Heels

by Megan Erickson

  Heels

  Megan Erickson

  A Boots Novel

  Contents

  Boots

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Want more?

  Boots: Chapter One

  Zero Hour

  About the Author

  Other books by Megan Erickson

  Acknowledgments

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Megan Erickson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Copyedited by Keyanna Butler

  Cover design by Theresa Connor

  First edition May 2018

  Dedication

  To those who want to believe…

  Heels can be read as standalone, but if you haven’t read Boots yet, what are you waiting for?

  “This story has a bit of everything - romance, suspense, violence, humor and a couple in Tara and Lance that will burrow in deep!!”

  — Nicandbooks

  One

  I tugged at my dress for the millionth time because I swore everyone could see my coochie.

  My sister caught me, like she caught me the other half a million times, and narrowed her eyes. “It’s not as short as you think it is.” Reva’s eyes softened. “Look, I want you to have a good time.”

  Shit. Shit. I really needed get out of my own head. This was Reva’s night, her big bachelorette bash before she married the love of her life. As her maid of honor, it was my duty to ensure she had a smashing time. Instead I was wishing I was home in my PJs reading a book. Not here, at a bar in Kentucky, drinking something really strong and wearing a dress that was too tight, too short, hair done up, makeup to the nines.

  Basically, I wasn’t sure who I was tonight. Her friends—all her coworkers at the salon—converged on me as soon as I’d arrived at the hotel. They’d been eager to dress up Reva’s sister, the mousey librarian who preferred knee-length pencil skirts and blouses that didn’t show off my cleavage. Heels though… well, I’ve always loved my heels.

  I took a sip of my drink for courage. “I’m having a great time!”

  Reva gave me a look like she didn’t believe me.

  “Honey, I am,” I insisted. “Well, I’m a little off my game because…” I gestured to my body with a flourish. “But I’ll get used to it. I’ll be…Samantha’s sluttier, drunker alter-ego.”

  Reva laughed at that. “It’s fun for a night, right? It’s like Halloween. And Sam, I wouldn’t say this if I was sober, but because I’m not, I’ll going to give it to you straight. I asked the girls to do this for you. Because I’m tired of you living in that world that Tim caged you in.”

  My back went straight. “Reva—”

  “No.” She threw back the rest of her long island iced tea. “He made you think you had to hide your body, and he was flat. Out. Fucking. Wrong.”

  Her voice was rising, and I glanced around uneasily. Then I began to gulp my drink because Reva was about to go on a tear and once she started, there wasn’t any stopping.

  “Did you actually look at yourself in the mirror before we left?” she rapped out at me.

  “Um—”

  “Because if you did, you’d see Scarlet Johansson curves with a Kim K. ass and hair like… fuck I don’t know a celebrity with good hair.”

  “Sofia Vergara!” Trish piped up.

  “Sofia Vergara hair!” Reva yelled in my face.

  They were being nice. Drunk nice. I didn’t look like Scarlet, and my ass certainly wasn’t like Kim Kardashian’s. My hair was the one decent thing I was proud of, but even that let me down sometimes.

  I tried to change the subject. “Can we talk about you since this is your night?”

  “Nope,” Reva shook her head.

  “You need to get your groove back.” That was Trish again.

  I was starting to suspect this night was less bachelorette party and more build-up-Sam’s-confidence therapy.

  “I already told y’all I wanted to take you shopping. That body was made to wear clothes.” That came from Ali, the salon’s makeup artist, who was twenty-two and looked like a supermodel.

  I gawked at her. “Um…”

  “Also those eyes,” she gestured at me. “You should’ve been born with winged eyeliner, that’s how well it fits your eye shape.”

  Reva, Trish, Ali, and the four other members of our party were now looking at me expectantly. I didn’t know what to do. Or say. They were being so sweet, and while I recognized that my ex-husband’s words had done a number on me and my confidence, I wasn’t getting over it in five minutes because some women complimented me. Oh how I wished it was that easy. But seven years with a man who told me I looked like a whore when I wore makeup and sneered that I was fat when I picked up a cookie had scarred me deep.

  I wished I wasn’t like this, that I wasn’t damaged as all hell. That I could wear this dress with confidence.

  Reva didn’t wait for me to talk. She grabbed my hand and hopped off her stool, forcing me to do the same. “Be back in a jiff, girls,” she said. We walked down the length of the bar—which wasn’t too crowded yet. It was still early for the Blue Eagle—a small bar in Gentry, Kentucky, that had a little bit of everything. Good food thanks to an always busy kitchen, a karaoke stage, a dance floor, and an arcade area with pool tables. There was also a deck which was filling up fast. It was a one-stop shop in a town that already had enough places to get drunk. Still, it was a Saturday night in the summer, and the crowd was growing.

  Reva marched me down to the bathroom. She threw open the door, herded me in front of a mirror and stood behind me. I looked down at the sink.

  “Uh uh,” she said, forcing my chin up with a forefinger. Then she said softer, “Look at yourself, baby.”

  Well, now I was going to cry and make my mascara run because my older sister was doing that soft voice thing she did. Calling me baby only made it worse.

  “Your mascara is waterproof, but still try not to cry,” she said with a small giggle.

  That made me smile through my blurred vision. “Reva,” I whispered.

  “No, that asshole…goddamn if I’d known it was half as bad as it was, I would have murdered him in his sleep.”

  She would have, I didn’t even doubt it. It’d been me and Reva since we were kids, since our dads—we didn’t have the same father—were unknown and our mother forgot she had two kids. Reva had always taken care of me, but old habits died hard and I’d chosen the same kind of man that my mother spent all our childhood choosing. The bad kind.

  “Baby, you’re beautiful,” Reva said. “He knew he had beauty in his hands and instead of cherishing it, he had to beat it down to build himself up. That’s not your fault, and I don’t care if I bleed myself dry getting my sister back, I’ll do it.”

  Yeah, I was going to cry. “I’m trying.” I sniffed. “I’m trying so hard.”

  “I know you are. And I’m sorry if I made the wrong choice letting the girls go at you, but I wanted you to see that you can have fun, be flirty and gorgeous, wear whatever you want, put on as much
makeup as you want. For you. Not for a man. Get it?”

  I smoothed my hands over the dress that Reva had bought for me. The bodice was a light peach with thin straps that dipped low in the back in a V. The color went well with my summer tan. My cleavage was out of this world, held in by a fancy bra the girls put on me. The dress was skin tight until it flared out past my hips, the color deepening to a darker coral. The girls weren’t wrong—I had curves. I was a Coke bottle. Always was, always would be. My waist was maybe a little thicker since my divorce because Tim wasn’t around to glare at me whenever I wanted some Oreos.

  On my feet were strappy, heeled sandals which made me maybe five-foot-four. If I was being generous. Reva got the height so her daddy must have been bigger than mine. I wasn’t sure where my chestnut hair came from, or my green eyes. Both Reva and our mother were blonde with blue eyes.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to really look at myself—the smoky eyes, the lipstick, my long hair, curled in a way I could probably never achieve again. “I’m not quite there yet on my own, but I’m working on it. I promise. So tonight, I’ll be my alter ego. And I’ll pretend my ex-husband wasn’t a douche. I’ll pretend I have a personality—”

  “Oh my God, shut up, Sam,” she said on an eyeball.

  “—And I’ll pretend like I love my body and think I’m hot.”

  Reva stared at me for a while with pursed lips. “Well I guess that’s an improvement.”

  “It certainly is. Now can we go back to your friends and finish out this bachelorette party in style? You still need to do karaoke or something.”

  She laughed, looking fabulous and gorgeous in her royal blue mini-dress with her pink bachelorette sash. “You bet, baby. Let’s go.”

  So we walked out arm and arm, and instead of the amaretto and Coke I’d been drinking—Trish called it a pussy drink—I leveled up to a long island iced tea like Reva.

  It happened after I set my long island iced tea on the bar. It happened after I ordered another one, sipping this one a teensy bit faster because I was feeling loose and fuzzy and happy. It happened once we left our spots at the bar and began to make our way to the edge of the dance floor.

  That was when I felt a tingle slither up the back of my neck, like someone was watching me. I looked over my shoulder into the crowd, but no one stuck out. I didn’t meet anyone’s gaze from across the room and lock eyes. None of that. I turned back to the dance floor to see Trish leading Reva onto it as the beginning bars of Crazy in Love started up.

  And I felt it again. This time, there was a light touch on my elbow, just a brush of fingers, and I jerked away, then twisted my head to look up into a man’s face.

  The first thing I noticed was that he had a the most expressive smile. It was a good one too, big with white teeth. It took up the whole bottom of his face, but it was what that grin promised. Along with those dimples cutting into his cheeks—that grin promised banter and trouble and smartass comments…and a whole lot of orgasms. Oh yeah, a whole heck of a lot. Paired with light hazel eyes, and a rumpled head of brown hair, I lost my voice. I just gaped at this man who was grinning at me with so much promise.

  “You looking for me?” he said.

  I blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”

  “Saw you looking around, and I thought, ah, she’s looking for me. So, I thought I’d come over. Make it easy on you.”

  I was still staring at him open-mouthed like an idiot. Was this happening? Men like this—tall, lean, well-built men with charming grins didn’t walk up to me. They looked right through me like I was invisible.

  “Um—”

  He leaned in closer, so close I could smell his fresh-scented cologne. “Close your mouth, Peaches, before you catch a fly.”

  I snapped my jaw shut with an audible clack. Peaches?

  “The dress,” he said oddly. And I realized I’d said my question out loud. “Just a heads up. You walk in here wearing that color, and every man in here is wondering if you taste like peaches too.”

  Now my eyes bugged out of my head. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”

  He shrugged, totally unbothered. “Just telling the truth.” Then he grinned again, and I realized he knew what the grin did. He knew how it made women feel, what it promised. He wielded it like a weapon. Even knowing that, I was slayed by it. At his mercy. Waving the white flag.

  And that’s why I opened my mouth and said. “You said, every man, did that include you?”

  That grin got bigger, deeper, his hazel eyes warmed—no they didn’t warm, they ignited—and for the first time in a long damn time, I felt heat lick between my legs. And that felt good, good in a way I hadn’t realized I’d needed.

  “You want an answer to that? Then it’s one I have to show you,” he said.

  And oh yeah, oh my God, I was turned on. In response, I wrapped my lips around the straw of my drink and sucked hard.

  At that, he threw back his head and laughed. I hadn’t realized he could get more handsome. But when that deep rumble of laughter bubbled up from his chest and left that gorgeous mouth, I fell a little bit deeper into him.

  He stopped laughing and bent his head so that his lips were at my ear, and that’s where he whispered. “Baby, you just say the word and I’ll be on my knees for that taste.”

  My legs began to shake.

  A hand wrapped around my bicep, and his eyes darkened just a bit, slicing to whoever was standing next to me. It was Ali, and she was looking at the man in front of me with a healthy dose of caution. She was also fucking gorgeous, so I knew now was the time this man would realize there were better options on the table.

  I glanced at him preparing to see him perusing Ali’s body, but that wasn’t the case. His eyes were latched on me, right on my face. I didn’t have a chance to dwell on that when Ali shouted over the music. “Come onto the dance floor. Reva wants you!”

  Right, more like they’d probably seen me dumbfounded by a man way out of my league and were saving me.

  “Right,” I said. I shot the man a smile and gestured toward where I saw my sister beckoning me. “Sorry, here for a bachelorette party.”

  His gaze followed my gesture to my sister, then he cut back to me, completely ignoring the younger supermodel at my side. What was that about?

  “Come on,” Ali tugged on my arm again.

  “Be there in a minute honey,” I said, and she let my arm go in order to saunter back onto the dance floor.

  “See you ar—” I began.

  His hand settled on my hip, hot and heavy, and when his fingers pressed ever so slightly into my flesh, I swore I felt those five points of contact all over my body. “Name.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Peaches works.”

  His eyes crinkled, like that amused him. Still he asked. “What’s your name, beautiful?”

  “Sam.” I blurted out.

  “Sam?”

  “Samantha.”

  “Samantha,” he murmured, and his eyes did a scan of my body. “Right.”

  “I need to go…” I gestured again.

  He let me go, and as I was running out onto the dance floor, I realized I hadn’t asked him his name.

  Trish immediately pulled me into her when I reached their side, her eyes wide. “Oh my God, Sam. He’s still watching you.”

  I didn’t want to turn around, because I was a little worried if I locked gazes with him again, I’d never be able to pull away. I looked to my sister. “Is he watching me?”

  Reva’s eyes drifted over my shoulder. “Oh yeah. Casual as can be, leaning against the wall, beer between his fingers, one thumb in a belt loop. He’s like a Marlboro Man come to life. Goddamn.”

  “Anyone know who that is?” Trish asked the group.

  The town wasn’t that big, and I was sure if anyone had seen him wandering around, we’d remember it.

  “I do,” said Vera, an older stylist whose family had lived in town for five generations. “New
mechanic for Harry at Gentry Auto.” Her son worked there.

  “Oh shit, he’s a mechanic?” That was Ali, who gave him another look over her shoulder.

  I hadn’t realized I was frowning at her until her eyes met mine and she laughed. “Oh don’t be jealous, Sam. He has eyes for no one here but you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Maybe he just sees me as an easy mark. No way he’s into me with one look.”

  Trish blinked at me.

  “Can we just dance?” I snapped at Reva, hands on my hips, flinging my hair over my shoulder, mustering all the attitude I could.

  Reva hooted and clapped, clearly pleased. “Baby sister, we can do whatever you want as long as you don’t lose that fire you’re finally getting back.”

  “Whatever,” I muttered.

  Then a new song came on, and with the man’s eyes burning holes in my back, I danced.

  Two

  “Peaches.”

  His voice came to me later, after about ten songs where I danced and sang and laughed until my stomach cramped. We stood at the bar, where my sister was chugging water on our orders before we took her back home to her place. My buzz was wearing off but I was feeling good. Tired, but good. While dancing, I’d glanced back to see if the man was still standing there, and didn’t see him.

  So he’d given me a boost of confidence with his flirty smirk, and his dirty words, then left. I hadn’t been mad, but I had been disappointed, which was ridiculous. I had no idea what to do with a man like that, with all that charm and sex appeal. So it was for the best.