Read Online Turn Up the Heat by Serena Bell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Serena Bell
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his own skin?
Yes, pretty much. Hoping all that, and more, that she’d ask him to open the gate, that she’d lean back against the bars and draw him to her, that she’d look up through her lashes and let that pouty lower lip fall open slightly, inviting him in as explicitly as if she’d said,
Kiss me.
Instead—unsurprisingly—she jogged by, so close for a moment that if he had only breathed her name she would have heard it. He could have thrown a clump of weeds and caught her on the arm. There were beads of sweat on her forehead. From this distance, he could hear her breath, fast and desperate, a deep, dark tug that woke his cock and dragged it to standing.
And then she was gone, and he watched her run away, the lean, sculpted muscles in her legs, the clutch of the bigger muscles in her gorgeous ass, the bounce of her ponytail.
He let his gaze drop, reached for a handful of knotweed, and went on with his work.
—
Lily sat at the kitchen table in her sister’s house, peeling an orange and gazing out the window over the kitchen sink.
It was not the most beautiful view ever. The houses in this neighborhood had been built all at the same time and the developer had run out of money for landscaping before he’d been able to do much to break up the view between them. Sierra’s window revealed three consecutive yards, lined up, cluttered with toddler toys and swing sets, pre-fab sheds and plastic lawn furniture. The lawns were drying up in the summer sun, rife with patches of dead grass and crabgrass. Here and there, someone had planted a compensatory fruit tree and there was a patch of shade.
Lily had finished peeling the orange and was dividing it into sections. It made her not only miss her nieces and nephews—who were at camp—but also feel quietly glad they weren’t here. Although the orange was really too big for one person, it was too small for four, and she would have given most of it away.
Sierra had done a good job with those kiddos, taught them manners without disciplining the childhood mischief completely out of them. Lily hoped she’d do as good a job with her own someday.
If she had any. She didn’t know how easy it would be to have kids and own a restaurant, particularly as a woman. The first few years, running a restaurant was backbreaking, life-consuming work. You had to be there every hour of the day and deep into the night, and when you weren’t on the premises, you were buying food at the market—or sleeping.
And there was the problem of having time to meet someone eligible when you were so damn busy. You might be able to have an encounter here and there, but to have a long-term relationship, get married, you’d have to meet a patient man whose own ambitions dovetailed with yours.
Fat chance.
Lily figured that even if she managed to meet someone willing to compromise between his ambitions and hers,
she’d
have to be willing to give up some of her own fantasies. The chances were slim that he’d be the sort of guy who graced her daydreams.
Like Kincaid.
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew that marrying the shirtless man on the cover of a romance novel didn’t necessarily deliver the happily-ever-after it promised. Kincaid
might
look like the best item on the menu, but she’d be better off taking compatible values and goals over photogenic looks and sexual wow-factor.
On the opposite side of the next yard, someone was pruning one of the few trees. He was wedged in the vee of two branches, leaning back against one while he trimmed a branch over his head with a pole pruner. He was by far the best part of Lily’s view, naked from the waist up, rippling with muscle, not an ounce of fat on his tanned, glistening form.
Nice.
This town was
full
of them, apparently, these photogenic, wow-factor men. This one’s back and arms were heavily inked, the most prominent tattoo a design that wrapped the back of his neck and covered most of one side of his back. Diamonds—
With a start, she
Yes, pretty much. Hoping all that, and more, that she’d ask him to open the gate, that she’d lean back against the bars and draw him to her, that she’d look up through her lashes and let that pouty lower lip fall open slightly, inviting him in as explicitly as if she’d said,
Kiss me.
Instead—unsurprisingly—she jogged by, so close for a moment that if he had only breathed her name she would have heard it. He could have thrown a clump of weeds and caught her on the arm. There were beads of sweat on her forehead. From this distance, he could hear her breath, fast and desperate, a deep, dark tug that woke his cock and dragged it to standing.
And then she was gone, and he watched her run away, the lean, sculpted muscles in her legs, the clutch of the bigger muscles in her gorgeous ass, the bounce of her ponytail.
He let his gaze drop, reached for a handful of knotweed, and went on with his work.
—
Lily sat at the kitchen table in her sister’s house, peeling an orange and gazing out the window over the kitchen sink.
It was not the most beautiful view ever. The houses in this neighborhood had been built all at the same time and the developer had run out of money for landscaping before he’d been able to do much to break up the view between them. Sierra’s window revealed three consecutive yards, lined up, cluttered with toddler toys and swing sets, pre-fab sheds and plastic lawn furniture. The lawns were drying up in the summer sun, rife with patches of dead grass and crabgrass. Here and there, someone had planted a compensatory fruit tree and there was a patch of shade.
Lily had finished peeling the orange and was dividing it into sections. It made her not only miss her nieces and nephews—who were at camp—but also feel quietly glad they weren’t here. Although the orange was really too big for one person, it was too small for four, and she would have given most of it away.
Sierra had done a good job with those kiddos, taught them manners without disciplining the childhood mischief completely out of them. Lily hoped she’d do as good a job with her own someday.
If she had any. She didn’t know how easy it would be to have kids and own a restaurant, particularly as a woman. The first few years, running a restaurant was backbreaking, life-consuming work. You had to be there every hour of the day and deep into the night, and when you weren’t on the premises, you were buying food at the market—or sleeping.
And there was the problem of having time to meet someone eligible when you were so damn busy. You might be able to have an encounter here and there, but to have a long-term relationship, get married, you’d have to meet a patient man whose own ambitions dovetailed with yours.
Fat chance.
Lily figured that even if she managed to meet someone willing to compromise between his ambitions and hers,
she’d
have to be willing to give up some of her own fantasies. The chances were slim that he’d be the sort of guy who graced her daydreams.
Like Kincaid.
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew that marrying the shirtless man on the cover of a romance novel didn’t necessarily deliver the happily-ever-after it promised. Kincaid
might
look like the best item on the menu, but she’d be better off taking compatible values and goals over photogenic looks and sexual wow-factor.
On the opposite side of the next yard, someone was pruning one of the few trees. He was wedged in the vee of two branches, leaning back against one while he trimmed a branch over his head with a pole pruner. He was by far the best part of Lily’s view, naked from the waist up, rippling with muscle, not an ounce of fat on his tanned, glistening form.
Nice.
This town was
full
of them, apparently, these photogenic, wow-factor men. This one’s back and arms were heavily inked, the most prominent tattoo a design that wrapped the back of his neck and covered most of one side of his back. Diamonds—
With a start, she
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