Need You for Mine (Heroes of St. Helena)

by Marina Adair

  “Want to talk about it?” he asked, repeating her earlier words.

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah, well, me neither,” he said. “But since I just broke every rule known to man about women and asked you, while wearing merlot undies by the way, the least you can do is indulge me.”

  “It’s stupid, really.” And completely humiliating.

  “Then we’ll both laugh.” He took a sip of the Scotch and handed it to her. “Which, if you ask me, beats the shit out of crying.”

  A small chuckle escaped, and he was right, it did feel good. In fact, it felt so good she did it again.

  He palmed her hips and drew her even closer, leading her between his legs, until their thighs were brushing “See, it can’t be so bad if you’re already laughing just thinking about it.”

  Harper took a sip, then cringed as the liquid courage burned a path down her throat. When she could pass air through her chest again, she said, “Liza Miner stopped by to tell me Crafty Mamas would run a craft booth, and the elementary school is on board as well.”

  “That’s great. Better than great. It means we actually have a booth filled.”

  “And she’ll fill more booths,” she said. “As long as her mommy blog gets all the credit for hosting the event.”

  Adam laughed. “I don’t care what she says on her blog. As long as she helps fill tables, and all the proceeds go to the Back-to-School Packs fund, we’re golden.”

  “She’ll be happy to hear that,” Harper said. It was still unfair, and extremely petty, but if Adam was okay with it then who was Harper to deny Liza? It wasn’t as if boasting about fake accolades was any more dishonest than convincing an entire town of a fake relationship. Which gave Harper fake street cred in the allure department. “She asked my advice on lingerie for a date she has, right now, actually. She said she wanted to feel sexy.”

  “Lingerie? Sex? Hell, if I knew this was what women talked about, I would have asked to chat it out a long time ago,” he said, only half joking. “What did you recommend?”

  She felt her cheeks flush. “Honeysuckle.”

  “Ah. Great choice.” He lifted his hand to tug at the neckline of her shirt over one shoulder. “Is that what you’re wearing under here?”

  She smacked his hand away with her free one. “No.”

  “What?” he said, sounding like the offended party. “I’m in my skivvies and I don’t even get a little peek of lace?”

  “You’re the subject, not me.”

  “What are you going to subject me to?”

  She ignored this, but didn’t move her shirt back up. “Liza wasn’t shopping for just any date. It was a first date. With Clay Walker.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I guess my pep talk on how he could be a good dad and manage to find some time for himself really inspired him. To ask Liza Miner out.”

  “Classic dildo move.” His gaze drifted over her mouth, as his hands drifted well below the belt loops on her cutoffs. “Guy’s a moron.”

  “Yeah, well, I wanted that moron to want me.” She closed her eyes because they felt suspiciously wet. “Here I am, trying to reinvent sexy and alluring to attract the attention of one of the most sexy and alluring designers in the world, and I can’t even attract the attention of the guy I’ve been crushing on for almost a year. How am I supposed to save my grandma’s shop?”

  “The same way you save everything else in this town.” He tilted her chin up until she opened her eyes. “With your entire heart and soul.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” she said. “I still have my whole heart and soul to give, because no one wants a piece of it.”

  “Ah, sunshine.” He touched her cheek. “You give a piece of it every day to everyone you meet. The kids in your class, the people around town, the moron who wants to start dating and misses the perfect woman standing right in front of him. Even the asshole who can’t manage to plan a picnic.”

  “You aren’t an asshole.”

  “See, right there, you see the best in everyone. You’re warm and quirky and sunny and so damn open and giving it blows my mind.” His gaze tracked down her body and back up, making her shiver from head to toe. “And that, Harper Owens, is alluring and addicting and sexy as hell.”

  Harper couldn’t remember anyone calling her sexy before. Coming from a master woman-whisperer, she should have discounted it. But she couldn’t. He seemed so genuine, and she could tell he believed what he was saying.

  Distracting herself from how heavenly his hands felt on her body, she played with a string dangling off the hem of her shirt. “A year, Adam, and he asks my advice on dating, then asks someone else out on my date, and I’m stuck here. Working.”

  “Correction, sunshine,” he said, taking her hand and tugging her onto his lap—his nearly naked lap, which her short cutoffs did little to protect her from. “You’re here with your boyfriend, who happens to be Mr. July. And everyone knows that July is the hottest month of the year, reserved for the hottest subjects.”

  She laughed. She was feeling silly and rejected and like a fraud, and he still managed to make her laugh. “Everyone knows that, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  Just like everyone would know the second Mr. July burned out on this faux-mance. People wouldn’t ask him if he was okay, or if he needed to cry it out. Because everyone would assume that he’d dumped her. Harper Owens. The ordinary woman who caught the most extraordinary fish in town, but couldn’t reel him in.

  And wasn’t that going to suck.

  She drained the last sip of Scotch, noticing that her belly was delightfully warm, and handed the glass back. “Thank you for listening to my pathetic day, but I’m all talked out.”

  She went to stand, but he pressed his palms down on her thigh, holding her in place. “Oh, honey, my day will make your pathetic one seem like a trip to Disneyland.”

  She snorted, because she’d been to Disneyland. It was her senior trip, and she was in love with the captain of the water polo team. Curtis was sweet, smart, going Ivy League in the fall—and gay. Not that Harper knew. It came as a complete shock when he decided, during the big Happiest Place on Earth photo beneath Sleeping Beauty’s castle, to kiss the captain of the football team. Well, a shock to Harper—her friends were only shocked Harper didn’t know.

  “Impossible,” she said.

  “It’s a second-glass kind of story.” He took the bottle off the stand next to the chair and refilled the tumbler. “One I promise will have you laughing.”

  She crossed her arms.

  “Fine, if by the end I convince you mine was worse, then I get a peek at what’s under that top of yours.”

  Convinced there was no way his day could have been more embarrassing, and wanting to get off his lap before she went in for another hug—and pressed herself against that twelve-pack—she said, “I think this is just your mine is bigger than yours mentality kicking in, but go ahead.”

  “As an April Fool’s joke, I submitted a request for a condom vending machine, which was accidently passed up the chain of command.”

  Harper’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

  He gave her a look. “It gets better. I had to go apologize to the chief’s secretary, in person, for writing the word dick seventeen times in a formal request.”

  Harper felt Adam cringe, so she had to ask, “Who is the chief’s secretary?”

  He handed her the glass. “Mrs. Franklin.”

  Harper choked on the whiskey. “Mrs. Franklin? She was my first-grade teacher.”

  “Mine too. I had to look straight into the eyes of the woman who taught me the importance of penmanship and explain the importance of proper hose safety.” Adam took the glass back and drained it.

  “What did she say?”

  “That she was so impressed with my use of innuendo she didn’t feel the need to hand it over to her boss.” Adam leaned back against the chair, and Harper felt herself slide a little closer. Her heart followed suit. “I’ve sc
rewed this promotion thing up a few times now, been passed over for lieutenant more than that, but I need to get it right. This is my last chance to prove I’m more than my reputation.”

  Harper knew it was none of her business, but sitting on his lap, listening to the frustration in his voice, she felt herself being pulled in. Becoming invested. “Prove it to yourself? Or to the chief?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Love interests aside, I’m pretty good at reading people,” she said. “But I can’t figure you out. It’s clear to me how much you want this promotion. You’re planning the biggest headache of the year, and you even took yourself off the market to impress your boss. But you still picked up Baby in a bar, while in uniform, came here having no idea who she was, then two minutes later you kissed me, and have probably kissed a dozen other girls since—”

  “I haven’t kissed anyone.”

  “—even though you knew it would look bad.” She stopped, along with her heart. “Wait, you haven’t kissed anyone since me? But that was like two weeks ago.”

  “I know. I haven’t even gone looking,” he said, sounding equal parts surprised and proud. She understood the first emotion, but the second confused her. It had only been a week that people thought they were dating, but he’d already taken himself off the market before that.

  Why?

  Was she that bad of a kisser that he’d gone into hiding? Or was she that good and he’d felt those darn tingles too? Not that she got the chance to ask, because he said, “Thinking back to that night with Baby, you were right, it was a stupid move”—his voice dropped to a low rumble—“but haven’t you ever needed to let go? Drop all of the BS and escape for a while?”

  “Yes.” Harper had spent most of her childhood pretending that the sets in the play were real, that the cast was her family, and that she belonged in that extraordinary world.

  “So you go out, meet someone, there is heat and zero expectation beyond mutual pleasure. And there it is, the chance to get lost for a while, blow off some steam, and before you know it, you’re in a ladies’ dressing room, caught up in the moment, waiting for the rush to take you over, like you’re free-falling from thirty thousand feet without a chute, and . . .” He paused, the look on his face one of confusion. “Really? Never?”

  Harper realized she was shaking her head. Because embarrassingly enough, she’d never experienced anything like what he was describing. Even worse, she didn’t know it existed outside of books.

  She’d had boyfriends. Some even knew how to make her hum. But to be so caught up in the passion of it all that she felt out of control? Thirty thousand feet without a chute out of control?

  Sadly, no.

  She had serious doubts that she’d ever elicited those kinds of feelings in her partners either.

  “Well,” he continued, “I was a little slow in learning that the rush isn’t always worth the repercussions, and the only thing thirty thousand feet without a chute can get you is dead. So I’m changing, because I want this promotion. I need it.”

  “I believe you.” She just didn’t understand why. She didn’t think he did either. But being sworn in as a lieutenant seemed to represent more than a promotion to him. It was a defining moment of some kind.

  “But I still confuse you,” he said. If anything, that seemed to make him more frustrated than the thought of not getting the promotion.

  “One minute I think you’re an overgrown frat boy,” she said softly, “but then you do something incredibly selfless and sweet and . . . you surprise me.”

  “I’m not sweet, sunshine,” he said, cupping her face, “and very little of what I do is selfless.”

  “You brought me my favorite cookies.”

  “Because I needed to figure out why I was being shafted by every single woman in town.”

  “You were sweet enough to ask what my favorite was. And you didn’t out me in front of Clay for lying, when you had every right to.”

  “I wanted to kiss you.”

  “You put your life on the line every day,” she said, and he gave an all in a day’s work shrug, but she saw the tips of his ears pinken. “You love to make people laugh, but when it really matters you do the right thing, always. Even when it’s hard. You’re loyal and protective of those you care about, which is why you took the blame for the rookie crashing the engine.”

  He stilled. “How do you know about that?”

  “I’m the oracle,” she joked, not wanting to rat out Emerson, who’d mentioned Adam was with Dax at Stan’s Soup and Service at the time of the accident. “I know everything and I know that hiding beneath that reputation”—she poked his pec—“is a sweet man.”

  One who wanted to make amends for his past and build himself a better future. One who was determined to move forward, no matter how hard. From what, she wasn’t sure. But it impressed her almost as much as it turned her on.

  He turned her on. Made her want to ditch the chute and free-fall. Heck, the way he was looking at her, as though her thinking him sweet made his day, made her want lots of things. A kiss for starters, which would lead to another, then another, then the dressing room and that rush she couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Her stomach was already in a free fall, and her heart wasn’t too far behind, which was why her head was yelling to pull the ripcord before she got hurt.

  Harper straightened, enough so she didn’t feel as if he were surrounding her. “And when a lady pays you a compliment you’re supposed to say thank you, then walk away to keep her guessing.” Still being sucked into his vortex of charm, she stood. “As for your day versus mine, you win, but you have to admit that my introducing Liza to the alluring powers of Honeysuckle for her date with Clay is a close second.”

  “Clay doesn’t deserve to see your allure,” he said, his gaze lowering over her body until her nipples went hard. “But I do. A deal is a deal.”

  Harper looked down at herself and saw casual—uninspired in her flip-flops, jean cutoffs, and a strategically picked tribal shirt. Sure she’d added some lip gloss and a few swipes of mascara before she’d texted him back, but that didn’t warrant the hunger she saw on his face.

  “I’m not wearing anything sexy under here,” she lied. Beneath the crazy artist look, she was wearing nothing but lace and silk—enough to do her own lingerie shoot.

  “Did you know that when you lie your eyes go all misty as if you think you’re killing unicorns?” He tsked softly, standing to face her. “And there you go, misreading signals again. It wasn’t the bra and panties that got me the first night.” He was looking at her mouth again. “It was you. And you deserve a man who can see that.”

  He took the tumbler, then backed her into a side table, setting the glass down. Without a word he framed her face between his big, rough hands and pressed their bodies close. So close she had to place her hands on his chest for balance.

  Which only made things worse, because his body was solid and unforgiving, nothing soft or vulnerable to grab on to. Yet, he was holding her with a gentleness that stole her breath.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Something I sure as hell don’t deserve, but can’t seem to stop.”

  That gravelly midnight DJ voice he had going on went a long way toward making those pesky concerns vanish. And whatever little worry she was clinging to disappeared the second his mouth came down on hers.

  Not hard like before, but soft feathering kisses that skated across her top lip, then the bottom one, before capturing them both in a way that had her knees melting. That was to say nothing for what was going on in her panties.

  Adam coaxed and teased, sliding his fingers into her hair and pressing in as close as he could, until all of their good parts were lined up. And the man had a surplus in the good part department. Hard muscles contrasted with the gentle way he held her, and suddenly she forgot how to breathe. She simply didn’t have enough brain cells left to figure out how to get enough oxygen to her lungs.

  Then he whispered
her name and breathing was the least of her problems. Her bones liquefied, her knees buckled, and her heart turned over. And over again. Before she knew what was happening she was wrapped up in a warm man cocoon, sitting on Adam’s lap, her arms locked around his neck.

  She dug her knees into the leather of the chair as her thighs settled around his. Adam seemed to like the direction she was taking because he moaned and took the kiss deeper, took everything deeper, until she didn’t know what was up and what was down, even though it felt as if the ground were rushing up to meet them. And Harper let go.

  Let go of the fear and the worry. Let go of that damn parachute string, since it was impossible to hang on so tight and live up to her end of the bet. Because fair was fair, and Harper wanted to fall.

  “What are you doing?” This time it was Adam who asked, his voice so thick she could barely make out what he said.

  Tugging the bottom of her shirt up to show her belly, she said, “Life is too short to be ordinary. And I want extraordinary.”

  Harper pulled her shirt off and, no, she didn’t have on Honeysuckle. But she did have on a see-through demi that was guaranteed to heat things up. Although when she tossed her top to the ground, Adam gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. A look that had her wanting to cover herself. “What do you see?”

  It took him a long moment to speak, but when he did, his voice was gentle. Almost as gentle as the finger tracing her cheek. “I see a woman who is so extraordinary that she makes everything else here seem ordinary.”

  Which was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. Only instead of kissing her, showing her how incredibly intoxicating she was, he tucked her hair behind her ear and said, “Which is why I have to go.”

  Adam was buttoning his pants and nearly to the shop’s door when Harper came around the corner. Still in nothing but teal lace and cutoffs, she paused by the counter and crossed her arms.

  Her hair was a mess of curls from his fingers, her lips bruised from his kisses, and her nipples were hard because he was that good.

  “Wait. You’re leaving?”