Janet Evanovich - Naughty Neighbor

Louisa curled her fingers into Pete’s jacket and pulled him within inches. He looked like a kid who’d been told he could have ice cream for supper and didn’t believe it.

“So,” she said, “all smoke and no fire, huh?”

“I was under the impression you didn’t want fire.”

She leaned forward until their noses almost touched. “I was under the impression you didn’t care what I wanted. This is a heck of a time to get sensitive.”

He had his seat back, and Louisa on his lap faster than she could formulate a protest. His hand moved under her coat, under her shirt, flesh to heated flesh, and his mouth covered hers in a kiss that made no effort at restraint.

There was fire there, all right. More than she’d expected. Much more than she’d actually wanted. Their tongues tangled, his hand moved higher, and in a flash of panic, Louisa realized this wasn’t the first time Pete Streeter had made a mistake in his Porsche-and the size of the present mistake was much larger than she’d originally anticipated.

It was the last coherent thought she had before passion took over. After that moment there was only heat and need and aching desire. She writhed in his arms as his fingers stroked and inflamed her. She struggled with her clothes and whimpered in despair and delight when his mouth left hers to move lower. But she’d been right. Union was awkward in the cramped quarters.

“Hold it,” Louisa said. “I don’t think this is gonna work.”

Pete had reached the same conclusion, but he wasn’t willing to give up so easily. “Let’s just roll out into the woods.”

“I’m not rolling around in the woods! It’s freezing out there.” Louisa pushed her tangled hair back from her face and struggled to regain some focus. It had all happened so fast. She was naked, and she was in an obscenely embarrassing position with her foot stuck in the steering wheel. She looked down at herself and groaned. “How did I manage to get my clothes off in this tiny car?”

His grin widened as he snagged her panties from the rearview mirror. “It was nothing short of a miracle. You were a desperate woman.”

She snatched her panties from him and tried to extricate her foot, feeling the humiliation crawling up her spine, burning her earlobes. If she lived through this, she’d be a changed woman, she promised herself. She’d turn celibate for life, and she’d never again ride in a Porsche. Right now, her most pressing need was to get both feet on the floor.

“I think I have a problem here,” she said, twisting her foot this way and that, having no luck at wriggling it free.

Pete didn’t think it was a problem. As far as he was concerned, she could stay in that position for the next sixty years. He’d never seen anything so sexy in his entire life, and he hadn’t exactly been a choirboy.

“Well, for crying out loud,” Louisa said. “Do something!” Here she was strung up like the Christmas goose, and Pete was just sitting there staring at her.

He smiled silkily and slid his hands up the insides of her thighs.

“That’s not going to help.” She gasped. “It’s my ankle that’s stuck!”

“No need to shout. You weren’t specific about what I should do. Besides, this is very enticing.”

His touch was lovely, but Louisa’s foot was falling asleep, and her modesty was asserting itself. She was naked, and Pete Streeter was completely clothed. Five minutes earlier she’d approved of that arrangement; at the present moment she’d be grateful if she could just drop off the face of the earth.

“My toes are numb. My foot’s going to have to be amputated.”

Pete sighed. He didn’t want her foot to be amputated, but damned if he didn’t like looking at her with her leg hooked up onto the dashboard. “I’ll help you get loose, but we’ll have to do this again sometime,” he said, inching her foot through the opening in the wheel.

“When hell freezes over. This has been the most embarrassing night of my life. Let me get my clothes on, and then push me out the door. When you get home you can send a cab to come get me. I don’t ever want to see you again. I’m moving to Montana tomorrow. Maybe I’ll be a cowboy. Do they still have cowboys?” She searched under the seat. “I can’t find a sock.”

“Moving to Montana isn’t a good idea. You’d miss the air pollution, the traffic jams, the lines at the supermarket checkout. I think you should stay here. We could get married.”

“I don’t want to get married. The only thing I want to get is dressed. And I’m never taking my clothes off again. Not ever. Not even when I take a shower.”

He didn’t understand her embarrassment. It wasn’t as if they were strangers. They’d just almost made love. True, it hadn’t been exactly as he’d imagined their first lovemaking would be, but he thought it should count for something. Maybe that was the problem, he decided. They had gone too fast, been too frantic. They should try it again, slowly, with tender words and maddeningly gentle touches. He looked down at his jeans. He could do it. Watching her gather her clothes had reinspired him. She still hadn’t managed to get her shirt on. More inspiration.

She worked at untangling her bra from the gearshift, and her breasts jiggled with the effort. That tears it, Pete thought. A man could only take so much.

“I don’t want you to feel awkward,” he said, popping the top snap on his jeans. “The problem here is that I have too many clothes on, so I’ll take some off.”

“I don’t care what you do with your clothes,” Louisa told him, shoving her arms into her shirt. “I’m keeping mine on for the rest of my life, and I’m going to try very hard to forget this happened.”

He shook his head. Women were such a puzzle…especially this woman. He debated apologizing, but discarded the idea. He didn’t feel apologetic. He felt affectionate and proprietary. He also felt a tad insulted that Louisa wasn’t responding in kind and wanted to forget the whole thing.

“Participants are supposed to get mellow after almost making love. Where’s your afterglow? Where’s your sense of humor?”

“That wasn’t almost making love. That was…” She searched for a word but couldn’t come up with anything horrible enough. All the words that came to mind were shamefully exultant. In truth, it had been hands down the most exciting ten minutes of her life. It had been excruciatingly delicious. That didn’t alter the fact that she was now mortally embarrassed and disgusted with herself. “That was a conflagration,” she finally said.

He smiled in agreement. It had indeed been a conflagration.

She tugged her navy cords over her hips. “It must have been the sparkling water. Maybe it was the moon. Is there a full moon out tonight?”

“This is insulting.”

Louisa shrugged into her jacket. When she was fully clothed she turned and looked at him. His face was unreadable in the darkness, but she could see enough to know he wasn’t smiling. His tone had become serious and chillingly quiet. Now he was mad, she realized. She supposed he had reason to be. Blaming her passion on the moon wasn’t flattering to him. It also wasn’t true, but the truth wasn’t something she wanted to face right now.

“I suppose physical attraction might have played a part.”

“Uh-huh.”

He didn’t look appeased. She sighed and slouched in her seat. “What do you want from me, Streeter?”

“How about the truth?”

“I wouldn’t tell you the truth if you beat me senseless. You could rip off my fingernails, dunk me in boiling oil, carve your initials on my forehead…”

He made a disgusted sound. “Stop. You’re making me nauseous.” He took the keys from the ignition and jerked his thumb at her door. “Out.”

“I was only kidding about taking a cab,” Louisa said. “You aren’t going to make me take a cab, are you?”

“No. I’m going to make you look for a pig. I’d hate for you to have to write this night off as a complete loss.”

There was a short patch of grass slanting away from the road. Beyond the grass was a birch stand. Pete set off into the birch stand, and Louisa scrambled to keep up. Beyond the birch stand was a brick-and-aluminum colonial on a quarter of an acre of mostly open lawn. The house seemed austere in the moonlight. Rectangles of light spilled onto the ground from downstairs windows.

Pete didn’t care about the colonial. Pete was interested in the weathered rambler next door. Bucky Dunowski lived in the rambler. There was a big Ford pickup in Bucky’s gravel drive, a Harley parked on the front porch, and a Union Jack hung from the sagging porch roof. A dog barked in the vicinity of the rambler.

“That’s it,” Louisa said. “I’m out of here.”

Pete held fast to her. “The dog’s chained, Wimpy.”

“It isn’t that I’m afraid,” Louisa insisted. “It’s just that I don’t see any pigs. We may as well go home.”

Someone shouted into the darkness for the dog to shut up, but the dog continued to bark. The back door to the rambler opened, the dog hurried inside, and the door slammed closed.

Pete pulled Louisa forward. “I thought this was important to you.”

“That was before I decided to move to Montana.”

“Where’s your spirit of adventure? And what about outrage. Someone smashed your car windows. You’ve been fired, and there are clandestine activities afoot in the Senate chambers.”

She dug her heels in halfway across the lawn. “My car is insured.”

“That doesn’t make this pig fiasco any less outrageous.”

“This is outrageous,” she said, flapping her arms. “I feel compelled to point out to you that it is not considered polite behavior to go sneaking around at night, peeking in people’s windows.”

He motioned for her to be quiet while he crept closer to the house. The muted sound of a television carried out to them. Beer cans and take-out cartons littered the ground around a garbage can on the back stoop. Bars of yellow light bordered either side of a shade drawn on a front window.