Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch by Victoria Pade Page B

because exploring anything else seemed even more dangerous, and certainly more complex.
    â€œIf I could afford this bathtub and had the space to put it in, I would,” she confided.
    â€œAnd if I do, will you come over and use it?” he asked with that bad-boy grin.
    â€œI better buy my faucet and get going,” was the only answer she could think to give.
    â€œI’ll supply the candles,” he tempted.
    â€œReally, I have to go now,” she insisted, keeping one eye on the room’s entrance for her fellow church member.
    â€œYou know what I’d like as much as you comin’ over to use my tub, if it becomes my tub?”
    â€œWhat?” she asked, still on the lookout for the salesman.
    â€œI’d like it if you’d stop tryin’ so hard to run from me, little rabbit.”
    â€œI’m not running. I really have to go,” she lied for the third time.
    He just stared at her as if he knew it. For a moment, anyway. Then he said, “Okay. Go.”
    So why wouldn’t her feet move?
    She stood rooted to the spot, watching him, struck by how terrifically handsome he was, how terrifically appealing, how terrifically sexy, wanting to climb back in the bathtub with him. Fellow church member or no fellow church member lurking just outside.
    But in the end she couldn’t do it.
    â€œSee you around,” she said lamely instead.
    â€œSure.”
    She finally persuaded her feet to move. But before she’d gotten more than a few steps away, Cal’s deep voice stopped her.
    â€œHow about we watch the sunrise together sometime soon? I know the perfect place for it.”
    So maybe she hadn’t bored him to death the previous night. Or just now, either.
    â€œI’d like that,” she heard herself say before she’d given any thought to the wisdom in it.
    Then she wondered if that perfect place to watch the sunrise was from his bed, thinking that perhaps she should add that she’d only like to watch it with him if it was from some respectable spot.
    But somehow that seemed presumptuous even if his tone of voice was full of insinuation.
    Not to mention that she wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to put on that restriction....
    â€œHappy faucet huntin’, Abby Abby,” he said then, rather than making a firm date.
    â€œThanks. Enjoy your bathtub.”
    â€œWithout you? Don’t know if that’s possible,” he said on a sigh.
    Incorrigible. He was definitely incorrigible.
    And she liked it way too much.
    Â 
    ABBY WAS DREAMING that there was a woodpecker in her room.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    She could hear it, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see it.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    She also couldn’t figure out how it had gotten into her room.
    Tap, tap, tap.
    Or maybe it wasn’t in her room. Maybe it was pecking from outside. On her window...
    She came awake slowly until she realized the pecking wasn’t coming from a woodpecker inside or outside her room, that it was someone knocking on her window. Then she bolted the rest of the way out of sleep with a rush of pure adrenaline, sitting up in bed.
    Somebody was knocking on her window!
    Her bedroom—like all the rest in the house—was on the second floor. But being in the rear, it had its own outside door onto the wide sunporch that ran the length of the back side. There were a dozen wooden steps that rose up from the yard to the porch, but no one came calling from there. Especially not in the middle of the night. Or even at 4:43 in the morning, which was what her bedside clock said was the time.
    The lacy white curtains on her window were pulled but they had a tendency to part about an inch at the center rather than meeting directly. And through that inch she could see that there was a person standing out there, and that was where the soft tapping was coming from and not from the woodpecker of her dream.
    She got out of bed and grabbed a bathrobe even though her