by Tina Leonard
A man who didn’t have to be corralled into a commitment was a man who wanted to be in the relationship to start with. She didn’t care what Judy said—a man didn’t always have to be lured into settling down.
“All right, Judy,” Saint said, remaining obediently in the booth. “What do you have cooking now?”
“Cooking indeed. I leave that up to Stephen, the best cook in the county, besides Hattie.”
Saint’s gaze met Cameron’s. Most people would have said that Stephen Redfeather’s cooking wasn’t one of Hell’s strong suits, whereas Hattie’s cooking was a dream. But Judy always said Stephen’s was top-notch. To be fair, he could grill a mean hamburger—when, and if, that was what he chose to serve you.
“What’s on my mind is that the second annual parade is coming up. The first one went so nicely we need to do it again. Don’t you think?” she asked Saint. Not waiting for an answer, she said, “And this year, we’re setting up the kissing booth kiss-off. Saint, I’m putting you in charge.”
“Hold on a minute, Judy.” Saint shook his head. “I’m not coordinating kissing booths. I’ll do anything to help out with Hell’s parade, because I think it’s great for business for Stephen and Hattie and Madame Chen’s flower shop, and for Hell in general. But don’t ask me to run kissing booths. Put me in charge of coordinating traffic or parking or something.”
His gaze slid to Cameron. She felt her skin get a bit warm. Kissing was a topic best avoided at the moment.
“That’s Frick and Frack’s job,” Judy said, naming Steel’s deputies. “But here’s a compromise. You and Cameron run the kissing booth committee together. It was our largest fund-raising activity last year, so I’m counting on you to really liven it up this year.” Judy nodded. “And I want Poison Ivy’s girls invited. My girls against hers.”
“I can agree to that,” Saint said.
Cameron was astonished. “Why would you agree to that? You know Judy’s going to drive you mad.”
Declan laughed. “He’s agreeing because of Ivy’s girls, of course. Even I’d sign on for that job.”
Saint grinned and Steel chuckled—until he caught Judy’s eyes on him. Judy huffed, annoyed. “Cameron will be in charge of Ivy’s girls, and Saint, you can man my booth. And I won’t drive Saint mad, Cameron. Not one bit.”
“It’s true,” Cameron said. “Judy, you know how you are about anything to do with Hell.”
“I’m very loyal, it’s true,” Judy said. “Growing the town of Hell is a top priority for me. That’s why I dreamed up the Hell’s Belles, to be the bright new face of Hell, Texas.”
Cameron shook her head. “I can manage the booths myself, Saint. You don’t have to get involved.”
“I’m okay. I know how our mayor works. And I promise not to sample the kisses at Ivy’s booth.” He scooted over as Steel slid into the booth, which made the space between Cameron and Saint shrink to almost nothing.
“You sound like you’re making such a sacrifice.”
Everyone laughed, despite the tension. Cameron forgot about Saint kissing other women, suddenly alert to the warmth of his body. Saint was sitting very close to her now, almost unnecessarily close. She caught the scent of some woodsy soap and, as always, the smell of leather. And hunky man. She was glad when the pitcher of beer came around and Saint poured her some.
She hoped the beer could calm her racing pulse. She took a sip, then another.
Nope. Still all hot and bothered by the sexy male next to her. The one she’d kissed in a rash moment of unplanned spontaneity—as he’d kissed her before that. One paid a price for spontaneity, as Cameron knew well. She was a planner, a list-maker, a scheduler. Everything ran in an organized fashion in her life, with plans projected on three-, five-, and twenty-five-year goal markers.
Kissing Saint hadn’t been part of the plan. He knew it, she knew it—and by nightfall, all of Hell would know it.
And there was just no way to make it anything other than what it was.
She had a thing for Saint Markham.
From the study he was making of her, Cameron knew he was wondering if she’d been teasing him, trying to get her way with him about the lessons, or if she actually had some kind of feelings for him.
“Here’s to kissing,” he said, raising his glass to her.
She blushed, a curse of pale skin with freckles that revealed emotions she’d rather keep hidden. “To kissing booths,” Cameron said, raising her glass.
“Good.” Judy smiled. “I was hoping you’d take that job on. I just know it can be a huge success. Who doesn’t like to be kissed?” She glanced over at Steel. “I thought I’d ask you to be grand marshal, Steel.”
The big man waved a hand. “Sign me up for whatever. I’m putty in your hands.”
Judy laughed. “You’ve never been putty in my hands, Steel.” She glanced fondly at her big sheriff. “Oh, look,” Judy exclaimed, “there’s Eli!” She glanced around for Redfeather’s owner. “Stephen!”
The tall, handsome Native American appeared at the booth. “Yes, Judy?”
“Take Eli to a booth, would you, and give him my potpie? I haven’t touched it yet, but I’m not all that hungry.” She smiled at Stephen. “No one loves your potpie more than I do, but I bet Eli hasn’t eaten today.”
Stephen took the potpie and went to do Judy’s bidding. Eli Larson was homeless by choice, because any number of Hell’s denizens had offered to set him up with lodging in some form or fashion. The town also saw to it that he was fed, wherever he showed up. Money for this was provided in the town’s coffers as part of the budget.
Cameron looked at Judy. It seemed to her that Judy was a bit pale today, not her usually bubbly self. Certainly she still had lots of energy—Judy on her deathbed would be planning a party or instructing the pallbearers—but it seemed to Cameron that something wasn’t quite right.
And Judy never passed up Stephen’s cooking, even if everybody else lived on the hope that one day, his chicken might actually taste like chicken.
“Judy, love, let me order you another pie,” Steel said.
“I don’t have much appetite, handsome. But thank you.”
Judy went on with her parade plans, and when Saint excused himself twenty minutes later to get back to work at the Hell’s Outlaws Training Center, Cameron gratefully slid out of the circular booth, too.
“See you later, Judy, Steel,” they both said. Cameron made a beeline for the sidewalk, hurrying to her truck—but it wasn’t going to be that easy, she realized, hearing Saint call her name.
“Yes?” she asked, turning to face him.
“We should probably plan a meeting or two to figure out how we’re going to address this kissing booth idea. I’m not particularly looking forward to going out to Ivy’s to put the idea forward.”
This was a concern. The Honky-tonk was always jumping, and it was a nightmare to try to have a conversation, much less plan anything. Cameron swallowed. “Even on my best day, I’m not much of a planner,” she said, telling what would have been recognized by Ava and Harper as a monster fib. “I don’t think I’ll be much help with Ivy.”
She didn’t want to go to Ivy’s, because she didn’t want to take a chance on jeopardizing Ivy’s complicity in her sneaking out to the Honky-tonk occasionally for a little harmless fun. Plus, she didn’t want to be alone with Saint.
She wanted everything to go back to pre-kiss, so that she could exist in a happy bubble of admiration, and crushing on Saint from afar.
“Yeah, but you kissed me. You have to go with me.”
Cameron stared into his eyes. “That’s not how one slight momentary lip-to-lip engagement works, and I’ll remind you that you kissed me first. None of which implies a future IOU.”
“Sure it does. We’re a team now.”
They couldn’t be a “team.” She didn’t have that much willpower. And she knew willpower was very important in meeting one’s goals.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said, sta
ting the obvious on many levels.
“Oh, it’s never a good idea to go out to Ivy’s. That’s why I’m taking you for backup.”
She saw his point. Poison Ivy’s gals were pretty poisonous themselves—not to mention that Judy and Ivy were the closest thing to blood enemies there could be. She’d heard a whisper that Judy and Ivy’s bad blood went way back, further back, even, than Judy’s being jealous of Ivy over Steel, which was just the tip of the iceberg. Judy wanted to grow the town, and Ivy didn’t, preferring to keep Hell man-friendly, rough, and tough, a lawless paradise for men looking for a place to forget, to lose themselves in a wild time. Which made Ivy very rich.
Judy wanted to clean Hell up, and not just because she was its mayor. She genuinely didn’t see the benefit of Ivy’s business model. In Judy’s opinion, Ivy’s place attracted a reputation Hell didn’t need. Judy wanted families and eligible bachelors and bachelorettes. A modern-day chicken house of sorts didn’t fit with Judy’s vision of Hell.
They were also competitive over the matter of their hair: Ivy’s long, loose tresses silver-blonde over rich brown, sexy and beautiful, versus Judy’s tall, elegant beauty showcasing a silvery, high-stacked mane of curls and strands. But these details were just window dressing (serious window dressing, to be sure) for the real rivalry.
On a recon mission one day through some papers in Judy’s office, Ava, Harper, and Cameron had come across an astonishing document that claimed Judy and Ivy were, in fact, first cousins. They’d hardly been able to believe it, but there it was. So the war between them was Hatfield and McCoy, with bad blood between their families. Ivy’s roadside establishment for men on the outskirts of town stuck in Judy’s craw like no other. But a two-lane road was all that separated the two women, Hell proper on Judy’s side, the Honky-tonk just outside city limits on Ivy’s side, though still under the demesne of Hell.
Ivy would have liked nothing more than to nip off one of the Outlaws, one of the men Judy considered Hell’s and well out of Ivy’s clutches. Steel wasn’t safe, and when he got called out to Ivy’s Honky-tonk in the capacity of sheriff, he always took his deputies and sometimes an Outlaw or two for safety’s sake.
Saint was no safer. Ivy would get a charge out of siccing her girls on the big, handsome SEAL. Cameron took a deep breath.
“I’ll go. On one condition.”
He grinned, slow and sexy. “Name it.”
She tried not to notice all the hot sex appeal being aimed at her. “You can’t bring up that I gave you a friendly peck. Ever again. You kissed me, I kissed you, it was harmless.” Not exactly, but it sounded brave—or at least she hoped it did.
He smiled. Ruffled her springy ponytail. “Come on, Red. If I didn’t tease you about that kiss, I wouldn’t get to see your freckles light up.”
Great. This was going to be a nightmare.
“The problem with this town is that there’s not enough kissing. A lot would be solved if there was more smooching and less yakking. Kiss me, gorgeous. We’ll start a new trend of make love, not gossip, in Hell.”
Her eyes went wide. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can. You put your lips right here—”
She backed up a step. “No, I mean, I—no. I had a brain cramp when I kissed you before, Saint, not a loss of common sense.”
“Oh, I see. That’s what we’re going to call it. A ‘brain cramp.’ ” He laughed out loud, and passersby walking past them to the shops turned and smiled at them.
If he liked seeing her freckles light up, they were surely on fire now. “I’m going.”
She hopped in her truck. He gave her a salute.
“I’ll pick you up at nightfall. We’ll head out to Ivy’s, see if we can stir up a little trouble.”
Cameron nodded, pulled out of her parking space. Drove away, her heart racing just a bit. Her well-ordered life was a little less orderly now, and it was all her fault.
The first impulsive thing she’d done in years, and Saint didn’t seem to have any plans to let her forget it.
Chapter 3
It was obvious to Saint that the sexy little redhead was teeing him up, the same way Ava had worked Trace over. Of the three new girls to town, Cameron was by far the biggest daredevil. Harper had her wild streak too, but her having a young son kept her from too much trouble, at least so far. Saint was of the opinion that sometimes still, quiet waters were the ones that secretly wanted most to experience raging waves of wildness, but so far Harper had kept any waves to herself. Judy was the queen of making waves, and she’d looked far too pleased when kissing had been brought up. Cameron’s freckles had been a dead giveaway to anyone who cared to look. They’d practically been sparks of flame.
It was so darn sexy when she did that. Hell, he longed to turn those freckles hot himself. No doubt they were all over her body, a tantalizing thought he’d like to explore.
But that was a fire he wasn’t even going to try to start.
Yeah, Judy’d placed her bet squarely on Cameron’s being the one to break through into bullfighting, and that meant she had to have a mentor.
That mentor would be him, of course.
It was a halfway tempting idea, but he didn’t want to mentor anybody in anything, certainly not one of the Hell’s Belles. That was Judy’s boat, and she could float it all by herself. He wasn’t going to get caught the way Trace had. Once you’d seen the game played, you had only yourself to blame if you got burned.
But Cameron was darling and sexy, and just his type, so it wasn’t easy to pass up the temptation. Still, he didn’t need a woman in his life. A woman would pretty much mess up his solitude, and there was little solitude in Hell, anyway. He needed solitude. No one could do tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and not need peace and quiet afterward.
Cameron was not the woman for peace and quiet. No woman was, especially not a woman who was tight with Mayor Judy, and no one would doubt that statement. Look what Ava had done to Trace, after all. There Trace had been, a happy man secure in the mission of making the Hell’s Outlaws Training Center a viable business. Then Judy tossed Ava into his life like a well-thrown bomb, and Trace had never been the same.
Obviously Trace was happy about it now—but getting there had been a questionable road strewn with potholes. No sane man wanted that.
But that kiss Cameron had given him—and that sweet, sexy ass of hers—destroyed him. Oh, Judy was good, there was no question. She’d picked her team with precision, one for each of them. Trace, Saint, Declan—they were all marked men.
Kissing booth, my eye.
That was a Mayor Judy plan if he’d ever heard one. The idea for the kissing booth had blossomed in Judy’s brain two years ago, when she’d first hit upon the idea for the Hell parade. The parade idea he’d fully supported. Revenue, notoriety, a chance to show that Hell was something more than a hot, dusty backwater of a town of hardscrabble residents—sure, he endorsed that plan. The Hell’s Belles would get a chance to strut their stuff, and Hell would look like a family-friendly place, though it really wasn’t. Not yet.
But the kissing booth idea hadn’t gotten off the ground the first year of the parade, mainly due to lack of time and organization. Plus, the members of Judy’s Hell’s Belles team had been new, and learning how to be a team.
This year, however, would be more successful. What would bring more visitors than pretty girls lined up for kisses?
He didn’t want Cameron in a booth kissing every loser that found his way to Hell. He didn’t inspect why he didn’t want her kissing losers when he wasn’t offering any concrete reason why she shouldn’t do exactly as she pleased. Judy had a win-win going with her idea, now that it looked like it might actually get off the ground.
But since he was a chairman of the committee, he didn’t want it getting too far off the ground.
Which made him something of a selfish rat bastard, caught between the cheese he professed not to want and the trap he certainly didn’t want snapping his neck into a dating noose. More pa
rticularly, a matrimonial noose.
Like Trace. Who was pretty happy about the noose or trap, whichever analogy you preferred, that now took up nightly residence in his bed.
Saint sighed. “I wouldn’t mind Cameron in my bed,” he said out loud, pulling into the training center. Trace met him at his truck, a smile on his face.
“So. A date with Cameron tonight, is it?” Trace said.
“A date?”
“Heard you two were cozy at Redfeather’s. And that there was some smooching going on. You old dog.” Trace laughed as he ambled toward the barn holding a saddle. “Speaking of dogs, I appreciate you keeping an eye on Prince. Or maybe it was Prince keeping an eye on you, if gossip is to be believed. We heard all about the cupcake fiasco. How you went from a knee to the groin, to kissing Cameron is a story you’ll have to share around the booth.” Trace seemed to find his comment hilarious.
Saint followed him. “The greased lightning known as the grapevine in Hell is incorrect on all levels.”
“I don’t care. The story is good, so don’t ruin it for us.”
“ ‘Us’?” The plural sounded a bit ominous.
“Declan and me. And the sheriff. Jimmy Merrill, and a few of the other guys,” he said, naming some of the town elders. “If you last the summer, it’ll be a miracle, now that lips have been locked.”
“Lips were in no way locked. It was a friendly peck,” Saint said, same as he’d told Declan.
“Declan said it was a good minute,” Trace said. “Too bad you couldn’t stay on that long when you were riding bulls.”
Declan clearly had embellished the story. “It was nothing like that. Friendly peck between friends, nothing more.”
“This is awesome. Methinks you protest too much, old friend.” Trace went whistling into a stall, clearly enjoying the town version of the story and not interested in the truth.
“Judy put me in charge of the kissing booth,” he called after Trace. “As a married man, I think it would be more reputable if you manned that battle station.”