His ego couldn’t help flexing his arm. “Bouncer slash bartender.”
“How nice for you.”
“Any particular reason you’re being catty?”
“You did cause me to take an unexpected mud bath.” She gestured toward the pond, the plastic six-pack ring still clutched in her left hand.
“I thought we’d already moved past that.”
“Because of you, I have to go shower, and my schedule is packed. I really don’t have time for a shower, but clearly I have to make time.”
“And yet you do have time to rescue ducks in distress.”
“I always have time to help those in distress.”
Dade pressed his lips together.
I’m in distress. I need rescuing.
Where in God’s name did that thought come from? He lowered his eyelids, crossed his arms over his chest. “I apologize for mucking up your day.”
“You’re forgiven,” she relented.
He wanted to ask her a million things. Are you feeling the same way I’m feeling? Does your stomach hurt? Is your chest tight? Does the sun seem incredibly bright? Do you have an irresistible urge to get naked with me?
“So about Red’s room?” he prompted.
“He hasn’t officially vacated it.”
“But he’s gone?”
“He left his things. He never checked out.”
“So he’s missing then?”
She shrugged, but he saw concern on her face. She cared about Red.
“Did you report him missing?”
“How is that any of your business?”
“I need a place to stay.”
“Red always comes back.” She raised her chin. “It would be disloyal of me to give away his room.”
He didn’t push it. Although he’d appreciate the opportunity to stay in Red’s room while he searched for his buddy, he didn’t want to arouse her suspicion. Considering the way he was feeling about her, it was probably better if he didn’t stay here. “Do you know who else in town might be willing to rent out a room?”
“How long do you need it for?”
“Can’t say for sure.”
She made a face, reached up to stroke her chin with her thumb and index finger. Assessing.
“I’ve got a thousand dollars to put down for a deposit and first month’s rent,” he enticed.
“Cash up front?” She looked hungry, but conflicted.
“Cash up front.”
A long moment of silence passed between them. He could see the tension in her body, felt a corresponding tension tighten in his own.
“I have an ethical dilemma,” she said. “I need the money, but what if I rent the room to you and Red comes back?”
“You give me a partial refund and I move out.”
She chewed her bottom lip in a gesture that made him want to nibble that lush piece of flesh too. Hell, he wanted to nibble her from head to toe.
He couldn’t forget why he was here. Red. He had to keep his mind on Red. His buddy was in trouble and needed his help.
Still, he couldn’t stop staring at the mesmerizing mermaid in yellow with a green streamer of seaweed caught in her hair. He stepped closer.
“I don’t know about that.”
“This Red character, he just took off without a word to anyone?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he leave his car behind?”
“He didn’t own a vehicle. He walked everywhere he went or hitchhiked.”
“Hitchhiked?”
“It’s a small town. People don’t mind giving their neighbors a ride.”
“A regular Mayberry, huh?” he drawled, but Dade knew danger resided as easily in a small town as it did in a big metropolis. They didn’t breathe rarefied air in Cupid. Beneath the pretty surface lurked problems and troubles, secrets and lies.
“We look after our own,” she said.
“When was the last time you saw him?” He was pushing it, he knew, walking a thin line, risking giving himself away.
She frowned.
“Trying to gauge when he might come back,” Dade hastened to add.
“Red comes and goes as he pleases, so I can’t be one hundred percent certain, but I think the last time I saw him was the morning of the nineteenth.”
Four days ago. The day before Dade had received the Mayday text. “You didn’t think it strange that he disappeared without a trace?”
“He did that occasionally. Took off without notice.”
“Did?”
“Yes. Several times.”
“You said ‘did
.
’ In the past tense. Not ‘does.’ ”
“Oh.” Her eyes rounded. “Well, I suppose it’s because this time it feels different.”
“Different how?”
“For one thing, he’s never been gone this long.”
“No?” Dade took a step closer. His gaze trained on the pond weeds clinging to her hair. It distracted him. Apparently, she had no idea it was there. “Did you report his disappearance to law enforcement?”
“I did.”
“What did they say?”
“Red has some mental health issues.”
Dade curled his hands into fists. “If he’s got mental health issues, you’d think that would be a stronger motivation to search for him.”
She studied him a long moment. “Why do you care?”
“If I rent the room, I’d be disappointed if he shows up to boot me out of it.”
“I never said I was going to rent the room to you.”
“You need to make up the income for the boarder you just lost.”
She bit her bottom lip again, those pearly white teeth sinking into the plump pink flesh. He saw the truth in her eyes. She needed every penny she could scrape together. That intrigued him. What was her story?
“I don’t rent long term to just anyone.”
“And yet you took in a mental case.”
Sorry, Red. No disrespect.
“I never said he was a mental case.” Natalie drew herself up tall, tossed her head. “He served in the armed forces. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. What kind of person would I be if I turned away a former military man who’d suffered the consequences of defending my freedom?”
“A cautious one?”
“I’m not incautious.”
“Is that right?”
“It is.”
“Then why does a single woman take in boarders?”
She looked perturbed. “Who says I’m single?”
“You don’t wear a ring.”
She tucked her left hand behind her back. “Not wearing a ring doesn’t mean anything. I could be married. I’m plenty old enough to be married and have a passel of kids.”
“But you’re not married. You’re all alone.”
“Just because I’m single doesn’t mean I’m alone by any stretch. I have three—well, two now that Red’s vanished—long-term boarders and a constant turnover of tourists. I have a sister, a maid, a gardener, and a cook. My entire family lives around me—cousins, aunts, uncles. I’m the least alone person you’ll ever meet.”
“Well, imagine that,” he said lightly, feeling that inexplicable tugging in the center of his chest once more.
They were back to square one, not speaking, caught in each other’s eyes.
“So if someone wanted to harm you, they’d have to go through a cadre of friends and relatives.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Who on earth would want to harm me?”
“There’s darkness in this world that you have no idea about.”
“You underestimate me. I have a permit to carry a handgun and I know how to use it.”
Surprised, he arched an eyebrow.
“Rattlesnakes,” she said. “Lots of rattlesnakes in the desert.”
He couldn’t get over this wild attraction beating through him. She was a pretty woman, but what concerned him was the overwhelming pull of attraction that gripped him whenever he looked at her. He hated feeling so out of control. His gaze fixed on the seaweed in her hair again. It was just an excuse to get closer to her, but he couldn’t resist. Dade stepped forward.
She backed up, the pulse at her throat thumping wildly. “What are you doing?”
“You’ve got something . . .” He reached a hand up to touch her hair.
In that second of that touch, his past disappeared. All the things he’d done wrong, all the wrong paths he’d taken suddenly seemed the exact right paths leading him here—to this woman, this place, this moment in time.
Kiss her!
his body screamed at him.
Kiss her! Kiss her!
Her breath was so shallow that she was scarcely breathing. Their eyes latched together, inseparable, the current between them stronger than electricity. His fingers found the pond weeds and he plucked them from her hair.
“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “There really was something in my hair.”
“You thought I was lying?”
Her cheeks blushed hotly. She looked so damn cute, he wanted to wrap her into his arms and imprint her lips with his. Brand her. Make her his, forever and ever.
It was an unsettling sensation for a man who’d sworn never to settle down, never to stay in one place for long. Shocked by his thoughts and feelings, he turned and flung the weeds into the pond.
When he turned around again, she was assessing him coolly, but he could see her trembling. Had he done that to her?
He should cut his losses here, jump on his Harley, and find somewhere else to stay before he got mired in the quicksand of her eyes.
She nodded.
“I’ll show you the room,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to rent it to you.”
“Thank you.”
“I need to change my clothes first. You can follow me inside the house and wait in the kitchen.”
“All right,” he agreed, feeling so utterly grateful that he was ashamed of himself.
She bent down to pick up her shoes and a plastic leg brace and limped toward the house.
“You’re limping,” he said.
“It’s permanent,” she called curtly over her shoulder without looking back.
He felt a stab directly in the center of his heart, and it was all he could do not to rush ahead, scoop her into his arms, and carry her into the house.
Don’t, Vega. Don’t go there. Not even in your mind.
Still, he couldn’t deny that her vulnerability cut through him as sharp as a bayonet. She possessed a gentle beauty, round and soft and kind. A certain tranquillity that said she led an unblemished life in this safe little town surrounded by extended family.
But the limp belied all that.
The limp—and the labored way she toiled up the hill—told him she’d suffered. Continued to suffer. Under those circumstances, how had she managed to hold on to her simple elegance?
In that moment, he felt something totally unexpected.
Jealousy.
He was jealous of the way she’d navigated the pain, and while her body had not come out of it unscathed, she’d kept her soul pure. If he’d thought himself unworthy of her before, in the face of her injury, he knew for certain he wasn’t good enough to wipe the mud from her resilient feet.
Love at first sight requires a total leap of faith.
—MILLIE GREENWOOD
N
atalie couldn’t have felt more exposed if she’d been stripped buck-naked. Dade stared at her brazenly, lustily, audaciously, as if she
was
naked. His stare set her on fire. No man had ever looked at her in quite the same way.
Her scalp tingled from where Dade’s fingers had skimmed through her hair, and her heart was thumping as loud as an orchestra, a rapidly rising crescendo of saxophones, trumpets, bassoons, and trombones. If he were music, he’d be big band swing—bold, lively, and fast-paced. Looking into his eyes, she had an overwhelming urge to sing, to hop, to dance.
Dance.
He made her want to dance.
She hadn’t danced since ballet class, the year before the plane crash, and she would never dance again. Not with her handicap. She would never foxtrot, jitterbug, or do the Lindy hop, and she felt the loss deep within her bones for something she could not have.
It was crazy, this mixed-up jumble of need, longing, fear, hope, and euphoria.
“May I see the room?” His eyes glittered darkly and he looked dead sexy in the morning light. This man had done his share of living.
She wanted to say no. She should have said no, but two things kept her from it. One, she needed the thousand dollars he promised, and two; she couldn’t seem to make her mouth form the word. She nodded. “This way.”
Her dress was plastered snugly to her body. She turned and, without waiting for him to follow, headed toward the fence separating her yard from the park, moving with precise steps to minimize her limp, fully aware that his intense eyes were gobbling up the sight of her.
She felt him behind her, big and strong. Her pulse skipped through her veins, light and heavy at the same time. She put her tongue to the tip of her upper lip.
This is it. Love at first sight. He’s The One.
Calm down, calm down.
He went ahead of her to open the gate. A gentlemanly gesture. Courtly, but at the same time threatening because it was something she could grow very accustomed to. A man looking out for her.
This
man looking out for her.
She was headed off the deep end.
Truth was, she’d never felt anything like this and he scared the living daylights out of her. Her true love.
Could the legend be true? Did she dare hope it was true? Could she trust it? On the surface, having faith in him was so stupid, but it was too late. No putting that genie back into the bottle. She felt it in every part of her. Magic. Dreams. What if she gave herself over to the fantasy and it turned to dust in her hands? Oh God, what was happening to her?
She stuck her hands in her pockets as she stepped past him with her head down, avoiding his gaze. Her fingers closed over Shot Through the Heart’s soggy letter. Dammit. She’d forgotten the letter was in her pocket.
Dade closed the gate behind them, touched her shoulder. His big hand was unexpectedly warm and comforting. She almost jumped out of her skin.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled, abandoning her attempt to walk normally and shambled up the path as quickly as she could, her Keds clutched in the fingers of her right hand, the AFO cradled against her right elbow.
His footsteps echoed behind her, both scary and thrilling at the same time. She was having trouble adjusting to the fact that she was a different Natalie from the one who’d awakened this morning. That Natalie had never felt . . . this . . . this . . .
She had no word for what this was.
Natalie gulped, feeling trapped, challenged, and five hundred other inexplicable things she couldn’t even name. Irritated with herself, she clenched her jaw. She was not normally like this, weak-kneed over a handsome man. Then again, she’d never felt this kind of chemistry. If she had, she’d have surrendered her virginity eons ago.
“Have you had breakfast?” she asked, going all B&B hostess on him. That was the way to handle this situation until she could make sense of her feelings. Keep it strictly professional.
“No.”
The back door flew open at her light touch, swinging inward with a loud creak.
“That latch is suspect,” Dade observed.
“It’s an old house.”
He paused to look at the door. “It has a skeleton key lock.”
“So?” She shrugged.
“This wouldn’t keep out a cat, much less a cat burglar. You need a proper lock on your back door,” he chided.
“We don’t have much crime in Cupid.”
“Everywhere has crime.”
“If there’s something in here that someone wants that badly, they’re welcome to it.”
“What if they want your life?” he asked.
“My, you’re just a little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“I could install a lock for you. Wouldn’t take me long.”
“I’m not worried about it,” she told him, and then called out, “Pearl, we have another guest for breakfast. One who apparently has a thing for locks.”
“Buffet is still out,” Pearl hollered back amid the clanging of pots and pans.
“Just go through there.” Anxious to separate herself from him, Natalie pointed to the door leading into the formal dining room. “Help yourself. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He looked at her with his eyelids at half-mast, a lazy, bedroom expression that constricted her throat. His eyelashes were the color of ink and surprisingly long, softening his devilish eyes. “Don’t rush your shower on my account.”
Her pulse, which had started to settle down a little, kicked up into a fresh gallop.
The barest hint of a grin tipped the corners of his mouth. She had the most insane urge to ask him to join her in the shower. This was nonsense, but she couldn’t shake the thought of the two of them in her shower, steamy water sluicing down their naked bodies, her head tossed back, his mouth nibbling her throat, his hand—
Stop it!
Her body flushed hot all over. She had never had a particularly strong sex drive, which was one of the reasons she’d been satisfied without lovers to meet her needs. A vibrator did the trick.
Until now.
Feeling self-conscious, she clumped up the stairs to her bedroom, determined to tamp down the onslaught of hormones surging through her bloodstream, but her will deserted her. Aching, demanding need pushed low into her belly, building pressure and heat.
Why was she reacting this way? Why now? Why this man? She didn’t want to feel this way.
Oh, you liar!
No man had ever ignited her the way he did with nothing more than a sultry look.
For years, she’d secretly felt a little superior to women who fell willy-nilly into love with first one man and then another. She had seen loving too easily as a weakness, a character flaw, while she smugly clung to her virtue. Now, she’d been infected with it too, consumed by an overwhelming physical need to merge with Dade Vega. It worried her to realize that this man could quickly become an obsession. Payback. Karma.
Cold shower. She needed a cold shower. A cold shower would douse the problem. No hot and steamy water for her.
She pulled Shot Through the Heart’s letter from her pocket, opened it carefully, and spread it out on the wide window ledge in her bedroom to dry. Afterward, she stripped off her wet dress and left it lying on the bathroom floor. She turned on the water as cold as she could stand it and stepped under the spray.
Teeth chattering, she soaped up and tried to analyze what it was about him that intrigued her beyond the initial slam-dunk of attraction. Was it more than the novelty of her feelings? She was a twenty-nine-year-old virgin who’d clung for so long to an outmoded belief in one true love for everyone that her belief had created a crisis of faith. So now that it had happened, shouldn’t she be over the moon?
Except now that it was finally happening, she was even more muddled and confused and uncertain than ever. Things weren’t solid and crystal clear the way she’d imagined they would be. Brakes were needed here. A cautious eye to counter the sizzling desire.
He was a loner. A drifter. A biker. He was decorated with tattoos. He spelled trouble, but at the same time she felt oddly safe with him. Protected. Was it beyond foolish to trust her instincts? So what was he? Dark knight or knight in shining armor?
Gak!
She was romanticizing him. She was as hopeless as the lovelorn who wrote letters to Cupid.
She toweled herself dry. Got dressed in dark green walking shorts, a white peasant blouse, and white Keds. She had a pair of the iconic sneakers in every color because they were the only store-bought shoes she could wear in comfort with her AFO.
On the door of her closet hung the shoes she’d bought but could never walk in—black thigh-high boots, a pair of mules, espadrilles, wedges, sling backs, Mary Janes. She’d collected them for years, one pair every Christmas, since she was sixteen. A gift to herself.
Sighing, she closed the closet door.
After pulling her wet hair into a ponytail, she went back downstairs to voices in the kitchen. Dade had entered Pearl’s inner sanctum and was still alive to tell the tale?
“Her favorite food is pizza,” Pearl was saying. “Pepperoni with black olives.”
They were talking about her! Natalie paused outside the kitchen with her hand on the swinging door.
“But she won’t ever eat it,” Pearl went on. “She never spoils herself. Never indulges.” The way her cook said it made self-discipline sound like a fault, not something she took great pride in.
“Why do you suppose that is?” Dade’s low voice rumbled. The sound of it sent goose bumps spreading up Natalie’s forearms.
“She’s scared to death that if she lets down her guard for one little second that everything will fall to pieces and she won’t be able to put it back together again. That if she eats just one little slice of pizza, she won’t be able to stop, so she won’t risk it.”
“Control freak, huh?” Dade chuckled.
“It’s understandable though.” Pearl’s voice softened. “She’s had it rough.”
“How so?” he asked.
Natalie’s cheeks burned. No way was she going to stand here and listen to them gossip about her.
“Ahem.” Natalie noisily cleared her throat as she pushed into the kitchen.
Dade sat at the small kitchen table looking totally at ease, his long legs stretched out in front of him, the bright morning sun falling across the blue floral tablecloth. He was eating toast smeared with grape jelly. He caught her gaze, and one wolfish eyebrow arched upward.
“If you’re ready,” she said primly, “I can show you that room now.”
He polished off the last bite of toast, washed it down with a swallow of tomato juice, dusted his fingers against a white paper napkin imprinted with Cupid’s Rest B&B in pink lettering, and got to his feet. “Thanks for the breakfast, Pearl.”
“You’re welcome.” Pearl beamed.
Natalie couldn’t believe her cook liked him. Ornery Pearl got along with very few people. “This way, Mr. Vega.”
Without waiting for him, she turned for the back door. His footsteps pattered behind her. Each step escalated the restless jumpiness, coiling her muscles tight as springs. She already regretted agreeing to rent him the room.
She led him to the carriage house, opened the door to Red’s room, and stepped inside.
Dade came in after her. His broad shoulders seemed to fill the entire room.
Natalie took a deep breath and faced him. “This is it. If you can leave for a couple of hours I’ll send the housemaid over to clean up.”
“I can do it. Just give me some cleaning supplies.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not how I do things.”
He gave her a wicked half grin that knocked her off kilter. “Stickler for the rules, huh?”
“There’s a proper way to do things, and having guests clean their own rooms is not proper.”
“I’m a long-term boarder,” he said. “Not a guest.”
“You can clean your own room after this. I still have to go through Red’s things.” She picked up the cardboard box, stood stiffly with her back to the window, Dade blocking the exit with his linebacker shoulders.
The expression on his face was enigmatic, but the gleam in his eyes was pure sexual heat. “Everything by the book.”
“I have a business to run. It has to be that way.”
“Miss Prim,” he teased.
“I suppose you pride yourself on being a rebel.”
“Snap judgment about me based on the motorcycle?”
“It’s not just the motorcycle.”
“No?” He took a step toward her.
Her body tightened. She struggled not to let him see how much he affected her. “You came up to the house the wrong way. A rebel comes to the back door.”
“Faulty GPS directions, remember.”
“That’s an excuse.”
His fiendish smile told her she’d nailed him. “Maybe I came to the back door as a surprise attack, not an act of rebellion.”
“Why would you want to attack me?”
“Not you personally,” he amended. “It’s a life strategy.”
“For what?”
“Dealing with the world. Life is a battlefield. Every encounter is an opportunity to win or lose.”
“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”
“Life
is
harsh. If you don’t have a strategy for dealing with it, you’ll end up dead.”
“There’s just one problem with that philosophy.” She toyed with the cord on the window shade.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll end up dead anyway and in the process turn many people into enemies.”
“Many people are enemies to begin with.”
She shook her head, clutched the box tighter to her chest. “That’s so sad and reductive.”
“In what way?”
“Limiting life to a single strategy.”
“You’ve got a strategy too.”
“I do not.”
“You might not think about it consciously, but you’ve got a method for making it through the day. We all do.”
“Yeah? So what’s my strategy?”
His dark eyes burned. “This is just a guess since I don’t know you, but from what I can tell, you think life is a rule book. If you follow the rules and don’t step outside your comfort zone, you won’t get hurt, but because of that, you also never really live.”