Before she knew what he meant or what was happening, he'd leaned forward to capture her mouth with his. She gasped against his lips, one of her hands lifting automatically to clench in his T-shirt.
His kiss was firm and skillful, but also strangely questioning, as if he was testing something out, seeing what might happen. Vanessa knew what should happen. She should push him away, get into her car, and drive away.
She didn't, though. Her body softened against him, and her lips parted just enough for him to slip his tongue between.
Pleasure and excitement fired off from every nerve ending as their mouths moved together. One of her arms wrapped around his neck, and she pressed her body against his. She heard herself making an odd, silly sound at the back of her throat-a helpless expression of how good she was feeling, how much she wanted this to happen.
How much she wanted even more.
"Damn, Vanessa," Joe murmured against her lips. "You're the sweetest, hottest thing I've ever known."
The rough words shouldn't have moved her as much as they did, but her excitement spiraled even higher at the sound of them. Her pulse, her whole body, throbbed as she rubbed herself against him, trying to feel him as much as she could.
She had no idea how long the kiss would have lasted or how deep it would have gone had she not heard a sound from the house-maybe a door slam. Whatever it was, the sharp noise pierced through her heat-clouded mind, and she jerked violently as she realized what she was doing.
Kissing Joe Coleman-eagerly, shamelessly-against the side of her car where anyone might see. Most of the workers had gone home now, but still...
What the hell had she been thinking?
She took a ragged breath as she pushed him away from her. "What are you doing?"
Joe was flushed, and his expression was hot and almost groggy, like he hadn't fully pulled out of the kiss. "I think we both were doing it."
"Yeah, but...but it was crazy. We don't do that."
"We could do that."
"I don't want to." She rubbed at her mouth, trying to get her mind to work. This was Joe-her rival, her taunter, the man who drove her most crazy in the whole world.
He closed his eyes for a moment, but he was almost smiling when he opened them. "Yeah, you do."
"No, I don't. I don't even like you."
His smile widened as he gently stroked her hot cheek with his knuckles. "Yeah, you do."
She tried to control her breathing, since she didn't want him to see how much his kiss had affected her. "You're crazy. We're not doing that again."
"Whatever you say."
She made herself turn away from his big, warm body, his expression that looked both hot and affectionate. Her hand was trembling as she opened the door to her SUV. "Can you step away please? I need to leave."
"Whatever you say." He did step back, despite the amusement in his tone. And she knew he was watching her as she fumbled with her seatbelt and then managed to get the car into gear.
He was still standing there, watching her drive away, as she managed to escape down the driveway. She had no idea what he was thinking, why he would have kissed her the way he had.
Even back in those first months she'd met him, after Carl had died, when she'd believed he was really interested in her, he'd never kissed her like that. Just little brushes against her lips, against her cheeks. She'd believed he was so sweet, so tender.
But Vanessa wasn't naïve anymore, and she knew better than to take him seriously.
It might have felt like he'd channeled years of longing and desire into the kiss just now, but it just wasn't true.
Wednesday
Vanessa didn't sleep well that night. She kept waking up to visions of Joe, kissing her, doing even more. Some of the dreams were so vivid she could actually feel him touching her, but then she would open her eyes to a dark room and frustrated body.
In the morning, she was exhausted and irritable, grumbling under her breath at everything from the coffee pot to the politicians on TV. No matter how much she told herself to snap out of it-that what had happened yesterday with Joe didn't mean anything, didn't change anything-it still felt like her stability and peace of mind were crumbling around her.
She'd lived a fairly sheltered and uneventful life. She'd only dated a couple of other men before she'd met Carl, and she'd dated no one since. Women kissed men they weren't really into all the time. Kissing Joe didn't mean anything at all.
But the truth was-Vanessa never kissed a man unless she really liked him. So she had no idea why she'd done something as stupid as kiss Joe.
As she left the house, she tried to distract herself with the work that needed doing today. She needed Hal and his buddy to take care of the paneling in the entry hall, so she decided to work on the fireplace herself. Manual labor was just what she needed to clear her mind of Joe and how it had felt to kiss him.
He wasn't around when she arrived at Eden Manor. She talked briefly with Peter, who was carrying boxes of trash down from the attic, telling him that Carl's grandmother didn't know anything about the history of Eden Manor but had said he should ask Mabel Harris, whose family had lived in town for two centuries. Then Vanessa checked on Ruth, who had already started on the balustrade and was making good progress. When Vanessa saw Joe's truck pull up the drive, she ended the conversation quickly and slipped into the dining room, closing the door behind her.
Joe wouldn't be working in the dining room for a few more weeks, so he would have no reason to come in and see her.
Until she figured out why she was responding to him so wrongly, she was just going to avoid him completely.
She arranged her tools and then found a fairly comfortable position on her knees before she started to work on stripping away the layers of plaster and paint from the tiles. A small, contrary part of herself was disappointed that Joe didn't poke his head into the room with a teasing greeting, but the rest of her was incredibly relieved.
She didn't need to see him. She didn't want to see him. Carl had never made her feel like this-like she was jumping out of her skin. It couldn't be healthy. Best to just carve Joe out of her life as much as possible.
She took out her frustration on the manual labor, and she was surprised when she realized it was after noon. She needed to rest for a while and grab some lunch. A quick look out the window proved that Joe was still parked out front, so she was careful as she left the house and headed to her SUV.
He must have been around the back of the house, since she saw no sign of him.
She drove home for lunch and to rest for an hour, but then she came back to keep working for the afternoon. It was slow going, and she was only halfway through the fireplace when she checked her watch and saw that it was five o'clock.
She hadn't seen Joe all day. That was a good thing.
It was good. It wasn't a letdown.
Since Ruth was just finishing up, Vanessa went out to the entry hall to say a few words and check in on the progress. After raving about the work Ruth had done so far, she glanced out the window to see if Joe's truck was still there.
It was gone. He'd left for the day. Evidently, he didn't feel the need to talk to her after he kissed her.
Of course, she'd been avoiding him too, so she had nothing to begrudge him about.
Deciding it would be smart to keep working for a little longer, so she wouldn't go home and sit alone, thinking about Joe, she repositioned herself so her back wouldn't hurt so much and wiped vigorously at two more tiles she'd exposed, trying to get the last of the plaster off them.
"There you are."
The voice surprised her so much she gave a violent jerk and dropped the rag onto the floor.
Taking a deep breath to recover herself, she picked up the rag and started wiping with it again. She didn't need to look back to see who was standing in the doorway. "What does that mean?"
"It means I haven't seen you all day, so I was wondering if you were avoiding me."
"You haven't appeared to make great effort to find me." She kept her voice light, not wanting him to sense that she was disappointed in the least-not wanting to even feel disappointed.
"I was giving you some space."
"Very sensitive of you. But what makes you think I need any space."
Joe had been approaching as he spoke, and now his voice lowered as he knelt down beside her in front of the fireplace. "So you're saying you want to be close to me?"
She tensed at the sexy timbre of his voice. "Don't be ridiculous."
She heard him sigh before he said, "You're upset."
Since that was the last thing she wanted him to believe, she turned to meet his eyes for a moment. "I'm not upset."
"Yes, you are."
"I think I'm the best judge of whether or not I'm upset."
"Of course, but that assumes you'll tell me the truth about it."
"I'm telling you the truth. I'm not upset."
"It was just a kiss."