by Maddie James
And that, he had said while staring into her eyes, was exactly how he wanted her.
Putty. In his hands.
Oh.
Mary Lou wasn’t sure yet about being putty in Thurman’s hands. Oh, he was stable and a provider and a half-way decent kisser, but…
Never mind. She didn’t want to think right yet about going any further than kissing with Thurman. They hadn’t, well, she was holding him off on the sex thing, telling him she wanted to wait for her wedding night. She’d even gone so far as to cite she was traditional, and old-fashioned, like his mother.
Thurman was in love with his mother. He backed off.
Mary Lou shook herself. Why had she agreed to marry Thurman? Really?
She didn’t want to think about it and focused on the red door in front of her, instead.
“All right. You are here. Go for it.” Mary Lou dismissed her wayward thoughts and rapped the knocker on the heavy wood door.
It was swept open before she could put her trembling fist back to her side.
“Mary Lou!” In one motion, Suzie jerked back the door, grasped her by the arm, and pulled her inside the living room. “I’m so happy you could come,” the owner of the B&B proclaimed. “I cannot tell you how important this is to me.”
Mary Lou still had to wonder and opened her mouth to ask, but Suzie went on, hooking her arms in hers. “You see, I’ve been waiting to try out some of my new ideas on someone who isn’t used to my cooking. Oh, I know that you’ve taken one of my cooking classes, but that really didn’t count because, well…”
“You don’t have to say it, Suzie. I understand. I suck at cooking.”
“No!” Suzie squared her body in front of Mary Lou and looked her in the eyes. “And that is perfect because I want to make sure my meal plans make sense to the novice cook, see? My new cookbook, Perfectly Matched, is all about meal planning and recipes and pairing foods together. I want to make it easy-peasy and useful for everyone. So…”
“So you picked me?”
Suzie smiled and Mary Lou relaxed a bit. Honestly, she didn’t know why she was nervous about this anyway. Suzie Matthews always put everyone at ease within seconds. She could already feel the tension in her shoulders melting.
“Tea?” Suzie started for the kitchen. “Let’s work in here. I have the usual. Earl Grey, a lovely orange blend, and a spicy Chai.” She turned and motioned for Mary Lou. “Or do you prefer coffee? I have cinnamon flavored brewing…”
Suzie rattled on and Mary Lou found her feet. She moved into the kitchen and told herself that she was going to enjoy her day. After all, Suzie was Legend’s hostess with the mostest. Surely she could pick up some pointers as well as have a bit of fun.
Right?
****
“You know, Mary Lou, you really are a pretty girl.”
Mary Lou felt the heat rush to her cheeks and glanced away. She doodled with a pencil on the yellow legal pad where she’d been helping Suzie with meal plans and rating the selections. It had been a good day so far and she felt comfortable with Suzie as they talked about everything under the sun—including men, and her upcoming marriage. It felt like girl-talk and she’d not had that in a long time. In fact, she was enjoying being with Suzie.
“I guess I’m okay.”
Suzie lifted Mary Lou’s chin and brushed a stray strand of hair back from her forehead.
“I bet Thurman thinks you are pretty.”
“He says I’m durable.”
She looked straight into Suzie’s eyes and in return, Suzie made an awful face. “If you tell me he also said you had good hips for breeding, I’m going to leave here right now, go find that homely carpenter, and kick him where the sun don’t shine. What an awful thing to say!”
Mary Lou chuckled at the thought of Suzie kicking Thurman’s skinny ass and shrugged.
“Well, I suppose it’s true. I’m the stable housewife kind of woman, not the glamour girl.”
“Oh crap.” Suzie rose and pulled her off the barstool until she stood. “I’m a freckle-faced, red-head with pale skin and big hips, but I’ve learned to play that up to my advantage and focus on my assets. You need an attitude adjustment. Come here.” She tugged her toward the pantry and opened the door, then turned her body to face a full length mirror. “Stand up straight, Mary Lou. Pull those shoulders back.”
She did.
Suzie gathered the extra fabric in her sweatshirt at her back, causing the shirt to tighten across her more-than-ample chest and emphasize her small waist.
“You, my dear, have a perfect hour-glass figure. Men love that.”
Mary Lou looked her body up and down in the mirror and scowled. For the first time ever, she observed herself in a different way. “I always thought I was frumpy.”
“Well, you are if you wear baggy clothes like this. Honey, you need to show off this figure of yours.”
Shrugging, she replied. “What’s the use with this face? And this mousy nest of hair.”
Sighing, Suzie looked her straight in the eyes. “My dear Mary Lou. If the truth be told, do you want to marry Thurman Phillips? Or do you want better…because honey, you can do better.
You just need a little, well, sprucing… But of course, it’s up to you. If you are determined to settle for Thurman the carpenter who thinks you are durable…”
Mary Lou didn’t want to answer that. Thurman was stable. He had a job and owned a house. He wanted kids and he wanted to stay right here in Legend for the rest of his life. Those were all things she wanted too, weren’t they?
Weren’t they?
Who was she trying to convince? Suzie? Or herself?
“Of course I want to marry him.”
Suzie grunted. “You need more self-confidence and you need a new hairstyle and some makeup, and if you will let me…”
For the second time in a day, Mary Lou wondered why Suzie Matthews had taken such an interest in her.
At once, a rumbling rolled through the kitchen and both women jerked to stare out the back window. Suzie moved forward and she followed.
Suzie gaped. “Oh. My. God.”
“What?”
She pointed and Mary Lou followed the direction of her finger—and nearly passed out cold on the floor. Her head went light. Her vision blurred. “Shit,” she said between her teeth.
“Shit!”
Brad, Suzie’s husband, was in the yard directing a vehicle as it moved up the side of the house.
A dark blue bus, the kind you see on the interstate traveling into and out of Nashville, carrying country music stars to and fro, pulled off the driveway and under Brad’s guidance, parked in Suzie’s backyard. In large silver script across the side of the bus was written the name, Nash Rhodes.
They watched as the vehicle parked, the door opened, and then out walked—
Both women screamed, grabbed each other, and jumped up and down right there in the middle of the kitchen.
Suzie reached up and tugged the scrunchy from Mary Lou’s hair.
“Ow! What are you doing?” she gasped.
“Getting you presentable!”
“No!” A million thoughts raced through Mary Lou’s head. Her hair now falling into her face, her heart pounding—
Nash Rhodes was walking up to the back of Suzie’s house!—and all she could think of was that she needed to hide. She raced for the open pantry and ducked inside. “I need to hide! I’m frumpy! I don’t have a waist! No makeup. Mousy hair! Shit!”
Halfway in the pantry, Suzie grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Dammit, woman! Get a grip!” Then she reached up with both thumbs and forefingers and pinched her cheeks.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting some roses in your cheeks.” Then she fluffed her hair. “There, looks like you just rolled out of bed.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“Yes!”
“Oh.”
Next Suzie shoved a pair of sunglasses on her face. “A trick I use when I don’t want to put
on eye makeup to go to the store. Keep them on.”
The back door creaked.
Suzie gathered the extra fabric of Mary Lou’s sweatshirt in her fist and tugged her halfway out of the closet. Grinning, Suzie looked toward the door where her husband walked in.
“Hi honey!” Suzie said.
The shadow behind him could only be the embodiment of Nash Rhodes. Mary Lou thought she would faint dead away and avoided looking his way. Her knees were buckling and her head still spinning. Meeting Nash Rhodes never happened this way in her dreams. Then, she was all dolled up and had on her tight Wranglers and fancy boots, and he just couldn’t resist her.
Not like this! In sweatpants and no makeup.
Suzie’s grip on her shirt was constricting her chest. She couldn’t breathe.
The shadows walked into the kitchen. Her over-stimulated brain wasn’t comprehending a thing. But…
But she could almost smell Nash. She’d dreamed a thousand times what the man would smell like.
Tobacco. Bourbon. Sweat. Sex.
Oh, be still my pounding heart.
“Hey Suze.” Brad walked on into the kitchen and kissed his wife on the cheek. “Hey Mary Lou.”
And then in walked Nash Rhodes. All six-foot-something-sexy of him, larger than life and sucking every bit of breath out of her lungs and evidently, all of the oxygen out of the room.
Lightheaded, she eked out a weak, “Hi,” then grasped the pantry door and leaned into it. Maybe fell into it. It swung forward and she tripped over Suzie’s feet and, in a tumble of flying mousy locks and yards of extra sweatshirt fabric, landed flat on the floor with a very unladylike oomph.
The sunglasses skidded across Suzie’s polished hardwood floor.
After a moment of dead silence, she little by little lifted her face.
The toes of some very expensive boots were pointed right at her nose. Ostrich. She knew he always wore ostrich because it was a well-known fact in the Nash Rhodes fan circles.
Bringing her gaze up a little higher, she took in worn denim jeans, a little frayed around the 1ankle, and tight over the calf.
She swallowed and called herself every kind of clumsy. Stupid. Stupid. Clumsy. Plain Jane. Idiot girl. Mousy Mary Lou.
A large hand reached down and she glanced further up.
Calloused on the pads of his fingers. She noticed that. From guitar pickin’, she was certain.
“Here, honey, lemme help you up.”
Oh, shit, that voice. Smooth as chocolate and sharp as chipotle peppers. Made her heart turn over in her chest. Twice.
And within a second, she lifted an awkward hand up to grasp his big ol’ warm one—it just smothered hers—and he freaking hauled her to her feet.
“Oh!”
She felt lighter than air.
She risked a lengthy look into his eyes and he grinned that sexy, sultry, melt-your-heart Nash Rhodes grin. The one in all the posters. The one she’d imagined in her daydreams and savored in her oh-so-wicked night-time fantasies.
Damn.
Then all went black and she fell again at his feet.
****
The voices above were what roused her.
Suzie’s. Brad’s.
She waited while she was coming to, to see if she could distinguish anyone else’s. She was humiliated enough, as it was, without waking to see Nash peering over her body sprawled out on the floor.
No, wait. It didn’t feel like she was on the floor. In a bed?
“Poor thing. I think the excitement was too much for her,” Suzie mused. “Brad Matthews, why in the hell didn’t you give me some kind of warning?”
“It was one of those things, Suzette. It sort of fell into place and I thought I was doing a good thing.”
Mary Lou heard Suzie sigh. “Well, of course. I know. I could have used a few minutes…” She paused. “Well, at least we didn’t run Nash off.”
Is he here? She wanted to open her eyes.
“Naw. He’s fine. Was a bit worried about her though. Said she was like dead weight in his arms when he carried her up the stairs.”
Mary Lou flashed open her eyes. “He carried me?”
Suzie sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. “Yes, sweetie. Oh my goodness, are you okay? I was so worried.”
She sat up. Oh, woozy still. “He carried me?”
“Yes, but it’s okay. He was concerned.”
Mary Lou’s heart beat faster. “Just my luck. I’m in Nash Rhodes’ arms and I’m unconscious and have absolutely no recollection of it. Dammit!”
Suzie looked at her and held her gaze for a long moment. Then she turned to her husband and said, “Brad, I know you have things to do this afternoon at the lodge, right?”
“Well, I thought I’d hang around the house and play with Petey this afternoon.”
“Petey loves to go to the lodge. It’s a beautiful day. He can ride his trike on the deck while you have things to do.”
Glancing between husband and wife, Mary Lou knew there was more to this conversation than what was on the surface.
Suzie nodded to Brad.
“Oh, of course. Yes. I have things to do.” He left and Mary Lou questioned just what kind of control Suzie had over that husband of hers.
Suzie turned to her. “Sex.”
“What?”
Suzie shrugged. “Sex is power.” She smiled a big grin then. “And he loves me and will do anything for me.”
“For sex?” Mary Lou thought she was starting to get it.
A giggle bubbled up in Suzie’s throat. She nodded. “For sex.”
“Oh.” Then she thought of Thurman and frowned. Could she wield the power of sex over him? Did she even want to?”
“Mary Lou…” Cupping her face in her palms, Suzie turned Mary Lou’s face her way. “Now, you listen to me, Mary Lou Picketts, because I’m only going to ask this once more. Do you really want to marry Thurman Phillips? ‘Cause you have a look on your face, and earlier, well… Or do you want to live on the edge a little bit and see if I can hook you up with Nash Rhodes, even if it’s only for an evening. Your decision. And it’s a once-in-a-lifetime shot.
“But before you answer, think about this. Is it about Thurman or is it about you? What do you want, deep in your heart? Durability? Or a chance at something more? A chance. That’s what I want to give you, Mary Lou. A chance at more.
“And if you do, then this afternoon, we have our work cut out for us, but we’ll give it our best shot, all right?”
Suzie stopped talking, and Mary Lou realized, sitting there on a bed in one of Suzie’s guest bedrooms, that her chest was heaving in, breath after breath, and her heart was beating a wild tattoo in anticipation.
“I don’t want to be durable.”
Suzie grinned. “What do you want to be?”
“Sexy.”
The grin widened and fear lanced Mary Lou’s mid-section.
“We can do that,” Suzie said. “But here is your first task. Get on that phone and call Mr. Thurman Phillips and tell him that I need you to stay the weekend with me here at the B&B.
Plead the deadline and tell him I’m paying you. If you have plans, cancel them, because I want you freed up for the entire weekend. You hear? If he needs to tend to Miss Priscilla, then so be it, but let it go. The cat will be fine.”
“But we have tickets for the concert Saturday night.”
“Honey, you are going to have a front row seat and a backstage pass. Tell him to take his mother. I need your help and I’m hiring you. Now call.”
She hesitated. Should she? Could she turn herself over to Suzie for the entire weekend?
Yes.
She reached for the phone. “All right. I’m all yours.”
Suzie squeezed her hand. “Nope, I’m hoping by the end of the weekend you’ll be all his.”
The thought of that made Mary Lou’s stomach twist into a knot. She better call Thurman before she threw up.
Chapter Three
“Why in hel
l you agreed to do this, I will never know.”
Nash straightened his Resistol and looked at his manager, Rick Jameson, through the mirror. “She’s a fan. Least I can do.”
“Bullshit. You have millions of fans. There is barely a return on investment by paying special attention to one fan. You should be resting up tonight because we’ve got a long haul this weekend, and the two weeks after that.”
Nash turned. Rick was right, but he was damn tired of the long hauls lately and was eager to get away from the bus, his crew, the band, and Rick for one evening and experience some good home cooking and down-home company. Tennessee wasn’t Louisiana, but the folks here were good people and it was almost like home. He liked the Matthews and the looks of the bed and breakfast they lived in, and well, if they had invited a fan of his to eat with them, so be it.
“I’m having dinner with the Matthews. Brad is on the board of the hospital and owns the lodge. I might decide to make a donation, so it’s more than meeting fans. You guys take the night off, head into Knoxville or Gatlinburg.” He tossed a credit card Rick’s way. “Have a round or two on me. I need some space.”
He started for the door, hoping that message was blunt enough. Rick’s hand landed on his bicep. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Looking down at the smaller man’s fingers on his upper arm, Nash flinched. Rick was beginning to get on his nerves. He pulled his arm out of his grasp. He wanted to jerk it, but didn’t. No need to make a scene. He wanted out of this damn bus.
“I think the better statement is this—don’t you do anything stupid, and stay the hell out of my way tonight. Got it?”
Rick dropped his hand and backed off. The look on his face told Nash that he understood.
They’d all been testy the past week. Forty cities in fifty days had taken its toll. He needed a break. They all did.
He twisted the knob on the bus door, wondering if the fan at dinner this evening would be the same temptress he’d carried upstairs earlier in the day and carefully laid on the guest bed.