Along Came Trouble (Camelot 2)

“Oh!” Katie again.

“I think I’m having a hot flash.” Nana.

“What did he do?” Carly asked, hating herself.

“He took off the tie.” Ellen this time.

“That’s all?”

“He has a way of taking off his tie …” Katie said, fanning her hand in front of her face.

Oh, shit. She knew that. She’d seen him do it once, after he’d taken her out for dinner in Columbus. He’d loosened his tie in the backseat of the limo, yanked it out of his collar with a practiced flick of his wrist, and she’d gone a little insane with lust. They’d had to do it right there and then. When they were halfway home, she’d flashed back to the tie-yanking thing again and crawled onto his lap for round two.

She was never going to survive this concert.

She was never going to survive Jamie Callahan. If she let him in this time, he would shred her into a million little pieces of confetti, and then someone would sprinkle them over his head while he was singing and dancing and looking hot onstage, and he’d go home to his fancy life and leave her to be swept up and thrown away in a Dumpster somewhere.

She couldn’t risk it.

“Someone help me up,” she said. “I want to go to bed.”

Nana snorted. Katie and Ellen ignored her. Jamie started singing another song.

By the time he had his shirt off, Katie had gone pink, Nana had cat-called herself hoarse, Ellen was a little pale, and Carly couldn’t really remember anymore why she was refusing to let him in. That voice of his ate right through her defenses.

It always had. It was the whole entire reason she’d screwed the man in the laundry room to begin with. Well, that and his body. And his smile. And his charm. But mostly it was his voice in her ear. He’d come up behind her while she was giving him a tour of the house, put his hands on her hips, and told her flat out in that voice like warm honey that he wanted to take her to bed, and did she think there was any chance she’d let that come to pass?

It had been bold, brazen, and wildly inappropriate.

She hadn’t hesitated for a second.

But that was her whole problem. Her greatest fault. Impulsive Carly, always leaping before she looked. It got her into heaps of trouble. Impulsive Carly had fallen in love with Jamie Callahan, but impulsive Carly was going to have a baby soon, and she needed to knock that shit off if she wanted to be a good mother. Good mothers did not have sex on the laundry room floor with strange men, and they didn’t place their bets on Jamie Callahan. He was flighty and irresponsible and so, so sexy. He was giving a concert on her front lawn, for her. He was—

“Holy hell, he’s taking off his pants!” Katie said.

“Nah, he’s just unbuttoning them,” Nana clarified. “He’s going to

make us wait.”

“The label will have his head on a platter,” Ellen said.

But it was hard to hear them over the cheering of the crowd and the voice in Carly’s heart that told her it didn’t matter what Jamie’s faults were, because she loved him and he loved her. And she needed him now.

“There goes the zipper,” said Katie.

“What do you suppose he’s got on under there?” Nana asked.

Nothing. He had nothing on under there, because Jamie always went commando. And suddenly, she didn’t relish the thought of the rest of the world knowing that fact. Or getting a glimpse of what her lover was packing. Which was not remotely small or pencil-like.

“Let him in,” Carly said.

Three heads turned and gave her three identical blank, astonished looks.

“Let him in the fucking house before he embarrasses himself.”

Ellen sprinted for the door.

Chapter Twenty-five