Talking After Midnight

Three

Marybell gasped low and long, making his spine stiffen. “Ohhh, Fredrico! The things you do to me!” She cooed the words, following up with a customary moan Tag had become familiar with since he’d started eavesdropping at her office door like a stray dog hungry for scraps.

These constant thoughts about Marybell, this mystique he wanted to unveil, with no sense to it at all, were damn inconvenient. Unwarranted, and totally unwelcome.

Yet here he was, a week after meeting Marybell for the first time, exercising his right to curiosity.

From the moment he’d left her apartment, he couldn’t shake the crazy need to see what she really looked like without the big ridiculous hat and that green mess she’d put on her face.

What drove her to go to such lengths to keep him from seeing what she looked like, anyway? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her before, whether she knew it or not. Not up close and personal, but he’d seen her around. They’d even met briefly once a few months ago in Em’s office, Marybell on her way out, him on his way in.

He’d concocted an answer for that while he thought about her nonstop since they’d met.

The answer was easy. He’d discovered a thing or two about the women here in Plum Orchard. They didn’t like to be caught without their pretties, as Em called them. Marybell had been really sick, so it stood to reason that catching her at such a bad time would make her run for cover if she was anything at all like Em. She was Em’s friend. They were bound to be on the same wavelength. Though Marybell’s makeup and hairstyle were a little more over-the-top than Em’s, they were clearly what made her feel pretty. He’d taken care of lumping their motivations together in his mind quite nicely.

That handled, he still had no answers.

This strange fixation on Marybell wasn’t like him. Not since Alison, anyway... No one had interested him even a little since Alison.

He couldn’t pinpoint his curiosity, couldn’t reason with it. So he’d chalked it up to Marybell’s voice, sugary-sweet and light as air even nasally with congestion, and those enormous eyes, looking up at him in the midst of the crusty stuff surrounding them. She’d sparked his curiosity, and since he’d fixed her heat, he hadn’t stopped wondering what Marybell Lyman really looked like.

When Em mentioned they needed some work done around the guesthouse at Call Girls, he’d done everything but jump up and down with his hand in the air, yelling, “Pick me!”

Now, as he hovered around her office door, pretending to fix an outlet that didn’t need fixing, he found himself glued to her every word through the door separating them. And whoever the hell Fredrico was, he already didn’t like the bastard.

Which was irrational at best. Why his back was up over a phone call with a stranger, one of the twenty or so he’d heard her take since he’d started his “behave like an ass” campaign, was a question Tag wasn’t ready to find the answer for.

You couldn’t be jealous about a guy you didn’t even know for having an intimate conversation with a woman you didn’t know, either. Could you?

Shit.

If she’d just show her face, he’d probably find out she wasn’t his type and then this hunt for Marybell Lyman would be done. End of irrational.

But it was as if she was hiding from him. Every time he thought he had her cornered, and she was going to walk out of her office door at any second, she didn’t.

Then Em, being the kind of GM she was, a stickler for details, would hunt his ass down and drag him off to another project to complete before he had the chance to pin Marybell down.

“Tag?”

Em’s voice cut into his thoughts, making him drop the screwdriver in guilt. It clattered to the floor, smacking into his toolbox. Damn. Caught again.

Tag dragged his eyes upward, meeting Em’s inquisitive gaze. “Yes, ma’am?” he drawled, hoping he’d managed to keep his voice level.

“How do you keep ending up here?”

Here as in parked in front of Marybell Lyman’s office? Or here as in here way past the time most contractors call it quitting time, here? Play dumb, Hawthorne. “Here?” Tag lifted his knit cap and scratched his head.

Em pursed her lips, her eyes not amused. He knew that look. It was the “there’ll be no plum pie for you” look—the one she gave to her sons and his niece, Maizy, when they misbehaved. “Yes. Here.” She pointed to the hallway, swishing her finger around. “Whenever I wonder where you are, I don’t have to wonder long. Somehow we always end up here. What is your fixation with this hallway?”

It was Marybell Lyman’s hallway? Probably not the answer she’d want to hear. Though why should he feel guilty for his interest in a woman? He was a single, mostly healthy, thirty-four-year-old man. He was allowed to be interested.

Except whenever he came to do any work at all at Call Girls, there was always the residual Neanderthal concept he felt ridiculously compelled to silently defend.

Women talked dirty in these here parts. Men liked to hear women talk dirty. There was always the natural assumption he was voyeuristically living out a caveman’s dream under the guise of “fixing” things.

If he were completely honest, hearing Marybell say some of the things she said did make him hot. They damn well did. But the heat was always tempered with the reminder that this was her job, and she likely filed her nails and caught up on her reading while she did it. Not quite as hot.

Yet this quest to meet Marybell wasn’t about her words. Not at all. This was about finding out if she was still just as cute without the floppy hat and flakey goop. If her hair was buttery blond all over, or just at the tips, leading to the question: Why don’t you just ring her doorbell and meet her right and proper, Hawthorne?

Answer? He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that yet. Calling on her was an unspoken commitment he wasn’t prepared to offer. A gesture he wasn’t sure he’d properly be able to follow up with anything more than his curiosity. He’d only just begun to get his life back on track—complications, especially with a woman, were the last thing he needed.

So instead, he skulked around the fringes of her doorway on the off chance he could take the easy way out and catch a glimpse of her—in the effort to rule out any possible attraction, of course.

Em poked his shoulder, bringing her once more into focus. “Tag?”

He shrugged casually, straightening. “I thought you said you needed me to fix the outlet.” Em had said fix the outlet. She’d said the one in the entryway to the guesthouse, but he said tomato; she said tomahto. At least that was the explanation he’d go with if push came to shove.

Em nodded her dark head, patting him on the arm as if he were ten. “I did, but not the outlet here in the hall. The outlet in the entryway. You know, that pretty room with all the lush green plants you’re always complainin’ remind you of the rain forest section of the zoo? The one out there, not in here?”

Right. The room which damn well wasn’t anywhere near Marybell’s office. “Right. Sorry. Must’ve misunderstood you.”

She planted her hands on her hips, cocking her head. “All week long? I swear, it’s like I’m speakin’ in a foreign language!”

Movement in Marybell’s office took his attention away from Em’s clear impatience with him. Tag stopped just shy of holding up his hand to quiet her in order to listen uninterrupted.

Marybell’s chair creaked. There was the rustling of paper and then the typical nothing. No door opening. No blare of trumpets playing, signaling that the elusive Marybell had finally strolled out of her office door to grace them with her presence.

Em snapped her fingers under his nose, the clicking interfering with what was going on in Marybell’s office. “Taggart Hawthorne, where are you?”

He blinked to refocus, catching Em’s confused gaze. Tag let his head hang low to show appropriate shame. Em had given him work he damn well needed, and he was too busy hunting Marybell like prey to pay attention. “Sorry, Em. Just distracted. Won’t happen again.”

Em’s finger rose in lecture pose just as he heard another noise coming from Marybell’s office, blotting out everything else.

Her office window. He’d know the sound of a latch snapping unhinged on a window from a hundred paces.

Oh, the hell she’d escape him this time. That thought made him spring into action. He swooped down and grabbed his toolbox, skirting around an annoyed Em with a grin of apology. “Entryway. I’m on it.”

* * *

She fell into a thorny bush just outside the window of her office, catching her nose ring on the brittle end of one of the limbs before dropping into the mulch surrounding it with a grunt she tried to muffle.

Her shaking fingers reached up to attempt to untwist the small hoop when she heard an amused “Good thing I brought my chain saw. I’m happy to help. Just say the word, and I’ll rev her up. Vroom-vroom.”

Surely there was no one looking out for her up there. Hadn’t she just expressly prayed for the umpteenth time in the past week, to whoever was in charge, to allow her an easy escape? Or had she been slacking off? She’d lost count of the times she’d sent skyward the pleading wish to avoid Taggart Hawthorne.

Knock-knock, is anyone home?

Would he ever be done with whatever it was he was doing and go away? What kind of contractor was he if it took him this long to do what Em had labeled “minor repairs”?

The sheer terror she’d fought all week long while Tag banged around outside her office door rose in her throat like cream to the top of a cup of coffee.

But you have the “people shield” on, Marybell. Relax.

How could she relax when her entire life was a lie? Seeing Tag confirmed that, drove that point home as sure as he was the hammer and she was the nail.

Since she’d recovered from the flu, and reasoned her fears away without the influence of cold medication, she’d taken a deep breath about the situation with Tag and had decided avoiding him was better all around.

There was no reason why she couldn’t do it, she’d told herself. Even though she and Em were friends, and there’d be occasions when she’d have no choice but to mingle with him, it didn’t have to be difficult if she didn’t make it difficult.

Except Tag had made it difficult, probably without even realizing he had. First, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him and his tea, which tasted awful. But the gesture still made her heart quicken and soften.

Second, it wasn’t just his awful tea lingering in her house. Tag’s rugged sexy had hung around long after he was gone, and she couldn’t shake it. Every time she thought she had her lusty thoughts contained, the fantasies of his calloused hands on her flesh, sweeping along her skin to part her thighs, reared their ugly heads in the way of an erotic dream or seven—if she kept count.

She’d spent hours wondering what his lips tasted like—felt like. Was he a sloppy kisser, his tongue doing that awkward slap at hers? Or was he an expert with a tongue like the god of sex and sin?

Since Em had told them all he’d be doing some work around the office, she’d been on pins and needles, avoiding him at every turn while he breezed in and out of Call Girls. Not just because he might somehow recognize her even with her “people shield” in place, but because just the sound of his voice beyond her door made her knees weak.

“Marybell?’ Tag rustled his way into the bush, sitting on his haunches and leaning over to bring his face into her line of vision.

It was such a great face. Almost classically handsome, but not quite. Angled, defined, rough. That was the word that came to mind every time she thought about him.

His sharp jaw caught the light of the half-moon, his eyes, heavily fringed with black lashes, full of playful amusement. “Here, let me,” he offered deep and delicious, lifting that calloused hand to her nose, the one she’d spent a ridiculous amount of time recalling.

Swallowing her hysteria, Marybell protested, raising a finger to ward him off. It was trembling, but she waved it for all it was worth, anyway. “No, no. I’ve got this.”

Tag grinned, infuriatingly wide, deepening his boyish dimples, that were a stark contradiction to the rest of his face. “You’re pretty hooked on that limb. One move the wrong way and you’re gonna lose a nostril.”

She attempted to twist her finger up under the hoop to no avail. “Nostrils are overrated. I can always breathe through my mouth.”

His hand went to her nose, anyway, shooing hers out of the way. “You should always have backup,” he teased, far too gravelly and sex-on-a-stick-ish for her panic’s comfort. With easy fingers, Tag plucked the limb from her nose ring and grinned again with his success.

Free from the limb, Marybell scrambled to her feet, cursing her clunky work boots when she tripped over the cement Buddha statue Sanjeev, Dixie’s friend and house manager, insisted each of the Call Girls have beneath their office windows.

Tag’s hands, strong, so incredibly solid, went to either side of her waist, settling there to right her. An unfamiliar thrill shot straight to places Marybell was unused to having thrills.

She flattened a palm against his chest to protest—a chest like a hard wall of granite. This would be so much easier if his chest was more on par with something mushy—say a bowlful of Jell-O maybe. Yet the firm surface of muscle through the wall of his thermal shirt set her palm on fire.

Tag’s breathing picked up, shooting a stream of condensation from his hard line of a mouth, slicing the chilly night air. Had that hitch in his breath happened because of her hand? She marveled at the notion.

No. It couldn’t be. Marybell dismissed the thought entirely. She was a sex-starved fool. That’s what she was. There was no siren in her, no unique song she sang that brought droves of men to flounder at her feet as they did at gorgeous Dixie’s.

She wasn’t carved-in-stone pretty. She was gothic and dark with a touch of glam to motivate her to continue this charade she’d long since outgrown.

Then Tag’s skin was touching hers, his long fingers, as calloused as she’d remembered them, snaked around her wrist in a loose hold. “You have nice hands,” he commented clear as day. “Interesting color choice for nail polish.” He inspected her fingers one by one, holding them so close to his lips Marybell shivered.

“You don’t like gunmetal with gold flecks?” she croaked, acutely aware this hard, rough man was sucking her into his blatantly sexy aura.

“Oh, no. I like gunmetal, but I really love gold flecks,” he teased. “I like the green and red in your hair, too. I also like that you still have a nostril because of me. It evens out your face. Why don’t you thank me for saving it over dinner?”

Marybell’s breathing became rapid and choppy similar to the function of her brain. “It’s ten o’ clock. Too late for dinner.” No, no, no. No dinner. No tea. No contact.

But he doesn’t recognize me...

And we’re going to keep it that way. How do you feel about losing everything plus putting the people you love in a circus of media?

While she battled internally, they had somehow become pressed impossibly close together. His breath on her face, warm and minty. His thighs touching hers—thick and insanely hard. His scent—so Tag, clean, spicy. Tag’s everything mingled with her everything.

Was there no mercy tonight?

“But isn’t that what you were sneaking off to grab when you climbed out the window? Your dinner break is at ten, right?”

“What makes you think I was sneaking off at all?” There was no sneaking about this. She was flat-out in hiding.

“Simple deductive reasoning. It’s gotta be easier to get to the lunchroom by just opening the door of the phone-sexing room than by way of your office window, right?” he asked, his hips blending with hers and settling against them until the outline of him through her suddenly too-thin, zebra-striped leggings heated her whole body. “All that climbing out, climbing back in. Hard on the thighs.”

Hard thighs. Lots of that to go round here.

“Challenge is my middle name. I like a good one. The window seemed as good as any.”

“So you’re not avoiding me or anything, right? Because even though your office window presents a good workout, it’s a little extreme.”

“It’s hard to fit exercise in between takin’ calls. It was the obvious choice.”

He shook his head. “That’s not what I asked you.”

“What did you ask me?”

“I asked you if you were avoiding me. I’d find it hard to believe, because who’d want to avoid a nice guy like me, but there it is. I think you’re avoiding me.”

His point-blank stare was what was impossible to avoid. He’d pinned her with it, and he wasn’t letting her gaze go.

Blatantly lying wasn’t her strong suit. Her strengths lay in running away. But here went nothin’. “I don’t even know you. Why would I do that?”

“Only you have the answer to that, Marybell Lyman. What could the answer be?”