by Dee Tenorio
“Boy, what are you doing on the floor?”
Cole looked up, all thoughts of the new system stopped dead.
“Peacock?” Burke asked, voice echoing through the small corridor, while Cole’s heart leapt. And not in the good way. “What the hell does a peacock have to do with you being on the floor?”
There was another murmuring sound, something Cole couldn’t quite make out as he circled the counter, getting more concerned by the second. He headed over to where Burke stood staring into the hallway. The sight was just as Cole had seen the day he’d gone to Amanda’s house. Billy Anderson toes-up on the ground. Only this time, instead of a sexy blonde kneeling next to him, he was alone.
Cole spared a glance at Burke, but he didn’t see any understanding on the other man’s face.
“She said it would all be in the catalog, but I didn’t believe her,” Billy said softly, awed, from the floor.
“Believe who?” Burke walked over, Cole right next to him.
“Her, the girl of my dreams.” Billy held up a shiny black booklet of some kind. It took a second for Cole to register what he was seeing, and then finally, he recognized the stunning blonde woman on the front. The naked one.
His naked one.
It was all Cole could do not to scrub his face with his hand. But that would give things away.
“You fainted looking at underwear?” Burke demanded, stomping over and pulling the booklet out of Billy’s hand. He made a disgusted sound before reaching down to grab Billy by the shirt and lift him forcibly to his feet.
“There’s no underwear on that picture,” Billy said dazedly. “And you’ve never seen her in peacock feathers.”
“Yes I have. It’s on page three.” Burke put the booklet back on the stack—holy shit, there was a stack!—on his table of promotional material at the end of the small hall. “I checked out the whole thing before I let Amanda put it in here for Susie this morning.”
“Amanda brought those in?” Cole asked, trying to keep the strangled note out of his voice.
He must not have done very well because Burke frowned at him. “Yeah, Susie’s expanding. She figured a lot of the guys in town aren’t too keen on walking into the Suite Shoppe, so this was a good way to get their attention.” Burke glanced down at the booklets again and shook his head. “I almost feel bad for Emil’s calendar. Since she put this out, nobody’s picked up a single one. The place has had so many people coming in for it I was thinking of charging for the copies. Didn’t you notice all the people coming and going?”
No, but an elephant could walk in while he was working and he wouldn’t notice. Cole frowned at the two stacks. There appeared to be equal copies of both the catalog and the calendar. Then he remembered who he was dealing with. “You’ve been refilling it, haven’t you?”
Burke nodded, the persnickety bastard. “Can’t seem to keep them on the table.” He glared at Billy, who was still too many shades of red to really notice. “Boy, we really need to get you a date.”
“Yes, Boss.” Billy smiled, his gaze losing focus. “I know just the girl to ask.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Cole snarled, his hands in fists at his sides.
Billy’s eyes went wide.
Burke’s narrowed into suspicious slits. He looked down at the booklet again, tilting his head before rolling his eyes and mumbling, “Son of a bitch!” He looked at Cole. “Told you they get impatient. Guess it’s safe to say you didn’t know anything about this.”
“You think it would be there if I knew anything about it?” Cole replied, not liking the tight feel of his own skin or the loud roar happening in his ears. Where was that coming from? “How many of those have gone out?”
“Well, this is the last of them, and the box she gave me had about two hundred—”
“Two…” Cole turned and stalked for the front door of the shop. He was already starting down the road when he heard Burke yelling after him.
“Hey, you left your bike!”
“Won’t need it!” he yelled back without turning. The mile walk would be necessary to calm him down enough that when he got to the Suite Shoppe, he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Like throttle the nerve-wracking virgin behind the register.
But he wasn’t making any promises.
“Amanda!” The bellow from the front of the store completely drowned out the sound of the bell over the Suite Shoppe’s door.
Amanda popped her head up from the box of colored chocolate body paint she was unpacking in the back room. She looked nervously to where Susie stood on a ladder stuffing boxes into the storage cabinets above the racks.
The other woman didn’t even turn around. “This is your rodeo, pumpkin. Better get out there and ride.”
“Amanda! Do not make me come looking for you!”
“Yes.” Susie turned her head, brow raised imperiously. “Don’t make him look for you. You know him, he’s incapable of walking through the shop without knocking over half the stock.”
“He may do that anyway.” But Amanda could see her point. She stood up and headed through the dividing curtain. “You can stop yelling, I’m right here.”
Of course, when she got a look at her brother towering and seething from across the store, she did have an inkling that maybe here wasn’t the smartest place to be.
Locke stood like an avenging angel next to the register, arms crossed over his chest, his jaw clenched tight, his close-cropped pale hair all but standing on end. And that icy gaze of his was almost enough to burn her into freeze-dried ashes where she stood.
Oh yeah, he knew about the catalog.
“Did you need something?” When all else fails, go for innocence.
Locke remained silent. Glaring.
Amanda swallowed. Oh, this was baaaaad. “Well, if that’s it, I’ll just get back to w—”
“What the hell were you thinking?”
She cringed, which she really hated, because she wasn’t actually afraid of Locke, but he’d never used that tone with her. The one so full of rage and disappointment that it crawled up her spine like acid.
“Do you have any idea what everyone out there is saying about you? About Susie? Because they all know the two of you are the models in that booklet.”
“Leave me out of it, Locke!” Susie yelled from the back.
“Oh, you’re in it, woman!” he yelled right back, sending Amanda’s brows rising to her hairline. “You’re all over page two, three, four and goddamn five!”
Susie poked her head out of the curtain, her gaze zeroing in on Locke but instead of the hellfire rage Amanda expected, all he got was a pseudo-sultry wink and an over-sugary southern drawl. “Why, Havlocke, I do believe you sound like a fan!”
“Susie.” His growl managed to escape his mouth without moving either of his flattened lips.
“Go to hell, Locke.” Clearly, Susie wasn’t nearly as impressed as Amanda. She simply went back behind the curtain with a final, “And you forgot the back cover!”
“Like hell I did,” he growled, but apparently Susie didn’t hear him.
Ooookaaaaay. “I guess if that’s everything—”
Locke’s brows dropped, his scowl dark enough to make her think he was standing in heavy shadow. “You guess wrong.”
Little sparks flickered somewhere in the back of her head. “Aren’t you the one who always told us not to give a damn what anyone was saying about us? ‘Make up your mind, commit yourself to the task and do it to the best of your ability. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.’ That’s what you taught us, Locke.”
Because there had been a lot of talk when their parents died. That Locke was too young to be expected to raise six kids all on his own. That they were all going to suffer for not having two parents. He hadn’t wanted them hurt over things he couldn’t change, no matter how much he might want to.
The reminder didn’t even faze him. “When you weren’t doing anything wrong, yes!”
The sparks burst into light at the edges of
her vision. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
If he didn’t like the deeper, colder tone of her voice, he didn’t do much more than grind his teeth.
“I helped a friend with her business by modeling her product for free. Nothing indecent. Nothing for you to get angry or judgmental about.”
“Really? You don’t think you could have warned us about it? Couldn’t have at least told the younger ones that when someone brings over a copy after school they shouldn’t take a look if they don’t want to know what their sister’s backside looks like?”
Okay, that put a dent in her indignation but she couldn’t tell him that. “Locke—”
“And don’t tell me you didn’t know exactly what you were doing putting it in Burke’s place.”
“I was drumming up business!”
Locke’s head turned to the side, his eye squinting to tell her how pathetic he found that excuse.
“You may not approve, but that doesn’t mean I need to ask your opinion if I want to walk down Main Street stark naked.”
“That’s up to you. I won’t have to live with the consequences,” he replied coolly. Damn, now that his initial explosion was over, he was back to the collected, in control man everyone expected him to be. She wasn’t so naïve as to think he wasn’t still pissed enough to put her over his knee. “What I don’t approve of is you using this as a way to strike out at me.”
The urge to take off her shoe and throw it at him was strong, but that would just cement his impression that she was acting like a child. Even if she kind of was. “Contrary to popular opinion, Locke, the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
“I never said it did. If I thought you’d done this because it was about helping Susie, I’d have had the damn booklet in my store, but that’s not why you did this, is it?” With his quiet calm, no one could take the wind out of her sails quite like her brother. He took a step forward, his gaze darkening, turning him from the brother who drove her crazy to the man she respected as much as she did her father. “When are you going to stop making me out to be the bad guy, Mandy? All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be safe and happy.”
Except her father had never hurt her as deeply as Locke had… Should she tell him that? Could she get the words past her throat? She never found out.
The bell over the door rang, and unlike her brother, the man walking through this time looked like he had every intention of putting his hands on her.
Cole stomped into the Suite Shoppe, surprised that the mile-long walk had done virtually nothing to cool his temper. Not a thing. He didn’t even consider himself a hot-headed person. He generally had to have his buttons seriously pushed to gear up to a decent-sized blow-up. But in less than a week, Amanda Jackman had managed to set it on fire more times than he thought possible. It was like she had some kind of magic key right past all his comfort zones, directly under the skin to parts of himself he no longer thought he had.
But this was it.
The final straw.
She wanted to amp the stakes on this game of hers, fine. He could do that. But the kid gloves were off.
The door rattled shut, the damn bell overhead jangling like a dinner call. One part of his brain was aware that they weren’t alone, that there was a mountain of a man at the register, but he just didn’t give a flying fuck. He cut through the racks of silky this and willowy that, his prey standing at the partition between the fun stuff and the naughty stuff, as he’d come to think of it.
And didn’t she look sweet and innocent, her eyes wide as she watched him head her way. Those plump, pink lips parted on a soft intake of breath, gleaming with wet gloss.
“C-Cole,” she stammered, rubbing her palms on her jeans. She had on a white, short-sleeved blouse, almost a peasant cut. Pretty, especially the way the neckline dipped and showed a tantalizing glimpse of her cleavage while maintaining her modesty. “I didn’t expect you to come by.”
“Oh, yes you did.” She had to know he’d come running like a well-trained dog, ready to defend what belonged to him.
So what if he’d never thought of a woman as belonging to him before in his life?
So what if she had no idea that this damned demand of Locke’s had become real for him?
She was about to figure it out pretty damn quick.
Before she could get another word out, he was in front of her. Wrapping his fingers around the back of her neck and pulling her into a kiss so hot and wet he was sure the top of his head was about to blow off. She gave a wild squeak, but it disappeared into his mouth.
Her hands landed on his arms, her fingers grabbing the fabric of his T-shirt, holding on through the onslaught. And it absolutely was one. He took her mouth like he had every right, lashing her tight against him, stealing her breath and every thought she had in her head.
He thought she’d push him off, just to get a word in edgewise.
Instead she melted for him.
Soft and pliant, kissing him back with innocent licks against his tongue and pleased little sounds at the back of her throat. That sound that got his cock up and at ’em every time. This one was no different, especially when her arms went around his neck and she held on for dear life. Then it was all he could do not to pin her to the nearest wall and take her right there.
He heard someone saying his name, but since it wasn’t Amanda, he didn’t bother looking up. Hell, if someone was screaming “Fire!” he wouldn’t have pulled away.
The taste of her was sweet, like candy, but rich in the indefinable Amanda way, and he wanted more of it. He almost wished he could make himself relax his hold, be gentler, but the same possessive, Neanderthal urge that had him heading her way in the first place had him tilting her head to take her deeper. The temptation to stay there, kissing her senseless, was strong, but he finally remembered kissing wasn’t what he’d come for.
She made a sound of dismay when he broke away. Her face was flushed, her lips just a little puffy and parted, but her eyes watched him warily. Good. She didn’t have a clue what was going on.
“I should have given you that spanking when I had the chance.” He didn’t even recognize his own voice. It was deep, gravelly and so pissed off he vaguely wondered if he scared her.
Her eyes did widen for a second, but then her lips spread in that happy, pure-Amanda smile, and he realized absolutely nothing scared this woman.
He let go of her shoulders and grabbed her hand, already pulling her back through the racks. “You wanted a real damn date, you’re getting a real damn date.” And everyone in town would know she was with him. “So if you don’t like it, that’s just too damn bad.”
She’d angled and teased and now she was getting what she wanted. But if she thought he was going to let her get away with manipulating him, she had another thing coming. The woman was going to pay for this, and he had years of ideas for how she could make it up to him.
“Susie, she’s taking the rest of the day off!” he yelled, knowing the other woman had to be around somewhere. She always was.
“My purse!” Amanda suddenly cried out as they passed the register.
“You won’t need it.”
“B-but…my car!”
“Won’t need it.”
“Wait!” She dug in and started pulling back to stop him.
Good thing her brothers had worked him until he could drag his own bike if he wanted to. “Nope. You should have thought about what would happen if you pushed me too far, Amanda. Now you’re stuck, so either shut up and follow me, or shut up and follow me.”
He heard the satisfying clap of her teeth snapping shut.
Right before he noticed the mountain that had planted itself in front of the store’s door. Locke glared at him, all kinds of warning in his gaze, but for once, Cole really didn’t have it in him to give a shit.
“You gonna stand there all day or are you going to open the door?”
“You’re pushing it, Cole,” Locke muttered.
“I haven’t even started yet,” the
death wish inside him made him say. But really, what was Locke going to do? Beat the shit out of him? Remind him in front of Amanda that they had a deal? For once, Locke’s rules were working in his favor.
So if he smiled, and that smile felt wolfish to the point that Locke practically snarled, all the better.
“Let it go, Locke.”
Cole almost turned at Susie’s softly spoken instruction from the back of the room. But he didn’t dare look away from Locke. Not because he thought the other man would take advantage and plow him into the ground for touching his sister—although he could—but because he didn’t for one second want Locke believing he’d backed down. That was a fast track to having Locke up his ass for every second of every day he might spend with Amanda. However many that might be. Because much as he hated to admit it, this game of cat and mouse was only starting. She had a lot to learn still, about herself and certainly about dealing with him. He wouldn’t be maneuvered like this again. If her plan was to drive him crazy wanting her, then turnabout was fair play. Before he was done, Amanda Jackman was going to be climbing the walls for him. Wanting him. Craving him. Damn it, she was going to love him back enough to forgive him.
But none of that was going to happen until he got through the damn front door.
It felt like forever, he and Locke glaring at each other, before Locke finally shifted his glance to his sister. “This what you want, Mandy?”
Good question. One Cole would like the answer to as well.
Her fingers tightened their hold on his hand. Reassuring him. Soothing him. “Absolutely.”
Locke’s gaze followed the movement of her hand. When he looked up at Cole’s face again, his expression hadn’t changed, but Cole knew he’d won this round. Locke moved, pulling the door open and stepping aside.
Cole didn’t need an engraved invitation. He walked through, taking Amanda with him.
Chapter Ten
“Let me see if I have this right,” Cassandra Halifax said from her spot on a wheelbarrow full of dirt.
Amanda looked up from her task on the grass a few feet away, smiling even as she squinted in the sun. Amanda had gotten to know Burke’s wife a little over the last two months, during her Monday afternoon lessons. He’d given her a world of crap about ambushing Cole with her pictures in the catalog, but Cass had put an end to that one week by declaring drastic measures a woman’s only choice when the man she wanted was an idiot. When that got him to stop grumbling, Amanda decided Cass was the greatest woman alive.
