Page 43 of Stars Shine In Your Eyes

Malcolm couldn’t help noticing how good Josie looked, how he’d catch the faintest whiff of vanilla and know she was near. He couldn’t get the feel of her, the taste of her out of his mind.

When she ran upstairs to grab a tape measure she’d left up there, he found an excuse to follow her. She turned an inquiring gaze on him when he shut the bedroom door. Okay, so there was no bed. It was an empty room with boxes of old dishes and junk that needed to be cleared out, but he still found himself in a bedroom with the door shut, alone with Josie. She must have interpreted the expression in his eyes correctly, for he saw the way her breath huffed in, causing her beautiful breasts to rise and her lips to part. He felt as though she were pulling him toward her.

“Malcolm,” she said. It was as far as she got before he was pulling her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around him, opening her lips, letting him taste her, tease her.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about kissing you,” he said. “It’s been driving me crazy.” She tasted so damn good. Hot and sweet, and when she made little moans deep in her throat, his desire ratcheted up to a burning need.

“The bedrooms are quite a shambles,” he heard Fiona say just before she threw the door open.

He barely had time to pull away from Josie and walk to the window, pretending to be studying the windowsill while he tried to get his body under control.

“Oh,” Fiona said, surprise packed into the single syllable. “I didn’t realize you two were up here.”

“Just grabbing the tape measure,” Josie said in a tone that was probably supposed to sound breezy, but to him sounded guilty. He’d bet his first million that she was blushing.

“Hope we didn’t interrupt anything,” his sister said as soon as Josie’s feet could be heard pounding down the stairs.

“Not at all,” he said, hoping his casual tone sounded more believable, but suspecting it didn’t. Not to a woman who’d known him her whole life. “I was just making sure there was no dry rot in the windowsill.” It was the lamest excuse he’d ever come up with, but why else would he be staring at the window?

“And is there?” Fiona was grinning. He knew it without even turning.

“No.”

“Good. Then maybe you can move aside so we can measure the windows for curtains.”

After lunch, he found the house so overrun with people that he told Josie he needed to see her outside. She followed him, and he grabbed her hand and led her into the gardens. A hedge so wildly overgrown that it was practically a forest gave him the shelter and privacy he needed. “I don’t believe we finished what we started upstairs,” he said, pulling Josie back into his arms.

She felt exactly right there, as though she fit, and his entire body exploded with need. How did she do this to him? They couldn’t spend too long making out like teenagers, or they’d be missed, but still, he couldn’t seem to let her go.

Until a voice trilled far too close for comfort. “Malcolm? Josie?”

Alice. Of course, if it wasn’t one sister nearly walking in on him and Josie, it had to be the other.

Josie gave a tiny giggle and pulled away, straightening her hair and shirt. He could have told her she was wasting her time. Her lips were wet and swollen from his kisses, her eyes heavy-lidded with desire. He was certain he looked similarly blissed out.

“Just checking the property boundary,” Malcolm called, pleased to have thought up something that sounded half believable.

“Why? Are you planning to buy the place?” Alice laughed, but the idea took root.

Just for a fleeting moment, he imagined buying the cottages so Josie could have retreats whenever she wanted to. He could picture her here, maybe living on the houseboat, or even more heart-poundingly, he imagined the two of them buying a place somewhere together. Somehow he knew that she wouldn’t fall in love with his flat in central London. Josie would want a real home, with bedrooms for children and gardens to play in. The image was fleeting, but it warmed him, all the way through to his heart.

They emerged from the brush, and Alice sent him a sharp look that promised massive teasing and intrusive questions later. Hopefully, he would think of something that would satisfy her and still be relatively truthful.

He didn’t even know himself what was going on with him and Josie.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The day had been a whirlwind from the moment she’d woken. Josie hadn’t had so much as a moment to breathe. But that wasn’t what had her feeling like she was spinning slightly out of control. It was Malcolm’s kisses, kisses he’d given her all day long. Kisses he’d stolen while pulling her into hallways and closets and bedrooms and behind garden walls. Every time, he’d kissed her until her head had spun and she’d been breathless. Several times, they’d almost been caught by his sisters.

Still, they couldn’t seem to stop.

She should insist that they hold off until they were back on his boat. But how could she possibly resist him? And how could she pretend she didn’t want him as much as he wanted her? It was bad enough that her lips were swollen from his kisses, her cheeks flushed pretty much every minute throughout the day.

But it was the heart that she’d vowed to keep hidden and protected that was proving to be the real shocker. Because with each kiss that he gave her, every time he pulled her close, another little piece of the wall around her heart fell. Every time she heard his laughter with his sisters or one of the workers, another piece fell. And to cap it all off, the day had been warm, and when he’d been helping to patch a broken wall outside, he’d taken off his shirt. She’d barely been able to keep from drooling. She could still hardly believe that she’d had her hands and her mouth all over his gorgeous skin, all those muscles that rippled in the sunlight with a slight sheen of sweat.

It was almost impossible to think straight about the work that she was trying to get through. There had been several times when someone had asked her a question—a question that she should’ve had a ready answer to—and she had to ask them to repeat it. Because she’d been unable to tear her brain, her body, her heart away from Malcolm. It was foolish, the most foolish path she could possibly walk down. She knew better. Again and again, she reminded herself that she was in the UK for two weeks only. Two weeks that would be wonderful. Breathtakingly wonderful. But that was it. There was no future in what they were doing. She would not just be foolish, but downright crazy to harbor any hope there could be more.

The sun was just beginning to set as everyone left, and Josie locked up the cottages for the night. Malcolm had put his shirt back on, but it didn’t really help. She was almost shaky with need for him.

---