Free If You Can't Stand the Heat... (Harlequin Kiss) by Joss Wood

realisation that he wanted...no, craved her.
    He’d never had this reaction to any woman before. Generally it was easy come, easy go. Nothing about Ellie so far had been easy, and he suspected that nothing would be. Jack shifted on his feet as desire flared. It would be easy to seduce her, but that would make leaving in a couple of days that much more complicated. Because somehow he instinctively knew that he couldn’t treat her as a casual encounter. There was something about Ellie that tugged at him—some button that she pushed that made him suspect that this was a woman worth getting to know...
    And that was more terrifying than being caught in the crossfire in any hot zone anywhere in the world. They had yet to make flak jackets to protect against emotional bullets.
    Ellie looked up from the bare cake in front of her, which had been cut into the vague shape of a train and was covered in rough white icing. She sent him a tired smile. ‘I’m wondering what I can give you for supper.’
    Jack pried himself off the wall and walked away from the table she was working at. ‘Something simple...let’s order pizza.’
    Ellie sighed and Jack saw relief flicker on her face.
    ‘Okay. I just need to finish this and we can go home. Or you can go home and I’ll follow in a bit.’
    Jack hooked a stool with his foot and rolled it towards him, sinking down onto it with a groan. ‘I’ll wait for you.’
    Ellie pulled out a ball of fire-engine-red dough from a container and started to knead it with competent hands.
    Jack stretched out his legs. ‘What are you making with that red dough?’
    ‘It’s not dough. It’s fondant icing. It’s for a train cake,’ Ellie explained. She gestured to what looked like a big pasta roller on the table next to hers. ‘It goes in there to flatten it out, then I’ll drape it over the cake.’
    ‘Does it have to be done tonight?’
    ‘It should be. Luckily, I can make this in my sleep.’ Ellie slapped her hand into the fondant and caught his look. ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
    ‘I was just thinking about your business, what you do here.’ He hadn’t been, but he suspected that she wasn’t ready to hear what he’d really been thinking...which involved her being naked and sliding all over him.
    Oh, Lordy-be, there was that smile that made her womb vibrate. It was a combination of schoolboy naughtiness and sex-on-a-stick, and Ellie thought that stronger women than her would have trouble resisting it. She opened her mouth to ask what he was smiling about and practically bit her tongue in half to keep the words from escaping.
    The hell of it was that while she’d initially thought that Jack might be all flash, today he had proved that he was more than just a hot body with a reasonably sharp brain. How many men of her acquaintance would have jumped in to help, tinkering with a motor and getting splattered with grease and then patiently mixing endless batches of batter—a thankless, back-breaking, horrible job to do by hand—without a word of complaint?
    Ellie smoothed icing over the front of the train. The ability to give without asking for something in return, to jump into a situation and offer help when it was most needed, was a rare quality and unfortunately deeply attractive. Even more so than his hot body and masculine face.
    Ellie’s hand stilled on the cake as a panicked thought jumped into her head. She wanted him to go—now—tonight. She wanted him to go before she started imagining him in her bakery, in her life...before she started dreaming of a clear mind to keep her focused, a steady hand to prod her along, a hard body to touch and taste, then to curl up against at night.
    Ellie fisted her hand and had to stop herself from punching the cake. She was suddenly ridiculously, outrageously angry at herself. Why was she even letting thoughts like those into her head? Considering what-ifs and maybes? Yes, he was a good-looking guy who gave her a buzz, a man