are in use. And, as you’ll recall, we only have wing chairs in the lobby.”

“A sleeping bag on the floor, then.”

Jonah was a pretty easygoing guy, but this was going too far. He had his team to think of. “I have an important day tomorrow,” he told her. “I need my sleep. You bed down on the lobby floor.”

She stalked right up to him, nose to his collarbone. Their lack of equality in the height department seemed to aggravate her even more. “I have an important day tomorrow, too.”

“I’m competing in a hockey tournament.”

“I’m a bridesmaid in a wedding.”

“My condolences.”

The way her eyes suddenly widened, he got the odd feeling she agreed with his assessment of being stuck in a wedding party. “But this is ridiculous. There must be somewhere else you could stay.”

He’d booked the hotel for a reason. He was too old to bunk in with a bunch of hockey players trading war stories and shooting the bull. Most of the others were too old for it, too, but it didn’t stop them. He thought with wives and kids at home, they needed the male bonding time a lot more than he did. At this point, he’d rather sleep on the floor of the Elk Crossing Lodge’s lobby than on the floor of a cabin with six guys, at least half of whom were bound to snore. But he’d much rather sleep in a nice comfortable bed right here in this room.

“There isn’t anybody else I can stay with. What about you? Can’t you stay with somebody else from the wedding?”

She blinked at him once, slowly, and then shook her head sharply. “Impossible.”

He shrugged. “It’s not ideal, but we’ll just have to share for a night or two. There are two beds. I don’t snore.”

She crossed her hands under her breasts and he tried not to notice. “It’s not your snoring that worries me.”

“I don’t have evil designs on your body, either,” he said, trying to reassure her of his integrity. She was a good-looking woman and if they’d both stumbled into this hotel room in passion it would be one thing, but that wasn’t the case.

If he could get her to see him as a platonic roommate, they’d be fine. “Look—” he indicated the hockey stick leaning against the wall “—I’m playing two, three games a day. I’ll only be in the room to sleep, and too tired even to think about women.”

She raised one eyebrow as though finding that hard to believe, as indeed it was. He could probably be dead and still think about women. So he pulled his trump card. “You can trust me. I’m a cop.”

She seemed less than impressed by this display of trustworthiness. “What are you going to do? Arrest the bedbugs?”

“Thought I might shoot them.” For a second her mouth softened and she almost smiled, then caught herself.

She turned back to the doorway.

“Are you telling me there is absolutely no way you can force this man to leave my room?” she snapped at the three uniforms hovering nervously near the door.

The hotel manager took a deep breath. “The computer was malfunctioning and you were both given the same room. Unless one of you is willing to leave…” The manager glanced from one to the other, but they both held their ground. “I’m so sorry.”

“Can you at least tell me when I’ll have my clothes back?”

“As soon as possible. We’ve put a rush on everything.”

She turned back to him, her hair swinging in a silky curtain. “I carry mace. I’ll be sleeping with it under my pillow.”

“Hey, it’s got to be better to share a room with me than bedbugs.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”




3


HAVING HER MINIMAL NEW wardrobe organized, Emily got out the nail polish. Tomorrow, the paper rose making continued, then, most of the out-of-town guests would have arrived so there was a big potluck dinner.

Even though Emily hadn’t grown up here, she’d spent a lot of time in Elk Crossing as a kid, because so much of her family still lived in the area. It was going to be quite the reunion.

It had been a weird day already, now she was supposed to share a room with a big, smelly hockey player?

She tried to ignore him as he schlepped his big, stupid hockey bag over to his side of the room. At least he was taking the bed beside the curtain, leaving her with the one closest to the door and the bathroom.

Once he’d settled himself, he said, “There’s no mini-bar or fridge.”

“No. They don’t rent the room, remember?”

He grunted and went out of the room, sadly not taking his belongings with him, only to return a minute later with a bucket of ice.

He unzipped his monstrously large sports bag and dug out a six-pack of Budweiser beer. Perhaps he felt the force of her gaze on him, because he glanced up. His eyes were blue and twinkled as if he thought this whole thing was a great joke.

He pulled a can out of the plastic holder. Held it aloft with his eyebrows raised. “Wanna beer?”

He gave her his beefcake calendar grin, as though he thought she might have missed it the first time he flashed it.

She figured they might as well try to get along since they were stuck here together, so she nodded. To her surprise he got up and brought her over the can, even popping the top when she looked helplessly at her wet nails. “Glass?”

“No, thanks.”

He nodded and went back to his bed. Stacked the pillows behind him and popped his own beer.

“Are you really a cop?”

For answer, he lifted his butt and dragged out his cop badge. She rose and went for a closer look. The badge told her that he was, indeed, a cop, and he was from Oregon.

“Sergeant Jonah Betts,” she read aloud.

He held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Emily Saunders.”

It was so ridiculous she had to chuckle. “Likewise.” They shook hands. He didn’t do the he-man squish-all-her-bones thing, but it was still a firm clasp. His hands were big and warm, but she noticed he was careful not to mess up her still-damp nails.

“Most people call me Emily.”

“So, how was your day, Emily?”

She returned to her seat at the desk and carefully painted her baby fingernail while she replied. “This has been a very strange day. Apart from the obvious bedbug thing, this morning. Let’s see, I went to Wal-Mart wearing clothes I would rather not have been seen in.”

He nodded, understanding. “I remember. I’m guessing that’s not your normal look.”

“No. So naturally I bumped into someone I sort of knew years ago, a big mouth who happens to be friends with my cousin who’s getting married.” Carefully re-screwing the lid on the polish, she blew on her fingertips. “She saw me in the lovely outfit I was wearing, buying fashion at Wal-Mart and couldn’t keep the story to herself. At the lunch today? My dad offered me a business loan, my mom said she could help me with the cost of the bridesmaid gown and my aunt tells me she’s going to set me up with my third cousin Buddy, the orthodontist.”

“Why didn’t you tell the nosy broad about the bedbugs?”

“I am staying in this hotel in order to avoid being billeted in a family room somewhere, either on a pullout couch or an air mattress. My family does big weddings, so I wouldn’t have the family room to myself, you understand. It would be like a weeklong slumber party on really bad mattresses with people I barely know.”

“So you chose me, instead.”

“You wouldn’t be so flattered if you knew my family.” She blew out a breath. “I’m sure there will be people checking out tomorrow and I’ll get another room. Once I’m in that family room? I’m stuck for the week.”

“What kind of business do you have?”

“I’m a massage therapist. I run a wellness clinic. We have naturopaths, a chiropractor, a nutritionist and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine all on staff. We work as an integrated team.”

“Cool,” he said, though from his tone she guessed he wasn’t a big believer in alternative medicine.

“I enjoy it.”

“And, I’m guessing from the fact that they want to set you up with Cousin Buddy the orthodontist, that you’re single?”

“And loving it,” she informed him. After a day of pity for her spinster state, she was feeling militant.

He put up his hands, so fast she heard the beer slosh in the can. “Hey, I’m single, too. I get it.”

She looked at him curiously. Did the same unsubtle hints happen with men, too? “Do your family try to match you up with someone every chance they get?”

He sipped beer while thinking it over. Nodded. “My friends more. I’m the last one of my buddies still a free man. They see me as a challenge, but I aim to stay single.”

She raised her beer can in a toast. “To freedom.”

The both drank. “You want to watch some TV?”

“Sure.” Anything that would take her mind off the week ahead would be good.

While she applied a second coat of polish, he found the remote and punched channels. She heard him skip over some kind of cop show, make a rude remark about Dancing with the Stars, and then she heard the buzz of a news station. That she could live with. She was moving to her bed so she could see the TV when there was a knock on the door.

“Now what?”

“Do you mind?” She was closer to the door, but her polish was wet. “Maybe they’ve found another room.”

He rolled off the bed and padded to the door.

Opened it.

“Did you order an orange tent?” he asked, staring in some disbelief at the dress hanging from a chambermaid’s hand.

“My dress,” she cried, getting up. “Is it okay?” she asked the woman.

“Yes. We hung it in the big freezer. It’s what the exterminators told us to do. Anything that was on there will be dead by now.”

“Too bad that dress isn’t,” said Jonah.



THERE WERE SO MANY PEOPLE in town for the wedding that the potluck dinner that night was held in the Masonic Hall, where the wedding reception was also booked. Emily knew that in the next couple of days she’d spend many hours helping decorate the gymnasium-size space into what her aunt Irene insisted on calling the bower of bliss.

As an out-of-towner, Emily wasn’t expected to bring food, but she stopped at the deli anyhow and picked up a tub of potato salad. She’d have taken wine, but Uncle Bill had told her proudly he’d made enough for the entire week. Uncle Bill was a good man and one of her favorite relatives, but she’d rather use his wine as nail polish remover than drink the stuff.

As she walked in, her aunt rushed up to her. “Oh, Emily, I’m so glad you’re here. Cousin Buddy is dying to meet you.” She took the offered potato salad and dropped her voice, explaining, “He’s the one I was telling you about. Very successful. An orthodontist.”

She made flappy come-here motions with her hand to a guy standing with Emily’s mom and dad. Her folks immediately shooed him her way, acting in unison, so they looked like a vaudeville act. Yep, Emily thought, my family haven’t lost any of their subtlety.

She hadn’t had high hopes of an orthodondist in his thirties who went by the name Buddy, and she wasn’t disappointed. Her third cousin sauntered over looking at her with an expression that said, “Ta-da, it’s your lucky day.” He was of medium height with wispy blond hair and round, steel-rimmed spectacles, behind which pale blue eyes took in the world with a self-satisfied air.

“Emily, this is Cousin Buddy.” Honestly, the way she said it, Emily could hear the unspoken, she’s single, too!

“Hello,” she said, extending her hand at the same time Buddy leaned in for a kiss. She turned her head so his lips landed on her cheek, leaving a wet print that felt as if a dog had licked her face.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to get to know each other,” Aunt Irene said and scuttled off, sending her mom and dad a double thumbs-up.

Buddy was probably a perfectly nice guy, she told herself, and he was family. So, she put a pleasant smile on her face, pretended not to notice that her nearest and dearest were watching her and Cousin Buddy as though they were acting out the season-ending cliff-hanger of a particularly juicy and addictive soap opera. “I haven’t seen you at any family weddings before,” she said for something to say.

“No. I’ve always been too occupied with my practice and busy social life. But a man gets to a certain stage in life where he starts to appreciate the importance of family. And I had a couple of weeks with nothing to do so I thought I’d hang out and see folks I haven’t seen since I was a kid.”

“That’s nice.” But did he have to stand in her personal space?

“Who wants wine?” Uncle Bill strolled up with a tray of filled glasses. “The white’s a chardonnay and the red’s an infidel.”

“Thanks,” Buddy said, reaching for a glass of red.

“Maybe later,” she told Uncle Bill.

Buddy took a sip of wine and when his eyes didn’t water she said, “I think he meant Zinfandel, but I wouldn’t be too sure. Uncle Bill’s wine is pretty strong.”

Buddy sent her a lecherous glance. “I like my booze like I like my women. Strong and tasty.”

Oh, boy.

“Leanne,” she called desperately to the woman walking by. “How’s the bride?”

“Hey, Em. Oh, good, you met Buddy. Come sit with us.”

“Great.” So she followed her cousin to one of the long tables and Buddy followed.

Leanne was probably her favorite cousin, apart from her taste in bridesmaid dresses, and she seemed to have found the perfect man for her. Derek was an accounting major she’d met in college, obviously crazy about his soon-to-be wife, and the kind of man you could call on when you got a flat tire in the middle of the night. They were planning to put down roots in Elk Crossing, where Leanne already had a job teaching kindergarten.

Their table was made up mostly of the bridal party and their friends, so it was a young bunch, getting raucous as they chugged down Uncle Bill’s wine. Emily, from bitter experience, stuck to water, as did Leanne.

Buddy spent most of the dinner bragging about his practice, his shrewd investments and even, for ten interminable minutes, reminiscing about each and every expensive car he’d ever owned. Meanwhile, he was putting back a lot of Uncle Bill’s wine, which she was pretty sure had an alcohol content that would rival Screech rum.

On Emily’s other side was a woman in her early twenties who was a friend of Leanne’s. Emily had met Kirsten Rempel a few times and liked her a lot. She was pretty, fun and smart, but she’d had some bad career luck. A cute blonde with lots of energy, Kirsten had moved to Elk Crossing to work in promotions at the local radio station. Unfortunately, she relocated for the job before discovering that the radio station manager was a sexist boor. She’d lasted three months, and since then had been making her living as a hostess and server at one of two upscale restaurants in town.

Everyone had expected her to move on, but she seemed to have got stuck in this town. Now she was waitressing to bring in some money and dating a guy nobody thought was good enough for her. He also had a bad habit of letting her down, like tonight, so she was here alone.

Emily was happy to have Kirsten to talk to since it gave her a break from Buddy.

“How are things?”

“Good.” Her blond hair swung as Kirsten leaned forward. “The restaurant’s okay, but I need to find something else.” There was something about the way she spoke that made Emily wonder if she’d still be giving the same speech ten years from now. It happened to people sometimes in Elk Crossing. They came here and sort of got pulled into the town and couldn’t seem to get it together to move on.

She almost wished she’d had some of Uncle Bill’s “wine” so she’d have the courage to give this woman she barely knew a little pep talk. Not only was she in a dead end job but even Emily, who didn’t live here, knew her so-called boyfriend was far from faithful. And given that Kirsten was far too good for him, it drove her crazy.

Somebody challenged Derek to a drinking game and Kirsten cried, “No, they should play Newlywed Game.”

Then she put on her radio announcer’s voice, her whole body coming to life as she got into her role. “Now, Derek and Leanne, you’ll be asked a series of questions about each other. We’ll be able to tell if you’re truly compatible, if your love is the real thing, if your marriage will last, based on how much you know—or think you know—about each other.”

A great deal of laughter and hooting accompanied the questions Kirsten came up with. “What is Derek’s favorite kitchen appliance, and why?”

Naturally, Leanne had lots of help answering the question. “The vibrator is not a kitchen appliance, Don,” Kirsten reminded Derek’s friend. “You’re disqualified.”

“She keeps it in her kitchen!” he yelled. “I’ve seen it.”

“That was my cream whipper,” Leanne insisted, very red in the face.

“Okay, okay,” Kirsten said when the catcalls had died down. “Here’s a serious question and no one but Derek can answer. What’s Leanne’s favorite movie?”

“Star Wars,” he proclaimed.

There was a burst of laughter. “That’s your favorite movie,” Leanne reminded him.

“I thought it was yours, too.”

“Nope.”

“What is it, then?”

“Gone with the Wind.”

Derek was incensed. “You can’t say Gone with the Wind. Every chick says her favorite movie is Gone with the Wind. It’s like not having an opinion at all.”

“Except that it really is my favorite movie. Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable? When he carries her up the stairs?” She sighed gustily, all the women at the table nodding in agreement. “Are you kidding me? You don’t see movies like that anymore.”

“Know what my favorite movie is?” Buddy asked loudly, not seeming to realize the question-and-answer game was restricted to the bridal couple.

“What?”

“21.”

Derek said, “Isn’t that the one about those MIT kids who clean up in Vegas?”

“Yep. It’s based on a true story. These kids invented a system to win at the casinos using math. Brilliant.”

“So, you’re a gambler?” Leanne asked.

He shrugged. “I think above-average intelligence allows certain people to achieve above-average returns. I don’t call that gambling.” He slurred a little over his words.

“How about you, Emily?” Derek wanted to know. “What’s your favorite movie?” She couldn’t help wondering if Derek was trying to pull her and Buddy into some kind of compatibility game. If so, she’d happily prove that she and the money-obsessed dentist couldn’t be more different.

“My favorite movie is Wall Street. It’s about how greed destroys people.” She smiled demurely and sipped her water.

Leanne pulled her aside, ostensibly to discuss bridal matters. “Wall Street? What is the matter with you? Sense and Sensibility is your favorite movie.”

“Buddy’s getting on my last nerve. All he’s interested in is money. Who cares about his Mercedes Coupe? There’s more to life.”

Leanne sighed. “He’s trying to impress you. I bet he’s a really nice guy once you get to know him.”

“But not my type.”

“I only want to see you as happy as I am with Derek.” She gave Emily a quick hug. “We all do.”

“I know. And please don’t remind me I’m not getting any younger because your mom and mine already tag-teamed me on that one. Thirty-one is not exactly ancient. I’m picky, that’s all.”

“I know.”

Unfortunately, Buddy hadn’t listened when she’d tried to tell him that Uncle Bill’s homemade wine was about four hundred percent pure alcohol. Leanne had made her feel a little bad so she went and got him a coffee to go with his tiramisu. He ignored both and downed more of the red hooch, moving his chair closer to hers and slurring in her ear. Buddy was becoming an annoying drunk. The sooner he passed out the happier she’d be.

But he didn’t pass out. He got…amorous.

He moved his chair even closer so their knees butted against each other. She moved hers farther away so Kirsten could be forgiven for thinking she was making a pass.

He put an arm around her, big and overwarm. She was sure she could feel his sweat through the wool of his jacket.

She shifted so the arm fell off her and next thing his hand was on her thigh, making her thankful her temporary wardrobe was all wash and wear.

Finally, obviously realizing he was being too subtle, he said to her, “Let’s you and me get out of here.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see it.”

He giggled. “You’re cute. Mature, I like that in a woman.”

She glanced around with “help me” blazing from her eyes. No one seemed to notice or thought about rescuing her. No one. Leanne was too busy being in love with Derek, Kirsten was on her cell phone, presumably tracking down the whereabouts of her loser boyfriend, and everybody else was busy with their own affairs. Everyone except for her mother and father, who were watching Buddy hit on her with hope shining in their faces.

“I really have to go now,” she said at last to Buddy. “I’ve got a headache.” Maybe it was rude to leave so early, but she had had enough. Perhaps because she was inherently polite, or maybe because her parents were watching, she added, “It was nice meeting y—”

Her words were cut off by his mouth. His big, sloppy, wet, bad-red-wine-tasting mouth. He kissed her as though she were an air mattress he was trying to blow up in a hurry. He fastened his mouth on to hers, creating an air lock. When she grabbed his shoulders and yanked her face away she was sure she heard a pop.

Outraged, she looked around for her protective family to come and deal with this drunken moron. She caught her parents exchanging a high five, and her aunt smiling broadly, already taking credit for the match.

She jumped to her feet and headed for the exit, too fast for anyone to catch up with her. On the way she pulled a tissue from her bag and wiped her mouth. Yuck.




4


“HI, HONEY. YOU’RE HOME EARLY,” a gravelly voice said when she threw open the door to 318 a short time later. “Did you have a good time?”

“Don’t even get me started.”

Jonah glanced up from the hockey game he was watching on television. “Wow, you look mad. What happened?”

“Cousin Buddy happened. He got drunk and hit on me and—” Unable to adequately describe how gross the entire escapade had been, she said, “Eeew.”

“Got it. Want a beer?”

“Desperately.”

He popped the top of one and handed her a cold can.

“Thanks.” She took a grateful swig, hoping it would erase Buddy’s taste. “Why are you here? I thought you were boozing with the boys tonight.”

He pointed to his leg and she now saw the ice pack wrapped around his thigh.

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah. I pulled something. Hurts like a bitch.”

“How long have you had the ice pack on?”

“I don’t know.” He squinted at the clock. “Forty minutes or so?”

“Take it off. Give it a rest.”

“Can you do anything for me? In a professional capacity?”

“Depends. If you’ve torn the muscle, then no. If it’s in spasm, then yes. You want me to have a look?”

He nodded.

The room phone rang. Jonah leaned over and answered it. “Yeah?” A pause. Then he glanced up at her, looking sheepish. “No, you got the right room. She’s right here.”

He passed her the phone.

“Hello?”

“Who was that?” Leanne asked her.

Damn. “Why didn’t you call my cell? You always call my cell.”

“I had to lend Derek my phone since his died. I’m at my mom’s and I couldn’t remember your cell number so I called the hotel.” Her voice grew low and intimate. “I guess you’re busted. Was that Buddy? Did I interrupt something?”

“No! It’s not Buddy. He is a disgusting drunk, only interested in his fabulous cars and amazing stock picks. Did I tell you what he told me about his portfolio?” She thought if she babbled on enough about Buddy she could get Leanne to forget about the man who had answered the phone in her hotel room.

Her plan didn’t work.

“If that’s not Buddy in your room, then who is it?”

“It’s…well, it’s kind of complicated,” she started, trying to think of something fast, words that would explain a strange man answering her phone, while at the same time not including the word bedbugs or making her seem like a skank. Seconds passed.

“I’m listening.”

“His name is Jonah.”

“Nice name. And?”

“And, he’s…” Jonah was looking half guilty, half amused as she stumbled her way through half phrases. “He’s—” What? Why was it that whenever she needed to think fast on her feet her brain froze over. Only one idea came to her and once it had lodged in her brain nothing better came along. “He’s…my boyfriend,” she ended in a rush.

She didn’t know who was more surprised when the words came out of her mouth, her or Jonah.

Or Leanne.

“Your boyfriend?”

“Yes.” She turned her body slightly so she was no longer looking at her brand-new boyfriend. “His name is Jonah.”

“You already told me his name. What I want to know is if you have a boyfriend in town why you never said anything. How come he wasn’t at dinner tonight?”

“It’s sort of complicated.” She tapped her nails on the beer can wondering how she could possibly have come up with such a ridiculous story. “He’s in town for the hockey tournament, so he couldn’t come tonight.”

“And you never told me about him because…?”

She felt her cheeks beginning to heat. She really wished her unwanted roomie would go somewhere else for five minutes and give her some privacy, but he’d even muted the TV so he could eavesdrop better. He seemed as fascinated by her halting explanation about him being her boyfriend as Leanne was.

“I guess I didn’t want to share him.” Now that she’d settled on an explanation, it was easier to embellish. She could absolutely see herself hiding a boyfriend from her family—if she actually had a boyfriend. “You know what the family’s like. Dad would be asking him his intentions and Mom would be pricing wedding invitations and Aunt Alice would probably grill him on his sperm count.” A choke sounded behind her. “That’s why I keep my private life private.”

“Wow. You could have told me, though.” Leanne sounded a little hurt. “How long have you two been going out?”

“Not long.” In fact, she could count her relationship in minutes.

“You left so early tonight, I was worried about you. Now I know why.”

“Yeah. You know how it is at the beginning of a relationship.”

In her peripheral vision she noticed Jonah settle back against his stacked pillows, obviously enjoying her predicament hugely. A certain speculation in his eyes.

Leanne sighed, the sigh of a true romantic. “You mean when you think about them all the time and can’t wait to be together? When you think about sex all the time?”

“Uh-huh,” she agreed weakly. “All the time.”

“How is the sex?”

The whole situation was so ridiculous, with Leanne rhapsodizing about her made-up love life and Jonah doing his best to listen to every word, that she found herself giggling. She turned to Jonah and said aloud, “My cousin wants to know how the sex is?”

His grin was instant and wolfish. The way he looked at her made her suddenly realize it was not smart to tease a wolf. “Tell her it’s fantastic.”

She rolled her eyes. Leanne was cracking up on the other end of the phone. “I definitely want to meet this guy, when you’re not too busy having fantastic sex.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“I’ll meet him at the wedding, anyway, right?”

“Um, it depends on his hockey schedule.”

“No way. He has to come. Tell him.”

“Okay.”

“Now. Or put me on the phone and I’ll tell him.”

She held the phone away from her ear once again, and wished she was home in Portland in her pajamas watching a chick flick on DVD. Anything but this.

Since it was his fault for answering in the first place, she held out the phone to him and smiled sweetly. “Leanne wants to make sure you’re coming to the wedding.”



JONAH ALMOST FORGOT THE PAIN in his thigh watching his roomie trying to explain why a man was answering her room phone. He’d never seen a more incompetent liar. And hadn’t she dropped herself right in it?

“You can stop smirking,” she snapped when she got off the phone. “This is your fault.”

He leaned back against his pillows, his gaze never leaving her face. Cute face, kind of flushed right now, and her lips seemed a little plumper. Maybe they were like Pinocchio’s nose. When she told a lie they plumped up. Or maybe it was talking about sex that did it.

“So, I’m your boyfriend, huh?”

“I’m sorry. It was all I could think of.”

“It’s not so bad,” he said, thinking. “Should keep Buddy the orthodontist out of your mouth.”

She groaned. “That is a horrible pun. And you don’t know my family. They’ll want to meet you.”

He heard the panic in her tone. “Am I so terrible?”

“No. Of course not.” She looked at him dispassionately. “If you shaved and wore decent clothes, you’d be perfectly presentable. But they have this charming quality where if you get to thirty and are still single they panic and try to marry you off. To anybody.”

“Right. But look at the good side. I can be your beard. You don’t want to get married, I don’t want to get married. We’re not really a couple, so nobody’s going to get pressured into anything.”

“You don’t seem very upset about being stuck with an instant girlfriend.” She was nibbling on that pouty lower lip now, a job, he realized, he’d gladly take over. You got to know a person pretty fast when you shared a confined space with them, and he was starting to like this person in the next bed. Even though it was his fault for answering the hotel phone, she seemed to feel guilty for lying about their relationship.

“I can see certain benefits,” he said, settling back.

Her eyes instantly narrowed and she released her lip from between her teeth.

“Not those benefits,” he told her. “I was thinking that if I agree to show up to the wedding, you might take pity on me and give me a massage—” he looked at her “—or two.”

And, because she still seemed a little skittish, he added, “Emily, I’m going to make you a promise. I won’t make a pass at you.”

She didn’t exactly look relieved. It was a big deal for him to promise to keep his hands off a desirable woman who happened to be sharing his hotel room. Instead of looking grateful she seemed—pissed off. He couldn’t imagine she felt insulted. She was gorgeous. Men must make fools of themselves all the time over her. But since he was the first person to admit he didn’t have a clue about women, he continued.

“You’re beautiful. And under normal circumstances, I’d be doing my level best to get you into my hotel room. But since you’re here against your will, I give you my word I won’t try anything.”

She picked up a brand-new set of sweats and disappeared into the bathroom. When she returned, she was wearing the gray fleece, and she’d also gathered a couple of towels and a bottle of some kind of oil.

He was doing his best to concentrate on CNN and not the fact that sometimes his principles really got in the way of his sex life, when she came toward him. She said, “So, you’re saying there’s no way you and I would ever have sex.”

“No.” She was so sexy he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. A woman walking toward him with a bottle of massage oil and he’d announced he wasn’t going to touch her? He must be a mental case. “I said I wouldn’t hit on you.”

She settled beside him on the bed, shifting his leg so she could spread the towel underneath him. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not at all.” When she was this close he could smell her skin and see that her eyes weren’t completely brown as he’d thought. There were flecks of gold and tiny slivers of green in them, as well. As she settled her hands above his knee and began to gently probe the muscle, he said, “I’m giving you an open invitation to hit on me.”

Her fingers stalled and her eyes widened.

He grinned up at her. “Anytime.”




5


DAY THREE OF LEANNE AND DEREK’S Wedding Week Extravaganza was almost done, Emily thought with relief as she sat quietly at the desk in her hotel room, blessedly alone, writing out place cards for the wedding.

Today she’d had lunch with her mom. She loved her mom, but the “nice, long lunch, just the two of us,” had been somewhat marred by her mother’s enthusiastic comments about Cousin Buddy and her wistful excitement about Leanne’s wedding.

Emily successfully navigated the conversation around dangerous spots, like how lucky Leanne and Derek were to have found each other when they were both so young, interspersed with hints about how it got more and more difficult to find a mate as you got older and more set in your ways.

Naturally, this led to the story of crazy Aunt Hilda who never married and ended up living on a rotting houseboat with nothing but seven cats for company. “All she ever bought was cat food. I’m not saying Hilda was eating it, but you have to wonder.” She shook her head. Did she really think Emily had never heard this story before? “At least she didn’t have to worry about mice.”

They made it all the way to coffee, when her carefully steered conversation hit a Titanic iceberg. Her mother’s eyes filled and she said, “You know I love Leanne and I’m truly happy for her, and for Irene. But if my sister gets to be a grandmother first, I’ll just die.”

She’d spent the rest of the day feeling guilty somehow and that she had to make it up to her mom, which meant she’d ended up volunteering to do the place cards. Maybe her mom couldn’t boast of a happily married, eagerly breeding daughter, but she could damn well be proud of having such a helpful one.

Her silence was rudely interrupted by the door opening followed by a series of crashes.

“What are you doing?” The unholy racket caused her to turn her head and see Jonah stumble in with a whole lot of hockey equipment hanging off him.

“Sorry, I was trying to be quiet.” He banged the door behind him and some sort of pad tumbled to the floor. When he bent to reach it, two hockey sticks banged on the wall.

“It’s like Marley’s ghost entering the room.”

“Looks like rain. I didn’t want to leave anything in the truck to get damp.”

“Great. This hotel room isn’t nearly crowded enough. What it needed was more hockey equipment.”

As one, they both glanced at the big orange pouf of a dress hanging from the outside of the closet because, just as in her first room, there simply wasn’t room to cram all that dress inside.

The dress cast a faintly orange glow over everything, she was convinced. It definitely affected her mood.

He looked doubtfully beyond his bed. “I could put the stuff behind that curtain, but it’s probably damper there than in my truck.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m feeling bitchy. No idea why.”

He hefted the sticks, bag, padding, two pairs of skates and a uniform over to his bed and settled it in an untidy pile. He grunted as he yanked the liners out of his skates and placed them in front of the radiator as he had the night before.

She turned back to her task. No wonder she was thinking of Marley’s ghost; her current task was positively Dickensian.

She tried to ignore the unmistakable sounds of a man undressing by focusing all her attention on the nib of her pen.

“Okay if I take a shower now?” the deep voice asked.

“Yes. Fine.”

He passed behind and she felt him pause. “What are you doing?”

“Calligraphy.”

“I know what it is,” he said, surprising her. “What I meant is, why are you doing it now?”

“I’m writing out the place cards for the wedding,” she said, carefully finishing the Y on Cathy and double-checking the spelling of Cathy’s last name from the list beside the neat stack of cards.

“They had to get an out-of-town guest to do those? A couple days before the wedding?”

She put down her pen and turned. “Obviously, you’ve never been a bridesmaid.” She wished she hadn’t turned. She found herself at eye level with his scrumptious abs and the waistband of his gray sweatpants. She could smell him. He smelled athletic, of clean sweat and hard work. If she ran her hands over his body his muscles would still be warm and pliable from exertion.

“Good guess.” He sounded amused. Again.

“It’s part of my responsibility to help with all the little details that may have been overlooked.” She glanced at the stack of cards waiting to be painstakingly written, and lied through her teeth, “I really don’t mind.”

“I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”

“Honestly? I’m missing another potluck dinner. And the choosing of the embarrassing baby and child photos to be shown on the projector at the reception. Frankly, I prefer this job.”

“As soon as I’m cleaned up, I’m meeting a few of the guys for a pizza. You want to join us?”

She was genuinely surprised by the offer. And she smiled her thanks at him. “Thank you. But if I don’t keep going, I’ll never get these done. Besides, I’ve got a yogurt and a couple of granola bars if I get hungry. I’ll be fine.”

“Suit yourself.” Then he ambled into the bathroom and soon she heard the shower running.

Three place cards later, he was out again, freshly shaved and smelling of soap and shampoo. In her peripheral vision she noted he was wearing nothing but a towel, and that the hair of his lower legs was dark and his big feet were leaving damp prints on the carpet.

When he was past her, she allowed herself a quick glance at his back view, on the grounds that a hardworking calligrapher needed a little treat now and then. She was happy to note that his hairiness didn’t go as far as his back. That was smooth of skin and heavy with muscle. This guy did more than play hockey to stay in shape. Her professional eye noted that his right deltoid was more developed than his left. He was definitely right-handed.





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