Bare Essentials

by Leslie Kelly Jill Shalvis

  She couldn’t tell him.

  How could she? How could she explain she’d made that list the night of her prom, when she’d been little more than a frightened teenager, coming home so destroyed, so determined to leave this town and to come back only for revenge?

  How could she tell him the catalyst for that entire event had been his own father?

  Simple.

  She couldn’t.

  * * *

  IT WAS A LIFELONG HABIT of Cassie’s that when she felt troubled, she went looking for more. Trouble, that is.

  Nothing much had changed in that department. By ten o’clock the next morning she was on the lookout for a good diversion. Not easy to find in a small town, but she hadn’t been a wild child for nothing.

  By noon she’d recruited Kate, who loved her idea for a “pre” show of the store. A private party, much along the lines of say…a Tupperware party.

  Except instead of kitchenware, they’d have it with naughty lingerie and toys.

  Always enthusiastic, Kate came up with a list of women to invite, which included—among others— Annie, Daisy and Diane. Cassie came up with…Stacie. She actually didn’t expect Stacie to be interested, but by the next night, despite the hastily thrown together party, her neighbor came an hour early, flushed with excitement, waving her checkbook.

  Diane was right behind her, grinning from ear to ear. “Hey, babe, let us in.”

  “You’re…early,” Cassie said, blocking their way. She couldn’t let them in yet, she had a ton to do.

  “We came to help.” Stacie craned her neck, trying to see around Cassie. “Come on, let us in.”

  But she wasn’t ready. And she didn’t need help. She never needed help. Besides Kate would be here any second now, and—

  “Don’t make us beg,” Stacie said. “We want to help.”

  “Ah, jeez. Okay.”

  “You know, normally Will pales when I go shopping,” Diane said about her husband as she gently pushed Cassie aside so they could enter the store. “But I told him I think you’re selling naughty stuff and he got all excited. He actually told me to go for broke.” The redheaded thirtysomething grinned like a newlywed, making Cassie actually…yearn?

  That made no sense, she never coveted what other women had, especially when it came to marriage. Being stuck with the same man every night for the rest of her life, cooking his meals, folding his clothes?

  No, thank you.

  And yet…she couldn’t help but wonder. What would it be like to have a man on your side, forever? For a moment she closed her eyes and tried to picture it. The image she came up with was a potbellied man with a cigar hanging out of his mouth and a remote control in his hand as he lay on the sofa shouting out orders for her to follow.

  Pass.

  Then the image faded and was replaced with the tall, dark, unbearably sexy Tag. No potbelly. No cigar. Nothing but hot eyes and a hot body, and a voice that assured her she was the only woman on the planet.

  Ha! As if that would ever happen. Not after the other night, when he’d misunderstood why she’d had sex with him. When she’d let him misunderstand.

  “Oh, Cassie…” Stacie grinned as she looked around. “This is wonderful.”

  “Oh, yeah, it is,” Diane said. And before Cassie knew it, all the work was done. In half the time.

  It allowed her mind to wander. Right to Tag. She’d been feeling a little raw ever since he’d left her bed, so she’d been careful to keep her car under the speed limit. She hadn’t answered her phone. She’d hidden out in the store with the shades drawn while working.

  That Tag hadn’t found a way past those barriers only made them all the more important.

  And now the shop was filling with women. Young, old, in between—including Mrs. Wilkens!—all curious about the famed Kate and Cassie, and even more curious about Bare Essentials.

  But it was the oddest thing…from the moment she’d opened the door to Diane and Stacie, to passing out wine and laughing as the women got a charge out of ordering the most outrageous things of their lives, Cassie never felt one ounce of animosity from any of them.

  Not a single one.

  Was it really possible Pleasantville had urbanized? Accepted change? Grown up? Well, at least some of it had.

  * * *

  “I THINK WE WERE A HIT,” Kate said in disbelief hours later as they cleaned up. “Do you have any idea how much money we made tonight?”

  Cassie shook her head, still in shock. “They like us, Kate. They really like us.”

  “Yeah. We’re going to make it, aren’t we?”

  Cassie looked into Kate’s eyes and realized her cousin had been just as unsettled about being in town as she herself had been. “A Tremaine woman always lands on her feet. You know that.”

  “Sometimes it’s a long fall first.”

  “You deserve this, Kate.”

  “So do you. I love you, Cassie.”

  Cassie hated getting sentimental, but she’d never been able to refuse Kate. “I love you, too.”

  And later, when she left the shop long after Kate had, walking slowly to her car lost in thought, she was still marveling at the entire evening.

  Until a movement in the shadows on the other side of the parking lot made her glance over.

  Her heart stopped.

  Her everything stopped.

  She could have sworn she’d just seen Pete standing there against the building, staring at her from behind the cloud of his cigarette. But that was impossible. She’d called her agent just that morning and had been told Pete was thought to have gone to L.A. and was probably working under an alias.

  Still…She quickly slipped into her car, locked the doors, and took off out of the parking lot, craning her neck to see behind her, but she didn’t see him again.

  Real or Memorex? She had no idea, and though she wasn’t the hysterical type, she drove past her house and headed straight toward Kate’s. Her cousin would gladly spare a couch, no problem.

  Yet she drove past Kate’s, too.

  And ten minutes later found herself in front of one certain Sheriff Sean Taggart’s house.

  9

  THOUGH IT WAS WELL PAST midnight, Tag heard the car. He had an ear for such things, and even before his mind dispatched the information on the make and model, his body knew.

  He had a feeling his body would always know.

  She couldn’t see him. On the hammock between two trees in the vast acreage of his front yard, his still nearly full beer balanced on his chest, Tag didn’t turn his head to look, but just stayed where he was, studying the night passing him by.

  Cassie stayed where she was, too, running the Porsche for a long time, and with each moment that passed, Tag just concentrated on the beauty around him.

  He wanted her to go away.

  He wanted her to find him.

  And then she shut off the engine. Got out of her car. He heard the click-clicking of her heels as she sauntered up his walk toward his porch and wondered what she was wearing to go with those heels.

  A sexy little sundress designed to destroy his brain cells?

  Skintight, hip-hugging jeans riding so low he’d wonder about the laws of gravity?

  He wouldn’t look. Why torture himself? It wasn’t as if she’d let him have her again. Nope, she’d crossed him right off her list and out of her life.

  And he was so fine with that. Hell, he had a list of his own. And she was most definitely not even on it. She wasn’t sweet, or even especially kind. She would never put his needs first.

  She wasn’t ever going to love him, not the way he wanted to be loved.

  She knocked on his front door. No soft, timid knock for this woman. Despite the late hour and the fact there were no lights on in the house, she rapped her knuckles against the wood with authority.

  “What if I’d been sleeping?” he asked lazily, and let out a not-so-nice smile when she shrieked in surprise.

  “Tag…you scared me half to death,” she breathed,
stepping off the porch, probably sinking her heels into his grass as she came toward him. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Well, now, that’s my question to you.” He didn’t get up, didn’t even look at her, just kept his head tipped back, staring at the night sky.

  “Yeah.” She let out a breath, and in it he heard everything he’d heard in her voice. Nerves. Loneliness. Fear.

  And damn it, it was that last that got to him. With a sigh he left the hammock and took his first good look at her since that late, late night in her bedroom when she’d reminded him why he should have stayed away from her in the first place. She was wearing silky-looking pants that were indeed doing the gravity-defying, hip-hugging thing. A matching blouse with cutouts teased him with glimpses of her skin. She looked like a million bucks, and if he hadn’t known about her humble beginnings, he’d never believe it.

  But it was the expression she wore that stabbed right through his resentment in a heartbeat. “What’s the matter? Something’s happened.”

  “Oh.” She lifted a shoulder. “I was just out for a drive.”

  Uh-huh. “You’re scared.”

  “Are you kidding?” She let out a laugh and lifted her hair off her neck, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. “I just wanted a piece of the night. It seems cooler here at your house. Do you have anything to drink?”

  So they were going to play it that way. Fine. He handed her his still-cold beer. Lifting it in a toast, she tipped her head back and drank. Licking her lips, she looked him over, from his bare chest to his loose sweat bottoms, to his bare feet. “Having trouble sleeping?”

  Hell, yes. “No.”

  “Miss me?”

  Hell, yes. “No.”

  “Why, Sheriff, you lie nearly as good as I do.” Setting down the drink, she reached out and ran a finger over his shoulder, down a pec. “Wonder if letting off a little steam might help the both of us.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?” he asked as her finger trailed down his bare belly and toyed with the string of his sweats. “Letting off steam?”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  His body sure as hell didn’t. He’d gone hard at just the sound of her voice. “If that’s all it is.”

  “What else would it be?”

  He took another good long look at her. She’d hidden the emotions he’d sensed when she’d first arrived. She was good at that. “I don’t know. Maybe you came for…comfort.” It’d been just a guess, but he would have sworn she’d flinched.

  “I don’t need comfort from a man. Never have.”

  “That’s a shame,” he said, sucking in a breath when her fingers skimmed up his ribs, danced over a nipple. “You’re trying to seduce me.”

  “Is it working?”

  While he pretended to ponder, she glanced at him. Just once, nonchalantly. But it dissipated the sensual haze she always put him in. She was scared. She had come to him for comfort. He could see right through her, damn it. Did she really think he couldn’t?

  Whatever she thought, she wanted to keep it to herself. And would try to do so unless he could pry it out of her. “Come inside,” he said. She wouldn’t talk to him, not now, not yet, not when she was so keyed up.

  And hell, he wasn’t above letting her blow off steam first, especially if that meant letting her have her way with his body. There were some sacrifices worth the trouble.

  Being with her would be one of them.

  Silently they entered the dark house. Taking her hand, he led her up the stairs to his bedroom. His bed was huge and unmade, and she walked over to it, dropped her purse to the floor and stared down at his tossed sheets as she unbuttoned her blouse. “I thought of you these past few days,” she said.

  He nearly did a double take. Had she just…opened up?

  “I found myself looking for you as I drove around.”

  Had she just…said something sweet? Couldn’t be. “Probably trying to avoid getting another ticket.”

  “No.” She let the blouse fall to the floor while he soaked up her incredible body. “About that list, Tag…I wrote it a very long time ago.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t even see it again until Kate mailed me my diary a few weeks ago. And while I should admit that after that first ticket, I did briefly fantasize about using you to cross that item off, I never gave it serious thought. I didn’t have sex with you because of it.” Now she turned and looked at him, the soft truth in her eyes.

  And suddenly his throat was thick. She was sweet. She was kind. “Cassie…”

  “I brought you something.” In her sheer demibra and silk pants she bent, opened her purse and pulled out a small bottle. “From Bare Essentials. The best body massage oil made.” She untied her pants and they puddled at her feet, revealing matching panties. She stepped clear, a vision in sheer lace and high heels. “I’ve had the stuff in my purse for a week now. I…thought I’d give you a massage.”

  She was trying to give, in a way he instinctively knew she’d never given to a man before. And while he wanted to demand to know what had scared her, what had caused her to show him a side of her she’d never shown before, he knew better than to push. In her own time, he thought, and moved close. Cupping her jaw, he brought her face up for a kiss that ignited in less than two seconds.

  Until she pushed him away. “If you keep that up, you’ll miss out on your massage.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Lie down.” She softened. “Please?”

  He did as she asked, spreading himself out on his stomach on the bed. He groaned when she straddled him, sliding her long, long legs to his, bending over him so that her breasts teased his back. “Relax now,” she whispered into his ear, and then she straightened.

  The next thing he felt were her hands, slick with the oil, running over his back, his shoulders, his arms, and he groaned again. Her fingers were magic, alternately strong and soft, digging into his knots, easing them out of his body with attentive care.

  When he was the consistency of a wet noodle, she got up. He nearly groaned his protest until he felt her stripping off his bottoms, leaving him bare-butt naked, sprawled on the bed. Then her fingers returned to his body, digging into the muscles of his legs and his feet, then up to his back once again. “Good?”

  “Mmm—hey—” he yelped when she bit his butt.

  “Turn over. I’ll do your front.”

  Oh, yeah, he wanted her to do his front. One area specifically; the area currently digging into his mattress like a steel rod. But first…He kneeled up, grabbed her around the waist and tumbled her down to the bed.

  Flat on her back, her body automatically cradling his, she laughed up at him. “We’re done with the massage, I take it?”

  “We’re done with mine.” With that, he flipped her over, facedown on the bed. With a smile, he looked at her delicious rear end wriggling as she tried to free herself. Her very sheer panties were riding up, and he took a moment to enjoy the view. “Relax,” he whispered into her ear as she’d done to him, letting her feel the length of his body over hers. He lifted up, ran a finger from the back of her neck down her back to the base of her spine, then traced the line of her mouthwatering butt as far as he could. “It’s your turn.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Hush.” He stroked the part of her that was already wet for him, just once, and she moaned and arched her hips. So he did it again, outlining her through her panties, keeping up the rhythm she set with her rocking hips. Bending over her, he put his mouth to the very base of her spine and licked her.

  With a gasp, she tightened her legs around his hand, as if to make sure he didn’t stop. But he had no intentions of stopping, and showed her with his fingers as he continued to stroke in tune with her pumping hips. Faster now, and as he licked and kissed and nibbled his way over a perfect, luscious cheek, she panted and strained, looking so erotic there facedown on the bed he nearly couldn’t stand it. He wanted her to come, had to s
ee her come, so he slipped his fingers beneath the panties.

  Gripping the sheets in her fists, she whimpered for more. He gave it to her, nudging her over the edge when he sank his fingers into her wet heat.

  She came in long shudders.

  He’d never seen anything so arousing, and as he slowly brought her down, still stroking her ever so lightly now, still nibbling on her body, he wanted more for her.

  When she would have gotten up, or at least turned over, he held her still. “Hold on.” Straddling her hips with his legs, he unhooked her bra, letting the straps slip to her sides.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Giving you a massage.”

  “But…what about you?”

  “You did me already.”

  “I mean your orgasm.”

  “Oh, I’ll get mine.” He poured some oil down the middle of her back, loving the look of it on her skin. “Hasn’t anyone ever done this for you?”

  “Given me a massage that I haven’t paid for?” She buried her face so he couldn’t see her expression. “No,” she said finally, tenser than he would have liked.

  Well, he could fix that. “Come on, relax a little,” he coaxed, and ran his fingers down her slim back.

  She shivered, but didn’t say another word.

  “Breathe,” he urged when he saw that she was holding her breath. “Come on, deep, long breaths.”

  Her neck had hard knots that dissipated the last of his frustration at her. Poor baby. What had made her so incredibly tense? The same thing that had driven her here?

  Or was it him? He found he didn’t like either possibility. Her shoulders were even worse, and he spent long, long moments rubbing her down, firmly, then more gently kneading until the knots were gone. Her skin was so creamy, so silky soft, the pleasure was all his, for he’d wanted his hands on her like this again. As he rubbed and stroked, she was utterly silent, but she was breathing deeply now, slowly, and he could tell she’d decided to relax.

  Trust. Had she finally given it over to him? For this moment, at least, and feeling the sweet taste of victory, he got off her, pulled off her panties, and poured more oil into his hands. Then he started on her endless legs. He was a little surprised at how fast she’d given herself over to him, having expected her to protest again by now.