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Troy’s hand delved into my hair, loosening the band around my ponytail. My wet hair fell to my shoulders, clumps of strands sticking to my cheek. He lowered his hand and gripped my nape as he plunged his tongue into my mouth with an intensity that made my knees weak. He was holding me just the way I liked. Trapped in his embrace, his firm grip on my neck held me in place so I couldn’t escape his kiss.
A moan escaped my lips. Desperate to be closer to him, I clasped his hips and pulled him into me until we were chest to chest and our thighs molded together. The hard evidence of his arousal rubbed against mine. I arched my back, aligning our bodies in perfect synchrony. We were of similar height, and everything lined up just right.
“Troy,” I gasped, my voice heavy with longing. “Oh, god, I’ve missed you.”
I glided my hands up his sculpted back, tracing the contours of his sleek muscles, exploring every inch I could of this new physique I didn’t yet know.
“Ahem.”
A throat clearing shattered the moment I’d longed for since I’d picked him up from the airport. Troy dropped his hand and broke away from me, his breathing ragged pants that mirrored mine.
A man stood before us, dressed in blue overalls, an apologetic smile on his face. It was hard not to glare at him for interrupting.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I’m the plumber you called. Here to take a look at the kitchen sink.”
Oh shit.
“The plumber.” Gladys swept out of the house, moving faster than her knees should have allowed. She grabbed the man’s arm. “Don’t worry, boys. I’ll take care of him.”
They disappeared into the house, the man not getting a word in edgewise, given Gladys’s moving lips. The poor man looked bewildered.
“I knew it,” Troy whispered fiercely.
“Knew what?”
“She’s trying to play matchmaker between us. That’s why she had you over here this morning fixing the sink and now cleaning the pool with me.”
“But you weren’t helping.”
“It serves you right for being so gullible and falling for her antics like a poor sap.” He shook his head. “Seriously, Maddix, open your eyes to what she’s doing.”
“Gladys wouldn’t be manipulative.”
He snorted. “No? You don’t know my grandaunt at all.”
“Actually, I’d say that over the past ten years, I’ve gotten to know her pretty well. And so what if she thought we would be suitable for each other?”
“But she’s wrong. Friends. That’s what you said. In a little over a week, I’ll be back in Atlanta, where my life is. Not back here in this town that holds horrible memories.”
Troy stalked over to the lounge chair, took up his phone, and headed for the house. I stared at his back, fingertips tingling at the memory of how it had felt to touch him.
They aren’t all horrible memories, though.
8
TROY
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath. Jiggling the doorknob for the second time, I resigned myself to the fact that my grandaunt had locked me out of the house. I hadn’t thought to ask her for a spare key when I went out to lunch with Ashlee and her daughter earlier. Gladys had told me she would be home all day baking up a storm for the Apple Festival tomorrow.
How strange.
From force of habit, she never locked her front door. When she woke up in the morning, she opened the house and didn’t lock up until she was going to bed. I’d even warned her about leaving her door unlocked all day, but she’d brushed me off and told me this was the beauty of living in a small town. She’d then lectured me about all the reasons I would be better off moving from Atlanta and returning home.
Why on earth would she suddenly lock the doors? Maybe she’d left a key somewhere. I checked under the flowerpots and the mat and moved rocks aside but came up empty. I tried all the windows, but she’d locked them too.
Warning bells went off inside my head. As a teenager, she’d had a rule that she closed up at eleven each night. Whenever I broke my curfew from spending time with Maddix, she would carry out the threat but leave a window open for me to get in. Now I couldn’t even get in through a window.
Walking back to the front of the house, I called her cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail. I placed my hands akimbo and glared at the porch.
