SmokingHot

by Anne Marsh

  Wait thousand.

  Fortunately for both of them, he was a patient man.

  Pull thousand.

  He slid his hands up her back, thumbs pressing into her muscles, working out the tension. She exhaled softly, but didn’t stop playing possum. He swept his thumbs along the sweet bottom curve of her breasts, reacquainting himself with her skin and her body’s soft, sexy give. The wide-awake woman would have thrown up no trespassing signs, but since she was pretending to be asleep…

  “Stubborn,” he whispered, his voice loud in the room. It was early still. He’d bet most of the wedding party was still asleep.

  Check your canopy. And… he was out of condoms. That was a reality check all right. On the one hand, he hadn’t had a lover in a year and he’d always been careful. A high school scare had taught him that. On the other hand, he wouldn’t put Mimi in a position of having to trust him, nor would he take her at her word even though she had whispered to him last night that she was on the Pill and safe.

  There was nothing safe about Mimi at all, and the two of them together were downright combustible. Mimi liked living dangerously. She also liked punishing herself with the risks she took and he wouldn’t be any part of that, even if he had wanted her since he’d come to Strong. She’d been with Rio then, and he hadn’t been about to sleep with his friend’s girl. Look but don’t touch. That had been his rule, and that rule had worked just fine right up until last night when she’d made it clear that things were over between her and Rio and that he had an invitation to make a move.

  There were plenty of things he could do for her, to her, even without a condom or getting inside her, but the decision felt right. For a million crazy, mixed-up reasons, he wanted more than the one night with Mimi. Wanted this to be a beginning and not an ending for the two of them. He’d learned to trust his instincts fighting for Uncle Sam and everything in him now urged him to fight for Mimi.

  He’d been a wild child himself in his younger years. He was thirty-two now and felt older than the damned dinosaurs some mornings. He’d decided ten years ago that he needed to be able to look the man in the mirror in the eye in the morning, and that had meant he had to stop fucking up.

  He recognized that lost fuck you look on Mimi’s face. She drank too much, danced too freely, and generally did whatever the hell she wanted. But the I need someone look… that was what he hadn’t been able to resist. He understood not wanting to be alone—and wanting to punish yourself. She was gruff and prickly and, yeah, he’d pretty much kill to get underneath her skin, to coax her into sharing the pieces of herself she hid so carefully. Except she represented everything he’d put behind him. A wild child tempted you to fall and the falling was great. The best. Hot and raw and damned unforgettable, like the sex last night.

  Nope, it wasn’t the falling that was the problem. It was the landing. He had no idea what she was running from, but going along for the ride was a bad idea.

  All of which meant that Mimi’s original plan was actually the safest and best. They’d have a one-night stand and it would be over. He knew how it would work: one of them would get up and shower and the other one would sneak out. Since it was his room, she’d do the leaving. And yet…he wasn’t completely on board with the unspoken plan. Instead, he got out of bed and snagged a cold Coke from the minibar and a packet of Advil. He could practically feel her awareness against his skin, the silent laughter shaking her body and his bed. He had no idea what she found so funny, but Mimi loved to laugh.

  He wasn’t having sex with her this morning.

  He grabbed a pair of sweats and pulled them on, then round-tripped it to the bed, set his peace offerings on the table. She shifted slightly, giving him a better look at the tattoo covering the left side of her body. Her ink was gorgeous. His view from this side was some kind of fantastical bird and a whole lot of greenery and pink flowers. He’d bet that tattoo had hurt like hell, but then again Mimi never took the easy way out.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he said gruffly. He stroked a thumb along her jaw. “You can escape now.”

  ***

  Busted.

  Mimi bit back her laughter as Mack cracked a can of soda and retreated to the bathroom. Of course, he’d known for ages that she wasn’t asleep. She’d simply wondered how far he would take their game. Mack didn’t usually play. He was always so deadly serious. Gruff, almost. And then he’d flash a quick smile when something really struck his fancy, a dimple winking in and out of existence in his cheeks. His eyes, though… he almost always had a smile lurking there when he watched her. And Mack did a lot of watching. Maybe that should creep her out, but somehow it made her feel safe. Protected. Neither of which were states she needed or wanted.

  Or deserved, she reminded herself.

  But she didn’t roll over or open her eyes until the bathroom door shut and the water started. Okay. She peeked. Once. She was weak and Mack in a pair of low-slung sweats was pretty damned spectacular. She’d celebrated the Donovan wedding too hard—what else was new?—and now she had a hangover to go with her morning after regrets.

  Sitting up, she took stock. Mack’s gifts tempted her, but she ignored the Advil. She needed the cottony mouth, the pounding in her head. She deserved it. Sleeping with Mack had pretty much screwed the pooch. He was a paint-by-numbers kind of guy, while she was more of a … Salvador Dali gal. He was a Boy Scout, a keeper. He’d fought shoulder-with-shoulder with her to keep the flames away from the bar when the firefighter arsonist had tried to burn down the bar and half of Strong last summer. Mack was a nice guy. Fucking with him was not nice.

  Faye, on the other hand, was waking up this morning in Evan Donovan’s arms (if the man had let his new wife sleep at all), and no way the other woman was pulling Mimi’s secret agent routine and plotting her escape. Faye had made her promises to have and to hold and was all tied up in her happily ever after. Those kinds of strings weren’t her thing, but Faye was a good woman and Mimi wished her the best. At least Mimi hadn’t slept with that Donovan brother. And… there it was. The familiar rush of self-loathing. Mission accomplished.

  She got up and stole Mack’s hotel bathrobe, shoving her wedding clothes into the laundry bag the hotel had thoughtfully stored in the closet. Then, four-inch heels dangling from her fingers, she stepped out into the hallway.

  Time to get my walk of shame on.

  ***

  The door to his hotel room opened and then closed. If Mack hadn’t been standing on the other side of the bathroom door, listening, he would have missed it. Mimi didn’t slam out of the room, didn’t finesse the door so it shut with a barely audible click. She just went and there was a clear message for him in her leaving.

  She didn’t want to hang around with him today and they weren’t going to be sharing breakfast or a morning after. She’d come to him for sex, he’d delivered, and that was that. Hell, half the single men at the wedding would have been ecstatic if she’d picked them and he certainly hadn’t done any complaining himself. Mimi had been fantastic in bed and he wasn’t looking for a relationship anyhow.

  Was he?

  Mimi had a reputation for loving and leaving. As far as Mack knew, her two months with Rio Donovan last summer had been the longest she’d stayed with any one particular guy. While she wasn’t indiscriminate in her hook-ups, she’d always made it plenty clear that she wasn’t in it for the long haul. Sex with no strings. For no particular reason, he’d believed he’d be different. The one to change all that and convince Mimi to come back for more.

  For him.

  And if that didn’t make him sound like a girl then he didn’t know what did. He hadn’t protested last night when Mimi had made her plans for his body clear, so he had no business feeling used this morning. He knew how Mimi operated. She’d never pretended to be anyone other than who she was and he admired her for that. A woman who enjoyed sex and who wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted in bed? Yeah, that pretty much topped the fantasy list. And yet… he wondered ho
w much she’d really enjoyed their night together. Not the sex—that had been great and he knew it—but the part that had come after. The part where he’d almost been able to feel her beating herself up, using their night together to… hell. He had no idea.

  The tiny bathroom steamed up while he worked through the unhappy revelation that somehow feelings had snuck up on him while he hung out at Mimi’s bar. Pointless, not-going-to-be-reciprocated-so-don’t-waste-your-time feelings. Since he preferred doing to thinking, he stripped down and stepped in, soaping up with the hotel freebies. The body wash was floral, the scent from the green and gold bottle both sweet and slightly harsh. The little pint-size bottles were never quite enough, but he made do, dumping the contents into his palm and then tossing the empty into the trash.

  He flattened his hands against the shower wall.

  It had been good.

  It was over.

  And if he had no idea what it was, he wasn’t going to admit it.

  Chapter Two

  The day after hightailing it home from Evan Donovan’s wedding, Mimi spent her Sunday afternoon at the bar, getting things into shape for the week. It was still her slow season, being March and not the drought-prone, heated-up months of summer, but business was decent even on the weeknights and she had more than enough work to keep her busy.

  Because March in Northern California was plenty warm, she’d propped the front door open to take advantage of the heat. She also had country music playing on the radio (louder than she should), but, hey, that was a public service, right? If the radio was loud enough, no one could hear her singing. She liked to sing and if she wasn’t particularly talented in the vocal arena, that was okay. She’d never claimed to be perfect.

  Quite the opposite.

  Right then, however, her nemesis was a temperamental soda gun. The son-of-a-bitch wasn’t working, either sending the soda dribbling out or attempting to drill a hole in the bottom of the glass. All or nothing, just like her life.

  “Problems?” The rough voice behind her startled her badly enough to make her jump, the soda gun flying out of her hand to hit the counter and launch a stream of brown cola at the mirrored display of booze bottles. Great. Now she could add cleaning to her to do list.

  “Don’t sneak up on a gal.” She played off her jumpiness, glaring at the malfunctioning soda gun. Of course, if she hadn’t diagnosed the problem in the fifteen minutes she’d spent taking the thing apart and reassembling it, she probably wasn’t going to do so now. She was out of her league and it was time to call the repair guy and hope the bar’s bottom line could handle the hit.

  “Uh-huh.” Not waiting for an invite (and she’d have made him wait a long time—they both knew that), Mack came around the far end of the counter. In the light of day, he didn’t look different than he had yesterday or the day before that—except that she now knew exactly what lay beneath the faded cotton T-shirt and jeans. She drank in the steady thud of his steel-toes over her floor as he came closer but, instead of reaching for her, he reached around her and pointed out her phone vibrating like mad on the counter.

  She didn’t give a damn about the phone.

  He, apparently, did because he turned down her music and nudged the phone toward her. He didn’t have the decency to stare at her, color up, or even hesitate some. Instead, Mack acted like nothing happened and… that made her want to push his buttons some, force him notice her.

  Right.

  Wrong.

  She swiped her phone from the counter and strolled to the open door, soaking up the sun like a lizard.

  “Mimi Hart? I’m calling from the Oakland District Attorney’s office.”

  And… there was the past she’d decided was the past and no part of her present or future. Like she was riding the roller coaster at the New York New York casino in Vegas, her stomach rattled around somewhere in the vicinity of her ribcage before dropping straight to her toes. She’d come out here to Strong with one plan: forgetting everything that had happened in Oakland. Two hundred miles clearly hadn’t been enough distance. This phone call proved that.

  Hanging up would be pointless.

  “That’s me.” She concentrated on inventorying the cars in the bar’s parking lot—and came up with Mack’s truck. Her own Harley was tucked out of sight alongside the building. There was nothing but asphalt and the dark blue pick-up with a coat of dust and odd nicks and dings from fire calls. Battle scars, Mack had told her when she’d asked why he didn’t fix those dents like he fixed everything else. The sun shone the same as before, but she felt cold deep in her bones. Damn it.

  She shot a quick look over her shoulder, but Mack had his head bent over the soda gun. He enjoyed fixing things and he was good at it. If it was her lucky day—and it sure didn’t look that way—she wouldn’t need to call a repairman if he could work his usual magic. The too smooth, too chipper voice on the other end of the line kept right on talking.

  “According to our records, you testified in the State vs. Martinez.”

  The speaker paused expectantly and she used the break to calculate whether or not she could still plead ignorance.

  “Ms. Hart?” Now the speaker sounded less pleasant and more determined. Evasion likely wasn’t an option.

  “I did.” She dropped onto the bench by the door. She’d put the thing there for her smokers and resuming their habit suddenly seemed attractive, even though it had been two years since her last cigarette. She needed something to do with her hands. Since cigarettes and a lighter weren’t part of her immediate future, she fiddled with a loose thread in the frayed hem of her shorts, pulling strands free with the hand not holding the phone.

  “Your testimony was critical in helping to convict Mr. Martinez, along with several of his associates.”

  Probably. Maybe. She certainly hadn’t wanted to go to court and share what she knew, but even she had limits. She might have spent a lifetime running from her responsibilities, but testifying had been the right thing to do. The gang member had busted into a convenience store, cleaned out the register, and then shot the store clerk in the back. She’d known that because Sal Martinez had come into her street shop and asked her to tattoo the crime scene onto his left shoulder.

  “Mr. Martinez is serving life in prison, but one of the gang members convicted on lesser charges came up for parole last month.” Another demanding pause filtered down the line, but she had no intention of filling up the silence. If the D.A.’s office wanted to have a conversation with her and had gone to all the trouble of tracking her down, then they could do the talking. She’d received a letter inviting her to attend the parole hearing and give her reasons for or against. She’d wanted to leave that life behind and she’d ignored it.

  “Sol Herring was granted parole,” the professional-sounding voice continued and…damn it. Maybe she should have spoken up again. Said something. Protested. She just didn’t know what good it would have done, besides ripping the mental Band-Aid off wounds she preferred to ignore. Her last year in Oakland had not been a pleasant one.

  “Got it,” she said, because maybe if she said something, this conversation would end faster.

  “No one spoke up against it and since he was convicted of a lesser weapons charge and perjury, he served five years of a ten year sentence.” Now the voice sounded vaguely disapproving, familiar ground for Mimi. Clearly, she had been expected to register an objection with the court. As if that would have kept Sol Herring behind bars.

  Drawers opened and closed behind her. She leaned around the door as the DA droned on, reprising the facts of the case. The way she’d seen it then, the good guys had won. The bad guys had lost. She hadn’t paid too much attention to the details beyond that. Mack, she was willing to bet, would have memorized every fact, every charge. His rifling through the bar stuff yielded gold as she watched and he discovered the stack of manuals she’d stashed in a bottom drawer.

  As if he’d felt her looking, he lifted his head and stared back at her. Great. Now she was imaginin
g an invisible connection between them. Mack was big and bad-ass with a side of sweet. No way did she want to get on his bad side, but he was also precisely the man she wanted standing beside her in a fight. A fire. Or anything life might throw at her. No. She’d had her taste and they were done. Kaput. Over.

  He raised a brow, silently asking what was up, but this was none of his business. Hell, she didn’t want it to be her business. He frowned, but then started flipping through pages. Crisis averted. Mack savored manuals the way other guys got off on porn.

  “Given certain threats that were made by the main defendant, we felt you should be made aware of Mr. Herring’s parole.”

  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. The sentiment hadn’t been true in this particular instance. Martinez’s shouts as the bailiffs led him out of the courtroom after the jury had read their verdict? Yeah. His graphic threats had starred front and center in more than one nightmare.

  “Good thinking,” she said sweetly.

  ”You should take sensible precautions. Watch out for unfamiliar cars, persons. Avoid situations that make you uncomfortable.”

  Right. Like that was happening.

  “If Herring’s on parole, aren’t you watching him?”

  There was another brief hesitation. Damn it. She knew she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today.

  “Mr. Herring failed to check in with his parole officer,” the District Attorney’s assistant admitted.

  Great. “You lost him.”

  “We’ll get him back.” Determination filled the other woman’s voice and, if good intentions were all that it took, Herring would have been back under lock and key. Unfortunately, Mimi knew all too well the difference between good intentions and reality. “Until then, we recommend that you be careful and keep an eye out for trouble. I can have the local police department send patrol cars past your place.”