Page 26 of Tempting as Sin
He was clean-shaven now. Leaner, she could swear. He’d had a makeover. A do-over. Something. His hair was a golden brown and clipped close to his head, and his chest…wasn’t…waxed…
“Hi,” he said, and her gaze flew back to his face. He pulled the T-shirt on, which involved more shifting muscle and some difficulty, because his skin was…wet…
Oh, man. She was doing it again.
He didn’t look all that comfortable himself, she realized.
“I came up early,” he said.
“I see that. I was just…” She held up the handful of flyers and envelopes. “Getting Jace’s junk mail. And borrowing some, uh…dog food. For Chuck.”
Rafe had crouched down and was giving Chuck a scratch around the ears and a thump on the shoulder. “Somehow,” he said, “not what I would’ve imagined for you. Bit of a sad case, I’d say. And who are you, fella?” he asked Bailey. “Mate of Lily’s, hey? I’m Clay.” He put out a hand.
“You are not,” Lily said, at the same time as Bailey said, “Chuck isn’t a sad case. He’s just hungry, that’s all. And I’m not a fella. A fella’s a boy. I’m a girl.”
Lily wasn’t anything like the woman who’d sat, poised, perfect, and aloof, at the end of that bar. She was wearing overalls that were clinging damply to her in spots, especially around the, ah, torso area, which Rafe was carefully not looking at. They were stained with dirt around the ankles, too. Yes, they were printed with pink roses, but they were still overalls. Baggy, reinforced at the knees, and with huge, bulging pockets, one of which still held some kind of cultivator, because he could see the handle sticking out. He’d bet she’d forgotten it was there. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, and her pale-brown eyebrows hadn’t had anything brushed on them except possibly dirt. She had a few freckles on her nose, too.
She looked messy. She looked like the cutest farmer you could imagine. She looked just bloody fine.
Of course, she also looked not one bit happy to see him, so there was that.
All that went through his head as he shook the grubby hand of the boy—girl. Too-short jeans, too-messy hair, a blue-and-red striped T-shirt, and a kind of long-limbed, awkward almost-grace. She’d be a natural in the right kind of film. A road picture, maybe, about a father and the daughter he hadn’t realized he had. “Sorry,” he told her.Wait. Accent.But then, if he did the accent, Lily would think he was still lying to her.
He gave it up, kept the Aussie, and said to the girl, “I’m Clay Austin. What’s your name?”
She said, “Bailey. You talk kind of funny, but it sounds cool.”
He laughed. “You know, I get that all the time. The funny part, not the cool part.” He stood up and said to Lily, “Dog food, hey. This a new addition to the family, or are you just helping out a mate?”
“I told you,” Bailey said. “I’m not a boy.” Lily said nothing.
“What?” Rafe asked. “Oh. Nah, mate. Whoops, I did it again. Australians use ‘mate’ for everybody. Including girls, sometimes.”
“Oh.” Bailey appeared to be thinking that over and judging its merits as an argument. “I thought it was sailors. I read a book, and there was a first mate and a second mate, but they were guys.”
“It’s like ‘pal,’” Rafe said. “Or ‘buddy,’ maybe. Not like sailors.”
“Pal is a guy, too,” Bailey said. “And buddy.”
“You are possibly,” Rafe said, “the most literal person I have ever met. You may have to take my word on this one. You could call me a linguistics expert, at least when it comes to Australians.”
He thought Bailey might actually ask to examine his passport, but she’d apparently decided to move on. “Australia isn’t even the same continent as this. We’re North America, and Australia’s in the Southern Hemisphere. I never met anybody from the Southern Hemisphere before. How come you’re in Montana?”
“That’s a story in itself,” Rafe said. “You know some geography. Good on ya. But I’m not going to use the Australian up here. That’s just my accent. That is,”—he changed it out. “That’s juss mahack-sent. This is how ah really talk.” He shot a quick glance at Lily. She’d been married to Antonio Carrera. She had to understand the value of anonymity.
“Oh,” Bailey said. “Because of warrants.”
“What warrants?”
Bailey looked more disillusioned than ever. Now, he wasn’t just a dodgy character, he was probably stupid as well. “You know. Warrants. Like, the cops tell you they have a warrant when they come to arrest you.”
Lily made a sort of choking sound. “Glad I’m entertaining you,” he told her. “And no,” he told Bailey, “not because of warrants. I don’t have any warrants. I was playing around, that’s all. You could call accents a hobby of mine.”
Lily gave the most ladylike of snorts, and he said, “I heard that.”
“I sure hope so,” she said. She wasn’t looking quite so narky anymore, or uncomfortable, either. Still cute, though.
Bailey said, “Everybodysaysthey don’t have warrants, but the cops say they do, and then they take them to jail. My mom’s friend Terri said I should remember that that’s the redneck pickup line. ‘Of course I don’t have any warrants, baby. I’ve never even been to jail.’ That’s what Terri says.”
