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Bev’s hand shot forward, bracing against the dash.
“What the hell …?”
Half on and half off the road, Eden killed the car engine and threw her door open.
“It’s Paisley,” she called as she hurried around the car toward the stately bank of large maple trees Laura Sullivan had planted when she was a young bride. “Mrs. Carmichael has been frantic since the cat ran away last week. We need to rescue her.”
“That cat is evil,” Bev muttered, following her. “Besides, do you really think ran away is the right term? That sounds so innocent. I heard it was more like a prison break, complete with injuries and property damage.”
Eden waved that away. So Paisley was a little difficult. She was a rare snow Savannah. Being standoffish was a characteristic of the breed, as was the need for play and fun. Since Mrs. Carmichael wasn’t much good at either, the poor cat had probably run off out of boredom.
Before she could explain the psychological makeup of Savannahs, there was a loud screech, then a crash boomed out from behind the women.
Except for a teeth-clenching wince, Eden froze.
Bev screamed.
Cringing, they both pivoted toward the car.
Eden had forgotten to set the parking brake.
She and Bev stared at the tree-hugging vehicle in silence.
Damn.
“This is a bad week for cars around you,” Bev observed with a resigned sort of huff.
Eden groaned. It was like she was a walking, talking accident waiting to happen.
The car wasn’t new, or even in very good condition, but it’d been big enough for her to transport anything smaller than a horse, was paid for and had looked decent enough not to irritate wealthy potential clients.
Now the passenger fender had formed an intimate relationship with a redwood.
After staring at the car for a solid minute, Eden sighed and deliberately turned her back on it to walk the rest of the way across the street.
“Aren’t you going to do something? Where are you going?” Bev hurried after her. When Eden stopped under a tree and peered through the leaves, then reached up to test the strength of one branch, the cheery blonde gaped. “You can’t be serious? You’re still going to try to rescue the cat?”
“Why not? The car is already a mess—I might as well have something to show for it.” A safe, secured pet was a reasonable price to exchange for a molested fender. And maybe, if she was lucky, this could be her chance to bond with Paisley and get in Mrs. Carmichael’s good graces.
“Paisley,” Eden called in a cajoling tone. The cat, perched high on a maple branch, stopped its upward bounce to toss Eden a disdainful look. “C’mere, pretty kitty.”
“Why don’t we just call Mrs. Carmichael and tell her we saw her cat. She can come get it herself,” Bev suggested when her stilettos slid on the dirt bank. “And give us a ride while she’s at it.”
“Sure, a sixty-year-old woman needs to be climbing a tree after her cat,” Eden dismissed, her own stubby-heeled Mary Janes not slipping at all—girls who tended to trip over their own feet wore stilettos at great risk—as she made her way around the base of the maple.
After a few more calls, a few snarky remarks from Bev and another dismissive look from the cat, Eden sighed. She looked up the road, then down, to make sure no cars were coming. She only climbed trees once in a blue moon, but somehow she always managed to get busted.
“You’re lookout,” she told Bev. She glanced down at her pretty blue cotton dress, then tugged the back of the pleated skirt forward between her thighs, tucking it into the wide black belt. “There, modesty intact.”
“There, fashion destroyed,” Bev said, shaking her head in dismay. “If anyone asks, I tried to talk you out of this. I pointed out the likelihood of you falling, of you breaking yet another bone or something horrible happening to your hair.”
Eden’s fingers combed through the thick swath of heavy brown hair at her shoulders and gave Bev a confused look. “My hair?”
“I think it’s the only thing you haven’t messed up so far. It’s due.”
Eden grimaced, then shrugged. Bev was probably right. Some people might lament their fate, others would spend hours in therapy. She figured that by simply accepting that she was a little accident prone, she was not only ahead of the game in terms of dealing with emergencies—because after all, she created at least one a month—but she was saving a fortune on psychiatric fees.
“Watch for cars,” she warned again, reaching up to grab the closest branch.
“What do I do if I see one? Whistle? Throw myself across the driver’s window to hide their view?”
There might be a few drawbacks to having a BFF with a smart mouth, Eden decided as she levered her body onto the first branch.
“Just give me enough warning so I can hide,” she said as she gained her balance and slowly stood upright to reach for another limb.
With Bev’s voice droning in the background, covering everything from the fact that she’d never learned to climb a tree to the insanity of grown women acting like squirrels, Eden scurried higher.
A minute later, she was one branch away from Paisley.
“Hi, sweet kitty,” she said in a soft singsong voice. “Are you up here playing Queen of the Jungle? You should be—you look like royalty.”
She kept the soothing tone going, her outstretched fingers in constant motion to get the cat’s attention.
It worked. After a few seconds and a cautious sniff, the exotic white cat was nudging her broad forehead against Eden’s knuckles.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet.”
Unable to resist, Eden gave herself a moment to cuddle and pet the pretty cat before tucking her under one arm and slowly lowering herself until her butt met the branch. Like scooting down a rickety ladder, she went one branch at a time, with plenty of cuddling in between. Finally she was close enough to hand the cat to Bev.
“Why don’t you put her in the car,” Eden instructed, her belly flat against a wide limb that was about six feet from the ground. “Crack the windows, and there’s a bottle of water and portable pet dish in the trunk. If you’ll sit with her, she’ll probably drink a little.”
Despite her earlier opinion that the cat might be evil, Bev didn’t hesitate to reach out and cuddle the gray-spotted feline. Paisley gave a meow of protest, and threw an injured look toward Eden, but didn’t try to escape. Eden waited until her friend and the cat were safely inside the car, treats and water dispensed, before she lowered herself to the next branch.
There. She smiled her relief. Almost down.
It was the smile that did it, she figured.
Because she went from enjoying an easy descent to being suddenly trapped in the space of a heartbeat. Like an anchor, something held tight, so she couldn’t move.
Breathless, Eden twisted to see what was wrong.
Then scowled when she saw that the strap of her shoe was caught on a branch. Eden tugged. The shoe stuck. She tried to slip it off, but the branch was too rough, scratching painfully against the soft flesh of her instep.
A minute later she added cursing to the mix.
“Haven’t we been here before?” a husky voice asked.
Oh, hell. Eden froze. She hadn’t even heard a car. Please, oh, please, let him be talking to someone else.
“That is Eden up there, right?” the voice asked.
Double hell.
She shook her head, hoping the move would shift the curtain of hair from blocking her view.
Her heart, already pounding like a freight train, sped up. What little was left of her breath escaped her lungs in a rush.
She twisted her torso, angling herself sideways to make sure the face matched the voice.
Gorgeous green eyes, a tanned complexion over sculpted cheekbones and a strong jawline. Wide, full lips stretched in a smile that bordered on laughter. And the sexiest man-dimple she’d ever seen.
Her eyes widened and she gave a long, lusty sigh.
Didn’t it just figure? At least she’d tucked her skirt in so she wasn’t flashing him. Sure, she might have a few dozen fantasies about sharing her undies with this particular man. But this position wasn’t featured in a single one.
So she did what she always did when caught in an uncomfortable situation.
She smiled and made the best of it.
“Hi, Cade.”
3
“DO YOU DO THESE THINGS just to keep me in practice?” Cade asked, grinning at his favorite perpetual-victim, her silky brown hair a dark curtain over a face he knew would be sliding into a sheepish smile.
Eden Gillespie always looked sheepish when she had to be rescued. Something, if he’d ever considered it, he’d have figured she’d have outgrown. He eyed her legs, smooth and bare all the way to the top of her hot-pink panties thanks to the way her dress was hanging. Her arms were wrapped around the tree limb and one foot dangled while the other was caught in a snarl of branches and leaves. Clearly he’d have figured wrong.
“Consider it my welcome-home present,” she muttered, blowing a puff of air so her hair cleared enough that he could see the resigned amusement in her big brown eyes.
That was one of the things he’d always admired about Eden. She could laugh at herself. So many of the girls he’d grown up with, and the women he’d dated for that matter, took themselves and life way too seriously. They were so worried about controlling the impression they made, they didn’t let themselves just live.
Without thinking, his eyes shifted back to Eden’s legs. Long and sleek, they wrapped around that big, hard branch. He frowned at the scrapes and faint reddening of her tender flesh, for the first time ever tempted to kiss away a boo-boo. All the way up to her panties. Practical cotton, he noted, his mouth going dry, but in a fun, sassy color. Since she was facedown on the branch, the curve of her butt was perfectly highlighted in that pink fabric. His fingers itched to touch, to see if her curves were as firm as they looked.
Whoa. Not cool, he lectured himself. Lusting after the sweet girl next door was walking an awfully close line to settling down. Nothing wrong with it in the big picture, but in his personal rulebook? Totally out of the question.
“Want some help?” he offered, wondering how many times now he’d had to hurry these rescues along because of a hit of inappropriate lust. After all, he was pretty sure he’d been hauling her out of scrapes since his pre-teen days. But it’d only been since that rescue, when he’d seen her naked, that the sight of her made him instantly horny. He sighed with relief. There, now he was only a standard guy, not a weird pervert with a superhero complex.
“I can do it,” she muttered, tugging her foot to try and loosen it from the branch. Her shoe, a cute little black strappy thing, was good and stuck. She sighed and slanted him a rueful look. “But maybe you could just unhook my shoe for me?”
Cade didn’t bother arguing. He reached up and pulled the twigs from her foot. Then he wrapped both hands around her surprisingly narrow waist, easily lifting her from the overhead branch. It was like doing a military press, he thought with a grin as he lowered her body toward the ground.
Except he hadn’t counted on her shocked reaction. She gasped, struggling a little as if wanting him to let her go. Since he wasn’t about to drop her three feet to the ground, he shifted. Her breasts skimmed his chin. He froze. Other than to gasp and grab on to his shoulders for support, so did she.
Cade had felt the same energy pounding through his body when he held a live grenade. Danger, excitement, all senses on full alert.
Wrong, his brain screamed. Eden was the sweet girl next door. The same girl he’d been rescuing for years. She wasn’t supposed to inspire this degree of lust. The kind that made him want to take her, right there against the tree. He didn’t care that they’d only said a dozen or so words to each other in years, or that her friend was over there, face pressed against the window of the wrecked car, watching.
It was neither of those things that had Cade ignoring the hot need in his belly, or his body’s demand that he taste her, touch her.
It was the flutter of Eden’s lashes. The way her pulse trembled in her throat. The tiny trembles of her fingers where they dug into his shoulders. He, and his wicked desires, were out of her league.
So, nope. Not giving in to the need.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself up to that limit line.
Grinning, he slowly brought his arms down. He didn’t let go of his hold on her waist, so her body had to slide, in one long glorious trip, down his.
His eyes never left hers. There was something heady, intense, in seeing the heat flare, then her gaze blur with passion.
As soon as her feet hit the ground, she pushed away like he was fire, too hot for her to touch.
“Thanks again,” she said as she stepped backward. Her foot caught on a root and would have sent her sprawling if he hadn’t grabbed her.
“Babe, I live for these moments,” he told her in a husky tone, only half-teasing. Because he really did. Eden always made coming home fun.
“Me, too.”
The look on her face, a mix of horror and chagrin, said loud and clear that she had, as usual, spoke without thinking.
He should let her off the hook.
It wasn’t like he was going to give in to the heat between them. Ever since his first romp at the tender age of fourteen, he’d made it a point to stay relationship-free and keep his sexual encounters easygoing and simple. There was nothing simple or easygoing about Eden.
Except looking at her. That was as simple and easy as breathing. And talking to her. He’d never had any hesitation there. Listening to her laugh was pure pleasure.
Hell.
“C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home,” he said, his words a little gruffer than he’d intended.
“I can get home.”
Cade didn’t bother arguing. He just pointed to her fender, wrapped around that tree as intimately as he’d like to see Eden wrapped around his body.
“Oh. Yeah.” She sighed, looking from the fender to her friend, then to Cade. Her gaze shifted again to the cat, then his car. Finally she shrugged. “Thanks. We appreciate the ride.”
As soon as both women—and the feline—were settled in his borrowed BMW—the quiet redhead in the back and Eden and her rescue cat in the front—he started the car.
“So, you still seeing Kenny Phillips?” he asked, hoping like hell she’d say yes.
“Not anymore.” She did that cute little nose-wrinkling thing then shook her head. “He never quite forgave me for breaking his foot.”
It’d been Kenny’s screams that’d caught Cade’s attention a couple years back, leading him to rescue a stunning, naked Eden. Cade was still baffled by that situation, since Kenny was nothing if not a missionary kind of guy. How the hell did a guy break his foot having standard, missionary sex? You’d think it’d take a swing, a tube of body lube and a few leather straps to reach that level of risk.
“I don’t think you lost out on much. Dating is a full-contact sport,” he told her with a laugh.
Unlike a lot of women, Eden didn’t get that speculative, how interested are you in playing the game with me look in her eyes. Instead she just shrugged.
“I guess Kenny decided to sign up for a lower-risk league, then,” she informed him as she rolled her ankle first one way, then the other. “And he took most of his teammates in town with him.”
