Shut Up and Kiss Me

by Christie Craig

  Shut Up and Kiss Me

  Christie Craig

  LOVE SPELLNEW YORK CITY

  PUBLISHER’S PLEDGE

  Shut Up and Kiss Me

  Dear Reader,

  There’s just something about a man in a pink bathrobe.

  He put it on after the V8 bath. After the skunk sprayed him. After he crashed his car. After he was forced to return to the Podunk town where he left his one true love.

  “Wait, WHAT?” I hear you say. Welcome to the world of Christie Craig. Not that Jose is our hero. Heck, Sky’s about three thousand times sexier—just ask Shala. But she would have fallen for Jose’s brother anyway, even if the Native American lawman wasn’t so hunky or protecting her from a killer. It was fate.

  That’s what you get in a Christie Craig novel: sexy guys in (and out of) uniform, wacky hijinks, and best of all, genuine emotion. There’s a reason why critics love her and she’s been compared to Janet Evanovich and Susan Andersen. Dorchester’s Publisher’s Pledge program is our way of identifying particularly special books by giving readers a risk-free guarantee. We feel so strongly about Shut Up and Kiss Me, we’re willing to pay a full refund to anyone who doesn’t find it everything they want in a contemporary romance.

  Christie’s got a backlist you might not have seen yet. And I’m betting her books and Lay’s potato chips have something in common: you can’t stop at just one.

  Happy glomming!

  Christopher Keeslar

  Senior Editor

  A PRECIOUS WELCOME

  “Bo must have given you terrible directions,” the voice said. Shala squinted into the darkness. “It took you twice as long to get here as it should have.”

  “Bo told you I was coming?”

  “I’ve been answering calls about you all night. Tommy Crow called while flipping burgers and said some hot chick was looking for me. Harvey at the Shop and Go said you sounded desperate—and you must have been, to actually walk into the Funky Chicken. Most weekenders stay clear of that place. But you lucked out when you found Bo. There’s nothing Bo wouldn’t do for a beer and a dance. Bo said—”

  “I’m not interested in what Bo said, Mr. Gomez. I get the point. Everyone in town is loyal to you.” Which meant they either liked him or feared him. She touched her purse and felt for her Mace.

  A growl echoed from behind the swing. Shala saw two big dogs stretched out behind her camera thief. She stepped back.

  “Don’t worry, you’re safe,” Sky said.

  Shala couldn’t help but ask. “From the dogs or you?”

  To my husband Steve Craig for taking over kitchen duty while I was superglued to the computer keyboard writing about skunks, fire ants, fistfights, and love. And to my son Steve Craig Jr. for eating his dad’s cooking without complaining more than twice a day.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  PUBLISHER’S PLEDGE

  A PRECIOUS WELCOME

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  RAVE REVIEWS FOR CHRISTIE CRAIG!

  Other Love Spell books by Christie Craig:

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Is that war paint or love paint he’s wearing?” a female voice rang out from behind Shala Winters.

  “Don’t care,” another woman replied in a Texas drawl. “But I see why they call this town Precious now.” There came a burst of raucous laughter.

  Shala would have rolled her eyes if her gaze weren’t snagged by the group of hard-bodied, almost-naked males entering the arena wearing only headdresses and loincloths. A drop of sweat rolled down between her breasts. Too bad she wasn’t in the mood for hard-bodied, almost-naked men—hadn’t been for a couple of years. In fact, she wished she’d passed on this powwow altogether. If she’d known photos were outlawed, she’d be in her air-conditioned hotel room right now, washing drool and God only knew what else off her jeans from that humping dog she’d encountered at the park.

  Dad-blast it, she needed photographs for her PR project to work. But according to the sign posted at the ticket booth, cameras were adamantly prohibited. In fact, she was supposed to have left hers at the gate. Right. Like she would leave a piece of eight-thousand-dollar equipment with strangers. Shala readjusted her shoulder bag, camera included. Why hadn’t Mayor Johnson warned her about this?

  “Excuse me.” A blonde with poufy bleached hair, followed by a tall brunette, pushed into the crowd’s front line.

  “Look at that,” said the brunette. “I always loved playing cowboys and Indians. Now I know why.” More raucous laughter erupted.

  “Native Americans,” Shala corrected.

  “Huh?” the brunette asked.

  “That’s what they prefer to be called: Native Americans.”

  “Honey, I’ll call them anything they want,” said Blondie. “This is better than a strip club. Look at those abs.”

  Shala bit her tongue. For someone to be educated, they needed to be willing to learn.

  Focusing on the arena, she let her gaze slip to the men and their abs. Okay, she couldn’t blame the women for enjoying the view. Just because she wasn’t in the mood, that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate eye candy. However, a fine line existed between appreciating and gawking. According to Mayor Johnson, this was the reason the tribe had only recently opened their powwows to the public: people came to ogle, not to educate themselves in the Chitiwa tribe’s culture or history.

  The town’s economy depended on tourism, however. That was why the tribal council had changed its mind. Precious, Texas, was 65 percent Native American or Native American–Hispanic mix, so they had a vested interest in seeing Precious survive. And now, so did Shala. The town was paying her well to make sure it did. Not that everyone wanted her here. That point had been driven home by the mayor, and frankly, it made her a tad uneasy.

  Mayor Johnson had suggested she wait for her second visit to set up a meeting with the tribal council, hoping time would soften their opinion of her efforts to increase tourism by publicizing their tribal events. Several of the councilmen moved to the center of the arena and explained that the next exhibition was the “Dance of Love, a ritual meant to lure soul mates together.” One of the men, long gray hair flowing down his back, scanned the crowd. His eyes stopped on her, or so it seemed.

  “I’m already in love,” said the blonde beside Shala, pointing.

  Shala’s gaze shifted to the dancers and then back to the councilmen. The one who’d singled her out seemed to nod
in acknowledgment. A breeze picked up his hair, but his eyes stayed fixed on her. Did he know who she was? That stare was intimidating. Shala’s breath caught.

  A lull hit the audience, a reverent pause. The gray-haired man looked away, and Shala drew much-needed air into her lungs. With fresh oxygen recharging her brain cells, she wished again she hadn’t come. Heat, hunger, and memory of that overzealous dog kept her from appreciating the show.

  The smell of grilled meat, onions, and buttered corn blew past. While the breeze was too hot to cool her, the aromas made Shala’s stomach growl. The hamburger she’d bought for lunch had been snatched by her unwelcome and amorous friend at the lake. Just like a man, that canine had been all about sex and food. Glancing around, she considered wriggling out to the concession stands, but then she heard a low thumping in her ears: drums. Her gaze shifted. The councilmen had left, replaced by the dancers. The drums grew louder. The crowd grew tighter. She could swear the temperature increased ten degrees.

  A sigh escaped her lips. The sun hung low in the horizon and painted the sky a bright pink and purple. Her gaze eased back to the dancers. The drum tempo increased and the men began to move, tall and proud. The golden sunset cast a glow on them and begged for a photograph. Shala’s fingers itched to capture the image. She reached into her heavy tote…then remembered the sign out front.

  “Stupid rule,” she muttered, deciding to address it with the mayor. Powwows would be a big draw for Precious, but visitors would want images.

  Her aggravation melted as a low, strange chant filled the air. Sweat continued to collect between her breasts. The line of dancers moved her way: six men, though one stood out. Third to the left. He was eye candy at its best.

  “My gawd!” said Blondie. “How much does one of them cost for a night?”

  Shala attempted to ignore her, and yet, as another drop of sweat ran from beneath her right breast down into her navel, the trickle of dampness sent a sensual shiver through her body. A shiver she hadn’t felt in a long time. For a damn good reason, she reminded herself.

  The brunette’s drawl carried through the crowd. “Can we shove dollar bills in their loincloths?”

  Shala shot her an eye-rolling glance, then refocused on the dancer. Hard. Unrelenting. Muscles corded his arms and legs. His body moved to the pulsing drumbeat. Black hair hung loose, flipping up and down with his motions, and his headdress, with rows of white feathers, shimmered in the sunlight.

  His skin, the color hinting at his Native American heritage, caught the sheen of the setting sun. It appeared oiled. Oiled. Oiled, slick male skin. The thought took her back to the time she and her husband had ruined a good set of sheets with a bottle of baby oil. Her body recalled with clarity the feel of her oiled body parts moving across his. The experience had been worth the price of good Egyptian cotton. Too bad her marriage had gone the way of the sheets—into the Dumpster.

  “Good God, check out his loincloth,” Blondie said.

  Shala’s gaze lowered without thought. The drums continued, and the erotic sound got under her skin, into her blood. Thump. Thump. She was staring at that strip of white cloth, vaguely aware of behaving as badly as the two women beside her. Shala closed her eyes. When she reopened them, the man had danced closer. Glancing up, she saw high cheekbones, lips almost too beautiful to be masculine, a chiseled nose—

  Her breath caught. His hawklike eyes were on her, and not in a good way. Had he caught her ogling his loincloth? A blush heated her face and she glanced away, but not before she saw his intimidating scowl.

  She stared off into the crowd as if looking for someone, despite the fact that she didn’t know a soul. Never mind that ever since she arrived she’d had this weird sense of being watched; that was small-townitis, no doubt. But chills ran down her spine. She was an outsider. According to the mayor, an unwelcome outsider.

  This dancer’s stare was different, though. She could still feel his gaze eliciting strange emotions from her, like loneliness. How could she feel alone when surrounded by a crowd of over three hundred people? Easy, her mind shot back. You don’t let anyone get close. Especially men. But being alone was a small price to pay for emotional safety.

  “Hey.” The brunette elbowed Shala. “He’s staring at you.”

  Shala ignored her but braved another glance at the dancer. She regretted it. His scowl had grown angrier. Panicked, she dug through her purse—a reason to look away without appearing to be a coward, which normally she wasn’t. None of this was normal, yet she couldn’t put her finger on why.

  The beat of the drums changed, and she sensed more than saw the dancers turn. Tempted though she was to check if the man’s backside rivaled his front, escape appealed more.

  “Look at those tight asses,” the brunette said.

  Guffaws broke out. Without looking or laughing herself, Shala swung around, but the strap of her canvas bag caught the brunette’s elbow. It slipped off her shoulder, and her eight-thousand dollar Nikon made a break for the ground.

  “No!”

  Shala dropped to her knees. Picking up the camera, she checked the lens for cracks. No visible damage, thank God. She pulled the camera up close to inspect it and in the corner of her vision saw a flash. Lowering her Nikon, she saw the brunette drop a point-and-shoot into her purse.

  More concerned with her Nikon than the woman’s illegal photo op, Shala refocused. Sudden gasps echoed from the crowd. Half-standing while raising her gaze from her camera, she found her nose almost against a loinclothed crotch. She swallowed a lump down her throat and rose the rest of the way.

  Although she stood only chest high on the man, she tried to appear unaffected, as if she regularly found her nose stuck in men’s crotches. Before she could rationalize why the dancer was there, he yanked her camera from her hands. Stunned, she watched his backside—it was equally impressive to his front—disappear into the crowd.

  Reality hit. Someone had just run off with her eight-thousand-dollar camera. “Stop that man!” she screamed, and took off after him.

  An hour later, standing in the hot night air outside the ticket booth and still sweating, Shala teetered on the edge of sanity. Redfoot Darkwater, the tribesman with long gray hair who’d eyed her in the arena, seemed unaffected. He was the fourth councilman paraded down to discuss her missing camera.

  Discuss? Ha! The first three had all stood there like rocks, studying her like a high-school biology experiment, not saying more than six words between them. Redfoot was no different, his arms crossed stoically over his chest. She wanted to poke him to make sure he wasn’t one of those cigar-shop statues she’d seen as a kid.

  “Let me say this one more time, sir. I need my camera.”

  He didn’t blink, but at least he moved. He pointed to the sign. “You read the rules. Yes?”

  He talked! “Yes. I read the rules, but I didn’t take a picture. I just didn’t want to leave my—”

  “Sky says you took a picture.”

  Sky? Oh, Mr. Eye Candy. “Well, Sky’s lying. I didn’t take a picture. The woman beside me took the picture.”

  “But you did have your camera. Rule says all cameras must be left at the gate, and if found will be confiscated for one week.”

  Shala held her breath and wondered if she should tell him who she was and why she was here. Oh, goodness, this wasn’t how she wanted to be introduced! “Look, I accept that I broke a rule, and I’m sorry. But I didn’t take the picture, so if you could give me my camera…”

  “Can’t give you camera. Sky has the camera.”

  “Why does he have the camera? Who is Sky?”

  “He handles these things. You talk to Sky.”

  Shala was dying to let loose with some seldom-used language, but being raised by her grandparents had instilled in her a respect for her elders, even uncooperative, stoic ol’ farts. Realizing she wasn’t getting anywhere, she decided to be completely honest. “Look, I’m here in Precious, Texas, at the request of your mayor. I’m working for the town to inc
rease tourism. He wants me to find your town ‘precious,’ and this…this missing camera fiasco isn’t. Do you understand?”

  Redfoot’s brow creased. “You wait one week. You talk to Sky. You offer donation and he will probably give you your camera. The film, however, I’m sure he’s already destroyed.”

  “Film? Donation?” She took another deep breath, seeking a calm that didn’t currently exist anywhere in her emotional zip code. “My camera is digital, and every picture I’ve taken for the last three days is on it. If that man does something to my memory card, I…” She exhaled. “Can I talk to him? Please. Please. Pleeaassse!”

  The old man looked tempted. Almost. “One week. You tell Sky you want your camera. Sky is a fair man. He will return your camera. Maybe he ask for donation. One woman shine his boots to get camera back. You do what Sky asks, and he will be fair.”

  Fury bubbled up inside her. “I won’t be here next week. I need my camera, and I need it now. And I am not going to polish any man’s boots. What I’m going to do is call the police.”

  “This is Indian land. Police no good here. But you know this, don’t you?”

  She did, but during conniption fits she often forgot things. And she was smack dab in the middle of one. Why else would she be butting heads with the very people whose cooperation she needed to win? But it was too late. She’d patch up things later. Right now, she needed her camera.

  “Look, I’m not going to shine anyone’s shoes to—”

  “Then you do not want your camera very bad.” Redfoot turned to walk away.

  Shala called his name, hoping she remembered it correctly. “Please. I really need my camera.” As the man faced her, she could swear empathy filled his faded gray eyes. “Please,” she repeated.

  “You are confusing woman. You seem like nice girl, but you do not obey the rules. You say you not take a picture, but Sky does not lie. You say you want your camera, but you say you won’t work to get your camera back. I hope I am right about you, Blue Eyes.”