Thunderstruck (Providence Family Ties 3)

“No,” she yelled, and something hard hit the ground. “Just forget about it. I’ll get a heat pad or something.”

Leaning to the side so she could see around me, Addy’s expression turned to sympathy. “Are you sure? I don’t like the idea of you walking with your t-shirt like that. You never know who’ll see what we keep covered.”

Quickly leaning back, she grabbed a horse blanket off the top of the railing next to us and threw it at her. There was a sqwawk and the sound of it hitting something, so I assumed it’d hit its target.

“There you go. Use that blanket to cover your chest.”

It was a struggle, but I managed to keep the laughter inside as Marni stomped past us out of the stables, leaving me with a highly amused and very beautiful woman. The only one I wanted to be around at that moment.

“Do you believe she got it caught in the door?” she asked, tilting her head to the side as she studied me.

Looking over my shoulder, I did a quick assessment of where the door was behind us and where Marni had been when I’d first turned around. There was no way in hell she’d managed to teleport thirty feet in the space of one or two seconds.

“Not even a little.” I closed the space between us and kissed her, cupping both of her ass cheeks with my hands. They were the perfect fit. “Now, if you want to go and do a scientific experiment to see if she was telling the truth, I’m all for it.”

The mischief in her eyes should have warned me, but I was just enjoying having her pressed against me, so I missed it.

“Why would I deliberately tear my top when I could just as easily take it off?” She tugged on the part of her neckline resting just above her cleavage, giving me a glimpse of an inch of the crevice between her breasts, and let it pop back up into place.

Licking my lips, I tuned out everything going on around us. “That makes sense. You should definitely do that.”

This woman rendered me deaf and blind whenever she was around, and proof of this was in the fact I didn’t realize some of the other hands had joined us until they started laughing behind me.

“I think I’ll save that for another time,” Addy whispered as she ducked down so they couldn’t see her.

Sadly for her, the way she did it made it look like she was bending over to blow me—something that made the guys shout even louder.

“I thought she was a shy one, man,” Brody yelled. “Does she have a sister?”

Realizing where she’d gone wrong, she popped back up and buried her face in my chest. “Shoot me, just shoot me. Please.”

I wouldn’t shoot her for all of the money in the world, but I did give my guys a look that said I’d shoot them if they didn’t cut it out.

“We’re sorry, sweet Adrienne,” Gus called, putting his hand over his chest. “You see, we don’t get out much. This guy keeps us locked up here, doing all the work he doesn’t want to do.”

Exhausted after a busy week, I snapped, “I keep you because you have tiny little hands, so the stitching on the shit for the horses is neater.”

With the other guys ribbing him about his tiny hands, I picked Addy up and walked toward the office. I wasn’t lying when I said I had a call to Marni, but it was with my grandpa, so I could have missed it if I needed to. She just wasn’t a reason I would.

Setting her down in one of the chairs, I squatted in front of her. “Do you want a coffee? When do you need to get back?”

As much as I loved being around her, I knew Addy had a deadline she needed to stick to, so I was careful about keeping her past the amount of time she’d given herself whenever she had a break. Sometimes I’d go down to see her at her place, other times, she came to me if she needed to clear her head. I’d never put her in a predicament where she could lose her dream, and I knew instinctively she’d never do that to me either.

“I’ve got the rest of the afternoon off. I finished the lyrics today and sent them to their team for approval. Once I get that, I can finish working out the notes and composing the song for them.”

“Are you sure you don’t need to get back?”

Smiling, she skimmed her finger over the stubble on my jaw. “I’m sure. I’m ahead of where I need to be at this point, so I’ve got a couple of days to breathe. I thought I’d go and see Rocky and spend some time with him and Gibraltar.”