Like what? Passing out? Fainting? Swooning into a puddle on the linoleum?
But I work for Mayor Jack Jeffers. I’m an expert in looking busy.
I move my face into a concerned professional expression, like I’m reading work email. Fortunately, the Wi-Fi from the office bleeds into this building, provided you know to point your phone due west, angle it at forty-five degrees, and not move one single muscle.
The man from my lanai?
Remember?
Dimly.
Pfffft obviously!
I HAVE TO WORK WITH HIM.
Is your caps lock stuck?
He has those muscles, Penny. I googled them.
Know what they’re called?
Maisie!
Wait.
OMG
Wait.
The Belt of Adonis.
And you’re named after a goddess!
Peanut butter and jelly!
* * *
I drop my phone in my purse, listening to it buzz like it’s full of tiny bees. Maisie is no help, at all. We once took personality tests and hers came back Enabler.
My personality test, on the other hand, came back Mediator. So I mediate myself right into the most sensible response: Not only do I now have to work with him, but I now know for certain that he’s just passing through. Dress pants, rental car, Hollywood; nothing about any of those words sounds like a synonym for eligible. And I’m probably not even the first or the only one. I'll bet he’s got a lady in every town, exactly like me, with whom he does all sorts of unspeakable, sexy, tender…
I sip my tea. It’s lukewarm and bitter, but I don’t mind. It gives me a chance to collect myself. Sort of.
“So,” he says, rolling up his sleeves a little more and smiling at me. “Where do you think we should start?”
If you feel like driving a few hours, I know a place with a private infinity pool and…
Penny!
I make some flustered hair-smoothing gestures before finding my center of gravity again. “I’ll show you the most interesting parts of Port Flamingo.” I kick into full PR mode. “The Boardwalk, the beaches, the private cove on the other side of the bay.”
His jaw shifts off to one side, and he gives me a slow, sexy nod. “Private cove. That sounds pretty good to me.” His gaze stays in my lap so long that I get a simultaneous tingle and shiver. My cup jingles on the saucer, and I set it back down.
He puts his hands behind his head, letting me see the full package. And then he says, “But I think I already know the best part of this town, Penny. And I plan to come again. Multiple times. But only after you do.”
Gah!
It’s then that the waitress comes by with the check. I move to grab my wallet, to use the mayor’s card to pay, but Russ shakes his head at me. He lifts his lush bum from the chair and pulls out his wallet, curved to the shape of his body.
“Anything else, Officer?” the waitress asks him.
He narrows his eyes at her. The man is too sweet to say what he’s thinking, which is probably something like, Have you ever seen a cop in pants this nice? Because that’s certainly what I’m thinking. But he doesn’t say it. Instead he gives her a polite, “No, thank you,” and hands her a ten, telling her to keep the change.
Mayday. A generous tipper! Aircraft spiraling!
No, no, no. This cannot happen. He’s passing through—I refuse to get involved. And in addition to all that, the mayor has given me a job, and I’m going to do it right. Somehow or other. If I can’t, I’m headed for the garden center after all. So all I have to do is get through the next…
“How long did you say you’re here?”
“November 10.”
My heart falls like trapdoor just opened up underneath me. November 10. That’s only a week away. But it also strengthens my resolve. I can get through a week. I will not fall for this man in a week. A week is nothing.
He flips open his shoulder bag. “I hear the beach at the nudist colony has white sands.” He rolls up his sleeves over those beautiful forearms a little further. “We definitely need to go there.”
Who am I kidding? A week is an eternity. I’m so screwed.
He tucks his tush-bent wallet back in his pocket. I crumple up my paper napkin and press my knees together. He’s not a bag of potato chips. I don’t have to eat the entire thing. I don’t have to eat the entire thing.
“First things first,” he says. “I need to get the fuck out of these clothes.”
At about the same speed as my subconscious flashes me with his gorgeous naked body in my bed, and the two of us forehead-to-forehead as I came for him, it all tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Russ. Seriously. This is a terrible idea,” I bark-whisper. “We cannot be a thing. You’re here for a week. You’re from Hollywood. You wear dress shirts and wool pants. Look at you, look at me. A week is hardly enough time for an avocado to ripen. Last night is just that, last night. Past tense.” I add a curt nod and slap my hand on the table, now feeling fairly righteous in having flagged down the Man Wagon again. I will stay strong. I will not succumb to his charms or his stubble. “It happened, but now we have to work together and we can’t be sneaking off in the middle of the day to get out of our clothes.”
He gets this cocky grin on his face and gives me a laughing sigh. “I actually meant get out of these clothes.” He tugs at his shirt with his thick, rugged fingers. “I can’t get anything done if everybody thinks I’m here to hand out warrants or search their cars for weed.”
“But you look so good in pastels.” Maybe it’s Tourette’s.
“Shorts, Penny. Some T-shirts. Sandals. I need your help. You’re the one who’s going to be looking at me.”
I can smell his gum, his detergent, and his cologne. It’s the trifecta.
I fumble through my purse as a wave of heat singes my cheeks. I grab my lipstick and my little pocket mirror, and telescope the lipstick open.
He stands up from his chair, and I look up at him as I place the stick to my lower lip. I’m met with a slow head shake. “We cannot be a thing,” he mutters. “Goddamn it, you’re adorable.”
19
Russ
I hold the door to the diner open for her and guide her through, with my hand on the small of her back. As she passes underneath me, I get a close-up of the bow-shaped tan line at the nape of her neck. I follow it over her collarbone, down her chest, and then feel that rumble through my cock, thinking about how she likes to have her nipples pinched so damned much. A week with this woman? It’s going to be fucking fantastic.
One storefront down is a sign, hanging from the portico, which says Surf’s Up Surf Shop. She stops cold when she realizes where we’re headed. I try to push her along, but she’s actually digging in her heels—she lifts her toes off her flip-flops and rocks backward. One hand flies out and grabs a post, like she’s trying to stop herself from sliding down a hill in an ice storm. “We should go to Walmart or something. I need to buy laundry detergent anyway. Or we could go to the tackle shop! You’d look fantastic in waders.”
“Penny. It’s ten feet away. I don’t need waders. I just need something that doesn’t make me look like I belong in Quantico.”
“Seriously, Surf’s Up isn’t your kind of place.”
I let my hand slide down from the small of her back far enough to give the top of her ass a squeeze. “This right here is my kind of place.”
She groans and rocks into me, but she’s not giving in so easily. “Seriously. It’s expensive and the staff is super rude.”
On the sidewalk is a sandwich board that says Everything 50% Off! Voted Friendliest Surf Shop on the Gulf Coast, 2016! Come on in!
“Not buying it. Come on, cutie.”
She shakes her head even more vehemently. “False advertising. Friendliest surf shop,” she pshaws. “I’ve seen grizzled old surfers come out of there weeping.”
She twirls her hair around one finger, making a shiny, thick curl, accentuating the fine line of her ne
ck. That’s her tell, no question about it. “It’s a damned good thing you don’t play poker. You’d be hosed.” Then I grab her hand and drag her along with me.
As we enter the store, the shop girl looks up at us. She’s holding a big plastic glass with some kind of green smoothie in both hands. When she sees us she freezes, with the green stuff suspended halfway up the straw.
She lets the straw fall from her mouth, giving me one huge blink and a smile. She grabs a ballpoint pen from the desk and jabs it into her bun. “Can I help you, sir?” She’s cute, but nothing like Penny, not even close.
“We’re good,” I say, taking a look at a pair of shorts from a nearby rack as Penny drifts off towards a rack of skirts.
The shop girl comes around from behind the register counter and busies herself with a mannequin next to me. She gets up on her tiptoes and moves his plastic arm, so he looks like he’s pushing his hair back with his fingers. “I haven’t seen you in here before, have I? What brings you to Port Flamingo? Business? Or pleasure?”
That’s when I notice Penny. She doesn’t know I can see her, but her reflection is shining back at me from an angled mirror by the surfboards. She’s making a slicing motion across her throat.
The shop girl leans suggestively on the mannequin. “Looking for swim trunks, maybe? We’ve got a new line of Speedos…”
Penny grits her teeth and makes fists of her hands. I turn toward her to try to see what the hell is going on, but she’s snatched up a bikini from a nearby rack and is looking at the price tag.
It’s black with white bows, and I can imagine it on her already. Fuck, I’ve got it bad for this woman. But I have to keep some semblance of control. “I’m good. Just looking,” I say, and grab a pair of 36 longs off the rack.
“Long, eh?” asks the shop girl with a wink.
Behind me I hear Penny make a kind of strangled groan.
But the shop girl doesn’t flinch. “You know, you look familiar. Have you posed for any Regency romance covers? I swear to God, I’ve seen you bare-chested in a kilt. Seducing the Rake maybe?”
Before I can answer—it was one time, for fuck’s sake; I know guys who had STDs that didn’t haunt them like Seducing the Rake has stayed with me—we are interrupted by a hellacious racket. I turn around to look at Penny again. She’s managed to upend a whole display rack of sunglasses. They’re scattered all over the floor. Dozens of pairs, strewn all over everything. She gives the rack an extra shake, and a few more pairs clatter to the ground. “Oops.”
The shop girl huffs and jams another pen into her bun. “You break it, you buy it!”
“Put it on my tab!” says Penny, plucking her way through the sunglasses and leading me toward the back of the shop, where the changing rooms are.
20
Penny
There’s all sorts of sexy Russ-rustle-rustling as he tries on his clothes. It takes all my willpower to stop myself from running over to his changing room and pressing my eye up to the slats like I’m looking through a peephole. He slings his shirt over the top of the changing room door, then steps out of his shoes and socks. I can almost hear a drumroll in my head and then it happens: his suit pants fall to the ground.
Maybe today’s boxer briefs are light gray, like a sporty heather gray, because that would just be…
I grab a random black dress off the rack and dash into the second changing room. As I shut the door, I hear Maisie saying something like, “Boy, I sure could use some help with all these sunglasses, ahem-ahem.” But I ignore it. As the rustling next door continues, I unfasten the knot on my sundress and let it fall from my shoulders, so I’m standing in my bra and panties in front of the very unflattering full-length mirror. I’m hoping it’s unflattering. It damned well better be unflattering. But then I notice a very faint bruise on my hip, in exactly the pattern of his fingers as he gripped me last night. I slide my fingertips along it and turn to warm caramel inside.
“What kind of movie is it?” I ask him as I finagle my hands through the spaghetti straps above my head and tug the new dress down over my body. It’s a size too small and hugs me like shrink-wrap.
“Romantic comedy.” His zipper slides up. “Workplace romance.”
Oh, God.
I shimmy into the dress and stare at my reflection. There are times in my life when I am acutely aware of that devil-angel-shoulder situation, and this is one of them. Looking at myself in the mirror, I can almost see the two of them in position. The devil is a real vixen. Combat boots, and a raspy, sultry voice. No bullshit and a very respectable smoky eyeliner. She likes her music feminist and her tequila straight. On the other shoulder sits the angel. She’s a dead-ringer for my fourth-grade librarian. She smells like mothballs, her lipstick flakes off when she talks, and she’s big into smooth jazz. I hate her. Also, she’s pretty much always exactly right. Double-demerit.
The angel says, “Penelope Eloise Darling. Why can’t you find yourself a nice man with a steady job? That eHarmony questionnaire doesn’t take that long. Just think: you could find a nice Baptist minister in Tallahassee! At least you’d live in the same state!”
I suck in my stomach so hard that I feel dizzy, and try to pull up my zipper. Not even close. I cinch the fabric shut with one hand, suck in harder, and give it a yank. It bites into me, and I stretch the dress to the side as far as I can, testing the tensile strength of 1% spandex to its limit.
The devil takes out her hip flask and downs a pull of tequila while she considers her black nail polish. “Fuck that noise, Pen. You want him, take him. Boom. Done.”
The zipper finally cooperates. I don’t even look like myself, this thing is so tight. I spin slightly and look at my ass, over my shoulder.
Which is when the door squeaks open. I fully expect it to be Maisie, brandishing her Kindle and saying something like, “I knew I’d seen that jawline before,” but it isn’t. It’s him.
“Oh, fuck. Sorry, I thought this was my…” He trails off.
The desire ricochets between us like a pinball trapped at the bottom of an arcade machine. He’s in shorts that fit him like a glove, and a soft navy T-shirt, with a vintage Pac-Man logo, washed out and faded. And he’s found a hat, a super-stylish baseball hat with mesh on the back. Plus, flip-flops.
I thought he was handsome before, but this, this… Casual, and carefree, and look at those shoulders. Peeking out from the sleeve of the T-shirt is the bottom edge of his tattoo on the curve of his massive bicep.
Here lies Penelope Darling, who died of a swoon.
He lets out a breathy, quiet whistle. “I’m buying that for you.”
The way he talks, that dominance, makes me feel like I’m some new but treasured thing. I’m not used to it, but one thing is for sure: I like it. Except even in my haze, it’s the angel that answers first. “No, no, no. I’ll never wear it.”
“I don’t care.”
Frivolous retail purchases especially for me? “We…should get to work.”
His eyes move up and down over me again so deliciously slowly that I feel a shiver up my spine. “I'll show you getting to work.” He takes a step toward me, and runs his hand up the side of my dress.
I grab ahold of the hanger rack behind me as my knees start to get a little wobbly. “I’ll take you to the Boardwalk first. Rides. Ball-and-hammer. Funnel cakes.” He’s reducing me to bullet points. I can’t even string two nouns and a verb.
He pulls his hand away with a frustrated grunt. “Fine. But I’m buying it for you. No arguments. Got it?” he says finally, and then heads back to his changing room.
The devil turns to the angel, who’s got her lips in a tight, prudish line. But the devil? She gives zero fucks, and she raises her hip flask to me. “Here’s to romantic comedy.”
Toodles, Man Wagon.
21
Russ
She takes a sledgehammer in both hands and brings it down hard. The ball in the cylinder almost hits the top, but not quite. Penny raises one clenched fist in the air, cursing the
ball through giggles.
“Your girl’s got some guns on her!” says the big guy running the ball-and-hammer.
I hand him another raffle ticket, and he tucks it into his front pocket, which is stuffed almost to bursting. My girl. It’s too soon for that, way too soon. But still, I like the sound of it. The ring to it. The simplicity of that beautiful fucking idea. “She sure does.”
Wham goes the hammer again, ding goes the bell, and the lights at the top come to life, slightly dimmed against the afternoon sun. “Yaaaay!” she cheers, beaming. “What’d I win?”
“Got your choice of a coconut,” the guy explains, holding one up that still has a $2.99 sticker on it from the grocery, “or a goldfish,” which he holds out in a plastic sandwich bag.
My snort sneaks up on me out of nowhere, but Penny is much more polite. In her eyes, though, I can see that sassy twinkle. What kind of shitty prize is a goldfish? So she chooses the coconut, smiling and laughing as the big guy drives a gleaming railroad spike into the top, and sticks a straw inside.
I grab my camera from around my neck—key equipment if you’re in the PI-location-scout trade—and make like I’m going to take a picture of her. At first, I have zero intention of taking a picture of her, because there’s a shitload of guys here who look seriously shady. That’s the best thing about local carnivals. Need a guy who “has the skills required” to unfasten an ankle bracelet? Carnival. Need to launder some money fast? Town fair. Need to get a sense of a crooked mayor’s potential known associates, criminal, personal, and somewhere in between?
Just Like That Page 10