by Hope Ramsay
“What?”
Amy grinned. “Courtney, I know every boob hack there is. When you’re born with nothing on top, you figure these things out. Go tell the bride to relax. I’ll be up in just a minute.”
She hurried out the French doors and headed for the barn. For the last week, she’d been in and out of the warehouse where the garden tools and equipment were stored. Mario had a special shelf with electrical tape, masking tape, painter’s tape, and lots and lots of duct tape in various colors, including bridal white. A business like Eagle Hill Manor needed duct tape on a daily basis for all kinds of things.
This might be the first time it was needed for a bride’s cleavage.
She hurried into the building and came face-to-face with the last person she wanted to see.
“What are you doing here?” Dusty asked, and then he gave her a slow up-and-down look, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her all dressed up. The look unleashed her hormones. So annoying given the fact that their relationship was based on his pity.
“I need some duct tape,” she said, raising her chin.
“For what?”
Heat climbed up her face. He did not need to know the true reason. “I need it for the table linens,” she said, improvising.
“What’s wrong with the table linens?”
“They’re slipping. Look, I’m in a hurry. Are you going to guard your duct tape like a mean dog with a bone or are you going to work with me here?” She put her hands on her hips.
His mouth twitched, as if he were laughing at her. “No, no problem. Take as much duct tape as you need.”
She snatched a roll of the white tape. “Thanks.”
She turned, and even though a part of her wanted to glance at him over her shoulder, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. Dammit all. Why did he have to be so handsome and sexy?
She pushed that impossible question out of her mind and scooted into the library and up the grand stairway to the Churchill Suite, where Megan Leblanc, the flat-chested bride, was holed up with her bridesmaids and her mother.
Amy knocked on the door, and Courtney answered. “Um, they’re in a snit right now. I might have mentioned duct tape, and that suggestion was met with more than a little skepticism. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
So much for Courtney having faith in her. Well, this wouldn’t be the first time no one believed her. She stared Courtney right in the eye. “Trust me on this. And if you don’t trust me, just look up boob hacks on YouTube. The knowledge might come in handy for future emergencies.”
Amy stepped around Courtney. “Hey, everyone,” she said in a happy tone as she strode into the room, taking in the long faces and the shine of tears in the bride’s eyes. “I’m here to fix things.”
“With duct tape?” The bride looked horrified.
“Well, that would solve the problem.”
“Yes, but what happens afterward? I mean when…You know…”
“Oh, that…Well, think of the fun he’ll have unwrapping you. Maybe with his teeth?”
The bride stared. Her mother giggled.
“Okay, so maybe instead we could use makeup on your cleavage. Do you have some matte bronzer and powder? Some bronzer between the boobs and a little glittery highlighting on the top can really make the girls pop, you know? Although that might be risky with a white dress.
“Maybe we should just go for the classic fix—a pair of balled-up socks. Don’t tell me you never did that when you were a teenager.”
Megan looked guilty.
“There’s nothing wrong with giving nature a little helping hand,” the bride’s mother said. “And, honey, I know you had this idea about wearing a beautiful lace bra, but the bra you bought isn’t going to work. Why don’t you let Amy help you out, okay?”
Megan bit her lip and nodded.
“I promise, we won’t use the duct tape unless absolutely necessary.”
“How does that work, exactly?” Megan asked, the worry on her face morphing into curiosity.
Amy whipped out the cell phone Willow had given her yesterday as a perk of employment. She pulled up her Internet browser and searched for a specific video starring a drag queen named Cherri Bomb. “Take a look,” Amy said, handing over the phone. “But basically, you squeeze the girls together and someone tapes them from right to left and then left to right. Just watch the video. If a drag queen with no boobs at all can use duct tape to make himself look like a C cup, just imagine what we could do with you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dusty awakened on Sunday morning to find himself alone in his tiny house. Daddy had left, and not just for a walk or a drive. The old bastard was good and gone—took his clothes and his truck and even stripped the Murphy bed of its sheets.
Maybe their meeting last Friday with Samantha Fry, the Jefferson County social worker with a take-no-crap attitude, had put the fear of God in him. Samantha made it clear that Daddy needed to get himself sober, and she was going to find him a low-cost recovery program come hell or high water.
That hadn’t gone over too well. As usual, Daddy had blamed Dusty for everything. For tearing down the old house. For building a new one that was too small. For investigating Medicaid options. For not selling the land. Even for Daddy’s addiction to booze. The list of grievances went on and on.
Why the hell did Dusty allow himself to feel one iota of guilt about any of it? Daddy hadn’t ever shown one moment of remorse for repeatedly throwing Dusty out of the house—even on cold winter nights. But Dusty felt nothing but guilt when he discovered his father missing. Inevitably, the guilt gave way to worry and then to anger. Why the hell should he be all torn up with worry for a man who’d never, ever worried about him?
He tossed that thought around like a dog with a bone and finally concluded that he wanted to be the sort of man who worried about things like this. The sort of man who took care of his family—even someone like Daddy. So he swallowed back his anger and called the cops, but Officer Pierce told him the SFPD couldn’t do a thing about the situation since Daddy was an adult of sound mind.
So, bottom line, Dusty was a free man once again. Free to be alone.
And for the first time, his tiny house seemed way too big, even for him. He felt caught in the middle of his life, caught in limbo. He would be thirty-five next November, and he hadn’t really accomplished much. Maybe he needed to forget about Daddy and figure out what to do about the rest of his life. Maybe he should read Willow’s e-mails again and do something about a business plan.
But the minute he pulled up Willow’s messages on his laptop, he lost faith in himself. Willow’s suggestions for his business plan were like Greek to him. He didn’t have the first idea about how to write a business plan. And even if he wrote one, he didn’t know how anyone put a plan into action.
He had worked his tail off to become a horticulturist, and he’d spent his whole life learning to fish. He wasn’t a businessman. Writing a business plan intimidated the crap out of him.
He made himself a pot of coffee and sat out on his deck for a little while, listening to spring birdsong and trying to figure out what he should do next—go searching for his daddy, start working on a business plan, go fishing, or something else?
The something else took the form of an X-rated image of Amy Lyndon, and the more he tried not to think of her, the more her memory stuck in his head. Amy embraced her problems. She wore her own lack of experience and knowledge like a badge of courage.
She’d accomplished so much in such a short time. And yesterday he’d admired her even more after seeing her all turned out for her new job in a sexy little dress and hearing later how she’d somehow saved the day for a bride with that roll of duct tape she’d borrowed from the barn.
He wasn’t alone. Everyone at Eagle Hill Manor had fallen utterly in love with her because she had a ready laugh, a willingness to learn, and a wickedly smart imagination. That thought left an uneasiness in its wake. No, he didn’t love
Amy Lyndon. Much.
He put his coffee cup down on the deck and rubbed his temples where a headache had started to bloom. Shoot, if Amy Lyndon could face the world fearlessly, why couldn’t he do the same thing?
So what if he didn’t know what the term ROI meant when Willow used it in her e-mails. He could learn. And hadn’t he told Amy that everything she needed to know could be found at the Jefferson County Public Library?
Yes, he had.
* * *
Yesterday had been exhilarating and exhausting. Amy had put in twelve hours on the job, and she’d succeeded in so many ways. Not only had she fixed Megan’s boobs, but she’d also fixed the best man’s too-tight rental tux pants with a rubber band, and solved a problem with the champagne fountain with a bobby pin. It turned out that she had a talent for fixing things.
Even so, all that fuss and stress over a wedding made Amy suddenly wonder if she wanted anything so grand when she finally found Mr. Right. Maybe it would be better to elope, or have a small wedding, like the one the family wanted for Danny.
Not that Aunt Pam would ever allow Amy to have a small wedding. Pam had been denied the chance to plan David’s and Jeff’s weddings, so she’d be all over Amy’s wedding, and regardless of what Amy might want, Pam would turn her wedding into a gigantic affair fit for an American princess.
Unfortunately, princesses always had to wear poufy ball gowns and endure boring and obnoxious wedding guests for the sake of the kingdom. Princesses lived in high castle towers and got told how to behave. It wasn’t much fun being a princess, she’d discovered.
Maybe she could throw the family for a loop by finding a pirate or even a cute gardener to run off with.
She turned that thought around in her mind for a long time before setting it aside and labeling it “wishful thinking.” She didn’t know any pirates, and the cute gardener in her life had pranked her and lied to her.
The whole snipe-hunting thing had been boiling inside her for a couple of days. So on Sunday, after she’d returned her library books, she sat down at one of the library’s long tables, fired up her new business phone, and Googled the words “snipe hunting.”
She’d just started reading the list of URLs when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. At the same time, the library got uncomfortably warm. What the hell?
She glanced over her shoulder and found the explanation for the sudden atmospheric change. The dishonest Dusty McNeil leaned his long, athletic body against the information desk as he chatted softly with Donna Carlton. He wore a blue fishing shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose ropy muscles along his forearms. Tangled blond hair fell across his forehead in a sexy bed-head look that had Amy’s insides revving. She turned back to her phone, determined to ignore him.
Her search results for “snipe hunt” were displayed on the screen. The Wikipedia definition at the top of the list started with the words “a fool’s errand” and contained phrases like “practical joke” and “gullible rube.” Links to various web pages with snipe-hunting instructions followed. There was also an obscure reference down at the bottom of the list to a bird called the Wilson’s snipe, which apparently lived somewhere in Louisiana.
She followed the first link, and there it was, all laid out for anyone who ever wanted to send a so-called friend for a snipe hunt: the sack, the pinecone, and the peanut butter.
Dammit it to hell and back again. Wikipedia had it right. She’d been a total sucker, not just for going snipe hunting but for believing that Thursday night had been anything other than pity sex.
It was time to get out of the library.
But fate or bad luck or whatever interceded. Dusty finished his conversation with Donna and turned toward the stacks just as Amy got up from the table and turned toward the exit. Amy realized too late that they were on intersecting trajectories.
He altered his course to intercept her. He even put on one of his gorgeous smiles, complete with dimples this time. “Hey,” he said in a voice pitched low and quiet, “I saw you when I came in. Courtney told me you saved the day yesterday with the duct tape you borrowed, but she said the problem had nothing to do with table linens like you said it did, and now I’m—”
“I was just reading Wikipedia’s definition of snipe hunting,” she interrupted, too angry with him at the moment to discuss anything work-related. Or, really, anything at all.
His beautiful sun-bronzed skin paled. “Oh?”
“Yup. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Muffin.”
She stepped around him, but damned if the man didn’t follow her right out of the library’s front doors.
“Uh, wait,” he called. “Let me explain.”
She turned. “No need to. I get it. I’m dumb and naive. But it’s mean when you set up a person to fail and then laugh about it.”
She turned and tried to run away from him, but he had much longer legs. He caught up in no time, grabbed her arm, and halted her forward progress. His touch should have revolted her, but instead it sent an electrical jolt right into her core.
“Amy, you are not dumb, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” She tried to shake him off, but instead of letting her go, he tugged her around so she had to face him.
“Look at me, Amy.”
She didn’t.
“C’mon, honey, look at me.”
She finally peeped up at him. It was a gigantic mistake because his baby blues were full of concern, and she so wanted that kind look to be real and not a figment of her overactive imagination.
“You. Are. Not. Dumb,” he said. “And I was wrong to send you snipe hunting. I realized my mistake the next morning when I discovered you were homeless and desperate for money. I’ve been homeless a time or two. I know how it goes.”
“A few days ago you told me not to draw any comparisons between our life experiences.”
“Okay, I was wrong to say that too. But the thing is, that morning, when I found out you had tangled with some kind of animal out there in the woods, I needed to do something to make up for the fact that I may have put you in danger. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure the animal who scared you that night was Muffin, but it could just as easily have been a mean raccoon or a bear or something.”
“You should have told me the truth.”
“If I’d done that, I wouldn’t have been able to pay you. And you needed money. So…” His voice faded out.
“So the money and the breakfast were just handouts.”
He shook his head. “No. I paid you for the work I asked you to do in a fair exchange even if my initial motives were unkind. I’m really sorry, okay? But I’d like to make one thing clear. I didn’t send you on that snipe hunt because I thought you were dumb. I did it to teach you a lesson about asking dumb questions.”
“You didn’t like my questions?”
He shook his head. “No, just the opposite. That first day on the job you were trying so hard to impress me and make me think you knew stuff that you clearly didn’t know. You tried to BS me about the weeds and look what happened with that. So I tested you by sending you snipe hunting. If you’d asked me what a snipe was, I would never have sent you on a wild-goose chase.
“But it backfired on me, Amy. And then you turned around a few days later and surprised the hell out of me and everyone else by bringing that field guide of trees and shrubs to work. A dumb person wouldn’t have done that. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow you discovered the value of asking questions. You see, Amy, the lesson I wanted to teach you was that there’s no such thing as a snipe…or a dumb question. Every question is worthy of an answer.”
She pulled her arm free but made no move to escape. His words had paralyzed her.
“You want to know something else?” he asked, but hurried on before she had a chance to answer his rhetorical question. “This morning I was reading a bunch of e-mails Willow sent me with advice on how to write a business plan. Not one of them made any sense to me. I don’t know anything about ROI and thing
s like that. All that jargon made me feel stupid, and I was about to give up on the whole thing, but then I thought about you.”
“Me?”
He nodded and smiled in the most adorable way, with the corners of his mouth impishly curling. Amy’s anger began to slip away.
“Yeah,” he said. “I thought about you, and I said to myself, ‘Amy didn’t know squat about dog training, but she went to the library and she learned from a book, and now Sven sits on command.’”
A smiled tugged at her mouth. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
“So, see? You aren’t dumb. You’re brilliant. And you’re an inspiration. You’re the reason I decided to double down on my fight with the county. I need to find a book on writing a business plan, and I need to do what Willow has suggested for months—write an alternative plan for my land.”
“Oh, good. I love it when people stand up to Aunt Pam.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, but don’t think I’ve gotten over being mad at you just because you’re making Aunt Pam’s life difficult.” She paused, trying to find the words that wouldn’t totally bare herself to him. “The thing is, I don’t want pity sex from you or anyone.”
He blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Honey, if you think what happened on Thursday night was pity sex, then you need to think again. I stayed because I wanted to. There is no other reason. I think you’re a beautiful, smart, desirable woman.”
She stood there blinking up at him. Was he feeding her a line, like a good Casanova, or was he telling her the truth? She couldn’t tell. “Is that really what you think?”
“Of course it is. Didn’t I just tell you that I came here to the library because you inspired me?”
“Yeah, you did. Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever inspired anyone before.” Should she trust him? Should she forgive him? Her brain wasn’t sure, but her heart tugged her in that direction.
“There’s a first time for everything,” he said.
An incredible rush of warmth spilled through her and pooled in her midsection when her heart finally won the fight with her head. Maybe having sex with him hadn’t been such a mistake. She’d like to do it again, but maybe not right this minute. After all, he’d come to the library to find a book on writing a business plan. She’d read Sally Hawkes’s article in the Winchester Daily, and that had lit a fire under him. Willow was right; Dusty needed an alternate plan.
