Her friend, Jada, on the other hand, leaned over the table, angling to give both him and Michael a clear view down the top of her bright red dress.
“I’m going to bet you two are Scotch men. Neat?”
He let Michael argue the finer points of ice in a drink with her. Jada was the type of woman Michael lived for—flashy, obvious. Julian had dated those types of women before, usually when he was on the job down in Arizona or on the road for the Games. For all their superficial trappings, women like that made great companions for the short term. But right now, a one-night stand was the last thing on his mind. His body was definitely warming for something a bit softer. A bit more real.
He turned to Kate. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
She shrugged, and the thin strap of her dress fell along the gentle curve of her shoulder. He watched it, mesmerized.
“A few minutes. It’s not a big deal. There was a blues singer on before the pianos started.”
“Oh, it’s too bad we missed it.”
Kate wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry about this place. It’s probably not your thing, pianos, is it?”
Julian laughed. People always took one look at him and assumed the worst. “I’m a large man, Kate, but that doesn’t mean I’m a barbarian. A little jazz isn’t going to kill me.”
“You never know. Jada is her own force of nature, and I thought maybe you guys got caught up in it against your will. Lord knows she’s made me do one or two things I regretted later.”
Julian’s pulse picked up, and he leaned forward. That was a topic he could warm to. “’Like what?”
Kate shook her head firmly. “No way. I’m going to need a few more drinks before those secrets start spilling.”
“She’s being modest,” Jada interrupted, watching them both with a smile. “Kate here once drove an entire rugby team off the road. Their van tipped over into a ditch.”
“They deserved it!” Kate declared, her eyes dancing. “Don’t believe a word she says. They were trying to cut in line after the rest of us had been waiting for hours to get through a single lane of traffic. I just blocked them from doing it, and they drove themselves off the road. What’s the point of driving a nice big Cadillac if you can’t use it for good?”
“Did you stop to see if they were okay?” Julian asked, amused.
“They didn’t really tip over. It was more of a gentle lean. You should have heard all the cars in line, honking their approval. I felt like a superhero.”
“A vigilante in a Cadillac.” Julian laughed.
“Like the Green Hornet,” Kate agreed.
Julian settled back in his chair, taking in the scene with a deep breath. There was a gentle ferocity to Kate he hadn’t been expecting. He liked it. “So, you run cars off the road when you’re mad, you grew up in Seattle and you wear pretty shoes. What else should I know about you?”
She blushed and lifted one of her feet, examining the appendage as if seeing it for the first time. “You think my shoes are pretty?”
“Well, they’re not very functional, that’s for sure.” He fought the urge to rub his hand over her leg to double check how well that footwear was working out. “But nice. Definitely nice.”
She toyed with the stem of her glass, avoiding his eyes. “Thank you. But I’m not sure what else you want to know. Birthmarks? Employment history?”
“Good call, Kate,” Jada said from across the table. “Always start with birthmarks.”
“How about what it is you want Cornwall Park for?” Julian offered. He doubted he was going to get anything about birthmarks out of her.
Yet.
She blushed and played with the edges of her cocktail napkin. “It’s this group I’m part of. A historical preservation society—kind of like your Scottish Games, I guess? We do a big annual event, and we need a place to hold it.”
“Historical? Like what?”
“Umm…Regency. Jane Austen type stuff—the nineteenth century. We wear pretty elaborate gowns, and we do lectures.” Her leg tapped a nervous beat, inching closer to his own.
Julian nodded. An academic he was not, but he knew enough of history and women to know what she was talking about. Waist-cinching underthings. Thigh-high stockings held in place with ribbons and silk.
A group of women doing Regency playacting—he could get on top of that idea.
“That sounds interesting,” he managed to say without giving away the sudden loss of blood in his brain, which was coursing hot and thick toward his groin. “But isn’t that all indoor stuff?”
“Well, we hold balls and tea parties, and those are all inside.” She chose her words carefully and watched after each one for his reaction. “But I’m hoping to recreate this big, elaborate outdoor garden thing. And Cornwall Park is the perfect place for it.”
“You’re doing this all by yourself?”
“Sort of. It’s for the whole group, but I’m in charge of this particular event. It’s a long story, but I’m basically being punished for some…er…misbehavior on Jada’s part. I’m excited to do it, though. You probably think it’s silly, but—”
Her leg brushed against his. He reached over and rested a hand on her knee, stilling her nervous movements. “Don’t do that. It’s not silly at all. Recreating history and honoring the past is important.” He grinned down at her. “I should know. I do it in a skirt.”
He hadn’t yet let go of her leg, unable to pull the pad of his thumb and fingers away from the soft skin. Like before, her leg was almost cool to the touch.
“I’m sorry,” she said so softly it was almost a whisper. But her gaze was direct, and she didn’t pull her leg away.
“For what?”
“I’m so used to people making fun of the Regency group that I get weirdly defensive. If I’m not stammering about it, I’m usually up on a soapbox preaching the superiority of my ways.”
He nodded. “I get it. I used to get a lot of flak for the Scottish Games when I was younger, but I don’t anymore.”
“Of course you don’t. Who would dare?” She cocked her head and raked her gaze over him, appreciation and awe glinting warmly in her eyes. His internal body temperature jumped several degrees.
She softened her tone and added, “That’s not a fair comparison. You have extreme powers of intimidation. I don’t.”
Julian finally released his hold on her leg, allowing himself to take in the curve of her thigh where it met the hem of her dress, which fluttered higher as she shifted. All of it—the dress, the skin, the promise of what lay farther up—writhed with silken sensuality.
“Oh, you have powers too. Believe me.”
Love may overcome dark family secrets…but a grieving ghost could fire the final shot.
Ain’t No Sunshine
© 2011 Selah March
A
Come Rain or Come Shine
Story
Boone Butler can shut out the memories that made him a war hero, but he’s compelled to follow the Sorrowful Angel’s mournful wails back to Harlan County, Kentucky. They can only mean one thing: Delia’s in trouble. Even if it’s been over between them for twelve long years, she can’t stop him from seeing her safe.
Delia Concannon isn’t sure if the cries she’s been hearing in Bogey Holler are echoes of the past, or portents of more heartache in her future. All she can do is keep running her diner and wait for the next in a long string of misfortunes that started when she fell for Boone. Their love began despite their families’ longstanding feud—and ended when Boone’s brother murdered her father.
Now Boone has come knocking on her door.
One look, and Boone remembers why loving her was worth defying his family. He still has nothing to offer a woman like her, but he can’t stand seeing her living in the shadow of rising danger. Delia’s not running, though. Even when the Angel’s cries grow louder…
Warning: Contains a snarky best friend, her cantankerous grandmother, a hard-headed hero with a soft heart, too many pick-up trucks to count, and one mention of fried okra.
Enjoy the following excerpt for
Ain’t No Sunshine:
Delia was standing at her stove, applying a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup to a pan of simmering milk, when Boone Butler walked back into her life.
She knew his shadow against the screen like she knew the shape of her own hand. That same loose, easy stance belied by the tense set of his shoulders, and the way he ducked his head at her approach, appearing almost shy till you caught the bright glint of danger in his eyes.
“Well, look at you,” she said and pushed open the door, stepping barefoot onto the porch. A sudden wave of
been-here-done-this
washed over her, strong enough to make her eyes water. All at once she was seventeen again, face-to-face with the only boy who’d ever made her look twice.
He whispered her name as if that single word was all he could manage. The few feet of space between them seemed too far to bridge, like the distance between stars. When he reached out his hand to touch her cheek, she stepped into it, turning her face into the heat of his palm.
“Delia,” he said again, and then his mouth was against hers, quick and clumsy, as if he’d never kissed a woman before. Still, she felt the slow twist of desire in the pit of her stomach, and a flutter in her throat that stole her breath. He pulled away and grinned—that righteous, go-to-hell grin she still saw in her dreams—and in that instant she wanted nothing more than to let him chase her down the path of
her own destruction.
“Hope I didn’t wake you,” he said and she laughed out loud. Sleeping Beauty she’d never be, but if she were cold and dead in her grave, Boone’s kiss would rouse her. She knew it for a fact.
From somewhere far away, she heard a splash and a hiss, and remembered where she was.
“My cocoa’s boiling over,” she told him. “Come on inside.”
She felt his eyes on her as he followed her into the house, and the sensation made her keenly aware of the shortness of her robe and the bareness of her legs. While she cleaned up the mess on the stove, he wandered around her kitchen, running his fingertips over the shape of every canister and examining the toaster as if he’d never seen one before. Finally, she tossed the dirty rag into the sink and turned to face him, her arms folded over her chest in a defensive gesture she already knew was completely useless.
Boone was staring at her like she was the last working source of light in a fifty-mile radius. “You look good, Delia.”
“Do I?” Maybe he hadn’t noticed the faint lines at her eyes, or the extra pound or two at her hips, or how the difference between seventeen and twenty-nine might as well have been a lifetime. “Why are you here, Boone?”
He glanced away, and she knew the next words out of his mouth would be a lie.
“Just passing through,” he said, careless and offhand. “Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re getting along.”
“Passing through?” She sounded half-witted, parroting his words as if she didn’t have any of her own. But she couldn’t seem to absorb the fact of him standing in her kitchen, tall and solid—broader through the shoulders and thicker at the biceps than she remembered—and most definitely not a dream.
He shrugged. “I’ve got a job coming up in Atlanta next month organizing security for some politician and his family. I thought maybe…”
He stopped and pressed his lips together like he’d said more than he’d meant to. Her own lips tingled where he’d kissed her. She wanted to ask him a million things, but mostly she wanted to close the distance between them and run her fingers over the rough stubble on his jaw. A second kiss wasn’t out of the question, either. They’d do it right this time. She’d see to it.
He lifted his head and sniffed the air. “What’s that I smell? Not the cocoa—something else?”
“I fried up a mess of okra for yesterday’s supper.”
He squinted at her. “You make that with tomatoes?”
She nodded, undone by the bizarre turn in the conversation. “Balsamic vinegar, a little lemon juice, salt and pepper.”
“Sounds good. You’ll have to write that down for me.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “A tough guy like you does his own cooking?”
“A man’s gotta eat to live.” He reached out and swiped at a dribble of chocolate syrup she’d left on the counter. “And not by bread alone, or so they say.”
She watched him suck the syrup off the pad of his thumb and felt her body flush with heat from the bottom up. His eyes sparked against hers, flint to tinder, and she had to look away.
“Tell me why you’re here, Boone.”
He went still, leaning against the edge of the counter and staring at the floor. “I don’t know,” he said.
It sounded like the truth.
She took the pan off the stove, set it in the sink, and filled it with warm water to loosen the burnt milk. When she’d finished, she turned to him again.
“I waited for you.” She dried her hands on a dishtowel and hung it on its hook next to the stove. “You remember? You asked me to wait, and I did.”
It was the last thing he’d said to her before his cousin had dragged him away, muttering something about trouble in town with Boone’s brother, Gilley.
“Wait for me,” he’d said, and she had. Long after he’d enlisted in the army, long after Granny’s charm had left her hollow-eyed and spitting blood, she’d waited. Five years, to be exact—which, in the lifetime of a girl who’d never been past the state border in any direction, counted as almost forever.