Page 3 of The Bachelor

“No, I don’t. But I’m going to.” He pulled her forward off the wall. “The code on my phone is 451212 so you can unlock it if you want.”

She dug her heels in. “Wait, what if Ben realizes he has my purse and comes back? Shouldn’t I wait here?”

She had a point. Shane tipped his head to the diner across the street. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee and watch out the window for his truck.” He’d give it thirty minutes.

“I can wait by myself, you don’t have to stay.”

“You don’t have any money, remember?” Shane tugged her again and this time she came forward. “Stop being stubborn and just accept my help.”

Avery looked at him for a minute and then nodded. “Thanks. This is very nice of you. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“You’re right. I could be sleeping. But I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and see on the news that you are missing or were hit by a car or got arrested for loitering. And I hate the idea of never knowing what actually happened to you.” He put his wallet back into his pocket and glanced right and left to make sure the street was clear to cross. “Call me what you want, but it’s just the way I’m drawn.”

She looked up at him with those stunning eyes. “Apparently, I’m drawn like an idiot.”

What she was, was beautiful. She looked fresh, sweet, trusting. She looked like the kind of girl you brought home to meet your mama—and Shane didn’t spend much time with women like that. The women he hung around with were fun, confident, sexy, brazen. They knew what they wanted and it was a little bit of companionship of the naked variety, nothing more. Then there were the women who wanted to use him as a stepping stone into the industry. They were easy to spot. They looked hungry, calculating. He avoided them now, though he couldn’t say that had always been the case.

But Avery? This teary-eyed redhead fresh from the sticks was trouble. Because relationships weren’t his style and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. He believed in love and marriage. For other people. His biggest fear was buried deep inside him was something of his father and that he’d fuck up a relationship and hurt the woman he loved.

So he stuck with casual.

“I guess we’re both a couple of idiots. But at least we’re good looking.” He winked at her to lighten the mood. Try to get a laugh out of her.

“They say the devil was a handsome fella, too, you know.”

Now he had to laugh. He hadn’t expected that from her. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to dance.”

For the first time, she gave him the tiniest of smiles. “That’s a shame, because I sure do love to dance.”

Shane felt a stirring of something that was extremely inappropriate. Lust. Kicking up right below the waistband. He hadn’t expected that and he didn’t like it.

Damn it. He should have gone home with the girl from Tootsie’s, the one who had given him the fuck-me eyes. He could have avoided this whole mess.

Then he pictured Avery wandering around Broadway alone and his gut clenched. He had been in the right place at the right time and he was thankful for that. And damn it if he wasn’t going to be a true gentleman, lust or no lust.

Yet that didn’t stop him from saying, “You know what they say about dancing. It’s a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.”

It just fell out of his mouth. Flirt came naturally. He couldn’t stop himself.

But Avery just stared at him. “I don’t get it.”

Thank you, baby Jesus in the cradle. He had found the one woman who didn’t think he was charming or clever, or didn’t but thought he was hot and therefore pretended to think he was clever. “Ask your mama what it means.” He smiled and pulled the door to the coffee shop open and hoped like hell he could help Avery get home in the next five minutes, before things got awkward.

By awkward, he meant before he got a hard-on he could do nothing about.

Her eyes suddenly widened and she looked back at him, her auburn hair tumbling over her face. “Ooooh, I get it.” Her cheeks turned pink and she drew her tongue across her bottom lip, assessing him like she was seeing him for the very first time. “You mean sex.”

Just like that, with that short sentence falling from her raspberry lips and her remarkable eyes bright and curious, he went hard.

And things got awkward.

TWO

Avery O’Leery had been getting into scrapes her whole life, much to her mama’s chagrin. No matter the situation, she always managed to do something that got her dusty, dirty, banged up, or busted. Leaving her purse in Ben’s truck might be the biggest screw-up yet. She had always been a free-spirited country girl, had never gotten used to hauling a pocketbook around with her everywhere. Eyelash curlers, floss, and seven shades of lipstick were not things Avery felt the need to have with her at every minute, and now that lack of concern for her purse had landed her penniless on the streets of Nashville in the middle of the night.

With a man who might be her savior or her killer.

She hadn’t decided which one yet.

---