Page 27 of Gimme Some Sugar

Carly’s eyebrows winged up. “You think I’m talking about the shelf?”

“Well, yeah. What else would you be talking about?” Damn those crinkly blue eyes.

“You were whistling,” she accused, eyes narrowing. Come on. There was no way he just happened to have Aretha Franklin on the brain. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Jackson let out an unnervingly good-natured laugh. “Sorry, it’s a habit. I don’t even realize I’m doing it half the time.”

“So, you have no idea that you were whistling the song I was singing a couple of weeks ago when you showed up on my back deck?”

“Was I?” He actually had the nerve to laugh again. “Guess you must have made a lasting impression.”

Carly stood as tall as she could and kicked up her chin. “You just have to make fun of me, don’t you?”

To her surprise, Jackson’s expression sobered. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t mean anything by it, and I really wasn’t whistling that song to poke fun at you. I didn’t even recognize you until you turned around.”

Oh, God. The whole whistling thinghadbeen a coincidence. Carly shifted her weight from one flip-flop to the other, smoothing her palms over the front of her jeans.

“Oh. Well, in that case, sorry for snapping at you.” She examined her unpainted toenails and resisted the urge to wince at her egregious lack of pedicure. “Right. Okay. Enjoy the rest of your evening, then.” Carly gave an awkward wave and ducked by him, grateful for the basket full of groceries that would keep her occupied for the remainder of the evening.

“Wait.”

Carly’s traitorous legs halted her movement, and the box of pasta made a maraca-like noise in her basket as she jerked to a stop.

“The restaurant’s closed, right? For the night?”

She nodded. “Yes. Normally the restaurants I work in are slammed on the Fourth, but I guess everyone around here watches the fireworks over the lake, so if we stayed open, we wouldn’t do any business. But we’re open for brunch and dinner tomorrow, if you wanted to eat out.”

Jackson’s laugh echoed through the empty aisle. “No, no. I was just thinking that if you don’t have to work, I could take you to a place where you can have one hell of a food experience. Since you’re into that kind of thing.”

Carly’s curiosity perked to life and fired on all cylinders. “But all the restaurants around here are closed.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t get great food,” he pointed out.

Carly’s mind jumped to all the private parties that took place in New York when certain hot spots were technically closed. It made sense that that kind of thing happened in other places, she supposed. But Pine Mountain? It barely made the map.

“Okay.” Her curiosity guided the word right past the brain-to-mouth filter that would’ve surely censored it, and she sent a couple of surprised blinks in its wake. She swung her gaze down to her basket, fervently looking for an excuse hidden between the pasta and the cans of tomato paste. Damn it, there wasn’t even anything perishable to blame a getaway on! She really shouldn’t let herself get distracted like this. She needed to go home to the comfort of her kitchen and surround herself with the soothing familiarity of food.

Jackson’s smile caught her right in the chest, and as her knees turned to liquid, her mouth refused to do anything other than smile right back.

“Great. Just let me grab a couple of things and we can go. I’ll meet you at the checkout.”

8

Jackson wheeled his cart full of five bags of ice and just as many gallons of vanilla ice cream to the front of the store, where Carly stood twisting the handle of her paper bag in one hand. She looked like she might be daydreaming, just staring down at the red flip-flops barely poking out from beneath the faded cuffs of her jeans. Man, she had cute feet, with no obnoxious hot pink nail polish or funky toe rings to mess them up. Just smooth, tanned skin and bare, pretty toes. Nice.

The ping pong match between Hell Yes and Are You Out of Your Goddamned Mind volleyed for round two in his head, but he stuffed it down. Just because he’d asked her to swing by the party with him and he was a little enamored with her toes didn’t mean anything. There were probably seventy-five people in his mother’s backyard. Adding Carly as one more was really no big deal, flip-flops notwithstanding.

Except that the whisper was back, the weird one that told him to feed her. Which he knew was ridiculous, except that for some stupid reason, hewantedto feed her.

Weird.

“Wow. That looks…interesting.” Carly’s velvety voice knocked him loose from his thoughts, and she eyed the items in his cart as if she thought he’d grabbed the wrong stuff.

“You like that? I’m going for maximum intrigue,” he replied, working up a half-smile.

“Either that or you’re really hot,” she said, immediately turning pink.

That blush was going to ruin him. Not that it would be such a bad way to go. Jackson reached into the cart to load the ice cream on the conveyor belt and decided to let Carly off the hook for the hot comment. For now, anyway.

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