Sweet but Sexy Boxed Set

by Maddie James

  The first ten feet went okay. She gave it a little more gas and considered planting the other foot on the footrest instead of hovering over the ground with it just in case. It might even have gone okay if she hadn’t forgotten she was supposed to go left around the first cone and then swerve right around the second. She got wrapped up in deciding which way to go and then ran squarely over the first three cones.

  She couldn’t tell if the laughing was from Mitchell or Jimmy, but it was loud enough to hear over the engine of the moped. Spurred by their laughter, she concentrated hard, gave it more gas, and headed for the next series of cones. She was going too fast. She knew it. Still, it might have been okay, but the hem of her sundress suddenly broke free and the full skirt flapped up in her face.

  Jackie jerked one hand off the handle bars to grab her dress, and that’s when it happened. She remembered looking up and seeing nothing but orange. She recalled seeing Mitchell dive out of her way, and then she was lying in something soft that tickled her legs. Her head was in someone’s lap and she could hear voices talking to her.

  She struggled to open her eyes, hoping maybe she had fallen asleep watching television and this was all a silly dream.

  “Jackie,” Mitchell said urgently. “Tell me you’re alright.” It was a command, but she could hear the tension in his voice.

  She snapped her eyes closed. Tight. Was she alright? With her eyes closed, she reviewed all her body parts. A slight stinging sensation on her right knee and left elbow, maybe a little bruise popping up on her shin. Something about it hitting a handlebar as she flew over… a dull ache on the side of her head. Had it hit the electric orange wall in midflight?

  The only agonizing pain she felt that was possibly emergency-room material was her pride.

  If she kept her eyes closed, maybe would they give her up for dead and eventually go away. She could crawl away under cover of nightfall and go back to Chicago where no one would ever know.

  “Call 911,” she heard Mitchell say. His tone brooked no opposition and she could hear someone’s voice assenting and then footsteps walking quickly away.

  “No,” she said. She opened her eyes and raised them to meet Mitchell’s worried ones. “I think I’m okay.”

  Mitchell gathered her up in his arms and held her close. Her ear pressed against the hard wall of his chest where his heart raced. He held her for a minute until she heard his heart slowly return to a normal, reassuring rhythm.

  There was something wonderful about being held by the man who set her world spinning since she met him just last night. How could she have only known him one day and yet be so affected by him? Last night when he held her, it had been about the magnitude of their attraction for each other. A dizzying consciousness of needing to see how their bodies would fit and to what heights they could take each other. Breakfast this morning had been a test to see who would cave first and reveal more than they wanted to.

  Now, in his arms, surrounded by the touch of him, the smell of him, Jackie started to feel different. Something she hadn’t experienced in a long time. In his eyes, she saw something echoing her own thoughts.

  He cared about her, at least a little. She could see it, if only just for a few minutes. She wanted to close her eyes and savor how good it was to be held like this, but she was afraid he really would call 911 if she did.

  “Uh, Jackie,” said Jimmy.

  She looked over to where Jimmy was sitting cross-legged between her and a mangled looking moped.

  “I don’t think I can rent you a Moped.”

  ****

  Mitchell wanted to kick himself clear back to Chicago.

  As he sat there holding Jackie’s still body in his arms, he replayed her accident a thousand times and it was his fault every damn one of them. Since he met her last night in that bar on Duval Street, he hadn’t been able to do one rational thing.

  This morning, he was desperate to convince himself he was not interested in her as anything other than a fantastic memory of physical pleasure on the sand. One visit to her hotel room, and it would put his mind at ease and he could forget about her. But when he got there and saw her again, even for just the brief moment before her roommate slammed the door, he knew his feelings from the night before weren’t going to go quietly.

  On the way downstairs in the elevator, he made a plan to get the whole day with her all to himself. Bribing her friends with a sightseeing tour they believed was coming from Jackie was probably a bad idea. There was no doubt she’d know he’d lied about that part before the sun went down tonight, but he didn’t care. He was used to getting what he wanted. And he knew he wanted at least another day with Jackie.

  Rational thinking? Not since an hour before midnight last night when he first laid eyes on her. He was acting like an idiot and he knew it. Pushing her into riding a moped when she had clearly not been crazy about doing it was his crowning achievement of stupidity today.

  What had gotten into him? All he knew was his desire to be with her had thrown everything else out the window. But then in one second he forgot about himself. Her red skirt flapped in her face. She lost control of the moped. With a sickening thud, her beautiful body flew into the wall not five feet from him. And his entire world went into slow motion. He flew to her side in a second, but it was an eternity before she opened her eyes.

  Now, watching her eyelids flutter open, he could breathe again.

  Chapter Ten

  Jackie would have lain there in Mitchell’s arms for the rest of the morning, but a strange sensation startled her into reality. Someone or something was licking her bare feet. She opened her eyes wide as a long tongue slid between her toes. She smiled when she saw the culprit.

  “Roscoe, knock it off,” Jimmy said as he jumped up and grabbed the dog’s collar.

  “It’s okay,” Jackie said. “I like dogs.”

  “With Roscoe, though, you don’t know where that tongue has been,” Jimmy said.

  Roscoe looked like a dog who had seen better days. A medium-sized brownish-colored dog with an uneven coat and an endearing face and eyes. He only had three legs and his tail was missing.

  “I thought I heard dogs barking,” said Jackie. “Now it makes sense.”

  “Let’s get you inside,” Mitchell said. He stood up, leaned down, and wrapped his arms around Jackie to pull her up to standing.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  For a second, the world swirled and went black except for some little white lights that looked like stars. It went away after a few seconds, though, and Jackie was just about to declare the all clear when she felt herself leaving the ground. This time, though, she wasn’t flying through the air over a moped. Instead, strong arms lifted her and held her against a hard wall of chest.

  “I can walk,” she whispered, “you don’t have to do this.”

  Mitchell ignored her. She opened her eyes and saw the firm set of his jaw and decided it was pointless to argue. And he smelled so good. She rested her cheek against his shoulder and gave up all resistance.

  Mitchell carried her into a small office and laid her down on a couch. It was dark and cool compared to the white heat outside and the hot asphalt of the moped lot.

  “Really, I’m fine,” she insisted. “Just a few scrapes.”

  Mitchell knelt next to her.

  “Really,” she said and sat up.

  Mitchell sat down next to her on the couch. He was very close, their bare legs touched. Skin on skin contact brought back last night with a sudden rush of awareness.

  Last night was reckless. And recklessness is just the reason her elbow and knee were on fire today. She needed to keep herself together.

  “Think your brother will change his mind about renting me a moped?” she asked.

  Mitchell laughed, his face so close to hers she could see the tiny lines around his eyes and the delicious curve of his lips.

  “If he does, he’s an even worse businessman than I thought,” he said.

  Jackie looked around the well
-appointed office.

  “It doesn’t look like a bad business to me,” she said. “You’ve got lots of advertising out there, discount coupons everywhere, and a nice operation here.”

  Mitchell looked like he wanted to say something, but he closed his mouth again. Jackie tried to remember all the things she wasn’t supposed to know about Mitchell. Maybe it was best to just steer clear of this whole conversation.

  “The liability insurance must be a real killer, though,” she said, smiling for the first time since her crash. “You’ll probably have to do the driving on our island tour.”

  “That’s for sure,” he said.

  “I’ll ride on the back.”

  “No,” Mitchell said. “No more mopeds for you today. If you break your leg, you’re out of a job.”

  It was eerie, hearing Mitchell suggest she could be out of a job, and it took her a second to remember he still thought she was a dancer on a cruise ship and her ship was leaving tomorrow. Jackie was not a habitual and talented liar, and this game of deception was getting more and more difficult to play along with.

  Why not just say “look, it’s a crazy mistake. I didn’t know who you were, you didn’t know who I was, turns out I work for you, and my friends and I called in sick and took off for a wild weekend, but hey, what happens in Key West stays in Key West.” Or something like that.

  Jackie looked closely at Mitchell’s face and tried to read his expression. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would appreciate her deception.

  Ride it out. Have fun. Your friends deserted you for the day anyway. Enjoy the sunshine, the island, the attentions of a sexy man.

  “You look so serious,” Mitchell said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yep,” she said.

  “Do you want to continue our tour of the island?”

  “Why not.”

  “I’ll be right back,” he said and left the room.

  Alone, Jackie relaxed against the back of the couch and rested her head. She closed her eyes and took several deep steadying breaths. Glad to have a minute alone, but she also missed the warmth of Mitchell’s leg against hers.

  “Jackie?”

  A quiet woman’s voice. She took a second to place it. Marybess. Jimmy had introduced her a little while ago. Marybess looked like a neater version of Key West style than Jimmy. Long black hair and dark olive skin. Tiny and so petite Jackie suspected her Hermanos t-shirt was actually a child’s size from their gift shop.

  Marybess stood next to Jackie with a questioning look.

  “I brought you some band aids for your knee and elbow,” she said.

  Jackie sat up a little straighter. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll do your elbow, you can do your knee.”

  “Sounds good. Do you have to do this a lot? I mean, I’m not the first person to crash during the test, am I?

  Marybess smiled. “There have been some minor scrapes, but yours took the cake.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “I thought Mitchell was going to have a heart attack. I saw his face when you crashed into the wall.”

  “I almost hit him.”

  “Yep, but it wasn’t that. I think he was afraid he’d lost you.”

  Jackie laughed nervously. “Well, he hardly even has me. We just met last night.”

  “Seriously?”

  Jackie nodded.

  “If you say so, but I’ll tell you, I’ve known him for several years now, and this is the only time I’ve actually thought he looked happy to be alive.”

  “Really,” said Jackie. Interesting. A glimpse into the mind of Mitchell Ames.

  “Jimmy says he looks almost like he used to look, before—

  “Feeling better?” Mitchell asked. He filled the door frame. Jackie wondered how long he had stood there before he spoke up. She tried to decide if he did look happy to be alive. He sure seemed quite alive last night. And happy? She’d have to know him better to know.

  “Much better,” she said.

  “I called for a rental car,” he said. “We have about a half hour before it gets here.”

  “You should come see the animals while you wait,” Marybess suggested.

  “Animals?”

  “We run a rescue shelter in each of the moped rental stores. This one is full right now.”

  Jackie looked at Mitchell to gauge his reaction to the idea of a shelter tour. He shrugged.

  “If you want to,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  ****

  Jimmy glowed with delight and enthusiasm for his animal rescue operation. He led them into the fourth part of the building. Sparkling clean kennels and cages lined the walls. Behind the building there were larger fenced in areas and grassy places for dogs to play.

  “Right now we have a couple of chickens, some real oddball animals that we don’t know what to do with, about 40 cats, and six dogs. Not counting Roscoe, he’s ours.”

  “How did you acquire Roscoe?” Jackie asked.

  “Mitchell brought him in. It was a couple of years ago when he spent all his weekends down here trying to get an attitude transplant.”

  “Thanks a lot, Jimmy,” Mitchell said.

  “Just sayin’ you needed to relax like everybody else does. And there’s no place better for some serious chill time than the Keys. Anyway, Mitch found Roscoe along highway A1A. Made a hell of a mess in his Jaguar.”

  “I always hated that car anyway,” Mitchell said. “I was generous enough to give the beast to my brother as a sign of my family affection.”

  “The dog or the jaguar?” Jackie asked.

  “Dog.”

  “Very noble,” Jackie said with a grin and then turned back to Jimmy. “What do you do with them all?”

  “Hope we find them a home and take care of them until we do. Sometimes it takes a while.”

  Jimmy approached a row of cages set farther away from the others. Jackie followed him and then took a step back.

  “These are some of our resident oddballs. One parrot, an iguana, one tragically ugly snake, and two ferrets,” Jimmy explained. “We had a squirrel over here in not-so-domesticated land, but he was injured when he came in. Poor thing didn’t make it.”

  They all looked down and composed a serious expression out of deference to Jimmy’s feelings.

  “Whatever happened to the goat?” Mitchell asked.

  “You won’t believe it. I found it a home. Goat farmer came in to rent a moped, ended up taking the goat home with him. Hope it liked the long car ride home.”

  “Where was he from?” Jackie asked.

  “Ohio.”

  They were all silent for a beat.

  “Hard to imagine a goat riding all the way to Ohio in a car,” Jackie said.

  A long moment passed. Mitchell’s cell phone chirped in his pocket and a man’s voice on speaker phone interrupted their thoughts of goats and squirrels. Mitchell fumbled to get the phone out of the cargo pocket on his knee-length shorts, but the button slowed him down. They all heard the voice say,

  “Hey, Mitchell, it’s Hal. Listen, I want to talk to you about the Chicago sale. I’ve been running the numbers…”

  Mitchell finally got the phone out of his pocket and his finger on the speaker button and Hal’s voice disappeared. Mitchell stalked out the front door with the phone held to his ear.

  Jackie, along with everyone else, had heard the words Chicago sale. She knew what that meant. His only business in Chicago was the talent booking agency she worked for. Rumors had flown for the last month about a possible sale of the whole operation, but upper administration had played the ‘deny and reassure’ game. Teri thought it was a real possibility and was probably the most worried about it since she’d been there longest and had the most to lose. Now, hearing the words out of Hal’s mouth, whoever he was, drove it home for Jackie. The blood draining out of her face left her dizzy and lightheaded.

  She turned away from Jimmy and Marybess and sat down on the floor with the dozens of ca
ts and kittens crawling all over an elaborate maze. Carpeted towers with perches of various heights rose almost to the ceiling and it was alive with curious cats. Jackie picked up a small gray kitten and pulled it into her lap. She couldn’t look at Jimmy or Marybess right now. She tried to focus on petting the soft warm fur while trying to remember to take deep breaths. A distraction was what she needed. A convenient back door for her to run away was what she needed.

  “You okay, Jackie?” Marybess asked. “Suddenly you don’t look so good.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, “just hanging out with the kitties for a minute.”

  “You might as well while the boss is wheeling and dealing,” Jimmy said. “All that buying and selling keeps him busy.” Jimmy winked, “I think he’s gaining the world and losing his soul.”

  Jackie laughed lightly. “I hope it’s not as bad as that.”

  “Maybe I don’t know much about it.” Jimmy shrugged. “Guess I never did see where all that exchanging of money gets you.”

  “It does pay for all this,” Marybess said.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said.

  “He pays for the animal rescue?” Jackie asked.

  “Basically,” Jimmy said. “Renting mopeds is good business, but keeping hundreds of animals throughout the Keys takes pretty much all the profit and then some.”

  Jackie continued stroking the little gray cat. Maybe it was crashing her moped into a wall, but her head was swimming about a certain millionaire named Mitchell Ames. What kind of a man bought and sold businesses and changed hundreds of lives with one phone call…but then ran a profitless front for an animal shelter?

  The kitten tugged at her finger with its tiny teeth. Maybe she should take the little gray cat home to Chicago where it would fit right in at their office. It was gray and needed some love. And it knew a thing or two about being out on the streets.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Car’s here,” Mitchell said. “Ready, Jackie?”

  Jackie still sat on the floor trying to clear her head and focus on the soft gray fur of her new friend. She was alone. Jimmy was out back helping some other tourist with a moped rental and Marybess returned to the store.