Free Mad About The Man by Stella Cameron Page A

nipples. He stroked back and forth until she gasped, and then he trapped her hips between the counter and the part of him that was too hard and heavy to ignore.
    "Gaby, maybe we should just stay here." One empty house was as good as another if the company was perfect.
    "Maybe—" she tried to turn her head aside "—maybe we shouldn't stay anywhere."
    The uncertainty in her voice brought him satisfaction. "I don't think you mean that."
    "There are one or two things … one thing you don't know about me."
    "Only one?" he murmured. If she thought he hadn't guessed that she was one passionate woman, she was wrong. "Kiss me, Gaby."
    The sound of the front door slamming reverberated through the house. "Didn't you close that?" He brushed the backs of his fingers across her cheek.
    "Yes." Before he could react, she ducked from his grasp.
    Footsteps clattered in the hall leading to the kitchen. "Mom! Where are you?"
    "In here," Gaby called.
     

 
    6
     
     
    " M om, there's a truck out front." The small girl who burst into the room needed little introduction. Jacques wiped any sign of surprise from his face and put on his best benevolent expression for Gaby McGregor's daughter.
    "Jacques," Gaby said, glowing with obvious pa rental pride. "This is Mae."
    He put his hands in his pockets. "Hi, Mae. How are you?" So much for his assumptions about lack of impediments and empty houses.
    The child accepted a hug from Gaby without taking her dark brown eyes from Jacques's face. Once re leased, she wrinkled her nose and asked, "Who's he?"
    "Mae! Don't be rude." Gaby planted her hands on her hips, but chuckled fondly. "This is Mr. Ledan. The truck is a Jeep. It belongs to him."
    "I remember him! He's the one who sat at The Table at Sis's."
    "Your mother and I are friends." He deliberately relaxed his clenched jaw. "You can call me Jacques, if you like."
    "Mommy doesn't like me to call people by their first names if we don't know them."
    Jacques looked at Gaby. "I just told you your mother and I are friends." Gaby bit her lip and didn't quite suppress a smile. She was enjoying his discom fort, damn it.
    Mae braced her thin legs apart and accomplished a ferocious frown. "Is he from Los Angles, like Daddy?"
    "Um — "
    "Yes." Jacques cut Gaby off. "At least, I have a house in Los Angeles. But I've got one here, too."
    "No, you don't."
    Enough of the kindness-to-little-children bit. Jacques frowned right back. "Yes I do."
    "No you don't." Mae McGregor approached, her familiarly sharp little chin thrust forward. "If you lived in Goldstrike I'd know where your house is. I don't. So you don't."
    Gaby cleared her throat. "Mae—"
    "Have you ever seen the house just outside town? The one all on its own up in the foothills?"
    For an instant Mae's frown grew even darker. Then her finely drawn eyebrows rose. "The os-osterentious monster … monsterous … Does he mean that one, Mommy? The osterentious — "
    "Mae, hush," Gaby said.
    Jacques gave her a wicked grin. "That's the one, Mae. Ostentatious monstrosity? Is that what your mother calls it?"
    "Uh-huh. A lot of people do." She shook her head, whipping a shiny black ponytail back and forth. "I've never seen it. I know it's big, though. Too big to be useful—that's what Mommy said. But that's probably because you aren't from around here, so you don't know what your house is supposed to be like. Sophie always says it's nice to try to make excuses for other people when they do dumb stuff."
    This time Jacques didn't trust himself to meet Gaby's eyes. "That's very generous of Sophie. And very nice of you, too. But I do come from around here, really. My grandfather built La—he built the house you're talking about. That was just before I was born and I've been spending time there since I was a boy."
    "Jeez." Mae's frown slid back into place. "It's a real old house, then. I 'spect it's a whole lot older than ours, huh?"
    "I wouldn't be surprised." He'd never had much to do with children. Until today his