She asked in the sweetest most Southern accent she could muster up, “Hey, Ma? Where’s Father tonight? I thought for sure he’d be out here to greet us at the door.”

She heard Josh suck in a deep breath, and she knew he was reacting to her accent. Sucker.

“He’ll be here, sweetheart. Don’t you worry yourself. He wouldn’t miss ya’ll for the world,” she replied, walking inside.

Shelly turned and leaned up against the truck. “Well?”

“Well what?” Josh questioned as he lifted the first bag out.

“I know you’re dying to say something to me, cowboy?” Shelly asked, still putting on the thick country accent.

“Hmm. All I’m going to say to you is the next time we’re all alone and you’re wrapped around me…I want you to talk just like that.”

“Why?” she teased in her Southern twang as she sidled up closer, wrapping her arms around his waist. Tipping her head back, she bumped her hips up against his. “Oh, I see. You like the way I talk all country. It that right, Joshuahh?” she asked, adding an extra-long drawl to his name.

He reached up, taking her face between his hands. “Yeah, I like this country girl.”

“Well, good, cowboy, ‘cause she likes you, too.”

She went up on her tiptoes and was about to kiss him when another truck drove up the driveway.

Letting go of him, Shelly took a step back, glancing at Josh with a tight smile. She dropped the accent altogether and straightened her spine.

“Good thing you didn’t have your lips on me, Josh. My father would have shot you on sight.”

With that comment, she walked around the truck to greet her father.

* * *

Josh watched as Shelly made her way over to the truck that had just pulled up. He leaned against the side of his own truck with his arms crossed, watching the man that got out of the Ford F-150.

He was tall and blonde, instantly reminding Josh of Robert Redford. The guy was good-looking, and Josh could see where Shelly had inherited the fair skin and blue eyes.

When the man kissed her cheek, Josh noticed Shelly was still and stiff, losing that relaxed air she’d had about her only five minutes earlier.

Mutley took the opportunity to run around the truck, heading over to the stranger. Josh watched as her father bent down, his hand reaching out to ruffle over the dog’s head. Mutley, of course, licked his hand and wagged his tail. With a smile, Josh noticed Shelly was discreetly taking a step away from the dog, still not quite comfortable with him.

Josh found himself grinning until her father stood and turned to look at him.

As their eyes locked, Josh felt the other man assess him straight away. Shrewd eyes took in the truck first, then they moved back to him, looking over the T-shirt and jeans, and then he turned back to the dog and his daughter.

Josh was left wondering if he had passed or failed. Well, I’m about to find out, he thought. With a pinched expression, the man made his way over to Josh with the dog trotting along one side and his daughter on the other. Stopping when they reached Josh, her father held out his hand.

“Hello. I’m Dr. Lawrence Monroe.”

Oh shit, Josh thought as he looked to Shelly. Her father is a doctor, too?

He wondered if that had anything to do with the cool relationship between the two of them.

Josh reached out, taking his hand in a firm clasp, and shook it. He had to look up at the man and found himself caught in a kind of stare down.

Josh had promised himself he would not be intimidated. After all, he was successful and owned his own company, not that Shelly knew that. Overall, he was a good guy.

A good guy who wants to sleep with this man’s daughter. So?

“Nice to meet you, sir. I’m Joshua Daniels.”

Since when did I start calling people sir and ma’am? When I entered the South?Who knows?

“Yes, so my daughter was just tellin’ me.” He paused, and then turned to look at Shelly, effectively dismissing him. “Dinner will be served at 7:30.”

Shelly nodded. “We’ll be there.”

He looked his daughter over again, and then turned back to Josh, looking him over, too. “Cleaned up, I presume?”

“Of course,” Shelly muttered.

Josh watched as her father walked up the stairs and into the house where Shelly’s mother had disappeared to earlier.

Shelly turned to face him, giving him a smile so painfully false that it almost looked as though it hurt her face.

“And that is my father.”

* * *

With Josh’s help, Shelly had managed to get her things inside and upstairs to her bedroom. Then, she’d directed him to the room across from hers. She had just finished washing up, and she was slipping into some cutoff jean shorts when there was a knock on the door. She tied her blue-and-white gingham shirt at the waist and opened the door to see a fresh-faced, cleaned-up Josh leaning against the frame.

He looked her up and down, and then moved back out into the corridor, glancing both ways. Pushing her back into her room and following her, he shut the door and leaned back against it, pinning her with fiery eyes. She had just finished tying her hair into a high but messy ponytail and hadn’t put on any shoes yet.

“Whatcha doin’, Josh?”

She watched as he reached down between his legs with one of his big hands, adjusting the hard-on that had very obviously formed behind the faded denim. And didn’t that just send a shiver of desire straight down between my thighs.

“Just looking at you. I had this exact fantasy in my car today.”

She licked her lips and moved closer to him. “Oh yeah? And what was the fantasy?”

He let his eyes travel down her legs, and then they came back up to rest on her face. “You in a cowgirl hat, some Daisy Dukes, and cowboy boots.”

Shelly laughed, placing a hand on his chest. “Well, one out of three ain’t bad, sugah.”

“When you talk like that, the other two don’t even need to exist.”

“Hmm,” Shelly hummed in the back of her throat. “We’ve still got an hour or so before dinner.”

“We do, don’t we?” Josh told her as he pushed himself off the door, starting to walk forward. Reaching out, he grasped the knot that rested over her navel.

With each step he took forward, Shelly took a step back. “And just what do you think we should do in those sixty or so minutes?”

“Well,” he drawled, his eyes watching his fingers as they untied the knot. “I think we should start with this,” he told her right before he gripped the material and pulled it apart, the buttons popping from the shirt.

Shelly gasped, and then felt a smile touch her lips as she watched Josh give her the most deliciously wicked grin she had ever seen.

“And then what?” she asked, uncaring of the fact that she was now standing in front of him in her ripped shirt, her breasts barely covered by a black demi-cup bra, and cutoff jean shorts.

“Then,” he said as he reached out, stroking a fingertip down her chest, dipping it into her navel, and then stopping at the top of her shorts, “I’ll undo these.”

Feeling her heart start to beat rapidly, Shelly reached out and gripped his hand.

His eyes came up to meet hers, and he asked, “No?”

Chuckling at him, Shelly shook her head and whispered, “I don’t have a lock on my door, Josh.”

He blinked, and then what she was telling him seemed to sink in. He looked over his shoulder at the unlocked door, and then back to her.

“You don’t?”

Biting her bottom lip, Shelly gave him an impish grin and reached out with a fingertip to trace his shoulder.

In the country voice she knew melted him, she drawled, “Nu-uh, sugah. Ma didn’t trust me to have a lock on the door.”

* * *

Josh felt his mouth fall open after that comment. Fuck, she is sexy.

As she stood there with her ripped shirt and her sly little grin, Josh almost fell to his knees. He was debating in his head if it was worth the risk to do what he wanted, knowing that the door was unlocked, when she took the choice out of his hands.

“I’ve always wanted a boy to kiss me in my bedroom.”

Josh licked his lips, knowing he was up, literally, for that challenge.

“No boy ever came up here?”

Shelly shook her head, and for some reason, that answer greatly pleased Josh. How stupid is that?

“Georgia, if this boy kisses you in your room, he’s not going to stop,” he warned her, reaching out to touch her sexy lips with his finger.

True to form—well, true to the man-eater he knew—Shelly nipped his finger, once again shocking him to his boots.

“I’d be disappointed if he did.”

Groaning low, Josh made up his mind.

Slipping his fingers into her shorts, he unsnapped the buttons and parted the material.

As her bare skin appeared, Josh sent up a prayer of thanks that he was the one standing here about to lay down with Shelly Monroe.

He slid his hand down into her jean shorts and panties, turning his hand around so his palm was cupping her, and watched as her mouth parted on a sigh.

Her eyes were on his, and he couldn’t help but smile as he whispered, “Shh, got to be quiet up here. Don’t want anyone to come in and ruin the moment.”

* * *

Shelly widened her legs just a little to get Josh’s hand deeper inside her Daisy Dukes. Closing her eyes for a minute, she wiggled closer to him and tried to slow her breathing as she felt his clever fingers slip down between her wet lips.