Chapter Seven
“Dan? You inhere?”
Whoever spoke didn’t wait for an answer. A woman peered around the half-opened door. Jazz pushed Dan away, tumbling him onto his back, and scrambled off the low bed. She tugged her short skirt into place, her face screaming with heat. This time, her panties had definitely been showing.
“Whoops!” the woman exclaimed. Then she quickly recovered. She glared past Jazz at Dan. “What is wrong with you, you idiot? Dallas and Ryan are missing, you have the whole county roaming the ranch—including some reporter with a cameraman—and yet you can’t resist giving random women a private tour of your bedroom?”
“I take it you missed the interview on the side lawn,” Dan said. “Jazz isn’t just any woman. She’s my girlfriend.”
“You must be the smokejumper everyone is talking about,” the woman said to Jazz. “I’d pictured you smarter. Not even his money makes him worth wasting your time.”
Dan rolled off the bed and positioned himself next to Jazz. They looked like teenagers caught with their pants down. He slid an arm around her waist and hugged her to him. “Sweetheart, this is my oldest sister, Kirstin. Believe it or not, she loves me.”
Now that he pointed the relationship out, Jazz could see the resemblance. Kirstin looked like her brother, with the same hair, eyes, and features, although Jazz guessed her to be a good decade older. She was a few inches shorter than Jazz and a few pounds heavier, mostly around the middle, but she gave the impression of a much larger woman.
Amazonian, in fact.
“Of course, I love you,” Kirstin said. “You have money.”
“Not you,” Dan said. “I meant Jazz.”
His sister pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the room. “Sorry. In that case I meant to say, of course she loves you. You have money.”
“You have a sister?” Jazz said to Dan, because she couldn’t find anything more intelligent to contribute. She’d never considered that he might have family. Why would she? Until this afternoon, she’d done her best not to think about him in any context other than as her boss.
She should have stuck with her original instincts.
“I have two of them. They’re both older and they both think they’re my mother,” he replied.
She pried herself free of his arm. If only her face wasn’t so hot. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“It probably isn’t,” Kirstin conceded. She looked thoughtful. An unexpected smile lit up her face, making her look even more like her brother. “Which is kind of too bad.” The smile vanished as fast as it appeared. “But you have games lined up for the kids and people waiting for you to start them,” she said to Dan. “So move it.”
She hustled them both out of the room, then through Dan’s living room—which looked like something off HGTV—and into the Endeavour’s main lounge, which was currently empty.
“Go be a host,” she said, before shutting the living room door in their faces.
“I feel like I just got a spanking,” Jazz said. Or maybe hit by a truck.
“Is spanking something you’re into?” Dan asked.
She ignored that. “Does your sister live with you?”
“Good God, no.” His horror was too funny for words. “She’s got eight kids, all under twelve. Two sets of twins,” he explained, saving her from having to do the math. “Four and six years old. But don’t let that scare you. Twins run in their father’s side of the family, not ours.”
“We aren’t acouple,” Jazz said, even though he was yanking her chain and she was wasting her breath. He’d found a joke and was running with it.
“We aren’t? Because I’d never kiss my grandma like this.”
He captured her face in his hands, bent his knees to bring him to eye level, then, in a smooth, practiced move that had her catching her breath, settled his mouth over hers. The kiss was warm, firm, and far more seductive than she’d ever have suspected, because she lost the use of her legs. Her arms took on a life of their own, winding around his neck without any instruction from her. And then, she was kissing him back.
She couldn’t say for sure how it happened, but he’d lifted her into his arms and had her braced against the wall next to his door. She’d wrapped her legs around his waist and his hands were under the hem of her skirt. His fingers toyed with the dampening crotch of her panties.
He tracked the tip of his tongue along the seam of her lips, just a light, teasing touch that left her gasping for air, before pulling away. He lowered her to her feet, then straightened the skirt of her dress because it was beyond her.
They stared at each other as the seconds ticked by. Her mouth opened and closed. She could think of nothing to say. Disparate thoughts churned in her head, but none coalesced into anything lucid other than that Dan McKillop could kiss.
He looked equally stunned. He wasn’t as speechless, however.