Free The Love Shack by Christie Ridgway

There was horny and then there was clumsy, crude, boorish, and...
    ...and God, he could see it in his mind. He’d conjured her in his imagination so many times that she slid easily into his bed, under his hands, against his tongue.
    “That’s never going to happen,” she whispered, her eyes almost as big as the monster she probably now considered him to be.
    “Of course it’s not,” he said, stepping back. His bed, his fantasies, his sex life were all—now and forever—Skye-free zones. The other ways he needed her were just too important.

CHAPTER FIVE
    P OLLY WAS PUTTING SCISSORS to brown paper bag when Teague White breezed through her open front door. He stopped short, taking in the stack of bags, the scraps of paper scattered at her feet, the tagboard pattern and pencil that lay on the coffee table in front of the love seat where she sat. “What’s up?” he asked.
    My pulse rate. But, accustomed to hiding her physical reaction to him, Polly aimed a casual smile at his shoulder—she had to avoid looking too hard at the beautiful face above it. The stark, masculine bones framed by layers of short hair the same color as his almost-black eyes had the power to rock her world. She cleared her throat to answer his question. “I’m making Australian bush hats.”
    “Huh,” he said. “Brown bags stand up to the harsh conditions?”
    She went wooden as he approached, preparing for his usual kiss on the cheek. He hadn’t shaved and his whiskers prickled her skin, little needles of sensation that pierced her heart as if it were a pincushion. Pressing her knees together, she kept her gaze averted from him as he lifted the pile of cut pieces on the cushion beside her and took its place.
    “Polly?”
    Intent on not noticing how close he sat, how she could feel his body heat reaching across the few inches between them, she’d missed his question. “Uh, what?”
    “I asked again about the bush hats, sweetheart.”
    “Oh.” A little laugh burst from her lips. It did not sound nervous. After all this time, it was ridiculous to be nervous around Teague. Their years of friendship had inured her to him by now. “They’re for my class, as you should be able to guess.”
    “I’m always surprised at what you kindergarten teachers can do with scissors and paper. Not to mention yarn. I remember the finger-weave belts the kids made last year.”
    She felt a dimple dig into her cheek as she smiled, gratified he’d remembered. “Those came out pretty well, I admit.”
    One of his long legs crossed over the other. “You’re harshing on my midsummer buzz, though, by prepping for September so soon.”
    “I hate to break the news. It’s no longer midsummer. In three weeks I’ll be back in the classroom.”
    “Then we’d better make the most out of the time we have left.”
    Polly’s scissors paused, midcut. No, there wasn’t going to be any “we” about the next weeks. There shouldn’t be. There wouldn’t be.
    She’d made that decision after her coffee with Skye. Her best friend’s words had slapped her like a palm to the face. “We both know your biggest stumbling block to a fulfilling love life is Teague.” How had she guessed? It was Skye who also called her “Very Private Polly.” If her feelings for Teague were wearing through her usual deep reserve, then she was in trouble.
    He reached over now, tugging on the end of her ponytail. “You okay?”
    “I’m good. I’m always good.”
    “Then let’s make you gooder and finalize our August calendar. We’ll make it one to remember.”
    “Gooder?”
    He grinned. “Hey, I’m just a dumb firefighter.”
    She glanced away from that flash of white teeth. He wasn’t dumb. It was her, who had never managed to shut him out of her life. For four and a half years she’d wanted him, wanted him to see her as more than a friend, and even when their physical relationship never went beyond ponytail tugs and busses on the cheek, she hadn’t been able to stifle