by Cherry Adair
“Before you get started, I have a pole in the garage. I’d like it taken upstairs and installed.”
“A pole?” He gave her a lazy, amused look. Still no real smile. Mia cocked her head, trying to imagine him laughing. She couldn’t. “You training to be a firefighter? A high jumper? Ballet?”
“It’s an exercise pole. It’s in a green box near the garage door. Bring it upstairs, and I’ll show you where I want it.”
“I’ll take care of it, then I want to tackle the roof while the rain holds off.” He scanned the list. “I’ll save inside jobs for when it’s raining, and tackle the porch steps after I handle the roof situation. I’ll need supplies. Noticed a hardware store on the way into town. I’ll hit that when we’re done here.”
Today was a day of firsts. Mia had never let anyone set her priorities for her. She was a full-steam-ahead kind of girl. All ducks in neat, orderly rows, all tasks numbered, deadlines set. After last night, followed by this morning’s shockers, she was prepared to throw them all out the window and substitute every one of her tasks for sex.
“I’ll change and go into town with you—I need to pick up a few things at the market.” He wasn’t going to be satisfied with yogurt and eggs, no matter how slowly they were cooked. And his dog needed something other than her dinner.
“Change? We’re not going into combat. You’re fine the way you are.”
Mia narrowed her eyes. No one ever talked to her that way. But, of course, he was right. “Looking ‘fine’ wasn’t exactly my goal,” she pointed out dryly. “But we’re not going to the prom.”
He cupped his coffee mug between his broad palms and gave her an assessing look. “Did you go to your prom?”
“No.” Stanford Long had asked, and then not shown to pick her up. He’d just wanted to humiliate her and bring her down several pegs because she’d refused to sleep with him. If only her classmates had any idea how insecure she was, they could’ve saved themselves the effort.
She’d worn a Vera Wang strapless and a million dollars in jewelry. The most minimalist her stylist was willing to go. She’d sat on the bottom step of the double sweeping staircase waiting until after eleven, when she knew for sure he wasn’t coming.
Mia hadn’t mentioned the humiliating event to a soul, not even Todd. From then on, all dates were on her terms, or no terms at all.
“You must’ve been a pretty damn cute teenager.”
“I—I was put together.” Orthodontics, colored contacts, facials twice a week, stylist at the house every day—a Blush product from head to toe.
“ ‘Put together’? What the hell does that mean?”
“Well-groomed,” she told him wryly, desperately wanting to comb her fingers through that mane of dark hair hanging to his shoulders and falling over one eye. Thick and lustrous, it had a slight curl to it that should’ve made him look effeminate but instead made him look like a sexy pirate. “What about you?”
He was fit and athletic. Probably from working construction and not from working out in a gym. There didn’t appear to be an ounce of fat on him; his muscles were rock hard and clearly defined beneath the still-damp fabric of his T-shirt. “I bet you were on every sports team.”
“For a while, yeah. But no prom, or even the thought of one. I stopped going to school at fifteen, and spent most days with a street gang to further my education.”
Mia was appalled. Her childhood had been devoid of affection, and even though her schoolmates were all in a similar income bracket, her shyness and her excessive wealth separated her from everyone else. She’d been excruciatingly lonely, but she’d always felt safe in that ivory tower. The thought of having that safety stripped away was unthinkable. “You ran away from home?”
“First my mother died, then my father died a few years later.”
“That’s terrible. Where did you go? Who took care of you?”
He gave her a surprised look. “I took care of myself. I wasn’t going into the foster system. My father had a small construction company, and I worked for him after school from the time I was strong enough to hold a hammer. After he died, the company folded, and I did whatever construction jobs I could find. Paid mostly under the table, since I was underage, then I just kept going.” He shrugged. “I’m bringing a shitload of experience to your table.”
“Good to know. And on that positive note . . .” She stood up. She didn’t want to feel empathy for this man. He was a stranger, a sexy stranger, but a stranger nevertheless. If not for some lunatic trying to kill her so she had to bide her time here, she and Cruz would never have met. “Let me show you where that exercise pole is.”
Chapter Five
Sandy’s Diner served frozen entrées and store-bought baked goods. According to the sign in the window, all of it was “homemade.” If the coffee shop had been in New York or San Francisco, it would’ve been cleverly marketed as eighties-style kitsch. Mia suspected the cheap red plastic furniture and beige Formica in Sandy’s Diner was just a result of bad taste rather than a deliberate attempt. The place was empty when she and Cruz stopped by on the way back from the hardware store before returning home.
She’d happily driven her new truck to the hardware store. Good practice, because the wide streets were pretty much empty, and she tended to get distracted and go wherever her eyes led her.
Mia glanced out the diner window, observing an elderly couple walking by, holding hands. “Before coming here”—she turned to look at Cruz across the table—“I had no idea towns like this still existed.”
His folded arms were propped on the table, and sunlight made the dark hair on his tanned skin shine silvery. She liked the look of his arms. Strong, muscled, tanned. A workingman’s arms. She dragged her attention back to his face, where the distraction was ten times worse. The man had his own gravitational field, and it was hard to keep her hands off him.
The light tangled in his five-o’clock shadow and tipped his eyelashes with the same silvery gloss as the hair on his arms. Mia had to lick her parched lips to get any words out. Breakfast seemed like a dream now. Watching his mouth move as he talked made every nerve ending in her body lean forward. She wanted to touch. Be touched. God. She hunched because she could feel her nipples hardening just from thinking about having him inside her again.
She cleared her throat. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business, and a new, single woman in town is cause for gossip.” She’d decided that the less interaction she had with the town’s people, the better. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to recognize her from the news media.
“Let’s see how fast they learn I’m parked outside your house.”
His eyes weren’t dark brown, they were a rich deep amber. The color of her father’s best double-malt scotch, just much, much darker. “Parking isn’t a crime,” she pointed out. “Not even here. I don’t think—”
“So,” the owner of the restaurant addressed Cruz, having pushed aside the only waitress to get to their table, and effectively cutting Mia off midsentence. “You checked out of Gracie’s to go stay at the old Broussard place, huh?” She held a notepad under a beefy arm and the coffeepot in one fist, her small inquisitive eyes darting between Mia and Cruz as she waited for the salacious details. “Pretty isolated out there for a single gal alone.”
The insinuation floated over Mia’s head. Sandy could use both Blush’s Fountain of Youth intense hydrating gel and the Forever Young eye cream. And apparently she’d had her hair butchered by the same walk-in salon Mia had gone to, because her bleached hair looked as though a rat had gnawed at it. Lacquered and gelled, bleached and spiked, she thought she was something else.
“He’s not staying in my house. He’s staying at my house,” Mia clarified, her tone cool, feeling bitchy and not giving a shit. The woman should take some etiquette lessons. “I’ve hired Cruz to do some repairs.” She never explained herself. To anyone. But she didn’t want to arouse suspicion in town while she lived here. She didn’t give a damn what they said about her
after she left.
“Are you going to bring us cups so we can have some of that coffee?” she asked, much more polite than she felt. “And menus and silverware, too, while you’re at it?”
Without looking behind her, Sandy snapped her fingers at the hovering, painfully thin waitress, who, with the cook, watched them from kitchen doorway. “You hired my brother, then let this man fire him for no God-given reason. Just so you could have a good-looking man around the place? Marcel’s a hard worker. You shouldn’t have done that.”
Mia gave Cruz a puzzled glance and raised a brow.
“Latour,” he told her. “He was drunk at eight a.m.”
“He’s a good man.” Sandy took a step closer so they got a good whiff of her eau de cigarette. “He’s got his troubles, but he’s a good man. Got a wife and kid to feed. He wasn’t yours to fire.”
“Then he can come by tomorrow when he’s sober,” Mia asserted. When had Marcel come— Ah. The Jehovah’s Witness.
Sandy cocked an ample hip, gaze fixed on Cruz as she said pointedly and completely out of left field, “That camper ain’t got no faculties.”
Faculties? Between the accent and the word, Mia was puzzled for a second. Facilities.
“And you would know this how?” Cruz asked.
“I just happened to be over at Te Jean’s mechanic shop to pay for the outboard he fixed for my ol’ skiff. He asked me to take a look in your camper, see if I could find gros chat, his big, mean, ugly cat who’s always going missing. Sure hated to have it get stuck in your camper and die from the heat. That wouldn’t be good, no. That would be a mess, yeah.”
“You know what curiosity did to that cat, right?” Cruz said mildly, with a thin smile that should’ve warned the woman to shut up and do her job. It was a smile Mia recognized. She’d caught it in her own mirror a few times.
“Mais, it’s why I was in the camper. Weren’t you listening, man? You may be pretty, but you must have bad hearing.”
“Cups, coffee, menus,” Cruz said, maintaining his polite expression. “We can always take our appetites into Houma.”
“Here’s Daisy with your settings. I’ll tell Marcel Miss Mia wants him to come by tomorrow.” She shot Mia a pointed look.
“Only if he’s sober,” Cruz added, as Sandy stomped off.
Mia shook her head. “Charming.”
“Isn’t she, though?” Cruz absently shoved a shiny hank of dark hair off his face. It reached his shoulders but was clean and healthy-looking, and extremely touchable. Mia curled her fingers on her lap. “I’ll keep an eye on Latour,” he said, taking a pen out of his pocket. “Make sure he doesn’t become a problem.”
Oh, God. That look could make a woman’s underwear vaporize. Mia crossed her bare legs under the table, shifting in her seat as she squeezed her thighs together to mitigate the throbbing ache. The pressure just made the ache worse. What would he do if she grabbed him by the hand, hauled his ass out of the diner, and suggested parking the truck in a nearby alley so she could get number eleven, Sex in public, out of the way?
Mia thought of something the woman had mentioned earlier. “Who or what is the ‘Gracie’s’ you checked out of?” Some sexy blonde, she bet. Feeling a pinch that couldn’t possible be jealousy, more likely hunger pangs.
He plucked a paper napkin out of the holder and doodled down as he talked. “My truck broke down yesterday. Had to have a place to stay while it was being repaired. Gracie’s is the local B and B. Expensive. The bed in the camper will do me while I’m working out at your place.”
Mia bit her tongue before offering that he could do her, in her bed, for a few days. “There’s a bathroom downstairs; you’re welcome to use it—whenever.”
“Yeah, thanks, I was going to ask.”
Mia thought of being in bed and hearing him downstairs, naked in the shower. Dear God, she was turning into a sex maniac.
She watched his hand as it moved quickly over the paper napkin. He wasn’t writing, he was drawing. “Can I see?”
Wordlessly he handed it over. He’d sketched in incredibly few pen strokes a squinty-eyed, overweight rat with bouffant hair and a sly smile. “The likeness is amazing.” Mia smiled. “You could do sketches like this for a living.”
“It’s just a hobby.”
“May I keep it?”
He shrugged. “Never know when you might need to mop up a spill.”
“You’re being too modest. You have a real talent. Have you always been interested in art?”
“That isn’t art, but yeah. I guess. I like some stuff I’ve seen, hate others. Art’s subjective, isn’t it?”
“It is. My cousin likes strange shapes and angles and what I call ‘angry’ paintings with bold slashes of bloody red and oddly placed eyeballs.” Thinking of Todd made her miss him. She would’ve enjoyed sharing the Louisiana experience with him, though he would’ve gotten hives at Sandy’s coffee shop. “I tend to go for color and texture. But I’m not a connoisseur by a long shot. I just like what I like.”
“Elvis on black velvet?”
Mia laughed. “I’m more into dogs playing cards.”
He almost smiled. His lips didn’t curve, but his eyes lit up in amusement. “To each her own.”
“Ready to order?” the waitress asked, pouring coffee. When they said they needed a minute, she said she’d get back to them, then scurried back to her vantage point with the cook and the owner, who glared at them while she talked on her cell phone.
“Nice to know I wasn’t singled out.” Mia straightened her silverware with a rueful smile. “Sandy doesn’t like you either.”
“She hasn’t liked anyone since her boyfriend got her pregnant with quadruplets, then ran off with the local cheerleader in 1962.”
“I guess Te Jean told you that, huh?” Mia laughed at his deadpan delivery. He made not smiling sexy. “Let’s order before she poisons our food.”
Cruz called the waitress back and they ordered burgers. He spread his arms out across the back of the banquet seat, perfectly relaxed. And why shouldn’t he be? He wasn’t pretending to be someone he wasn’t, nor was he hiding in plain sight.
Mia mimicked his earlier pose, folding her arms on the table and leaning forward. She wanted to touch him so badly she could feel the nerve endings in her fingertips prickle with anticipation. “I’ve never lived in a small town, have you?” That was non-incendiary, wasn’t it?
“No, and you can see why. Everyone is in everyone else’s business.”
It stunned Mia to realize that while she felt as taut as a bowstring just looking at him sitting across from her, three feet away, he was as relaxed as one of Blush’s sexy male models, laid out like a buffet to sell cologne.
“What made you chose Bayou Cheniere to put down roots?” he asked, clearly in no hurry to return to the house to fix the roof.
“I was tired of big-city living,” she began, easily telling him the lie. “Getting tired of the rat race.”
“What do you do for a living?” He poured a waterfall of sugar into his cup, stirring as he watched her. It was almost as though he were searching through interesting files in her brain.
Mia shrugged. “Nothing too interesting. I work in a department store in Milwaukee.” She’d toured the Blush departments of several stores there over the years. “Cosmetics. My grandmother left me a little money and I want to take some time to decide what to do with my life.” Not too much information, if she wanted what she was telling him to sound believable.
“Louisiana’s a big jump from Milwaukee.”
“I figured a change was as good as a holiday.” So not true. She was a fish out of water here, and intensely missed much of her real life. She was here because she had to hide and this was the most unlikely place anyone would think to look for her. If she didn’t at least have the structure—however loose it might be—of her list to focus on, she’d already have gone mad.
She missed the rushing to meetings, the juggling of a hundred issues at once. The noise and elec
tric heartbeat of San Francisco. While Bayou Cheniere was absolutely nothing like living in that big cold house on Nob Hill, the silence and isolation here for the past month made her feel the same as she had growing up. Alone. “I saw the ad for the house. It looked as if it needed some TLC, I had the time . . .”
Cruz shot her another not-quite-smile, which made her heartbeat kick up and her mouth go dry. “That place needs a lot more than a little TLC.”
“I’ll give her what I can and go from there.” Mia realized she hadn’t taken her attention away from his sexy-as-sin mouth, and that devastating promise of a smile dragged her attention back to his face. With a brief stop at the impressive outline of his pecs under his T-shirt, unfortunately now dry. “Are you a city or country boy?”
“Mostly city. Small towns have their own charms, but”—he shrugged—“not my thing.”
She tried to detect an accent, but she couldn’t tell if he had one or not. “And yet, here you are. Why?”
“Why not? I can do my work anywhere. Just figured between jobs I’d travel around, see the country. Experience different places and people. I was heading to New Orleans when the truck broke down. Bayou Cheniere is as good as anywhere. As long as I can put gas in my truck and eat, I figure I’m here as long as the work lasts.”
“No permanent home?”
“The camper for now. So far I haven’t felt the urge to put down permanent roots. I was in the military for a while. Got to see the world, in a manner of speaking.”
The military could mean he was on permanent KP duty peeling potatoes. But somehow Mia didn’t think so. He seemed always alert, even when he appeared relaxed. His bearing was that of a man quick in his reflexes, fast on his feet.
He shrugged. “I like the freedom to pick up and go whenever the mood strikes me.”
“Leaving a string of broken hearts behind you?” Mia kept her tone light. Of course he left a string of broken hearts behind him. He was a man constantly on the move. But a man who looked and acted as he did would always have women falling at his feet. She’d be wise to remember that for the duration.