Messing With Mac

Oh God. Go, just start walking. Do the noble thing here, Ace, and get the hell out. “Your car isn’t out front.”

With a huge yawn, she raised her arms over her head and stretched, allowing the lace to slip another fraction of an inch.

His heart nearly came right out of his chest. “Uh…” He waggled a finger in the direction of her chest. “Your pjs…they’re falling.” Oh man, she was incredible, all soft and glowing and rosy from sleep. She stretched and yawned again, her legs shifting, pulling the sheet down to her thighs. The little-and the key word here was little-nightie barely covered her panties.

If she was even wearing any.

The thought made it difficult to breathe, as every ounce of blood in his body headed for parts south.

Another stretch from the princess, and this time she added a little moan of pleasure at the feeling of her muscles loosening. The sheet fell all the way off, and her creamy thighs came into view, along with the smallest peekaboo hint of matching yellow lace between them.

Mac nearly moaned, too. Was she teasing him on purpose? And was that the morning chill making her nipples pout up against the lace, or something else, something like…him? Be professional, he told him self. Get out. Now. He even backed up a step, but then his feet stopped working. “Taylor.”

“Hmm?” She yawned, eyes closed.

His eyes narrowed as the truth sank in. “You’re not awake.”

Her eyes jerked open. Her body stiffened in mid-stretch. “Mac?”

God save him from sleepy, sexy-as-hell, scantily-clad women so early in the morning, when his resistance was already down. All the way to zero down.

He had to give her credit though, as her eyes cleared from dream to reality. She didn’t screech.

She didn’t dive back under the covers. Not Taylor Wellington. Instead, she slid out of the bed and crossed her arms.

Though he did top her by several inches, she man aged to look down her nose at him. “You.”

“I’m sorry. I-”

She turned from him and headed toward the bathroom.

And the words backed up in his throat, because her nightie dipped down in back to the curves of twin sweet cheeks, the thin lace clinging to every inch.

Then the bathroom door shut, cutting off the view. He had to shake his head, hard. “Taylor.” He put his hands on the wood. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“We’ve been working together for how long now, Mac?”

Her conversational tone confused him. “A long time.”

“Yes, a long time,” she said calmly through the door. “And have I done anything, anything at all, that would give you reason to think that I’m a morning person?”

“Uh…no.”

“Have I ever gotten out of bed before I had to?”

Her voice was so even. Was she mad or not? “No, but-”

“You know what I thought when I opened my eyes and saw you, Mac? I thought you were part of my dream. It was a good one,” she added, and just her voice made him hard.

“I-”

“You should have just joined me, instead of standing there watching me.”

And on that heart-stopping statement, she cranked on the shower, drowning out any reply he might have had.

MIDSUMMER HEAT hit with a vengeance, but neither Taylor nor Mac had a spare moment to dwell on the sticky heat. Mac was surrounded by roofers, painters, flooring technicians and enough laborers that Taylor felt dizzy watching them work.

But work they did, and work hard. Her building, once the eyesore of the neighborhood, was shaping up into a beauty right before her very eyes. Pedestrians on the street, walking to dinner or the theater or wherever, stopped to ooh and ahh.

Taylor loved it, loved every little bit of it, including watching Mac work.

Especially watching Mac work.

He caught her at it, the watching, at least once a day. But she caught him, too. She’d be pouring over plans, over tile samples or even on her cell phone and she’d…feel him. She’d look up and there he’d be, eyes filled with heat and awareness.

And reluctant affection.

Oddly enough, for a woman who had spent a decade avoiding such emotions from a man, it was the last that got to her.

One afternoon she came staggering up the stairs to her apartment under the weight of a small writing desk. The thing wasn’t heavy, just awkward to carry, and worth a small fortune.

She’d picked it up at a garage sale for a song, and was so happy about it that nothing could dim her mood. “Don’t you look pleased with yourself.”

Mac stood in the doorway of her bare living room.

He wore jeans that had seen better days. They were faded, torn at both knees and one hard thigh. The soft denim fit him perfectly, outlining every nuance of his lower body. His T-shirt had come untucked on one side, caught on the tool belt slung low on his hips, exposing a strip of flat, rigid belly.

Her own tightened uncomfortably in response. “I am pleased with myself.” Having caught her breath, she hoisted up the small desk again.

“What’s that?”

“Just something I picked up. Do you like it?”

He eyed her slowly up and down. “Very much.”

“I meant the desk.”

“Oh.”

Since she’d been wanting him to say he still wanted her, she felt herself flush with excitement. “It’s circa 1920, isn’t it a darling?”

“It’d be more darling in your storage unit.” But he took the desk from her, making it look like a toy in his arms as he strode across the living room toward her bedroom.

The bedroom was a good size, but he dwarfed it, and as she followed him in, she became painfully aware of the fact that the only other piece of furniture in the room was her bed, pushed to the middle of the room with a drop cloth on the floor beside it, which she put over it during the day.

“Paint fumes are going to be bad this week,” he said. “No problem.”

“The noise and dust-”

“It’s no problem,” she repeated, watching the muscles in his jaw bunch as if he was incredibly tense. Why was that? If he wanted her half as badly as she wanted him, well, then, that was his own damn fault.

“I heard Nicole and Suzanne offer you a place to stay-”

She held up a hand and forced a cool smile, tired of battering down his defenses every time they spoke. “I’m staying here.”

“Look, Princess, what I’m trying to say is that this place isn’t going to be up to your standards.”

She laughed. “It’s never been ‘up to my standards.’ That’s the whole point of the renovation.”

“I just think you should go until we’re done.”

She stared at him when he turned to face her, wondering where this was coming from now, after all this time. Was he starting to feel the pressure, like she was, of being together day in and out? Was he, like her, aching for more? “You just don’t want me under your feet.”

He closed his eyes, then opened them. “The problem is not about not wanting you beneath my feet, but about wanting you beneath me. Period.”

An immediate hot current raced through her body. “Why do you do that?” she whispered, her knees wobbly, her pulse rocketing wildly, and all from a look and a few words.

“Do what?”