Authors: Kate Perry
His dark blond hair was longer than he'd worn it in
high school and became charmingly disheveled when he raked a hand
through it. He always did that when he was agitated.
Olivia wished she didn't know that.
He exhaled, pushing his hair back again, and
said, "I didn't want this."
The hurt that speared through her shocked
her. "Is that news? I already knew that. We covered this before you
left."
He frowned at her. "That's not what I
meant."
"Then what exactly did you mean?"
His frown deepened. "I don't like this
animosity between us. We used to be friends."
"You came in here to remind me of what we
were?" she asked incredulously. "What did you expect? That you'd
walk in here and I'd be overjoyed to see you?"
"I—"
"Eleven years, Michael! It's been eleven
years since I've heard from you. You seriously didn't think you
could step in here and we'd be best friends again?" She grabbed the
lacy briefs Mrs. Ledbetter didn't want and walked around the
counter to put them back in stock.
Michael followed her. "I'm not sure what I
thought, but I didn't expect that you'd still be so mad."
She slammed the underwear down on the
display table and whirled around. "Oh, I'm not mad."
He cocked a brow at her.
This was going nowhere. She took a deep
breath. "Michael, what do you want?"
"I just got into town, and I've heard about
your store, and..." He shrugged.
"Curiosity." She nodded. "I can understand
that. Now that you've satisfied it, either buy something or get
out."
The way he studied her made her feel like
she was under a microscope. He'd always been intense, but he wasn't
focused like this when he was a teenager. No wonder he had such an
impressive reputation as a director.
Not that she kept track of his career.
"You've changed," he finally declared.
She smirked humorlessly. "I'm not the girl
you left behind."
His gaze raked over her body. "Yes, I can
see that." He did another survey, slower and more thorough, as if
he were cataloguing her every feature.
Conscious of him checking
her out, she lifted her chin and leaned against the table to give
him a better view of the whole package.
Eat
your heart out
, she told him silently,
knowing she looked better now than she had eleven years
ago.
But he did too. Good enough to eat. She may
be a lot of things, but masochistic wasn't one of them. As tempting
as he was, she wasn't going to bite. "Well, it's been real. Don't
let the door slam your butt on the way out."
As if on cue, the front door opened. A gust
of frigid air blew in before Rick Clancy could close it.
"Damn, it's cold today," he said, striding
through the store toward her. He leaned down to give her a quick
kiss on the lips. "Hey, sweetheart."
She smiled at him. He couldn't have timed
his arrival better if they'd planned it. She snuggled into his side
and laced her arm around his waist. Tilting her head flirtatiously,
she batted her eyes at him. "I could help warm you up," she said,
making her voice huskier than usual.
"I knew there was a reason I came to see
you." He pulled her closer and wrapped his arm around her.
Olivia mentally sighed in relief. She was
going to owe him big time for playing along. "Rick, meet Michael. I
knew him in high school. Michael, this is Rick." She said his name
like it made her gooey inside.
"Nice to meet you, Michael." Rick smiled at
him but didn't let go of her.
She knew she loved Rick for a reason.
Michael nodded, his hands jammed into his
pockets. "Likewise," he said curtly.
Olivia tried not to beam too brightly.
"I have to go." Michael jerked his chin at
Rick and Rick responded with the same. It was a guy thing Olivia
had never quite understood, kind of like air guitar.
"It was good seeing you. Maybe we can talk
again on your next trip up," she said sweetly as he made his way
out.
Michael looked over his shoulder. "I'm going
to be in town for a while."
"Really?" The smile dissolved from her face,
and she dropped her arm from Rick's waist.
"I'm shooting a movie up here, so I'll be
around for the next couple months." He stared at her. "We're
shooting at your grandmother's farm."
"
What
?" Her voice sounded squeaky even
to her own ears.
"Yeah, so I'll see you around." He turned
and walked out, quietly closing the door behind him.
"Aw hell." She slammed her fist on the
table.
Chapter Three
"Ow!" she cried, shaking her hand.
Rick took it, kissing it before wrapping it
in the warmth of both his. "I didn't know you had these violent
tendencies, Olivia."
"It's a side of me I just tapped into." She
looked out the window and saw Michael cross the street. He was
headed for Grounds for Thought, her friend Eve's bookstore
coffeehouse.
She mumbled a curse. That
was where
she
hung
out.
"Want to tell me what that was all
about?"
She glanced up at Rick. Another few inches
and Rick would be freakish, basketball-player height. "That was
about settling old scores."
He grinned. "I see. And was vengeance
sweet?"
"I think I got a dozen cavities as a
result."
He laughed. She thought—not for the first
time—that the crinkling at the corners of his eyes was sexy.
Hell, everything about him was sexy. From
his lean body to his molten chocolate voice. He dressed stylishly,
was educated, and carried a gun. A woman would have to have one
foot in the grave not to find him irresistible.
Olivia checked where she was standing.
"I finished some business up the street and
thought I'd stop by to see if you're free for lunch."
"Working on a big case?"
"Oh, yeah. This old lady wants me to find
her lost dog."
She grinned. "I'm jealous. The life of a
private investigator is so exciting."
He tweaked a lock of hair. "So are you
coming to lunch or not? It's my turn to buy."
"Can't today. Sorry." She gestured to the
heavy velvet curtains that hid her backroom. "I have to put out new
stock that just arrived."
He brightened the way most men would if you
offered them a brand new Ferrari. "New underwear? Need help putting
it out?"
"You are sick." She shoved him
playfully.
"Take pity on me. This is the closest I've
come to women's underwear in a long time."
"Like you couldn't score if you wanted
to."
He shrugged. "I haven't run across many in
interesting candidates of late. Eve just married Treat, the lucky
bastard, and you're hung up on that guy who was just in here."
Her hackles rose. "What do you mean by
that?"
He looked at her shrewdly, as if all her
secrets were written on her wide forehead. "Exactly what I
said."
The man was entirely too observant. No
wonder he did so well as a PI. "You're wrong," she said, not sure
whether that was a lie or not. "Michael and I may have been
together high school, but it was over eons ago."
"Right. I could tell that by the way the
electrons were zipping between you two."
"And there are plenty of women around you
can date."
"Name one."
"Gwendolyn Pierce."
He roared in laughter, clutching his
washboard abs, which could reduce a grown woman to babbling
incoherently they were so fine. She knew. She'd seen them up front
and personal.
She propped her hands on her hips. "What's
so funny about Gwen? She's a lovely woman."
"Gwendolyn? Gwendolyn Pierce?" He gawked at
her, laughter temporarily forgotten in lieu of incredulity. "The
woman who sells decorated squash for exorbitant prices?"
"She doesn't sell squash. She sells gourd
art." Olivia had been leery of Gwen's idea for a store at first
too. Gourd art? But then Gwen showed her some of her pieces, and
Olivia was a convert. She and Eve had even helped Gwen launch her
store, Outta My Gourd, just few doors down from her. It'd been open
only a month and already it was a success. "Have you even taken a
look at her work? It's amazing."
"She gives me the creeps."
"What?" Olivia poked him in his ribs just to
cop a feel of his fabulous abs. She may not be interested in him,
but that didn't mean she couldn't appreciate prime male flesh.
"Underneath that tough, Sam Spade exterior, you're just a big baby,
aren't you?"
"Because I think the woman is absolutely
nuts?" He shook his head. "Sorry. You'll have to try harder to bait
me."
"Well, there has to be someone else around
here you can go out with."
"Nope. The only other woman is Jezie, my
neighbor's daughter, and she's only six. I'd wait for her but she
already told me she only loves me like a friend."
"Ouch."
"Yep. So was that a final no on me helping
you with the underwear?" he asked, his topaz eyes a study in little
boy eagerness.
"Got that right, my friend."
"Damn." He sighed dramatically.
Olivia laughed and pushed him toward the
door. "Out. Before you scare any more of my customers away."
"You mean they don't like a big, lurking
stranger giving them his opinion on which bras to buy?"
"Unfathomable, isn't it?"
"I just can't figure out some people." He
bent down to drop a light kiss on her lips. "See you later,
sweetheart. Come over some evening and we can watch a movie on my
new big screen TV."
"What is it with men and electronics?"
"They don't talk back like our women do." He
evaded her punch to his arm, laughing. As he opened the front door,
he turned around. "Olivia, if the guy doesn't want you, he's a fry
short of a Happy Meal."
She watched him leave, gaping. If she were a
weepy woman, she'd have tears in her eyes. But tears were for
wimps, and she never cried. Not in eleven years.
Rick may be astute but clearly he
over-interpreted this situation. She didn't want Michael, she
assured herself on the way to the backroom. Michael himself pushed
her into that decision.
She moved the burgundy velvet curtain aside
and shimmied through the narrow aisle. She lifted two boxes and
carried them to her front counter.
Michael had cured her of any delusions of a
life together when he dumped her the day after graduation. She'd
had such hopes for them...
She shook her head,
remembering how devastated she'd been when he told her he was going
to LA to accept the job offer her father made him.
Her own father
. The chance
of a lifetime, Michael had said to her. The break he needed to get
into the movie industry and become the next Martin
Scorsese.
She snorted, grabbed the box cutter, and
stabbed open the top of the first box.
The chance of a lifetime hadn't included
her. She was sure he'd ask her to go with him, but when she'd
brought it up he said having her along would be too distracting. He
needed to focus on his career; she'd only be in the way.
"Bastard," she mumbled, rifling through
cellophane to get to the merchandise inside.
The sad part was that she'd have followed
him to the ends of the earth if he told her he wanted her.
But he didn't.
"I was so stupid." She ripped the plastic
wrapping off the merrywidow.
It'd taken her years to get over Michael.
She wasn't going to make the mistake of getting suckered by his
charisma again.
She dropped the corset on the counter and
attacked the wrapping on the next one, shuddering as she remembered
the despair she felt when Michael left her.
But things turned out for the best. She'd
gone to Paris and, after two weeks of wandering the streets
aimlessly, met Cassis de Bonneville. The owner of an upscale
lingerie shop, Cassis hired her as a clerk and taught her
everything she knew about lingerie.
After five years in Paris, Olivia came back
to California with a dream: to start her own business. Her store
wouldn't just sell underwear—her store was going to sell
romance.
Olivia grinned and looked
around. She'd done it too. Romantic Notions had been open for six
years, and it'd done phenomenally. She sold higher end lingerie,
accessories, and what she called
romance
enhancers
—candles, body lotions, and games.
She also had a stash of toys in the back that she offered her more
adventurous customers.
She hardly lived in a void anymore. Between
her successful business and good friends like Eve and Gwendolyn,
she had a full life. And her Granny Mae loved her, even if she did
nag her to death more often than not.
She didn't lack for anything.
Except for sex.
"I'm not even going to venture there." She
scooped up her shipment of merrywidows—appropriately named, because
any woman who was without a man had to be pretty damn jolly—and
carried them to a display table she'd cleared earlier. She arranged
them, fanned out, larger sizes on the bottom.
She touched the black lace on the corset.
She, of course, had several drawers dedicated to underwear of all
shapes and textures. Still she always coveted the new merchandise.
She'd justify buying more for herself if she had a boyfriend.
She hadn't had a steady boyfriend in—well,
longer than she'd care to admit. The last man she'd dated with any
regularity was in France. She dated some casually, but mostly to
keep Gran off her back. She'd met some interesting men in the city,
but no one who held her attention for that long.
Like Rick. She'd met him through her friend
Eve, and they'd tried dating. She loved Rick. He was fun to hang
out with and she felt comfortable with him. But both of them
quickly realized that, while they were great friends, moving their
relationship into physical territory wasn't going to work. Rick was
hot, but they didn't have chemistry.