Stranded In Paradise Read online

  As Dax turned back to face the old man, his breath lodged in his throat.

  Chapter 2

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  An adorable vision wearing a grimy pair of coveralls stood before Dax, wiping her grease-covered hands on an orange shop rag. Her hair was tucked up under a baseball cap, an escaped lock revealing a blond curl. Vibrant green eyes sparkled as she met his gaze, and the smile she flashed him brought his body to immediate attention. Pulling the newspaper from under his arm, he held it in front of his rapidly stiffening cock. The woman stood a foot shorter than his six-foot-three inches and a smudge of motor oil colored her left cheek.

  Despite standing in the middle of a garage, a fresh clean floral scent swirled around him, taunting his nose.

  “Kenny?” Dax felt dizzy.

  “Kendall, actually.” Extending her hand to him, her warm smile broadened. “Kendall Zurich.”

  “Kendall.” As he repeated her name, the woman before him shivered, sending a jolt straight to his balls.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked again.

  Without hesitation, he placed his hand in hers. Filth or no filth, he needed to touch her. My answer is, what can I do to you? He mentally began undressing her. “My car…” he mumbled, flipping his thumb haphazardly toward the road, forgetting the rest of his sentence.

  “Broke down,” the old man, who Dax had forgotten was still in the room, chimed in with an amused chuckle. “And he’s kinda’ in a hurry.”

  Glancing around him in the direction to which he pointed, her dancing eyes grew wide when they spotted the smoldering heap on the side of the road. “Uh, well, let’s go out and have a look, shall we,” she said in an almost apologetic tone, preceding Dax through the doorway, tucking the rag into the back pocket of her coveralls.

  Dutifully Dax followed, his eyes fixated on the sensual sway of her backside as she walked. The grimy, oversized coveralls did little to disguise the curves hidden beneath.

  He imagined the softness of her creamy skin under his fingers as he gripped those wide, teasing hips, thrusting himself inside her from behind as she cried out his name.

  The sound of shuffling from behind announced that the old man was coming along too.

  Opening the driver’s side door, Kendall’s eyes narrowed as she sniffed the interior. She pulled the latch releasing the hood and walked around to the front of the car. Once the smoke had dissipated, somewhat, she surveyed the engine and then knelt down to look underneath the foreign-made automobile.

  With admiration, he watched her. Luscious full lips drawn into a frown, brows furrowed, her perfect petite nose scrunched up. She looked adorable as she studied the disabled car.

  From out of nowhere, he found himself curious as to what sensual expressions would cross her face when she checked out his naked body while he lay before her.

  Most important, how incredibly sexy she would look in the throes of passion. Envisioning her beneath him, breasts heaving with labored breathing, her nipples would be dark, puckered peaks from his lavish oral attention. A light sheen of perspiration would cover her heated, trembling flesh as he worked her body to orgasmic ecstasy, over and over again. The thought of licking the salty liquid from between her swollen breasts, off her skin, then sampling the sweet cream from between her thighs made Dax’s eager cock strain painfully against the zipper of his dress pants.

  Before he blew his load in his cotton boxers, he took a deep breath and gave his head a shake. Jesus, he whimpered in silent agony, as she stood, dusting her hands off on the front of her coveralls.

  “Well, Mr…” Kendall hesitated and Dax realized he hadn’t offered his name.

  “Dax.” He hoped his voice didn’t sound too strained as he attempted to control his arousal.

  “Mr. Dax—”

  “No, Dax is my first name. My last is Winslow.” He knew he was babbling like an idiot, and cringed inwardly. The warm sexy grin the woman before him wore had Dax wondering if she was aware of his discomfort.

  “Oh, okay, Mr. Winslow—”

  “Call me Dax,” he was quick to offer.

  “Well, Dax.”

  He noticed the difficulty she seemed to have swallowing, and the huskiness of her voice as she spoke his name made his nipples hard. Did he have an effect on her?

  “I have to tell you, so far this doesn’t look good, but I’ll need it up on the hoist for a better look.” Shifting her eyes, Kendall glanced at the man standing to the left of him. “Uncle Mel, will you pull the Chevy out of bay one and ask Haydn to come out here to give me hand, please?”

  He heard the old man walk away. Dax had been holding his breath, and the air left his lungs in a rush as her eyes came back to settle on him.

  “So where are you headed?” The sultry tone of her voice sent a jolt to the pulsing flesh between his legs.

  “Uh, Abbotsford,” he managed to say while images of her naked and sweaty still danced in the forefront of his mind. “I have a meeting there first thing in the morning.”

  “You’re a very long way from Abbotsford.” Though still inviting, her smile had turned sympathetic.

  “So I’ve heard,” Dax replied and reached up to loosen his tie a little more. Man, did the temperature just shoot up twenty degrees?

  “How in the world did you end up way out here?” She grinned.

  “I don’t have any idea,” he answered honestly.

  After getting off the plane, his mind had been everywhere else but his meeting. As he thought about it, he couldn’t even remember the conversation that took place with the kid at the car rental counter, hours earlier.

  “I plugged the address to the hotel into the GPS unit and well…” Dax shrugged, feeling like a complete moron sharing his momentary absentmindedness with the beauty before him. If there had been the slightest chance of her agreeing to maybe have dinner with him, he’d pissed it away now. Whoa! Where in the hell did that come from? “…here I am,” he finished.

  “I’ve never trusted those things. There is nothing wrong with an old fashioned paper map to find your way around.” She winked playfully at him.

  His cock grew harder. So hard he needed to adjust the discomfort in his pants. At the sound of approaching footsteps, Dax reminded his shaft now was not the time. Glancing over his shoulder he spied a tall lanky man strolling leisurely toward them. Meeting his gaze, the man eyed Dax with disdain. The evidence of a hard life was etched into the man’s features, but Dax estimated the other man wasn’t much older than himself.

  “Hey, how ya doing?” Dax asked as the man brushed past him. A terse grunt was his only reply.

  “All right, Dax, you get in and steer the car while Haydn and I push it up into the bay.” She walked to join her co-worker at the rear of the vehicle.

  “You can’t push this car all the way up there.” The protectiveness in his voice stopped him short. Jesus, is she crazy? Despite the angry glare the other man cast his way, Dax found himself greatly concerned for this woman’s well-being. “You steer and I’ll help…” This time when he met Haydn’s evil stare, Dax felt territorial. The need to stake his claim on the blond woman was difficult to curb, so he allowed the possession in his voice to flow freely from his mouth. “…Haydn, is it?”

  Haydn scoffed and snickered, but didn’t break eye contact.

  “I assure you, Mr. Winslow, we’ve pushed much bigger.” A playful sassiness accompanied her grin, and damn it, if the vixen didn’t throw a wink in, just for good measure! Gesturing him into the vehicle, she and Haydn took positions at the rear of the car.

  Within minutes, they had rolled it up into the garage bay and it was being lifted into the air above them.

  “Can you fix it?” he asked before the hoist even stopped elevating the car.

  The raised brow she gave him sparked a tingling in his balls again.

  “You don’t know much about cars do you, Mr. Winslow?”

  “Please call me Dax,” he reiterated again. Feeling a little insul
ted, he squared his shoulders adding, “And no, I don’t.”

  What the hell does that have to do with anything? Reading her expression wasn’t easy. What? Did the fact that he didn’t care to know about cars make him less a man, his mind and his cock demanded. Damn it, just who did this woman think she was, judging him based on his knowledge of cars?

  Casting a glance at Kendall’s co-worker, Dax’s hackles rose. The smug smirk on the man’s face had Dax’s blood boiling. A challenge glinted in Haydn’s eye. The urge to go all primal and mark Kendall as his grew almost impossible for Dax to control. He pictured taking hold of her, throwing her up over his shoulder and racing off into the sunset. Nice, he thought wryly, the buried ‘caveman gene’ has come up to bat. Yeah, that’s romantic, you ass.

  The small area of the garage filled with testosterone. If the man smirking at him was looking for a fight as to who was the better man where Kendall Zurich was concerned, Dax was more than ready to oblige.

  Whoa! Taking a mental step back, he wondered what prompted the possessive thoughts threatening to blow apart his control. Hell, once the car was fixed he’d be on his way and this little town would be long forgotten.

  Like hell it will be. Something deep in Dax’s subconscious leapt forward. There was no way he was going anywhere until he knew more about the woman he’d just met.

  Nodding her head, the warm, inviting smile on her full lips brought Dax back down to a sensible state. Man, she was good, he mused, feeling himself relax.

  “So what do you do for a living?” She cocked her head inquisitively.

  Reading genuine interest in her question, he found himself strangely excited with her query on a personal level. Suddenly, he felt as if it were just the two of them standing in the garage. In a way that thrilled yet frightened him, Kendall’s natural sensuousness had him mesmerized. Usually quite good at maintaining his self-control, standing so close to her as he was now, his control was walking straight toward the drainage hole in the middle of the garage floor.

  “I’m a lawyer,” he answered.

  Haydn scoffed again and the old man snickered, reminding Dax they were still there.

  Kendall, however, just nodded and grinned at him.

  “Well,” she said, pointing to her co-worker, “Haydn is holding the drive shaft. The car isn’t going to move without that. Also,” she continued, walking under the car to point out some grease-soaked part, “there is a crack in the oil pan here. It appears this car has been leaking oil quite steadily, hence the pinging and eventual knocking, which I’m sure you heard before she started smoking like an old locomotive. I’m really sorry, Dax, but you aren’t going anywhere in this car. The engine is fried.”

  He looked from the underbelly of the car to Kendall. No, no, no! This can’t be happening! “How do you know that?” he snapped, sharper than he’d intended. “You’ve barely even looked at it.”

  Shit! The look on her face told him he crossed a line. Offending her wasn’t something he’d intended to do.

  “I don’t have to look,” she replied, lifting her chin and crossing her arms over her breasts. “I can smell it.”

  Fuming in silence, Dax straightened his posture, assuming his stare-down pose which worked so well in a courtroom, but had no effect on the woman before him. The rising of her left brow had him taking a step back.

  Christ, she was so pretty, and his fingers itched to touch her again. As they held each other’s gaze, he felt himself relax as he studied her. Once calm he inhaled a deep breath and could indeed smell the stench of dead car.

  “Okay, well, do you have a loaner I can borrow?” he asked hopefully. “I’ll return it in a couple of days, after my meetings. Or just direct me to the nearest car rental place.”

  “Look ’round ya, son. Yer in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere.” The old man chuckled. “We got no car rentals ’round here.”

  “Uncle Mel, please.” Kendall poked the man in the belly. “I’m sorry, Dax. We’re just a small repair shop, and I don’t have anything here to loan you.”

  “You got your—” Haydn was cut off with a sharp glance from Kendall.

  “As I was saying,” she said with a warm smile, turning her attention back to Dax. “I don’t have anything to loan you. Unfortunately, your car needs a new engine. Now I can rebuild it, but it’ll take me a couple of weeks because I just don’t have all the parts here to do it.”

  Great, Dax groaned inwardly.

  As much as he didn’t want to be at that meeting in the morning, he wasn’t interested in letting the firm down, or worse, disappointing his father. The three senior partners were counting on him to make his own name in the firm by landing this client.

  He suddenly found himself with a far more important reason for wanting to ditch tomorrow’s meeting. She was standing in front of him, looking at him with the loveliest green eyes he had ever seen. As he stared back at her, he considered making a deal with the Devil himself, offering his very soul to see her out of those grimy blue coveralls.

  “Actually, it’s not mine,” he informed her. “It’s a rental I picked up at the airport.”

  “Oh, well in that case,” she stated brightly, “give them a call and they’ll make arrangements for a replacement.”

  The tightening in his groin had him shifting his weight in an attempt to relieve his discomfort.

  “Good idea,” Haydn snarled, shooting a nasty look at Dax before spitting a mouthful of tobacco at his feet, just missing the toe of his polished loafer. “Then ‘pretty boy’ can be on his merry way.”

  As if slapped in the face, Dax didn’t miss the irritation in Haydn’s voice, detecting the attraction toward his cute employer. Ignoring the other man’s snide tone, Dax flipped open his cell and dialed the rental depot at the airport. After several minutes, he snapped it shut, abruptly ending his call and knew the look on his face reflected his angry thoughts.

  “This just isn’t my day, is it? They don’t have another car available.” With a low growl Dax kicked a lonely tire leaning against the shop wall. “Shit!”

  * * * *

  Kenny felt bad for the handsome stranger. The poor guy was so out of his element in the middle of Milton Ville. A tiny little town, not really even big enough to warrant the classification of town, it was a small village in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, as her uncle so eloquently worded it.

  “Listen, Dax.” She glanced at the clock on the wall of the shop. “We’re closing up now, so you will stay with me tonight and we’ll figure something out tomorrow.” She grinned at him. “How does that sound?”

  “It’s not like I have many options. I didn’t notice a hotel as I rolled along the main street.” Although he shrugged, the intense look he held her frozen in place with had her soaking her panties again.

  “He can stay with me at my mama’s house,” Haydn snapped angrily.

  “Yer mama’s house ain’t big enough fer one more,” Uncle Mel said. “’sides he’d be more comfortable out at Kenny’s.”

  Kenny walked toward the control panel on the wall. “Why don’t you get your belongings out of the vehicle?” She turned to Dax as she pressed the button for the hydraulic hoist, lowering the car from the air. “Give me a few minutes to clean up, and then we’ll head out. All right?”

  Welcoming a break from the arousing heated scrutiny of the handsome stranger gracing her garage, she closed the door to the bathroom.

  As she unfastened the buttons marching down the front of her coveralls, the memory of his spicy clean scent tickled her nose. Inhaling deeply only added to the sexual frustration he’d induced. Not that she had a ton of experience, but no lover in her past had ever stirred her libido into a frenzy like Dax Winslow did in a matter of minutes.

  From the moment she laid eyes on the man, her nipples refused to recede. As aroused as she was, the amount of moisture in her panties was becoming a tad uncomfortable.

  Slipping the blue fabric off her shoulders, she continued to think of the handsome stranger stand
ing just beyond the closed door. The storm gray pinstripe suit—which fit him so beautifully it was criminal—she suspected bore the Armani label. A red and black tie with tiny checks was loosened from around his neck. The first three buttons of the black silk dress shirt caressing his body were undone, revealing tanned flesh, and a nervously bobbing Adam’s apple.

  As she continued her leisurely mental recollection of the hunk, the gush of fluid soaking her panties almost had her gasping in surprise. The lace of her bra as it scraped her hardened nipples made her weak in the knees. Oh Lord, she groaned to herself as her coveralls pooled around her feet.

  Short, dark, wavy hair was styled to perfection. Intense dark blue eyes had met her gaze and unless she was mistaken, they’d been laden with interest. Full lips curled upward, looking deliciously kissable. Temporarily, she became lost in the intense look he had held on her when their eyes first met.

  After relieving herself, Kenny stood at the sink brushing her teeth and scrubbed at the grease smear coloring her cheek. Pulling a brush through her hair, she wrapped the mass in a scrunchie before reaching for her clothes, which she’d hung on a hook on the back of the door that morning.

  The spicy fragrance of Dax’s cologne was hypnotic and when he’d placed his hand in hers, electricity jolted through her body. In the silence of the bathroom, Kenny wondered how those strong hands would feel roaming her curves and exploring her most intimate body parts.

  Unable to control it any longer, she allowed a shiver to set a pleasurable course through her body.

  If she were to have wagered a guess based on attire, the stranger in her garage was a professional. A lawyer would have been her first guess, an executive her second. She wasn’t at all surprised it was the first. There was an air about him she’d seen before, but he seemed far from being an egotistical know-it-all.