Just One Night

Copyright Hazel St James 2012
Smashwords Edition

Cover Photo Kotofot/Shutterstock

This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events of locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

All rights reserved. Except as
permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the publisher.

To my husband for your constant
encouragement. I love you.

For thing one and thing two, I am
sorry that supper was late, dishes weren’t washed and towels clean.
It will only get better, even if I have to hire a maid.

To LeeAnn, my fairy godmother. Your
support and dedication are beyond words. You made me rethink,
rephrase and redo until this story was exemplary.

You gave me faith in my writing,
when I was ready to give up.

To Holly Roberts, Mistress of
Wisdom. For forever reminding me of the good parts of being an
author, and what was out there if I was willing to reach for
it.

To Tanya Keetch, The Word Maid. For
being courageous enough to take a fine tooth comb to my story. You
are truly a gifted editor.

To Janda, my beta reader for life.
Thanks for taking a chance with me.

Title
Page

Chapter
1

Chapter
2

Chapter
3

Chapter
4

Chapter
5

Chapter
6

Chapter
7

Chapter
8

Chapter
9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

“
H
ey, do you need help?”
Sara heard someone yelling over her shoulder.

Trying to balance her books and papers under
one arm and her coffee in her other hand, Sara tried making her way
to the front door of her next class. She thought she was doing a
great job of balancing everything until her papers start to
slide.

“No, I got it….argh!!!” A gust of wind
picked up the papers and started to toss them around like they were
in a mini-twister.

Scoffing at her, most of her fellow students
kept on walking by the carnage littering the yellowing lawn. The
voice Sara had heard before everything started flying startled her.
“Let me help you.”

Sara turned to the lone angel, ready to
praise him for being a gentleman. She almost had to pick her jaw up
off the ground when she eyed the man, a walking billboard for
stranger danger. He wore a leather motorcycle jacket, dark denim
jeans, chopper boots and had a handkerchief tied around his neck.
His blonde hair was severe, cut in a closely trimmed, spiked mohawk
reaching from the top of his forehead to the nape of his neck. He
had a half day’s beard growth on his face and his eyes were
blood-shot. You could see the faint remnants of a yellowing bruise
under his left eye. To say that he scared her a little was an
understatement.

“Thanks,” was all that came out of her
mouth. Sara busied herself with picking up her papers. She had
missed school for nearly a week while she was back home helping her
family in Wisconsin. Missed assignments had a way of piling up fast
and they needed to be turned in as soon as possible.

“No problem,” he said to her as he chased
the papers around the front lawn of the school building. He brought
the menagerie of papers to her, set it on top of her books and took
the entire bundle from her hands. He nodded his head towards the
front door to move her along. “I can help you carry these inside.”
There was a bright smile plastered across his face.

“
You’re
in my
accounting class?” she squeaked as they walked through the front
door to the auditorium.

“What, you don’t think I could balance
someone’s books or do you think I can’t add and subtract?” Stepping
back, he turned around and looked down at his attire. “Or is it
that I don’t
look
like your average
accountant? Or maybe you think only pinheads in suits and ties can
run a business.”

Shit.
Five
words to him and he was already offended. “I didn’t mean it that
way. Well, I really don’t know what I meant. It was a stupid thing
to say. You are more than qualified to be an accountant if that is
what you want or whatever,” she stammered. “I keep saying the wrong
things. Thanks for your help. I’ll just sit down now before I trip
on my tongue.” A flush crept up Sara’s face, bringing the remainder
of her pride crashing to the floor.

His belly laugh was anything but
comforting.

“Ok, now you are laughing at me,” Sara
blurted out in hushed anger as her rosy blush turned to beet
red.

“I’m not laughing at you…it was cute that
you were flustered is all.”

Sara stood up and tried to reach for her
books. “I don’t appreciate being laughed at. Thank you for your
kindness, but I am going to sit elsewhere.”

“Stop.” His command was deep, rough and
broke goose bumps out on her skin. The resonance in his voice froze
her where she stood before the thought registered in her mind. Sara
tried to look him square in the eyes, but found herself staring at
his feet.

“I do not laugh
at
women. I was laughing that someone like you was
flustered by me. And that is the truth. NOW SIT DOWN. Class is
about to start.”

As if her legs were not her own, she sat
back down in the chair.
How the hell did this
guy get her body to move before she had processed the
commands?
It was downright creepy, maybe a little
thrilling. Ok, a lot thrilling. She felt like tiny butterflies were
fluttering deep down in her belly, inflaming her libido.

Reviewing his words in her mind, Sara
furrowed her brow together. “What did you mean by
someone like me
?”

His eyes began running up her body as if
using it as a checklist. “Studious…quiet…demure…” She crossed her
arms quickly as his eyes got closer to her chest. She wasn’t flat
chested at all, but she didn’t have much to show off. She barely
could even fill a B cup. Sara had always been thin, but she was
sporting a few muscles from all the hard work she did back home in
Wisconsin. Manual labor did have its perks. Still, she had always
thought her body looked like a string bean with boobs. She had
mousy brown hair which she kept shoulder length. Anything longer
than that was a pain to deal with. She wore very little make-up,
but she did always try to keep her nails neat and polished. It made
her feel like a girly girl. Otherwise, Sara was plain as plain
could be.

“My name is Chris, if you wanted to know.”
He slipped off his jacket and ran his hand down his face, Sara
could hear the bristle as his palm scrubbed across his jawline. She
couldn’t help but to think what that beard would feel like on her
face, her neck, and every where else. Stopping to look at her, an
all knowing grin broke out on Chris’ face. Sara’s gaze remained
riveted to his smile, which resulted in gawking at his full,
luscious lips. He continued to patiently watch her expressions,
waiting for her to respond. His beautiful lips began moving and
Sara jumped when she realized he had been talking to her.

“What was that, sir?”

Smiling like a loon, Chris replied, “I said,
now you’re supposed to tell me your name.”

“Oh… um…it’s Sara. Sorry. I’m usually not
this dense,” she stuttered back to him a little louder than she
wanted. The class that was within ear shot turned around, giving
them both the stink eye. “Ok, that was really loud. Sorry.”

Chris just smiled, stretched out his legs
crossing them at his ankles and sank back in for an hour long
lecture on owner’s equity. Mesmerized by the devil in leather on
her right, Sara didn’t hear a word the professor said the entire
lecture. When he first approached her, she really didn’t even give
him a second look as potential boyfriend material. In fact, she
didn’t even really
look
at him in
that way. All she saw was the hair, the biker jacket and
immediately dismissed that thought. Examining him more closely,
Sara realized that he had a face that could have been chiseled from
granite with his high cheekbones, and angular jaw. His heavy lidded
eyes were a cloudy, muted shade of gray. His scent was musky and
Sara couldn’t quite decide if it was cologne or his body exuding
pheromones. The skin tight shirt that he wore left nothing to the
imagination, Sara could see the lines that cut across his body from
his muscles. Sara’s imagination began to roam as she wondered how
it would feel to ride behind him on his motorcycle, her hands woven
over that muscled chest, her thighs clutching on to his legs like
vices, and her nether-region pressed against his backside….

“What was that thought?” Chris whispered,
startling her from her thoughts.

“What thought?”

“The thought that has you blushing again,”
Chris whispered in her ear. He was really close to her ear this
time because she could feel his warm breath on her neck. She’d felt
a few wisps of her hair catch on his unshaven face.

“I wasn’t thinking anything…” Chris
immediately cut her off with a slash of his hand.

“Lying is not attractive at all. In fact, it
is a turn-off for me.” Chris turned his body to the front of the
auditorium, not even giving her a sideways glance. She, too, kept
her eyes on the white board as the professor droned on. Her
thoughts kept fluttering back to what little conversation she had
with Chris.

Did her traitorous mouth just sever any
possible connection with Chris? Did she want to have a connection
with him? Her brain was screaming “
No,
dangerous!
” while her libido was screaming
“
Yes, dangerous!
And hot and delicious and muscular and…
”

A chuckle rose low out of his chest as Chris
rose from his seat. The realization dawned that class had already
ended, and most of the students were already leaving. She must have
really been daydreaming.

Chris set his shoulder bag down, put his
hand on her desktop and bent down to close to her face. He ran his
finger down her cheek, sending tingles down her spine. “There it is
again.” Leaning in even closer to her ear, he whispered, “I can
only hope that
I
am somewhere in
that thought that has you changing all these different shades of
red.”

Picking up his shoulder bag, he walked out
to the end of the row, bounded down the steps of the auditorium,
and passed out of sight through the front doors. Sara did not stand
up from her seat at first. She just stared after him…confused,
light-headed and really, really hot.

A
n entire week had passed
since Sara’s encounter with Chris in her accounting class. She had
skipped the last class, telling herself that she had the flu. It
was just her nerves flopping around in her belly. There was no way
she could handle sitting in the auditorium again with Chris in such
close proximity. The man did things to her mind and body just
sitting there. She felt like an idiot the last time they were
sitting together, not hearing a word the professor said anyway. In
fact, later that night when she tried working on the assignment
from her syllabus, she had no idea what she was supposed to do. She
spent three hours learning what she could have learned, had she
listened during the lecture. Not very likely with the hot body that
sat next to her. Sara decided that she would just work on that
particular assignment as best she could and stop in to see the
professor before class.

Arriving early, hoping to talk with Mr.
Pearce before class started, Sara was surprised to see other
students already milling about. “Crap,” she cursed under her
breath. There would be no way to slip in incognito now. Sara was so
painfully shy around men in general. Not only was she shy, but
nervous too. Her nerves would prevent her mouth from forming words
that her brain was sending down. It was embarrassing, and she did
not want the entire auditorium to witness the show.

Mr. Pearce turned towards Sara just as she
was approaching his desk. “Sir, may I have a moment of your time?”
He stood there for a moment, his gaze drilling into her. Then
slowly, a million dollar megawatt smile grew on his face. “Of
course you can. Sara, right?”