Down and Dirty(30)

She trailed out the back door behind him, swamped in his scent and oblivious to the cold as she tried to tear her gaze from his thick, broad shoulders. Instead she focused on the center of his back, but even that wasn’t safe. The T-shirt clung tight enough that she could see the straight, deep indent of his spine flanked by the muscles that made a perfect V to his trim waist. She swallowed hard and blew out a steamy sigh.

Amended note to self: make it two cheesecakes.

…

Shane stood before the wide log on the chopping stump and looked up. “I say we’ve got about twenty minutes of daylight left, so let’s get this done. Ready?”

Cat gave him the thumbs-up from her perch on the brick wall surrounding the patio. “Roger that.”

She looked so frigging cute, red curls flapping in the icy breeze. He turned away, focusing his attention on the task at hand. He gripped the smooth, wooden handle and was just about to take a swing when he thought about the longing on her face when she’d seen him shirtless. Why the fuck not?

“Well, shit, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right,” he said, leaning the ax against his shin and yanking the T-shirt over his head. His whole body tightened in protest at the cold, but the look on her face as the camera hung from her limp hand, forgotten, was worth every ounce of pain.

He pretended not to notice and took the ax in hand again. Lining up, he set his feet, then took a swing. With a crack, the log splintered apart, falling into halves on the frosty grass. “Did you get it?”

“Um, yeah.” She nodded vigorously. “Yup. I got it.”

“Are you sure? Because the camera’s aimed at the ground.”

She startled and peered down. “Well, it is now. It wasn’t before. I just clicked it right before that. But, you know, sure. Let’s do one more because this one’s blurry.”

Her nervous babble had him struggling not to grin. “Okay, ready?”

She nodded and pointed the lens in his direction. “Let ’er rip.”

He lined up another piece of wood, then swung. It split cleanly and fell off the stump. “Can we go in now?”

She climbed down from the wall and walked over to him. “What do you think?”

She held the screen to his face and he glanced at the picture. It looked fine to him, but what did he know?

“Yes?”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes before starting toward the house. “Yes. You look great, which is so unfair. No tricks, no Photoshop, no makeup, stark natural light.” He grabbed his shirt, catching up to her just in time to hear her grumble, “One shot, no one should look that good.”

“So what next?”

“Next we get a couple more indoor stills, and put this and the video up on the site. I already wrote your bio, I’ve just got to cut and paste that into your profile. According to the guidelines, once everything is loaded, we wait for it to get reviewed and then it will go live. I’d say by the time we eat dinner and clean up, you’ll be all set.”

Forty-five minutes later, their bellies full of beef stew sopped up with thick slabs of buttered sourdough bread, they sat back in front of the computer with their coffee and Cat logged in.

“Okay, it looks like you’re in.” She clicked on his profile and the desktop dinged. “And you have a message. Probably them welcoming you to the site, maybe some tips about how t—”

Before she could finish, it dinged again. Then again.

“Maybe they have a welcoming committee,” Cat said, clicking into the message center. Eleven new messages stared back at them, one of which was indeed a welcome from the president of MeetMyMate.com. The rest had numbers next to the subject lines, along with tiny thumbnail pictures.

All of them of women, lining up for a piece of him. Nuts.

Ding.

“Well,” Cat said brightly, pushing away from the table to let him get in front of the screen. “Seems like there was a hole in the market for someone like you at this place. You’re a hot commodity already.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Click on their avatars, read their messages, and see if you like any of them.”

“How will I know that from one message?”

Ding.

“You won’t. But at least we can weed some out. The maybes we can put into a separate folder, and then the yeses you can set up short dates with.”

Ding.

“Jesus H., can you turn that thing off?” she snapped. “It’s very distracting.”

He didn’t care that she sounded like a shrew, because her reaction could only mean one thing. She was jealous. Satisfaction surged through him, and he vowed to redouble his efforts.

“Sure thing.” He lowered the speakers, then clicked on the first message in the list. “Deedee Coruthers.”