Flirty by Cathryn Fox Page B

once again had her wondering why he’d run off to New Mexico.
    “Look at this dark wood trim, Alexis.” He grabbed her hand and took her into the front entranceway. “Touch this.”
    She ran her hand down the oak railing. “Can you imagine how many kids slid down this?” He gave a slow shake of his head and said, “The stories this house could tell.” His fingers closed over hers, his grip warm and strong as he led her outside. He took her to the side of the house where he touched the bright red, paint-chipped cedar shingles, and she felt excitement bubbling up inside him. “Over two centuries ago, this house was painted red to help the captain who lived here find his way home after being out to sea.”
    “You know a lot about this house.”
    “I know a lot about Whispering Cove, and every house has a similar story.” He backed her up a bit and pointed to the widow’s peak. “Over the centuries many women sat in that widow’s peak, waiting for their loved ones to return. My mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother spent a great many hours in theirs as well.”
    Loving this enthusiastic side of Sam, she couldn’t help but feel something stir inside her too. She loved his zest for life, and that he could see beauty in everything around him, even when it was crumbling before their eyes.
    “Don’t you see, Alexis?” he said, passion and excitement in his eyes. “This is what the house was meant to be.” He gave her a sexy, bad-boy grin that made her pussy clench with want as he led her back inside the house and up the wide staircase. “Maybe that’s why the spirits are upset with you,” he teased with a wink.
    When they reached her brightly lit bedroom and found her suitcase lying wide open on the floor, exactly where it had been before it went missing a week ago, they both stopped midstride.
    “What the heck?” Lex asked, bending down to grab her coveralls from the pile. She blinked up at Sam. “When? How?”
    “I have no idea,” Sam said, his voice lower, his eyes darker as they moved over the short dress she was wearing, a dress that she’d never be caught dead in before Whispering Cove. “Maybe there really are ghosts at play here, and maybe they are trying to tell us something.”
    “Like what?” she asked, her voice a little higher than normal as Sam visually undressed her with his eyes.
    “Well,” he began as he slowly backed her up toward the cot, passion backlighting his eyes. “Maybe they’re trying to tell you that instead of making the house into something it’s not, you’re supposed to embrace the beauty of it just the way it is.” As she acknowledged the flare of desire between her legs, he took the coveralls from her and tossed them aside. He trailed a finger over her mouth and her neck, going lower until he reached the button on her dress. His eyes locked on hers and he softened his words when he added, “And maybe they took all your boy clothes because they are trying to tell you that you are the way you’re meant to be too. That you should stop trying to be something you’re not.” He toyed with the button and fingered the floral dress, rubbing the material between his thumb and index finger in a way that had her hormones firing and her brain cells melting.
    Heat rose in her, and her fingers curled in his T-shirt as sexual energy arced between them. God, everything in the way he looked at her made her feel so beautiful, like she was one half of something very special. But she was here in this coastal town to prove herself, not to fall in love with the town, the people in it, and more importantly, Sam Doherty, a man who, she was coming to learn, was so much more than he appeared.
    All thoughts fled when he released the first button on her dress, then the second and third, exposing the pretty black bra she’d bought last week. When his eyes widened in delight, taking pleasure in the lace material and the way it hugged her breasts, it occurred to her that she liked