Leather and Lace

by Jessie Evans

  Sawyer thanked Bubba for the directions and shook his hand again before turning back to Mia and adding in a more intimate tone, “I would say goodbye, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

  “Oh, right, um…Mia.” She thrust a flustered arm toward him. “Mia Sherman.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mia.” His warm, dry palm engulfed her hand, sending a shiver of awareness prickling across her skin. “Hope I’ll see you around.”

  “I’m sure you will. It’s a small town.” She pulled her hand from his, and crossed her arms, willing her body to simmer the heck down. “But I won’t run you over again. I promise. That was a one-time thing.” She hit the words hard, hoping he would understand that she was talking about the kiss, as well as their collision. “I don’t usually go around diving through bushes in the middle of the night so…don’t worry.”

  “I won’t,” he said, a cocky note in his voice Mia didn’t care for. “You two have a nice night.”

  And then he turned and swaggered across the parking lot. Literally swaggered, like the hero of an action film, off to fight the bad guys, and probably blow up a few buildings while he was at it.

  Mia wanted to yell that there was no need to swagger on your way to get greasy eggs at a truck stop diner at three in the morning, but then Sawyer stopped beside the vintage Shovelhead Harley Davidson that Ross had been drooling over earlier in the evening, and swung one muscled thigh over the seat. He mounted the machine with an easy grace that made Mia’s mouth go dry, and things low in her body envy the leather between his thighs, before gunning the chopper to life, and guiding the purring bike out onto Main Street without a backward glance.

  “Am I crazy,” Bubba said, as the rumble of the Harley’s motor faded into the distance, “or were you kissing that guy before I walked up?”

  “Where’s Ross?” Mia asked, affecting greater concern than she felt for the man, who was probably at her place making nachos as she spoke. “Is he okay? Did you two get caught?”

  “Because it looked like you were kissing him,” Bubba said, obviously not prepared to let the subject drop. “I kind of hope you were, Mia. This schoolmarm thing is a dumb idea.”

  “Spinster, not schoolmarm,” Mia corrected. “And it’s not a dumb idea; it’s my destiny.”

  Bubba stepped closer, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I get that you were in a bad place when you came home, babe, but you know that curse isn’t real, right? I mean, what happened to your gram was just bad luck.”

  Mia bristled, but she refused to have this discussion again. She and Bubba had had the same argument a dozen times in the past year, and every time, it ended badly. Bubba came from a long line of mostly practical people, who lived off the land, and Mia came from a long line of cursed first daughters, who lived a real life ghost story, and both of them were too stubborn to entertain the other person’s point of view. It was better to table this line of questioning, and forget she’d ever kissed Sawyer. He was just another tourist. He’d be gone in a few days, and then everything would be the way it was before.

  It was a strangely sad thought, but comforting, too.

  At least that’s what Mia told herself.

  “Is Ross making nachos?” Mia shrugged Bubba’s hand off her shoulder and started across the parking lot. “Because I’m starving.”

  Bubba sighed, but fell in beside her. “He was chopping up onions and cilantro when I left.”

  Mia moaned in anticipation. “Oh, good. I love them with cilantro.”

  “I told him to throw some cookies in the oven, too. Just in case we needed sweet after the salty.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Mia said, but as she and Bubba walked through the warm night, with a sky full of diamonds twinkling overhead, and a gentle breeze kissing their skin, she wasn’t thinking about nachos and cookies, or even good friends and beer.

  She was thinking about kisses that made your toes curl, and a man who tasted like long summer days and hot summer nights.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sawyer Kane was not the type of man who stalked women.

  After his break up with Heather, a woman who gave new meaning to the phrase “invasion of privacy,” he knew what it felt like to have someone sticking their nose too deep into your business. It was annoying at best, and a form of torture at worst, and he would never do to anyone what Heather had done to him.

  Plugging Mia’s—aka Amelia Sherman’s—name into a search engine and trolling through the results long enough to find out that she was a Lonesome Point native, even prettier than he’d guessed, and ran a lingerie shop down the street from his hotel, wasn’t even close to the kind of snooping Heather had indulged in when she’d tapped his phone, but it still left a bad taste in Sawyer’s mouth.

  But not bad enough to banish the memory of Mia’s kiss.

  Sawyer hadn’t been kissed like that in longer than he could remember. He’d forgotten that something so relatively innocent could make his blood rush and his head spin. He’d forgotten that simply the feel of soft curves pressed to his chest and a woman’s mouth, warm and alive against his own, could make him ache like he’d been on the receiving end of a ten-minute blowjob. He’d been fantasizing about sinking into Mia Sherman’s softness since she tackled him Saturday night, and woke Monday morning from a dream featuring the redhead blushing beneath him as he kissed his way across every inch of her creamy skin.

  The moment his eyes opened, he groaned, not surprised to see his erection tenting the scratchy hotel sheets. He’d barely been awake thirty seconds and he was already so turned on it was painful.

  Clearly, he needed to get laid. ASAP.

  It had been over three months since his last time with Heather. He hadn’t been celibate this long since he was fifteen years old. It was time to get back in the saddle, and the curvy redhead with the sweetest mouth he’d ever tasted would do just fine. Mia had played hard to get when her friend showed up, but Sawyer felt confident she’d change her tune once they were alone. He’d never been turned down by a woman he wanted, especially not a woman who had already kissed him with enough passion to prove she was as desperate for a physical connection as he was.

  He had the entire morning before he had to meet his contact at the ghost town for the initial walk-through. That should be more than enough time to locate Mia’s shop, secure a dinner date for tonight, and be well on his way to making his fantasies of having her naked in his bed a reality.

  Sawyer swung out of bed and headed for the shower, taking the time to shave his head and face, though he’d just shaved Saturday afternoon. Once he was hired, he’d go back to his usual, every fourth day schedule. No one cared what he looked like when he was covered in sawdust and keeping company with construction workers and electricians, but when he was consulting, he liked to look like a man who could be trusted with priceless historical structures.

  Sawyer had learned the restoration business from his Great Uncle Felix, and Felix was a big believer in keeping up appearances. His uncle wore a three-piece suit to every consult, a practice that had charmed more than a few stuffy historical society ladies into hiring the dapper old man and his massive nephew.

  Sawyer couldn’t pull off a three-piece suit—he was simply too large, and a suit made him look like a mobster, no matter how well it fit. But after his shower, he put on his nicest pair of dark jeans and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up. It was going to be a southwest Texas scorcher out today, but it was a dry heat, and he wouldn’t suffer too much in long sleeves. The desert heat wasn’t anything like the slick, humid summers in Louisiana when he was growing up.

  He could still remember how it felt to have rivers of sweat tracing their way down his back as he hid in the garage that last summer, holding his breath as perspiration dripped from the tip of his nose and slithered down his neck, praying none of his father’s former friends would find his hiding place. None of them had, and he’d gotten out of the garage—and Louisiana—alive, but not every member of his family had be
en so lucky.

  Ever since that summer, while Sawyer was growing up on his grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming, he had worked hard, and played harder, determined to live enough for himself, and the family he’d lost. After the mess with Heather, he’d been more withdrawn than usual—downright hermit-ish, to tell the truth—but he was ready to get back to wringing all the good out of life. He was going to land this job restoring the neglected portion of Lonesome Point’s historic ghost town, and he was going to win over a redhead to keep him company while he was in Texas. An extended fling, with a woman who kissed the way Mia did, sounded like just what he needed to help him get back on track.

  After breakfast at the hotel restaurant, Sawyer returned to his room long enough to brush his teeth, slide on his Stetson, and double check the address of Lavender and Lace, and then he was off.

  He stepped into the hot morning sun feeling optimistic about his fresh start. Lonesome Point was a small town, but it had character. The downtown area was a vibrant place with flourishing businesses, two large hotels, several restaurants, and a handful of bars that looked rowdy enough to offer a good time, but touristy enough for the cowboys to keep their guns in their trucks. The town sat on a hill, providing a scenic view of the surrounding desert and the long butte crouched in the distance. On the right side of the butte, a slender peak rose like a candle on a birthday cake—Lonesome Point’s namesake—casting a long shadow in the early morning light.

  The faded, gray remains of the original Lonesome Point settlement were barely visible at this distance, but even a glimpse was enough to get Sawyer’s creative juices flowing. He’d seen pictures of the ghost town on the tourist site, but he was eager to get inside the buildings that had been closed up for years and start brainstorming how best to bring those crumbling structures back to life. He genuinely loved his job, and the only thing that could have kept him from heading over to scope out the town before his meeting was the chance to scope out a certain redhead in the light of day.

  He stepped off the sidewalk, jogging across the street behind a battered Ford pickup and taking the steps up to Lavender and Lace’s front door two at a time. The shop was located on the ground floor of a two-story structure that looked straight out of the Old West, but Sawyer knew it had been built much more recently. They hadn’t had aluminum siding made to look like distressed wood in the frontier days, and the concrete foundation was a dead giveaway.

  But authentic or not, the building was quaint, with funky purple shutters and a large sign above the door that proclaimed the shop’s name in elegant script. In the window, strings of bras in all the colors of the rainbow hung above a sign that read, “You’re a Size Awesome, Come in and Get Fitted Today!”

  The sign made Sawyer smile as he stepped through the front door. The redhead sitting cross-legged on the shop’s hardwood floor in the middle of a pile of bras, wearing nothing but a filmy peach robe, made him smile even wider.

  Mia was even prettier than the picture he’d seen online. Shoulder length red curls framed a perfect oval face graced by soft brown eyes, full pink lips, and a sharp nose softened by a scattering of freckles. She was a tempting mix of cute and sexy as hell, but he had to confess the robe had him thinking more of her sexy side.

  “Good morning.” He winked as he let the door swing closed behind him. “If you dress like this for work all the time, I’ll be stopping by every day I’m in town.”

  “Um, excuse me!” Mia clutched the top of her robe, an action that only served to pull the fabric tighter across her chest, emphasizing the curves Sawyer hadn’t been able to quit thinking about since they were pressed against him Saturday night. “The store isn’t open yet!”

  Sawyer took another step into the cozy shop, only slightly intimidated by the amount of lace packed into the small space. “The door wasn’t locked.”

  “We don’t lock doors in the mornings around here.” She scrambled to her feet, reaching down to pin her robe closed above her knees with her free hand. “It’s a small town thing.”

  “That can be dangerous,” he said. “Even in a small town.”

  “Well, we trust that the sun keeps people decent, and that they can read,” she said, jabbing a finger toward the door before backing away toward the counter. “Did you miss the big ass sign that said ‘Open at ten’?”

  Sawyer ambled across the room, enjoying how flustered she seemed. It made him think he wasn’t the only one affected by their kiss Saturday night.

  “I don’t read signs,” he said. “I figure, if I don’t read the signs, I can’t be blamed for not following directions.”

  “Ignorance of the law is not a legitimate defense,” she said, breath rushing out as her bottom hit the front of the counter. “Believe me, I tried that when I was fifteen. I still ended up with three weeks of community service.”

  Sawyer cocked his head, intrigued. “Juvenile delinquent?”

  “Just a little harmless trespassing with body paint, but there were signs posted, and prize pigs involved so…” Her eyes widened as he stopped in front of her. “You really are enormous, aren’t you?”

  Sawyer shrugged uncomfortably, hoping it wasn’t his size that was making her anxious. “Been told that once or twice, but I’m harmless.”

  “I doubt that,” she said with a wry arch of her brow that put him at ease. “But I don’t think I’ve seen anyone as big as you outside of a Mexican wrestling ring.”

  “I enjoy Mexican wrestling,” Sawyer said. “The masks are fun.”

  “They are.” She nodded in agreement, but her whiskey-colored eyes narrowed. “Your face…isn’t what I was expecting, either.”

  Sawyer’s tongue slipped out to dampen his suddenly dry lips. “Not an unpleasant surprise, I hope.”

  She shook her head for a long moment, but when she spoke all she said was—

  “Nope.”

  Sawyer nodded, trying to ignore the increasing awkwardness of their second meeting. “Well, I confess I had a pretty good idea what you looked like. I saw your picture on the shop website. I don’t like to pry, but I don’t usually kiss women I’ve only seen in the dark, so…” Sawyer took a breath, feeling more self-conscious the longer she stood there staring with that suspicious look on her face. “Anyway, I’ll get out of your hair, I just wanted to see if you might be free for dinner tonight.”

  “Dinner,” she repeated, her auburn brows drawing together.

  “It’s the meal after lunch, but before late night snack. You might have heard of it.”

  “I’ve heard of it.” Her scowl deepened, her lack of appreciation for his joke apparent in the humorless tone of her voice. “But I don’t eat dinner.” She shook her head, sending her curls bouncing. “I mean, I eat dinner, I just don’t eat dinner with people. Male people,” she clarified, waving a hand up and down, indicating Sawyer’s obvious maleness. “You know, who aren’t friends.”

  Sawyer smiled his least threatening smile, prepared to take things slow if that’s what Mia wanted. That’s not the vibe he’d gotten from their kiss, but he’d tasted whiskey on her lips Saturday night. She might be more conservative without a little liquid courage, and that was fine with him. He was a patient man, especially when he knew the woman whose trust he was winning would be worth the wait.

  “We could be friends,” he said. “I liked how you spruced things up around town Saturday night. The bras up the flag pole were a nice touch.”

  Mia’s lips parted, and for a moment, he thought she was going to return his smile.

  Instead, she clamped her mouth shut and lifted her hands, shooing him toward the door. “Thank you, but I already have more friends than I have time for.” She shooed him again, with increasingly urgent flaps of her hands, until Sawyer had no choice but to take a step back.

  “I really don’t mean to be rude,” she continued as she herded him across the shop. “But you’re only in town for a few days, and I don’t do short term relationships—”

  “But I—”

  “Or lo
ng term relationships,” Mia hurried on, before Sawyer could tell her he was in town for at least the two weeks it would take to finish his consult, and conceivably much longer. “Any relationships, really. I’m a schoolmarm—spinster. It’s kind of a family tradition, and I’m big on tradition. Super big.”

  Sawyer’s back hit the door, but before he could reach for the doorknob, Mia lunged around him, hauled the door open, and all but shoved him out onto her front stoop.

  “So take care,” she said, waving at him with a falsely cheery smile. “Enjoy Lonesome Point.”

  Sawyer opened his mouth to say he’d enjoy it a lot more if she’d tell him what he’d done to get on her bad side, but before he could speak, she’d slammed the door in his face hard enough to make him flinch.

  “That went well,” he mumbled, his mood souring as his cocky attitude from this morning came back to bite him in the ass.

  Clearly, Mia Sherman wasn’t going to be won over as easily as he’d anticipated.

  But that was all right. He wasn’t going to give up yet, not until they’d had a chance to talk when they were both sober and fully-clothed. And in the meantime, he’d keep his eyes open for other eligible women. Lonesome Point wasn’t a big town, but there had to be at least a few other single women between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-three who would be interested in what he had to offer. It would be hard to get Mia—and that kiss—out of his head, but in the past year he’d learned it was best to keep his options open.

  Sawyer turned, starting toward the coffee shop down the street, figuring he might as well kill some time before his meeting, only to nearly run over a petite blond woman standing on the sidewalk behind him with a little girl who looked like her pint-sized clone clinging to her hand.