Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)

by Tessa Bailey

  Unless they were in bed. Then all bets were off.

  Jasper removed his helmet and slung it over the left handlebar of his bike. “Y’all in need of some assistance?”

  The two people at the busted Suburban’s front end traded a look, as if he’d just spoken in a different language. Yup, these were city folk, sure as he was standing there. Dude was dressed for a Sunday sermon, even though it was a weekday morning. The girl at his shoulder was dressed for the opposite of church in ripped jean shorts and a crop top. She knew how to have a good time, that one. Jasper had a lot of experience with her type and could admire the displayed skin without feeling that spark of attraction he used to get in his belly. Now, the Jasper of Party Girls Past would have already gotten her number.

  Instead, he found his gaze drawn to the midnight-haired she devil spitting fire from the car’s significant shadow. He could barely make out her features, but the suspicion radiating from her gave Jasper the odd urge to inspire trust instead. A weird reaction, to be sure, since she appeared to be spoken for. The dark-haired man’s hulking arm was thrown around her slim waist as if restraining her from attacking, and Jasper couldn’t help but chuckle at the suspended animation of the scene. What the hell had he stumbled on here?

  Finally, Sunday Sermon spoke up, the whiteness of his teeth noticeable from across the highway. “Yes, actually. It’s our fan belt. We need to call a tow truck and there’s no cell reception.”

  “Cell reception?” Jasper asked with a perplexed look, just to fuck with him. City people were too easy. “I don’t follow.”

  Jasper swore the guy turned pale as cotton. “Is there a garage nearby?”

  “Sure.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back the way I came. I can take one of you to bring back the tow truck.” Hulk released She Devil and Jasper frowned over the unexpected loosening of his chest. “How about you? Want a ride?”

  She Devil’s mouth fell open and she scoffed, “I’d actually rather get back in the car with my brother. And that’s saying something.”

  He liked her voice. Kind of scratchy, like she’d been holding in a scream too long. What kind of things set it loose? “Which one is your brother?”

  She combed fingers through her midnight hair, leaving it askew in places, but damn if the wayward pieces weren’t cute. “Why?”

  For once, Jasper didn’t have a ready answer. “You’re the only one dressed for a bike except for the big guy, and I doubt he’d fit.” His hearty laugh sounded amplified in the dusty quiet of the road. “Sorry, I was just picturing him on the back with his arms around my waist. Go on and think about that. It’s quite a picture.”

  Party Girl giggled, but Jasper couldn’t take his eyes off She Devil, wanting to watch her as she took his measure. What are you seein’, beautiful? Mind telling me when you see it?

  A nudge of discomfort had Jasper turning back for his bike. “Listen up, I’m late for an appointment. If I’m late, I’ll catch hell.” He slid his helmet on top of his head. “I’m going to need an answer pretty quick.”

  She Devil stepped into the sunlight with a wince, telling Jasper she wasn’t the outdoorsy type, an opinion only heightened by her attire. The fitted black shirt had small openings in the sleeves where her thumbs poked out. Her jeans and boots were worn-in and comfortable, holes decorating both. If Jasper were forced to peg her, he would say She Devil was probably the type to sleep in on weekends. The kind who enjoyed rainstorms. Once upon a time, he would have speculated how she’d be in between the sheets before anything else about her registered, but he’d learned to keep that part of himself penned.

  Then she came a step closer and he stopped speculating on her extracurricular activities or weather preferences. She was a looker beneath all that makeup. Big-eyed, pouty, and challenging. And then, his mind did slip between the sheets before he determinedly yanked it back out. But not before a rough-edged thought slipped through: She’d like a man who knows how to be a little extra bad.

  “Who is your appointment with?”

  Jasper tilted his head. “Why?” he asked with a smirk, throwing back her one-word response to his earlier question.

  She rolled her lips inward, as though disinclined to commend him for paying attention. “If your appointment is with a barber, as opposed to a cult, I might be interested in that ride.”

  Behind her, Hulk shook his head. “Nope.”

  She Devil sent the big guy what Jasper assumed was a reassuring look before locking those golden-brown eyes on him once more. “Well?”

  “If you have to know, I’m meeting with a woman.”

  Was it Jasper’s imagination or did she look disappointed? “Well. We wouldn’t want to keep you. If you could just give us the garage’s name—”

  “Now, hold on one second.” Jasper slipped his cell out of his jacket pocket and started to dial, pressing the button to put the call on speakerphone. Sunday Sermon narrowed his eyes at him. The foursome watched him curiously as the call connected and a woman’s voice drifted out through the speaker.

  “Jasper Ellis. Lunch is on the table and your hide is nowhere to be seen.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at She Devil. “I’m going to be a little late today, Rosemary.” Covering the phone with one hand, he leaned forward a touch and whispered “That’s my grandmother,” before straightening again and returning to his conversation. “I’m playing Good Samaritan to some lost city dwellers.”

  A burst of static. “You might as well bring them on over. I made enough sandwiches to feed an army.”

  “Now, that’s a nice thought, isn’t it? But I don’t think they’ll all fit on my bike.”

  “I hate that thing.”

  “I know you do. I’ll be over when I can.”

  Jasper hung up before his grandmother could ask if one of the city dwellers was a nice single girl. He was still trying to figure that out for himself, although he still had no idea why it mattered. This morning when he’d woken up, finding a single girl had been about the farthest thing from his mind. Now, though, he found himself measuring She Devil’s proximity to Hulk and attempting to discern their relationship.

  “So. Have I been found suitable?” Jasper asked the group as a whole. “I can recite the presidents’ names, first through forty-fourth, if it helps, but I’m not in the habit of pissing off the family matriarch. She’s meaner than she sounds.”

  Hulk and She Devil exchanged a look. “We know his name now,” said Hulk.

  She Devil fussed with her hair again, messing it up more. “Maybe this is just how people act down here in—er, where are we?”

  “Hurley, New Mexico. Just outside Silver City,” Jasper supplied, his answer fading away as Sunday Sermon strode over to his bike and took a cell-phone shot of his license plate.

  “I have some very powerful men listed in my contacts. Feel free to annoy my sister, but bring her back alive.”

  She Devil gave him a nice long once-over as her brother headed back to the Suburban. Jasper was well used to once-overs from the opposite sex, except hers wasn’t overtly sexual, as most tended to be. It was shrewd and gave away none of the inner workings taking place behind her eyes. He liked that. A little too much to drive away. So he was relieved when she relented.

  “It’s just a quick ride.”

  She sauntered toward him, thighs flexing in her jeans, and Jasper swallowed a growl. Something told him this ride would be anything but quick, but he shoved the thought aside and distracted himself by removing his helmet and transferring it to her head. And hell if he didn’t have a hard time mobilizing himself under her scrutiny. Like she wanted to see past whatever was visible. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been dissected by a woman—and it was welcome.

  Damn, she smelled like the forest, cut with cooking spices. He tried not to be obvious about sucking in a good lungful. His reaction to this girl was goddamn strange, to say the least, but he had no choice but to go with it since she was about to mount his bike.

  It had
thrown her off a little, his gesture of passing over the helmet, but she recovered to grant him a speculative look. Mumbling under her breath, she threw a leg over his bike and gripped the back bar. “You might not recognize me, but I’m famous for what I can do with a knife.”

  Jasper joined her on the bike in one smooth movement, groaning inwardly when her thighs gripped his waist. Had her breath caught? “I hate to disappoint you, but this isn't the first time a woman's threatened me with a knife.”

  “Yeah, but it would be the last.”

  His laughter was lost in the roar of the bike’s ignition, the Suburban growing smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror.

  Chapter Four

  There was a reason Rita had gravitated toward the kitchen. Recipes. They were precise. They had instructions. You either added the correct textures and flavors, or you didn’t. There was no gray area in cooking. It was all right there before her, written on a glossy page. Even she couldn’t fuck up step-by-step instructions.

  Wrong.

  It had become starkly apparent while working under Miriam that there was a definite knack. And she’d apparently gotten in the “sarcasm” line instead of the “knack” line the day God had been doling out talent. She’d found fail-safe recipes and stuck to them, perfecting them in the privacy of her one-bedroom apartment, praying something new wouldn’t be thrown at her the following day. Learning on the fly had been a constant fear, day in and day out.

  So join a nationally televised reality show, right?

  Perhaps throwing herself to the sharks had been Rita’s way of grieving, of trying to find a way to feel close to her mother again. Or trying to flame out hard enough—once and for all—that she’d be forced into quitting the job she never quite performed more than adequately. Whatever the reason, she’d applied for the show knowing they couldn’t deny Miriam Clarkson’s daughter a spot, while somehow also knowing things would change afterward. Things would finally shift. Either she’d prod some dormant talent into animation or she’d cut herself off at the knees and it would be blessedly over.

  At the very least, she’d learned a thing or two about people through working with food. What they chose to order from the menu, more often than not, classified them. Had they lived abroad, were they adventurous, extravagant or cheap?

  Jasper Ellis was a twenty-ounce hanger steak with a side of garlic mashed potatoes. Easy. He didn’t require much effort or imagination. It had a lot to do with the way he wore his jeans. Like he’d picked up the first pair he’d stumbled across on the floor that morning and slung them up around his cowboy hips. And son of a bitch, look at that! They fit like a dream. She could even picture him saying it in the mirror as he splashed water on his hair—and damn! Didn’t his rich brown locks—with a touch of auburn—just style themselves!

  Appetizing, yet effortless. Hanger steak.

  Weirdly, she couldn’t seem to shake the memory of how he’d zeroed in on her, only looking away when addressed by someone else. This good ol’ boy had barely spared Leggy Peggy a passing glance, making Rita vacillate between classifying Jasper as a hanger steak and a porterhouse. A cynical part of her had taken the ride just to see how fast he would become predictable. Typical. Because while she could swear there’d been a spark of interest in his sky-blue eyes, men like Jasper were the opposite of her type. Not that she necessarily had a type, since she tended to find dating rituals repellent. In her world, small talk was on par with Chinese water torture, so her infrequent dates were usually men who’d been within her orbit for a while, like fellow chefs or market employees who sold her ingredients. Even then, date two was a stretch.

  So, yeah. If an online dating service matched Rita up with a Jasper Ellis type, she would consider suing them for false advertising. To put it bluntly, he was walking, talking sex. Kind of like a younger, more realistic, twice-as-magnetic version of Matthew McConaughey. Rita was a little surprised that a mob of women wasn’t sprinting after the motorcycle as they cruised back toward Hurley. None of those women would be a social maladroit without a pinch of color in her wardrobe. Most likely, they hadn’t threatened him with knife violence, either.

  Between her thighs, his hips shifted just a fraction and she almost laughed at the way her body reacted. Warmth trickled into her stomach on cue, and she fought the insane urge to rub her stiffening nipples against the sun-heated back of his leather jacket. Honestly, the man must have trouble just walking down the street without being propositioned. She hadn’t been propositioned in—ever.

  Definitely not each other’s type.

  They were almost to town when Jasper slowed the bike to a stop at a red light, the engine purring beneath them. Their eyes met in the circular rearview mirror. “You’re thinking awfully hard back there.”

  Rita hid her surprise in a shrug. “I was wondering why there’s a stoplight here when I can’t see another car for miles.”

  He cast a glance in both directions as if the thought had never occurred to him. “You reckon I should go through the red light?” He revved the bike’s engine. “Think about it hard, now. You and I would be fugitives from the law. The Bonnie and Clyde of New Mexico. It’s a big decision.”

  This man was ridiculous. “Clyde was impotent.”

  “Was he?” Jasper twisted his upper body around, appearing genuinely perplexed. “How did he keep such a beautiful woman around without all his parts working?”

  “I don’t know. Charisma?” Rita stared with impatience at the still-red light. Leave it to her to broach the subject of erectile dysfunction within five minutes of meeting revamped McConaughey. “Are we almost there?”

  “Another mile or so.” His hips turned on the seat, scooting her thighs a little wider, making Rita all too aware of the intimacy of their position. “I’d like to know your name before we get there.”

  Rita ordered herself to stop comparing the color of his eyes to the sky outlining him. “Why is that?”

  “So I can introduce you properly to Stan, our mechanic,” he explained in a patient voice. “I’d like to say, ‘Stan, meet so-and-so.’ Instead of ‘Stan, this is some nameless woman I picked up.’ It doesn’t have the same ring.”

  Rita sorely regretted taking this ride. Jasper Ellis was turning out to be anything but predictable or typical, and she didn’t like having her theories disproved. It was like sprinkling nutmeg on eggnog, then taking a sip and finding out you’d used chili powder instead. Why should this man who could wink a woman into the sack also have a personality? “Rita.”

  “Rita,” he repeated, although with his accent, it sounded more like Ray-da. “I like that. Rhymes with cheetah.”

  The light turned green and they starting moving before she could respond. There were two conflicting sides of her. One wanted this damn ride to be over, so she could send Jasper on his way and stop worrying about his refusal to be categorized. And the other side sorely regretted that the ride was coming to an end. The scent of his worn-in leather jacket teamed with the waft of diesel was pleasant. More than pleasant. The helmet strap beneath her chin was soft, like warm fingers encasing her jaw. Rita didn’t do outdoor sports, but being on the back of a motorcycle hadn't filled her with terror as she might have expected. When she considered it might have something to do with the steady energy of the man holding the handlebars, she shook her head to clear the thought.

  Hurley sneaked up on either side of them, small but efficient. A hardware store, a diner, a bakery. Green, leafy shrubs and ice plants gave the town a well-kept feel, the residents clearly taking pride in the community’s appearance. Its vibe was so far removed from the dusty two-lane highway they’d just come from that Rita felt like she’d been transported into an alternate universe. There were two convenience stores on either side of the main street, which was actually named Main Street, both with signs outside boasting deals on produce, the prices so reasonable compared to San Diego that she almost fell off the bike.

  Several people waved at Jasper as they traveled through town, sending
Rita shrinking down into the seat to avoid scrutiny. Had any of them seen her online disgrace? Not for the first time, it occurred to her how hilarious she must look on the back of a certified-cool-guy’s bike. They probably thought he’d lost a bet or something.

  Rita felt Jasper watching her in the rearview and ducked her head, grateful the drone of the engine prevented conversation. Finally, at the edge of town, they pulled into a garage. A man in coveralls set aside his newspaper and rose to meet them as they parked. “Shouldn’t you be sitting down to lunch with Rosemary?”

  Jasper held out a hand to assist Rita off the bike, sighing when she climbed off without his help. “Indeed I should, Stan, and I expect to catch some serious grief over my tardiness. But I had reason.” He gestured to her. “This here is my friend, Rita. The rest of her group is stranded out along Highway Sixty, just east a few miles. Would you mind giving them a tow in?”

  “You betcha,” Stan said, donning a baseball cap he tugged from his back pocket. The older man looked flat-out excited to have something on his agenda. “Pleasure to meet you, Rita. I’ll have them back in a jiff.”

  Rita walked toward the shade provided by the garage, joined by Jasper a moment later. They watched Stan pull his tow truck onto Main Street without speaking, and then they were alone. Without the hum of the bike’s engine, the silence made Rita jumpy. What, was she expected to carry on a conversation now? “Thank you for the ride. I don’t need you to wait with me.”

  She could tell he’d been expecting her to say that. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me.”

  “But your grandmother is waiting for you.”

  Jasper leaned up against the concrete building, crossing one ankle over the other. “I’ll admit I’m feeling pretty guilty about that. Feeling hungry, too. But I’ve weighed the pros and cons of the situation carefully, Rita. And I think a few more minutes talking to you is worth the added guilt and possible starvation.”