In Bed With The Wild One: In Bed With The Wild One / In Bed With The Pirate. Colleen Collins
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Tyler sighed, shoving his bed buddy behind him for protection. No half-naked hot kisses just yet.
“Emily?” Kate peered into the room. “Is that you?”
She didn’t answer, but her expression gave a clear message. Caught.
Well, at least now he knew her name. Emily, huh? Yeah, that fit. Pretty, sweet, a touch old-fashioned. All the things that drove him nuts.
“Well.” Dangling her hammer, Kate seemed lost for words. “Emily, you’re a faster worker than I thought,” she said finally.
Emily attempted to wiggle out from behind Tyler. “It’s not what you think,” she tried. “I was just—”
But Tyler clapped a hand over her mouth, not ready to let her spill all the details about the thug and the break-in just yet. No need to scare Kate. And no need to get them both kicked out of the B and B.
“Come on, Kate, give us a break,” he said, trying to put on his most charming voice. “We were just having a little fun. It’s your fault—you’re the one who made this place so romantic. Kismet, pirates, wild ones—we lost our heads.”
Glowering at him, Verna slapped her skillet against her hand. He’d never thought Verna was a particularly intimidating woman. Okay, so she always wore black and looked like a beatnik, but she was harmless. Now, however, she seemed a lot fiercer.
“What about the window?” Verna asked grimly.
“The window?”
“How did it get that way?”
Under his hand, Emily struggled to answer, but Tyler kept a firm grip. “We steamed things up a little. You know.” And then, God help him, he winked at Verna like some goofball Romeo on the prowl. “Sorry. I guess I got carried away when I opened the window to let in some air.”
“I’ll say,” Verna bit off under her breath.
Kate’s brows drew together in consternation. “Tyler, this is so unlike you.”
“Yeah,” he allowed. “Sorry.”
“Are you going to fix the window?” Verna prompted.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I can fix the window later,” Kate cut in. “It’s just the latch. Tyler, let me know when you go out for dinner, and I’ll take care of it then. Right now, we’ll just leave you to your, uh, romp. Won’t we, Verna?”
She backed off, shooing Verna in front of her, but the boy with the boxes got caught in the shuffle.
“Excuse me,” he tried to say, bobbing away from Verna’s frying pan. “I’m looking for Emily Ch—”
“That’s me!” Ducking out from under Tyler’s grasp, Emily asked, “Are you from the Gap? Are those my clothes?”
Tyler was beginning to think his baffled and confused state of mind was going to be permanent. Emily had delivery boys from the Gap running over with packages of clothing? Huh?
“I have to get my purse,” she told the wide-eyed kid. “Go next door. The room with the doll on the door. I’ll meet you.”
And before Tyler could stop her, she’d scrambled off the bed and through the armoire to find a tip for the delivery boy.
With a particularly nasty oath, Tyler let himself fall backward onto the black leather bedspread. He stared at the ceiling. What in the hell had just happened here? His room had been broken into by a crazy stalker with wide hazel eyes and the cutest, softest mouth he’d ever seen, and then again by a moronic hood who was probably going to come back in five minutes and try again. And he’d let both of them escape unscathed.
Rousing himself, Tyler slid the window back down and flipped the lock. It was wobbly, but it should do until Kate could do a real repair job. Then he crossed to the armoire.
Emily was safely on her side, in that girly paradise called the Pollyanna room. As he watched, she handed the delivery boy a few bills and backed up with her boxes. But how long would she be content to stay put?
With a grim smile, he pulled the panel closed from her side, snapped his own side shut, too, and slid the bolt to keep it that way. For good measure, he grabbed the heavy silver trophy off the shelf and propped it against the secret door.
“Tyler!” she shouted, banging against the back of the armoire from her side. “I still need to talk to you. I can help! Please let me help.”
“Go away, Emily,” he returned calmly.
“Let me in. Please?”
“No.”
Whistling loudly to block out her pleas, he strode out of The Wild One and locked the door securely behind him. He had business to attend to, and he had no time for pretty little distractions, no matter how sweetly her bottom curved or what delights she had spilling out of her unbuttoned blouse.
“A lawyer,” he said derisively. “Yeah, that’s just what I need.”
As far as he was concerned, there would be no more visits from Miss Emily tonight.
THERE WAS NO WAY she was standing still for this. Who did he think he was, anyway?
First he’d laughed at her, then he’d almost kissed her, and now he’d locked the door on her! He simply refused to listen even though what she had to say was of vital importance to his own well-being. What a jerk!
“Oh, God. He almost kissed me,” she whispered, slumping onto the edge of the bed, remembering every second of that intimate encounter. She lifted a weak hand to her lips. “And I almost kissed him back.”
She didn’t even want to think about what might have happened next. But it was too late. Her imagination was running away with her. She would have wrapped her arms around him, he would have pulled her underneath him, and they would have played all kinds of naughty Wild One games.
It was true. She would’ve done anything he wanted at that moment, on that bed, with him. She could protest to everyone who would listen that she wasn’t interested in him that way, that she didn’t want to seduce him or sleep with him, but one roll around a leather bed, and she could think of nothing else.
“I want his hands on me,” she whimpered. “I want my hands on him. I want to peel off every article of his clothing and lick him from head to toe.”
This was pathetic. Emily Chaplin, daughter of the senior partner and the esteemed judge, did not think about licking handsome strangers, let alone say it out loud.
She gulped. Until now.
Okay, well, that was neither here nor there. Didn’t happen. Not going to happen. She repeated both those sentences a few more times. Didn’t happen. Not going to happen.
He was The Wild One and she was Pollyanna and never the twain would meet.
She felt better now that she had identified this weakness in herself—identified and dealt with it. So she had a small problem. Did that mean she had to abandon her whole quest, her once-in-a-lifetime, footloose-and-fancy-free escapade?
“Absolutely not!” she told herself. “I’m here and I’m in this thing, and I’m going to stay until I solve the puzzle and save Tyler’s adorable butt.”
It probably would have been better to leave the “adorable” out of that equation, but she felt sure it was just a tiny oversight. The important thing was that she was back on the case. She’d heard his door slam and his footsteps bang down the hall a few minutes ago, so she could logically assume that he had once more taken off into parts unknown in North Beach. And she needed to get a move on if she wanted to catch up.
Quickly pulling on her new T-shirt, khaki pants and sneakers, Emily yanked her arms into her suit jacket on the way down the stairs. She certainly hoped she could get out of there before she ran into Kate or the cook again. How embarrassing to be caught