Killing Time

She hadn’t interrupted anything as mundane as an office romance. Either these two were playing some kind of fun and kinky sex game—burly prison guard attacks sexy, helpless, naked, studly criminal came to mind—or else a crime was being committed.

One scenario said she had to leave. The other demanded she stay. Because, it was entirely possible Mr. Naked Guy was about to get shot.

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU WERE SUPPOSED to turn tail and run,” a male voice said, sounding both weary and amused.

The voice sent a shiver of awareness down Caro’s spine. It sounded silky smooth, much too calm for a person being held at gunpoint, which made her think these two were, indeed, playing some kind of game. For some strange reason, the man’s voice sounded familiar to her ear. She’d just been too much in shock to pay attention the first time he’d spoken.

The woman laughed. “It takes a lot to make me run away.”

Caro inched closer to the door frame. There was just something about that man’s voice—not to mention his naked body—that made her itch to take another quick peek.

“That’s why you stripped, even though you knew I wouldn’t shoot you?” Louise asked. “You thought I’d run away at my first sight of a naked man, even though I have four little brothers?”

Caro took a deep breath and worked up her nerve to steal one more glance just as the man muttered, “Something like that.”

Louise had moved slightly out of the way. From this angle, Caro could only see the man from the waist up.

Wow, what a waist. Wow, what an up.

The man had crossed his arms in front of him, so his shoulders and triceps flexed and bulged. His hair was light brown, cut a little long, but not long enough to hide the thick strength of his neck.

Caro gulped. If she’d been the one with the gun, she figured it would’ve slipped from her hand due to the sweat breaking out all over her body. Good Lord, how could anyone be that close to a man so hot and not get weak in the knees?

“Oh, sweetie, you’re so funny. I helped raise the boys. Plus I grew up on a farm. I’ve seen male equipment. And while you’re, well, of generous proportions, you can’t compare to Buddy.”

Caro had to wonder who Buddy was. If the mysterious Louise really did know some man named Buddy, and he was better built than the guy in the office, Caro thought perhaps her stay in Derryville might be more interesting than she’d expected. Though she wasn’t sure her heart could take it. Not to mention her diaphragm, which had been sitting unused in her medicine cabinet for so long she could probably use it to strain pasta.

Truly, though, she didn’t see how anyone else could compare to Mr. Naked Real Estate Guy. At least not from her angle. She doubted anyone could look as good from behind as this man did, and she included a number of Hollywood heartthrobs in that assessment.

“Buddy’s a bull, Louise,” the man said, his voice shaking with what some might have interpreted as fear, but which Caro recognized as unbridled laughter.

Bull-like. There was something a man would aspire to, right? The thought inspired several wicked images. She had to back away again, if only to force herself to stop trying to peer around the armed woman for another tantalizing glimpse of the hips and down.

Wow, what hips. Wow, what down.

“I know. But for some reason, you made me think of him,” the woman replied.

“I don’t know many men who would compare favorably to a bull. But thank you very much, all the same.”

Still hidden in the near darkness, and still wondering whether the two were playing some sort of lovers’ game, or if she’d really stumbled into a hostage situation, she took a few calming breaths to decide what to do.

Look some more.

That worked.

This time, she gave into her impulse, dropped to her knees, and peered around the door from a lower angle. Definitely a better angle. For assessment purposes only, she told herself, knowing she was a big fat liar whose pants, if she had been wearing pants, would be incendiary right about now.

She stayed hunkered down, assessing the couple. The woman was a puzzle. Broad in girth, huge in stature, she wore an unflattering pair of jean overalls, which, Caro was sad to say, seemed to have come back into fashion for some bizarre reason. Not in Hollywood, of course. But they were showing up in the rest of the country—which pretty much meant another planet, as far as most people in L.A. were concerned.

Louise appeared taller than the better-than-average-height man, and heavier by a large amount. So maybe the hunk had a thing for big girls. In which case, he’d never spare a glance at Caro, who only stood five-seven when she wore two-inch heels.

She certainly wasn’t an imposing figure now, down on all fours in a closed real estate office, spying on a pair of lovebirds, or a female rapist. She still hadn’t decided which was the most likely explanation. Either the man was a philandering Realtor having a kinky good time—complete with props like fake guns—on a Monday morning. Or he was a poor innocent victim being held up by a naked-Realtor-robbing Amazon.

Not sure which, she curled her back and neck a bit, hunching lower until she was able to see that, yes, the woman was definitely holding a real—if rather old-looking—pistol.

The hostage wasn’t turning around. He remained still, his body aligned with the sight of the gun. His back was perfect. Smooth. Sculpted with layer upon layer of thick muscle. Tanned, taut skin glistened with a sheen of sweat that probably had more to do with the situation than with the temperature.

His thick arms flexed with the tension. That, more than anything, convinced Caro that while his tone might be flip, and his voice might hold laughter, he wasn’t relaxed. He was, in fact, completely tense, obviously waiting for his chance to extricate himself from this unusual situation.

The overall-wearing bandit was still too busy staring at that naked tush to move. Caro couldn’t blame her—she couldn’t do anything else, herself.

She’d never really considered herself a butt woman. A man’s eyes were so much more important. Or at the very least his smile. A pair of lips that could instill a sense of shimmering heat while widened in laughter used to make her completely crazed. One smile, in particular, had nearly been her undoing.

But as for the rest? Good looks, as she’d found in Hollywood, didn’t always equal good men.

That didn’t mean they weren’t fun to ogle. Particularly in this case, with a man whose backside looked hard enough to crack a walnut, and hot enough to make her legs go weak.

Then the man shifted, as if he planned to turn around. She hissed. Weak, nothing. At the thought of seeing the full-frontal onslaught, Caro’s legs turned to jelly. If not for her arms holding up the front part of her body, she probably would have fallen face-first on the carpet.

“Don’t turn around,” the woman said matter-of-factly, apparently noticing her victim making a move. “Please stand there and look away while I get myself mussed before Daddy gets here.”

Daddy. Mussed. Caro began to understand. This was strictly TV Writing 101 stuff. Tons of shows, from soaps to sitcoms, had explored this scenario in every conceivable way. This woman wanted to be caught in a compromising situation with Mr. Studly. Enter the enraged, armed papa. Fade to commercial.

“Please don’t take off your clothes.” He sounded more nervous than he had when she’d threatened to shoot him.

No commercial, Caro, this is real life.

“Fair’s fair.” Then the woman chuckled. “At least now I know what all the women in town are dying for a glimpse of.”

His thighs? His flexing calves? His arms, which looked strong enough to carry a woman to the nearest flat surface and make love to her from here to Sunday? All of the above?

Most especially that hard, sweetly curved rear that cried out to be caressed, held, stroked and clenched in mind-numbing passion? Caro gulped as her nervous habit kicked in: she started to hum the theme song from Sex in the City.

“Who would’ve thought those little black points were the tips of his ears?”

It took a second for Caro to understand what the woman meant. Then she leaned in farther, blinking off the haze of lust to take a really good look at the man. That was when Caro noticed what was above his perfect, hard, finger-licking-good backside.

A tattoo. A sexy, wicked, playful tattoo. It told a story that revealed quite a lot about the man it adorned.

Part of it, the little creature in the small of his back, riding just above his right cheek, made her pause. Because it looked familiar. Very familiar.

“Impossible,” she whispered, not believing her own eyes. She studied it, blinking a few times, wondering if she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing.

It was a lamb. A cute little furry white lamb, as incongruous as it was adorable when decorating this hunky man’s body. “Crazy,” she called herself, knowing there were millions of men in the world who had millions of tattoos.

Maybe some other hunk had decided to put a cute little lamb on his backside in honor of some other woman whose last name was the same as hers. Maybe that other hunk had called that other girl a sweet little lamb the first time they’d been introduced.