Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding) - By Sydney Somers Page 0,17
laughing.
“Please make my day and tell me you’re not wearing any underwear.”
Crouched on a gnarled branch about four feet above him, Hayley tugged impatiently at a ridiculously short scrap of material stretched across her thighs and barely covering her behind.
“Well, had I known that going commando would excite you so much, I would have taken my panties off before scaling the tree.” Her sarcasm was thick enough to skate on.
“Is this how you usually avoid your dates?”
“You’re not a real date.” She searched the foliage overheard for something Jackson couldn’t see. “Shake that ball, would you? Before the wedding would be preferable,” she tacked on when he picked up the ball for closer inspection.
With a flick of his wrist a bell chimed inside the red and yellow shell. From above came an answering meow.
“You’re up there looking for a cat?”
“I hope that’s a rhetorical question—either that or they smashed you into the boards one too many times.” Hayley maneuvered around the trunk, her bare feet moving up another branch. “Shit.”
He circled the tree, trying to keep her in view. “Is there someone I should call? Animal rescue maybe?”
“They’ll just make Copernicus even more stressed out. They already don’t like him after all the stitches—”
A branch snapped and Hayley yelped.
“Are you okay?” Leaves and twigs fluttered to the ground, and he squinted to see more than a flash of her bare calves and the navy fabric of her dress. “Hayley?”
Another pitiful meow came from just outside Jackson’s line of sight.
“How good are you at climbing trees?”
Jackson cringed. “Horrible. Broke my arm after I fell out of one when I was twelve.”
“Never mind. I think…I’ve almost got it…” Another frustrated curse was followed by, “Either embrace your inner twelve-year-old or you’ll have to head to the wedding without me.”
Damn, she was serious.
Jackson looked up and down the street, searching for another option—any other option—and not finding anything.
Okay then.
He toed off his shoes, then after another hard look at the tree, stripped off his socks too. At least he’d left his jacket in the car. Loosening his tie, he slipped it over his head and set it on the pile with the rest of his stuff. Once his top buttons were undone, he eyed the tree skeptically.
Must be out of his mind. Hayley clearly was for climbing the tree for a cat to begin with, never mind that she couldn’t be any less dressed for the occasion.
He had to jump to reach the closest branch, leaving him to wonder how Hayley had done it when she was a few inches shorter than he was. His foot slipped off the bark the first time he tried getting higher in the tree, and his chin scraped the branch.
“Maybe you should call Matt instead.”
“I’ve got it,” he growled, finally managing to maneuver a little higher.
He moved another branch aside and got his first clear look at Hayley through the leaves. Her dress was hiked almost to her hips and she crouched on a limb close to the trunk, long tendrils of hair draping the branches behind her like a golden spider web. The curves of her breasts spilled from what probably wasn’t supposed to be such a low-cut neckline.
He wasn’t about to complain though. It was the best view he’d had in ages.
A few inches to the right of her bare foot sat the ugliest—and that might be too generous—kitten he’d ever laid eyes on.
Splotches of mud-brown and burnt orange peppered his scrawny body, some long and fluffy and other patches buzzed down like he’d been shaved for surgery. A stubby black tail whipped back and forth, and two green eyes, one swollen like he’d been in his own bar fight, glared at Jackson.
“Has he had his rabies shot?” He ducked under branches to reach Hayley.
“He’s harmless.”
The warning hiss from the kitten said otherwise. “How did that little thing get up here?”
“The thing’s name is Copernicus and a dog probably chased him. He has a bad habit of goading them.” She tried to move and winced.
“A cat named after a Renaissance astronomer?” He glanced down at the kitten again and shook his head.
Both brows shot up. “You know who Copernicus was?”
“Discovery Channel,” he explained, ignoring the dig. “What exactly seems to be the problem?” Although most of her problem probably had to do with climbing the tree in the first place.
She gestured to her head. “I’m tangled.”
Getting close enough to untangle her hair required crouching opposite her, leaving nothing between his back and the wide open