by JoAnn Ross
“OMG. Be still, my heart,” Kim said as the bell on the front door jingled and Mac Culhane sauntered in.
Kim wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. One by one, the women all stopped chattering and digging through the sale baskets to stare at the sole male in the shop, who looked every bit as hot as the other times Annie had seen him.
Rather than his usual black T-shirt, he was wearing a blue button-down oxford-cloth shirt a few shades lighter than his eyes, and although he was still in jeans, the crease was sharp enough to cut through the sheets of designer paper covered with seashells that Annie had been in the process of bagging.
Every female eye in the store followed as he walked toward the counter. It was only because Sedona had mentioned it, and Annie was watching him so carefully, that she detected a slight limp.
“Is he not the most gorgeous male animal you’ve ever seen in your life?” Kim said under her breath.
“I could just eat him up with a spoon,” the customer, whose hair was dyed a shade remarkably similar to the fluorescent red that Maureen had shown up with the other day, said. “My late husband had a rock-hard body like that once upon a time. Everyone in Salem thought I was marrying him because he was running for the state senate and I wanted to be a politician’s wife.”
“But they were wrong,” Kim guessed as Annie watched Mac pause to treat a trio of women with varying shades of snowy hair to a dazzling smile that had them giggling like schoolgirls.
“You bet they were. I married my Arnold for the sex.” She sighed again, causing Annie to wonder if she was remembering that sex with her late husband, or imagining indulging in it with the midnight deejay.
Which, as a tsunami of impure thoughts swept over her, Annie found herself imagining as well.
“He’s good-looking,” Annie said, managing to keep her tone cool and composed even as her body flared hot and bothered. She wouldn’t even need the spoon. She had a sudden urge to lick Midnight Mac. All over. “If that’s your type.”
Another woman had just come up to the counter carrying a basket filled with glue runners, a box of metal whale brads, and a wooden-handled rubber stamp of a whimsical flower-spotted whale.
“Since when is tall, dark, and sexy as sin not every woman’s type?” the customer asked. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d be tempted to jump him right here.”
“Make that thirty years,” the first woman said. “Not only do I know exactly when you were born, since I’m your younger sister, but you’ll always be older than me.”
“Like two years makes that much difference at our age.”
“If I weren’t wearing this ring”—Kim waggled her left hand to show off the diamond she’d received from her fireman fiancè for Valentine’s Day—“I’d do him in a heartbeat. . . . Which is why we’re all going to have to live vicariously through you,” she said to Annie.
“Me?”
“Well, none of us have called the show under a fake name,” Kim said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Annie had always been a lousy liar. If she’d been testifying under oath in a trial for her life, the blatant lack of truthfulness in her voice would’ve had a jury sending her to the Big House.
“Don’t try to deny it,” Kim said. “It’s all over town. They’re even taking bets at the market on when you’re going to show up together in person.”
“Looks like now,” the late senator’s wife said.
“It’s not ‘showing up together’ to have a customer come into the store,” Annie muttered. “And people call radio stations all the time.”
“I wonder what he’s doing here. He doesn’t look like a scrapper or a cardmaker to me,” the redhead said.
“Nor to me,” her lavender-haired sister agreed.
“Which means,” Kim said, “the hottie deejay is here to see you.”
Which appeared to be the case when he stopped in front of the counter.
“Hi.” How could that one word, consisting of merely a single syllable, have the air between them crackling like heat lightning before a squall?
“Well, hello.” They were now the center of attention. Given the conversation that this encounter would generate once everyone got back on that blue and white bus, Annie felt as if she should be charging admission to the show. “This is a surprise.”
“Emma came home from yesterday’s card-making party with a wish list,” he said in a voice every bit as dark and rich as the chocolate fudge sold along with the saltwater taffy at the candy shop next door.
Every gaze in the place followed his hand as he pulled the notepaper from the front pocket of those jeans, which, though knife-creased, were still worn thin in some very eye-catching places.
“Great marketing ploy.” His grin, which caused the thin white scars beneath his eyes to crinkle, was unreasonably cocky. Even as she warned herself of its dangers, Annie felt her knees weakening. “Holding parties to get people hooked on more supplies.”
Reining in her thoughts, which had wandered into hot and treacherous territory, Annie lifted a sharp gaze to meet his laughing one. “It’s not a ploy. Your daughter’s a very talented artist. If you’d been aware enough to want to help her develop that talent, you would have bought her some decent drawing pens or pencils before she had to make you that list.”
The minute she heard the words escape her lips, Annie wanted to pull them back. Knowing from last night’s show how overwhelmed he seemed to be, suddenly a single father of a six-year-old girl, she shouldn’t have been so uncharacteristically snarky to the guy, who really seemed to be trying.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she led him to the back of the store where the pencils, pens, and inks were displayed. Fortunately it was at the far side of the wooden shelves, out of sight of the counter, where everyone seemed to have gathered to chatter about the invasion of testosterone into the cozy store. “That was uncalled for.”
“But true,” he said. “I have to admit that I’m pretty much on the low end of the single-parent learning curve.”
“You appear to be doing well enough. Emma seems very well adjusted.” Annie believed in giving credit where credit was due. She also suspected that it was natural for a little girl to want a mother. She certainly had. And, if she were to be perfectly honest, there were times she still felt that lifelong loss.
“This is quite a list,” she said, looking at the items printed in pink on the piece of paper. “And these alcohol pens are wonderful. But perhaps pricey for this stage in her coloring. Though putting these on her list suggests she wants to try blending, which would probably be too advanced for most people her age. But from the drawings on Charlie’s wall, I think you ought to just let her go for it.”
“We,” he corrected. At her puzzled look, he clarified. “After yesterday I got the feeling that she views you as a mentor as well as a potential mom candidate.”
“She did suggest I should marry you,” Annie admitted. She hadn’t been going to bring it up because she had no idea what his daughter had been discussing with him.
“That’s another list, and while you were definitely in the mix after your meeting at Gramps’s room, after the party I think you’ve now claimed the top slot.”
That idea, just as it had when Emma had brought it up yesterday, triggered memories and dreams she’d been trying, without success, to forget.
“I’m sorry if she was overly persistent about wanting a new mother,” he said. “I’m discovering a stubborn streak beneath all that girlie pink.”
“Gee, I wonder where she got that from?” Annie asked.
“Unfortunately, from both of her parents, so I suspect the teen years will be interesting. And I didn’t mean to make you unhappy.”
“You didn’t.”
“So you say.” He reached out and rubbed at the lines she hadn’t realized were creasing her forehead. “But your face is telling me something different.”
“I’m just getting a headache.” She brushed away his touch, which was l
eaving sparks on her skin, and got back to business.
“So . . . what I’d suggest is this basic set of less-expensive watercolor pencils. Along with these colored ones.”
“They both look pretty much the same to me,” he said. “What’s the difference?”
“The colored ones are more waxy and glide more smoothly across the paper.” She handed him one. “Try it on this sketch pad.” She kept the pad hanging on the display so people could try before buying.
He took the red pencil she handed him and drew a stick figure holding out a flower. Talk about smooth, she thought as he tore the paper off and handed it to her.
“Apparently while your daughter may have gotten her parents’ stubbornness, she doesn’t seem to have inherited her artistic talent from you.”
The little cloud of depression lifted as she looked down at what, if she’d been Emma’s age and received from a boy, she would have considered a love note.
“True. The drawing sucks. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”
“So they say.” Deciding that she didn’t want to share even a few of the thoughts she’d been having about him, she took one of the watercolor pencils from the bin. “As you can see, this is a harder pencil.”
This time he drew a rectangle with a square on top, then added arms and legs and a smiling face. Then drew a heart in the center of the rectangle and filled it in with a red watercolor. Next he drew a second robot, adding loopy lines that she took to be long curls and lips to its face. Reaching into the bin, he selected a pink pencil, which he used to shade in the ultra-feminine mouth.
Beneath the robots he wrote, in a broad, scrawling script, Robot Love.
“Very cute.” Which, dammit, was true. It also helped her connect the fun Midnight Mac on the radio with the dangerously dark exterior of the man she’d met at Still Waters. Layers. The man definitely had them.
“Now, you could’ve dipped the tip in water and done the same thing, or brushed it with water, but when I used to keep a spray bottle here, I found that sometimes the kids used it for water fights. So here’s another way to show you the difference.”
She took a blending pen and moved it across the heart of the female robot, which gave a softened watercolor effect.
“Cool,” he said. Taking the pen, he did the same on the lips. “They’re the same color as yours,” he said, pointing out what she’d already noticed. “And here’s where I tell you that they’ve been almost all I’ve been thinking about since yesterday. And wondering if they taste as good as they look.”
Growing up as a nomad, Annie had always tried her best to be the “good girl.” The kid that her foster parents might want to adopt for their very own. Or at least keep for more than a few weeks or months.
She’d stuck with that behavior through college, then into her marriage, being cheerful and acquiescent so as to never make waves.
But as those dark blue eyes settled on her lips, which had suddenly gone desert dry, Annie decided that perhaps there was something to be said for wave making. As Sedona had pointed out, she’d moved to the very edge of the continent.
So why not carry living on the edge just one step further?
After all, lips that firm and chiseled were designed to tempt even the most levelheaded woman. Dragging her gaze from his mouth, she saw a storm brewing in his eyes, his irises darkening until they were nearly as black as his pupils.
A bad girl she hadn’t even known was lurking inside her smiled at him. A slow, you-know-you-want-me smile that was as much dare as temptation.
“Well,” she said, in a husky voice that wasn’t as moonlight-and-magnolias-drenched as the one Connie Fletcher always pulled out when she was flirting with men (which was nearly always, from what Annie had been able to tell) but was a very long way from her usual calm and almost logical tone, “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”
23
Reminding himself that this wasn’t why he’d come here to Memories on Main today, as well as taking the extra precaution of putting both hands on the shelves on either side of her, to keep them from getting into trouble, Mac leaned forward, lowering his head.
The sky outside had been a brilliant coastal-summer blue, without the sign of a cloud, when he’d entered the store. So why was he suddenly hearing the rumble of thunder?
He was a breath away. A slight shifting of their heads and their lips would meet. Even as he was telling himself that this could end up being a major mistake, she licked those glossy pink lips with the tip of her tongue, and, slam bam, he was toast.
She tasted like cherries and temptation, and sex on a summer’s night, bringing up mental images of the two of them on a blanket on the beach while the waves rolled onto the sand, and the stars whirled overhead, and she moved beneath him, mouth to mouth, hot flesh to hot flesh, long legs wrapped around his back, telling him yes, and yes, and oh, yes.
She’d shout his name even as she begged for more.
He’d expected to feel sparks. But what he hadn’t planned for was an early explosion of Fourth of July fireworks.
He might claim to be just the guy on the radio, but Mac was no stranger to risk. Nor danger. If he were to be perfectly honest, he’d even have to admit that part of the reason he went outside the wire more than most AFN deejays was that he enjoyed it.
But he’d always recognized his own strengths. Along with his own weaknesses. And the emotions that Sandy from Shelter Bay, or Annie Shepherd, or whatever the hell she wanted to be called, stirred in him represented more risk than a horde of Taliban or a dozen terrorists with armed jingle trucks.
As the sweetest lips he’d ever tasted parted beneath his, even as a low moan flowed from them straight into his mouth, he forced himself to pull away.
“Wow.” Her cheeks were flushed, her lips swollen, her eyes dark and clouded with a tempting blend of confusion and unfulfilled need. “If Connie Fletcher knew you could kiss like that, you’d never be safe.”
“Connie Fletcher doesn’t have anything on you.” He knew the flirtatious redhead couldn’t, on her best day, knock his socks off the way this woman had with one mere, too short kiss.
He lowered his hands, which were practically itching with the need to touch her. All over. “That really wasn’t what I came here for.”
“Okay.” She glanced down at the pencils she’d been holding that had fallen to the floor between them. “And, for the record, I don’t usually kiss customers behind the display shelves.”
“Usually?” Mac lifted a brow, feeling foolishly like laughing. Not at her. But at their situation and because suddenly he was feeling so damn good.
She drew in a deep breath that did interesting things to the front of today’s sundress, a cheery yellow-and-white-checked number with delicate little hearts for buttons. As he imagined unfastening each of those little white hearts, Mac found himself slipping closer to the edge of that dangerous cliff again.
“Actually, I’ve never kissed a customer.”
“Which makes me your first.” He grinned. “I like that idea.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Actually, I’m hungry. Which is why I dropped in, to see if you wanted to go to lunch.”
“With you?”
“Well, we could go separately. But that doesn’t seem like a real good way to get to know each other.”
“And that’s important why?”
“Because we’re going to be spending the Fourth together. And although I’m pretty sure you’re not a serial killer or anything like that, I guess I’m sort of an overly protective father and I’d like to know a little about the woman that my daughter is pushing me to marry.”
“I told you, marriage is off the table. And it’s lovely to know that you don’t suspect me of being some sort of murderer, but I’m not buying your story.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Let’s just say you’re not going to be winning any Nobel Prizes for literature anytime soon.”
“Okay.” He
took a deep breath. Blew it out again as he wondered why the hell he was feeling like the high school nerd asking the head cheerleader to the prom. “Here’s the deal. I like you. My daughter likes you. And although you might keep trying to make me think otherwise, that kiss just revealed that you’re interested, too.”
She folded her arms across the front of the yellow gingham. “And your point is?”
Mac was encouraged that she hadn’t tried to lie about the connection between them.
“But you don’t want to be interested,” he guessed.
“No. I don’t. It’s nothing personal, and I’ve honestly no idea why I just acted that way, but the thing is . . . I’ve pretty much given up men.”
“Is that like giving up chocolate for Lent?”
“No. Merely a lifestyle choice.”
“Does that mean that anyone with a Y chromosome is now out of the running?”
“No.” Black curls bounced as she shook her head. “I didn’t mean that at all. It’s just that, well, relationships tend to complicate things too much.”
Damn. Something about him was making her skittish, so the first thing he had to do was get her to relax around him. To trust him. To prove to her that he wasn’t anything like her ex must’ve been.
“I’m just talking about lunch. You have to eat.”
“In case you didn’t notice, the store’s packed. I have to work.”
“Well, we’re in luck. Because that bus is getting ready to take off,” he said.
She glanced out the window, watching as several seniors who’d been visiting other Main Street shops dutifully climbed back on the blue and white tour bus.
“If you’re worried about that poll they’ve got going at the market and Barnie’s—”
“They’re betting at the barbershop, too?”
“According to my dad. And Van, down at the Grateful Bread, says we’re suddenly topic number one at Cut Loose.”
“Which means, since it’s the only salon in town, I’m never going to be able to get my hair cut again,” she muttered.
“There’ll be another story for everyone to fixate on in a day or so. Meanwhile, if you want to try to avoid any gossip—”