Page 13 of Guilty as Sin
“Nice. What accent is that?” Maybe she was supposed to know, but that wasn’t the vibe she was getting. She was getting,First time we’ve talked.Almoststranger,but not quite. It was definitely weird. And the hair was still standing up on the back of her neck. Good way or bad way, she couldn’t quite tell, except that the tingles were also running right down her body in sharp little jabbing shocks, and she knew whatthatfeeling meant. It meant,Oh, yeah, baby, look at me just like that.
She remotely remembered, anyway.
“Aussie,” he said, his mouth tightening in a very satisfactory hard-man way before he turned his attention back to Edelweiss.
Paige considered touching his arm. The lightest brush of her finger on that sleeve, shoving it up just the tiniest bit, revealing the rest of that dagger and feeling the muscle twitch at her touch. She’d have done it, too, except that she wasn’t quite sure what the response would be. Too much coiled energy about him. Too much edge. Too fast a reaction time. She had a feeling that if she did it, she could end up on her back on the ground, and not in a good way.
Well, maybe in a good way.
You do it,she told herself,and you just tossed Lily into the deep end. Because this guy doesn’t do anything casually, and he doesn’t go quietly if he wants more.She tore herself away from him and went to get the kids, who’d given up on their mothers once they couldn’t see them anymore, selfish little jerks, and were instead taking turns jumping over each other. When Paige opened the gate, though, the babies tumbled inside, where two of them ran straight to Tinkerbelle and started drinking like they’d been starved. Meanwhile, Paige took a few deep breaths, picked up her sadly grimy sweater, thought about the delicate cycle and hoped the sweater wasn’t a dry-clean deal, got herself together, and when the pirate walked out again with Edelweiss and the dog following him like a pair of baby ducks, said, “Thanks.”
“No worries.” He stepped closer and picked up her hand, and she froze.
He lifted his head, and the brilliant blue eyes met hers, so close that she could see the web of lines around them, like he’d stared into the sun too many times.
Something wentzing.
Surely that didn’t happen. Not that fast. He said, “Sprained, eh.”
She thought about taking him down. She wondered if she could. “Yes.”
“Better tomorrow, you reckon? Or should I come again?”
“Ah… sure, if you like.”
“Same time? Do you have a…” A swift glance down at the apron, which, at this moment, felt like all she was wearing. That was how much she could tell he liked it. “A job you’re going to?”
“Yeah.” Whoops, that wasn’t too Lily-like. “Yes,” she said with a smile. “In fact, I own Sinful Desires. The lingerie shop in town,” she hurried to add, because it sounded like an adult store when you said it like that instead of seeing the name printed in curly script on a white sign with gold trim.
A twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Goats and lingerie? Call me surprised.”
“Believe me,” she said, “so am I. And here I was not putting my hand on you so I could see your dagger, because I was going for ‘remote.’”
Fail on the Lily, but he didn’t know Lily, she was more than sure.
“Next time,” he said, “put your hand on me.”
That stare again. “Hmm,” she said, somewhere between Lily and Paige. “We’ll see. I’m Lily, by the way. And I’m sure I should remember your name, but I don’t.”
“I remember,” he said. “That it’s Lily.” A look that could cut steel, and her heart skipped a beat despite herself. What was she missing?
“And you’re…” She paused for his name, and he most unhelpfully didn’t provide it. “From Australia.”
“Queensland. Land of snakes and crocs and every sheep-shagging joke you ever didn’t want to hear.”
“Wild man, then.”
“So they say.” He whistled, short and sharp, and the dog, who’d been sniffing around the baby goats in a tolerant sort of way, came over fast. Not “bounding,” because surely this dog never did anything as undignified as bounding. Returning, that was it.
“See ya,” Mr. Hard-and-Hot said. “Lily.”
Paige didn’t want to admit how long it took her to shake off Mr. McHotbody’s impact. Just because she didn’t have enough else to think about, that was all. The feeling lasted through her shower, though, that was for sure. She somehow couldn’t stand naked in Lily’s clawfoot tub and soap down her more sensitive bits without remembering how easily the man had held sixty pounds of squirming goat, or the size and strength of those hands.
She worked with men. Hard men. Tough men. Sheknewmen. But he was something more. She needed to keep her distance, for Lily’s sake, or she was going to do something very stupid.
When she was rubbing down her newly waxed and buffed body with one of Lily’s fluffy pale-green towels, though, and smoothing on silky cinnamon-orange body butter from one of Lily’s containers of bottled decadence, her unruly mind went back to the way his hand had felt around hers. Who could blame her, really? Sad to say, it was the closest she’d come to a sexual encounter in some time. Civilians were intimidated by her, or they bored her, and cops sniffed around like dogs on the scent and made her think about gossip and perception and everyplace she didn’t want to go with that. Surely this mysterious Australian, with his accent and that hint of danger, was everything vacation flings were made of.
If only it hadn’t been for Lily. When she was standing in front of her sister’s lavender-scented lingerie chest, she finally gave in and picked up the phone.
