Tangled: A New Adult Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle of Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Royalty)

by Lakes, Krista

  Mrs. Kramer turned with painful deliberation, pushing the walker in a tight circle. “Young man, have you a date for this weekend’s ball?”

  Oh, boy. “Let me help you to the car,” Stella said.

  Mrs. Kramer lifted the walker and slammed it down again. “I’m a modern woman. I can ask a man if he’s available to escort me to a dance.”

  Dane stepped forward and bowed deeply to her. “I must most regretfully decline your very tempting invitation. I am spoken for this Saturday eve.”

  “Oh, poot.” Mrs. Kramer pushed the frame ahead of her and took mincing steps toward the door. “And I have the perfect dress to match your gray eyes.”

  “Now that would be a stunning color,” Stella said, hoping he’d turn them to her. He did, and the bright mischief she saw there squeezed her heart. Damn. She was going to have to fight after all.

  Dane offered his arm to Mrs. Kramer, and she gladly abandoned the walker, leaning on him as he led her out the door. Stella snatched up her perfume bag and the metal frame, holding the door as they passed through.

  “I’ll come back for that,” Dane said, and she knew what he meant. He wanted to see her alone for a second. She tried to suppress the smile but didn’t quite succeed.

  Rather than watch their slow progress to Mrs. Kramer’s ancient Lincoln Continental, Stella busied herself with randomly rearranging perfume bottles on the wall shelves. Where was Beatrice? Still cleansing her workspace? Vivian had forbidden Stella to do yoga. “The devil’s way to steal you from Jesus,” she’d said. “Call it exercise when it really brainwashes you into some ancient heathen religion.”

  Stella seriously wished her mother had never been saved. She liked Jesus just fine, and church was nice and the women there were great in the community, making sure the sick got checked on, and funerals had food, and little kids had Christmas presents. But Vivian’s brand of Bible beating felt like a punch line in a Johnny Carson monologue.

  The door jingled. Stella kept her back to it an extra moment, resisting the urge to check her hair or straighten her shirt. She didn’t want to seem too eager.

  “Stella?”

  He’d never said her name before. She squared her shoulders and turned. Her heel caught and she lost her balance, grasping at the nearest table. Her fingers grabbed a useless tuft of tissue paper. Tugging it upset a row of Jean Naté Bath Splash bottles.

  Dane leapt forward, trying to catch the breakables before they hit the floor.

  “Oh, no!” Stella caught two bottles in her hand. She moved too fast, and their heads crashed together. Dane bumped the display, sending another set of bottles falling into each other like bowling pins.

  Everything finally settled, and they started laughing uncontrollably. Dane set his bottles on the table and took the ones Stella was holding. “Bulls in the china shop,” he said.

  “Who you calling a bull?” Stella said, still laughing.

  “You. I’m calling you one.” A tiny set of fine lines crinkled out from his eyes.

  A horn honked outside.

  “Mrs. Kramer,” Stella said. “She wants her things.”

  “What’s with the ball gown?” Dane picked up the walker and hefted it onto his shoulder.

  Stella handed him the bag with the Shalimar. “No one knows. She seems to be living in some other era. Always been that way.”

  He tugged on the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  While he was loading the walker into Mrs. Kramer’s car, Stella dashed to the curtain that closed off the storeroom and peeked through. Beatrice was nowhere, her yoga mat rolled up in the corner. The incense sticks poked up from their position in the sand, no longer smoking. The air was still heavy with the smell, but the curtain kept it in.

  The door jingled again, and Stella thought of Pavlov’s dog. She wasn’t salivating, but her heart hammered painfully each time. She turned carefully. No more perfume needed to die today. She’d have to repair the display before Beatrice returned.

  But no matter. Dane was here. And Darlene wouldn’t be showing up to interrupt them.

  7

  Dane’s Proposition

  ––––––––

  DANE looked over the frilly shop, wondering what the hell he was doing. Darlene would be pissed.

  Stella watched him, a quizzical look on her face at his silence. Behind them, just out the front window, the old lady ran over the curb as she pulled away. “So, you’re here,” Stella said.

  He took pride in being smooth, always saying the right thing, making the right move. But he couldn’t think of a damn clever word. “You born here?” he finally managed.

  “Not sure this shop was here twenty-two years ago.” Her eyes crinkled in the corners with her smile. “But yeah, I grew up here in Holly.”

  He forced a little laugh. “Seems like a nice enough town.”

  “I’m not planning to hang around,” she said. “I got bigger things in mind.”

  He understood that. “Where you think you’re headed?”

  She picked up a pink bottle, sort of absently, turning it in her hands. “Not sure. St. Louis, maybe. Looked at New York.” She glanced up at him. “Texas.”

  He shuffled his boots, the chains on his hip jingling. “Big state.”

  “I like big.” She flushed at this.

  He cleared his throat. He wanted to be there, but he wasn’t sure why. He couldn’t explain it, this draw to her. She was pretty, fair and blond and tiny. He could have encircled her waist with his hands. Something about her was tough, but something else was fragile.

  “I guess I should get back to Joe’s.”

  “Do you have to?” She said it in a rush.

  Joe had sent him. That meant he liked Stella, maybe wanted Dane to like her. He wouldn’t meddle, not Joe, and he’d never said a mean thing about Darlene. Not about anybody. But he was here. It meant something. “I can stay.”

  And so Stella moved, with a bit of hesitation, behind the counter. She reached below the register and brought out a big binder. “I’ve been researching places to go. Cities.” She opened a page pasted with pictures and cut-up brochures.

  He approached the counter, watching the whir of color and text as she flipped through the book. “That’s a lot of work you’ve done.”

  “I’ve been planning my escape for a while.” She paused on Texas. “Is this stuff even right? Or all commercials?”

  He turned the binder a bit to look over the pages. “Everyone thinks Texas is all oil wells and cowboy hats.”

  “Well, is it?”

  “Nah. I mean, sure, there are cowboys. And people have oil.”

  “But.”

  “Well, most people are just, you know, normal. Def Leppard. Gimme caps. McDonald’s. I don’t know anyone with an oil well.”

  “You have a cowboy hat?” She rested her chin in her hand, her light-brown eyes on him.

  She had to know how she looked, coy and flirty. But yeah, it worked.

  “Hell, no.” He hated the whole country scene. The look. The attitude. He’d had many a run-in with a shit-kicker.

  Her bottom lip came out.

  “Well, I mean. Sure. I could wear one.” What the hell was he saying?

  “I think it’d look good on you.” She flipped the binder closed. “You know, all by itself.” Her face shifted in color. She’d embarrassed herself.

  He kicked the corner of the counter. “That might could be arranged.”

  But they both looked away, as if simultaneously thinking of Darlene.

  He exhaled in a rush. “On that, I guess I’ll head on back.” But he didn’t move.

  “Yeah, Joe will be calling.” She didn’t move either.

  He wanted to see her again. Hear about these plans. Find out where she came from. Teach her about Texas.

  “Will you be?” She didn’t look at him, tracing some pattern on the glass above the rows of perfume boxes.

  He didn’t get it. “Will I be what?”r />
  She bit her pink lip. “Calling.”

  Shit. He’d embarrassed her again. Made her ask outright. “We could just meet somewhere. I hear you like the water tower. That you’ve been up it a time or two.”

  She flushed fully red then. “Oh. I think I’m done with heights for a bit.” Then she seemed stricken. “Not that I’m afraid. I just. I had a moment. On the tower.”

  “You don’t seem like a girl afraid of much.”

  She straightened up suddenly. “Nope. Not afraid. So yeah. Top of the tower. No problem. Midnight?”

  “Tonight?” He was supposed to see Darlene, but he could get out of that. Figure things out.

  “You got other plans?” She clearly knew he did, knew his hesitation.

  “Not a one.” Not anymore.

  “Then midnight. At the top. Like that movie.”

  “Which one?”

  “An Affair to Remember.”

  “Don’t know it.”

  “They’re supposed to meet on the top of the Empire State Building.”

  “Supposed to? So they don’t?”

  “She has an accident. She doesn’t make it. And he thinks she doesn’t love him anymore.”

  Dane jingled the chain on his belt. “Does she?”

  Stella didn’t want to look at him, he could tell, and she wiped her hand along the counter as if it were dusty. “She does. But she doesn’t want him to know she’s in a wheelchair now.”

  “Does it have a happy ending?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Then I’ll see you there.” He nodded at her and turned away, heading out of the shop with long steps. He’d just gotten himself tied up even more, not his intention. And all that romantic mush in her head. But something about Stella bugged him, made him not think. Just act.

  8

  On the Tower Again

  ––––––––

  STELLA approached the tower with trepidation. She peered up, curious if Dane was already up. But the night was dark, no moon, and she couldn’t see anything but the gray gleam of streetlamps reflecting dimly on its surface. If the platform held any secrets, it kept them close to its metal belly.

  She would not let the quivering in her gut stop her from going up. She’d done it a hundred times, well, okay, five times. Once carrying a ladder, for Christ’s sake. She shut out her mother’s admonishment for the foul use of the Lord and ducked through the opening in the chain-link fence. She wondered if Dane even knew how to find it.

  Despite this being a date of sorts, she’d resorted to tennis shoes, unable to consider heading up the ladder barefoot, in heels, and certainly not in jellies. Even her lightweight Keds seemed slippery, so Adidas was the choice. She still did the miniskirt, though. Not much could make her wear anything else.

  She set her purse behind the concrete base to one of the steel legs and jumped to grasp the first rung of the ladder. Usually she had someone with her for the initial boost. But she could do it alone. She swung back and forth, grasping the metal tightly, until she had enough momentum to bring her feet up and above her head to catch on the ladder. Her leg crept up until her knee was over the rung, then the other, and she pulled herself up to sit on the lowest bar.

  Even this height made her stomach lurch. She remembered almost falling a few days before, her foot slipping off the beam. She forced herself to pull her leg through and firmly plant her shoe on the rung. She pushed up to standing and walked her hands up. Without letting her mind consider what she was doing or where she was going, she began scaling the first tier.

  A low whistle below made her pause. She looked down.

  “Impressive mount, good form. Definitely worth a replay.”

  Dane.

  She turned around on the ladder, like she had that day with Janine. “And the score?”

  “Nine point nine.”

  “Really?” She turned back around and began climbing again, faster now. “I think I just got robbed.”

  She finished the first tier, reaching up to cover the gap to the second ladder. A hand grasped her ankle, startling her. She gripped the bar tightly.

  Dane was just below, grinning up at her, teeth bright in the dark.

  “You scared the crap out of me!” Stella tried to pull her foot loose. His grip was firm, sure, then became gentler, a caress. Still, she was hopping mad. “How did you get up here so fast? You trying to kill me?”

  He rose a few more feet, pulling up next to her. She shifted over, and he swung behind. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  He pressed her against the rungs, one arm encircling her waist.

  With anyone else, she might have felt panicked, trapped. But she didn’t, just a zip of danger, a thrill. “What you going to do back there?”

  He pulled her to him with even more force. She felt his belt buckle against her back, the pinch of his arm wrapping securely around her middle. He moved his leg, bracing one foot on a higher rung, and fit her snugly against his pelvis.

  She didn’t know him at all. She shouldn’t do this. But of course she would. She’d been with a man or two. Or ten. A car cruised down the street below, stopping before a house. A girl ran onto the porch, waving. She jumped into the car, and it took off again. All oblivious to the scene above.

  Dane moved behind her, leaning down, his mouth on her neck. They hadn’t even kissed, she realized, and now they wouldn’t. She’d never had sex first, kiss later.

  She shouldn’t do it. He was Darlene’s, really. She tried to climb up a rung, out of his embrace. He let her go up, then followed, pulling her back to him.

  He ran his hand along her waist, then beneath her shirt. She leaned her forehead on a rung, concentrating on the feel of his fingers. Did he think she was just an easy roll in the hay? Was she? Her leg trembled with the effort of supporting herself. Dane felt it and increased the pressure, taking some of the weight off her, shifting her against his body.

  The wind kicked up and ruffled her hair. He eased his hand up her rib cage and along the edge of her bra. Were they going to do this? Here? She didn’t see how, in this precarious position. They weren’t super high, but high enough. A bone-crushing fall.

  He slid his fingers beneath the flimsy lace. She shuddered lightly and turned her head to him. “Dane?”

  He shifted over, and now his mouth reached her, kissing her lips, a question. She flooded with relief. Somehow not kissing made her a whore, but this, this was better. She’d kissed so many boys, often sloppy, sometimes dry, but a few were absolutely right. And he was tender with it, careful and almost shy, the opposite of everything else about this moment—their position, his fingers encircling her nipple, his groin flush against her.

  “This would be crazy,” he whispered. “And maybe not even possible. Should I let you down now? Get to know you proper?”

  But him asking changed everything. He’d given the power to her, and now she surged with the need to do it, to do this crazy, impulsive, dangerous thing. They’d never forget it, even if she ceased to know him after today. She’d remember it all her life.

  She leaned into his mouth, letting go with one hand to press his palm more firmly against her breast.

  He smiled against her lips. Now his hand moved down past her waist to the miniskirt, sliding it up.

  She turned her face away, her neck weary, and watched another car pass below. No one could see them, she felt certain, but she’d never done anything like this before. Outdoors, sure. In fields. Backs of trucks. In barns. Once on the roof of the high school. But never this. Not even close.

  His fingers slid inside the edge of her panties, tugging them down. She couldn’t move, couldn’t step out of them. He realized her problem and so instead, with a sharp yank, ripped them right off her.

  Stella felt nothing from the tear, just the cool sensation of air where there had been fabric. She looked down just as the pale-green scrap flitted below them, caught a bit of breeze, then landed on the branch of a tree just to the right. “You owe me a p
air of underwear.”

  He moved his hand beneath her knee, lifting her leg so that she separated her feet to rest on different rungs of the ladder. The wind cooled her even more, and she shivered. “This is crazy,” she whispered.

  He paused immediately, waiting, she realized, to see if she wanted to stop. She hadn’t expected that from him, just the push forward, the press into the act.

  “I’m game,” she said. “Something to tell our grandchildren.”

  He chuckled. “I think that qualifies as entirely too much detail.”

  Stella pictured Grandma Angie on the ladder with some beau and could totally see it. “Depends on the grandmother.”

  Talking so casually felt strange for what they were about to do. But maybe they should be more practical than romantic. Or not do it. His hand shifted on her thigh, leaving another cool spot. She reached behind him, feeling for the belt buckle.

  His belly sucked in as she missed the mark entirely and landed a little lower than she’d planned. He pushed against her, trapping her hand. Stella wanted to turn, to move into him, but that was impossible here.

  Dane reached between them and unsnapped his jeans. Stella sensed more urgency in him now, and her own pulse sped up. The miniskirt moved even higher, and now she felt the scrape of his jeans against her bare skin. He shifted on the ladder, moving beneath her, then up, and she felt it, felt him, sliding right into place.

  They were really doing this thing. It was going to work.

  Her arms trembled, so she hugged the ladder, preparing for the additional force of him moving against her. But he stopped. Stella turned her head as much as she could. “You okay?”

  “Are you? Should I?”

  Ah. “I’m on the pill. And nothing catching. You?”

  “Not on the pill. But nothing catching.”

  “But Darlene.”

  “Condoms, always.”

  He gripped her waist then and pushed hard and up. Stella sucked in a breath. Her skin felt cold in places, hot in others. Her arms were trembling again, and she didn’t see how Dane could maintain this position with just one arm.