“While I praise you on your good taste, I can’t take all the credit. The London account was won in the boardroom.” He could picture her standing there, her royal blue suit skimming over her curves, her hair pinned at the back of her head. She’d addressed Reginald with confidence, all while maintaining a smile and including him in the presentation rather than talking at him. “You were amazing in there, Lil.”

“Oh. Um, thanks.” She tipped her chin and blinked, her long, sloping lashes hiding her light blue eyes ever so briefly. “That’s nice.”

“I’m not being nice. I’m telling the truth.”

Her eyes diverted to his mouth, and she licked those soft pink lips. The look she pinned him with next absolutely stunned him. The pursed lips, upturned chin, the way she was leaning toward him the slightest bit… He couldn’t believe it.

Lily McIntire wanted him to kiss her.

Since he had wanted to kiss her since the day he’d met her, he was surprised to find his initial reaction was panic. Instead of closing his mouth over hers like the stud he was, he reacted like a kid with a grade school crush…and play-punched her in the shoulder.

What. The. Fuck?

“Hey.” He cleared his throat intentionally, still unsure what to make of his reaction. “I have an idea.” I’ll abruptly change the subject so I don’t maul you where you sit. “You can, uh”—he scratched his neck and averted his eyes—”do my speech for me.” He shrugged and gave her a cocky smile. “You’ll be like a ghostwriter. Only you’ll be a ghostspeaker.”

Wow. What a freaking reach. What was he so nervous about, anyway? How about because the girl of your dreams is coming onto you?

Yeah, that’d do it. And he’d blown it pretty bad that first time. He did not want a replay of getting shot down in double slow-mo.

The longing ebbed from her expression so gradually, he actually watched it go. Her heart wasn’t in the smile she offered him, and he was hit with the strongest twinge of regret.

She focused on winding the end of the blanket around her fingers, steadfastly changing the subject. “Well, you earned the award, Marcus. I’m sure everyone there will be—”

A crash from the kitchen interrupted whatever good-intentioned compliment she’d been about to pay him. She scrambled away from the sound behind her and across the mattress, practically landing in his lap. Her grip on his left forearm was so tight, he began to lose the feeling in his wrist.

“What was that?” she asked in a hurried whisper.

What it sounded like was someone overturning a china cabinet and emptying teacups, dinner plates, and various other place settings onto the worn wooden floor. From his memory of peering through those windows earlier, there were no dishes in there. And the speaker he’d hidden upstairs to play voices was not equipped with the sound of crashing china.

“I don’t know.” He studied the dark doorway in front of them, now silent in the gloom. He stood and she came with him, still latched to his arm. He placed a hand over both of hers, trying to calm himself and his thundering heart. Not only from the shock echoing through his body, but also from the feel of her smooth skin. “But I’m going to find out.”

She released his arm and half hid behind him as they stepped closer to the kitchen. He reached around and held her against him, keeping her at his back as he listened, his every sense on high alert. He could hear the wind blowing outside, the propane heater humming quietly at his feet, and Lily’s sharp, short breaths over his shoulder. Other than that, the house was still.

An electronic chirp made her yip, and she clutched the sides of his shirt tighter in both fists. “Sorry. My phone alarm.”

He turned and faced her, pulling her hands off him and holding them in his. “Wait here.”

He was supposed to leave her there and do his manly obligation of checking the kitchen, but found he couldn’t move. The way her strawberry-blond hair framed her cherubic face, the way her plush lips parted, made Lily much too tempting to turn away from just yet.

Gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he lowered his head and placed a kiss on the center of her lips. “And calm down.”

…

Earth to Lily.

Marcus disappeared through the doorway of the massive kitchen to confront whoever or whatever was destroying Willow Mansion’s dishware. She knew there wasn’t a single breakable item in there, but she’d heard it, too—the creak of the cabinet doors swinging open, the sound of china shattering into a zillion pieces.

She should be terrified out of her mind. Either nonexistent breakables had been shattered, or she was in need of a psychiatric evaluation. But “terrified” wasn’t her reigning emotion. The predominant feeling was attraction, and it cloaked her in warmth despite the cobwebs and splintered boards at her back.

Marcus Black was an exceptional kisser. He had firm lips, the bottom one slightly larger than the top. His kiss was no more than a peck, but his mouth had hovered over hers long enough for her to conclude that wine tasted a lot better on his lips than from a red Solo cup.

Or maybe she was simply afraid. Fear and attraction had a lot of the same characteristics. The sweaty palms, the elevated heart rate…

The picturing Marcus naked.

Okay, maybe not that last one.

Marcus—not naked—appeared in the doorway so suddenly she had to blink him into focus. His face was drawn and shadowed, but her heart ratcheted up at the sight of him anyway, her eyes automatically locking onto those talented lips of his.

“Grab the Coleman.” His toneless voice snapped her out of her fantasy of being kissed again. “You’ve got to see this.”

She forced her feet forward, lifting the lantern and taking it with her to the adjoining room. He extinguished the small flashlight in his hand when she stepped over the threshold. Holding the lantern high, she swept the light over every corner of the room before turning to him.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Right.” He relieved her of the lantern, his fingers brushing her bare skin and sending a trail of fiery awareness licking up her arm. “Don’t you find that strange?”

She started to answer, and then realized he was referring to the lack of broken dishes and not to the way his touch made her want to purr. Which he couldn’t possibly know about. Thank God.

“No,” she answered belatedly. “I find it fantastic.” Somehow the idea she’d hallucinated the sound—that they both had—was more reassuring than the alternative. Ducking her head into the sand wasn’t her normal habit, but this place was far from normal. And if she had a prayer of not losing her marbles while stuck here, she’d do well to pretend everything was A-okay. They both would.

He lapped the large kitchen one final time, his dark brows pinched. His boots stopped with a soft scuffing sound in front of her, then he lowered the lantern. She studied his brown eyes, choked by thick lashes, and his ink-colored hair tousled over his forehead in the yellowish light and thought of the kiss. How he’d leaned in and taken her lips so confidently. She’d bet he did everything that way. Confidently. Thoroughly.

“Did you hear me?” he asked.

No. I was fantasizing about you.

“Uh, sorry. Zoned out.”

The side of his mouth kicked up, and her heart hammered into her ribs like machine gun fire.

“I asked if you wanted to go back to bed.” He waggled his eyebrows and tipped his head toward the living room. “With me.” He affected his best bad-boy rogue expression. Teasing her again.

He seemed content to ignore whatever they’d heard. Good. She could work with that. “You’re impossible.”

“You can’t get enough of me,” he said as he followed her to the living room.

“You can’t get enough of yourself,” she threw over her shoulder, barely meaning it. She took her place back on the mattress as he set the lantern aside and arranged his big body on the bed next to her. He was quiet for a moment, studying the boards covering the windows in the living room.