by Jill Monroe
“Then give me your hand.”
Her hand balled up into a fist for a moment, then she lifted her arm. He clasped her fingers in his grip, strong and sure. His head lowered a fraction, as if he was going to kiss her. Hayden’s lips parted in anticipation, and the slow cadence of her heart flipped, now ratcheting up in speed. She spotted want and need in his gaze—and regret. He stopped.
Disappointment razored through her. He was going to give her space.
“Coffee,” she told him. “Everything’s better after coffee.” Tony didn’t drop her hand, and instead walked beside her toward the table where she’d stashed the breakfast from Betty. “Oh, I almost forgot. Apparently we lost a fight with a skunk last night.”
“That explains the burned clothes and bottles of apple cider vinegar.” Tony released her hand to rummage through the bag of clothes.
“I’ll unload our breakfast while you change. In the bathroom.” It was an act of self-preservation. She couldn’t handle Tony dressing in front of her after that near kiss.
“Yes, explains the clothes...but not the hot tub,” he told her as he shut the door, his voice low and setting off a chain reaction of awareness in every part of her body.
Nope, it did not explain the hot tub. Nor that path of towels to the platform bed. Hayden felt her face heat for about the hundredth time. Her skin was probably growing all blotchy. She never handled embarrassment well.
Hayden opened the wicker basket Betty had delivered and pulled out a coffee carafe and mugs. She quickly poured two cups, and then took a long draw from the mug, so glad the brew wasn’t piping hot because she would have gulped it down, burned tongue or not.
She was reaching for the carafe to top off her cup when Tony emerged from the bathroom dressed in jean shorts and a T-shirt announcing I Do A Body Good.
“Oh, if only I could remember,” she teased, surprised she’d so quickly slid into a playful mood. Coffee did a body good, too.
“Don’t laugh. Your shirt is worse,” he said, tossing her a bright pink T-shirt with Too Hot To Handle across the chest.
“Betty and her husband must have an interesting sense of humor,” she said as she raced for the bathroom to change.
Fifteen minutes later, Hayden no longer had to walk with a bedsheet trailing behind her like a train. She dumped the sheet on the straightened bedding. Betty’s bag had also provided her a change of underwear, the promised cami and a pair of khaki shorts. After a quick finger comb to her hair, she joined Tony at the table. The enticing scent of pumpkin spice muffin was too much and she reached into the basket and plopped a piece into her mouth. Delicious.
They sat in silence for a moment. They needed to have a conversation, but what was the protocol here? She’d missed the How to Talk to the Stranger You Just Slept With etiquette lesson. Of course avoidance was the preferred course of action in any social situation. A lesson taken straight from her grandma. Hayden bit back a smile as she remembered the woman’s advice. Hayden, dear, don’t force it. Things have a way of working themselves out, you’ll see.
Now people would call that “escape coping,” but sometimes Grandma was right and things did work themselves out.
In other words, just roll with it. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d do.
But first, one piece of information was best not avoided. For both their sakes. “You don’t have to worry about pregnancy or anything. I’m covered there.”
Alarm flashed through his brown eyes. “Hell, I hadn’t even thought about that yet.”
“Too busy trying to figure out how to ditch me?” she joked.
“No. Too busy trying to figure out what kind of idiot forgets making love to the most beautiful woman he’s ever been with.”
She let out a small laugh, but Hayden was torn. Torn because she didn’t know how to feel. All her emotions warred with each other as if they were battling for the last brownie in the pan. She was mortified that she couldn’t remember last night. Thrilled that she’d connected with Mr. Amazing and Hot. She was a contradictory mess of embarrassment, satisfaction and chagrin. And Tony thought he was the idiot. “I guess I’m strangely flattered.”
Tony leaned toward her, his brown eyes intent. “We have two options. Go our separate ways and forget this ever happened. Or find out why we hooked up and why neither of us can remember it.”
“How we hooked up. I know why.”
A slow smile curved his gorgeous lips. Tony had mentioned he was a filmmaker. Cue the rainbow. And the birds chirping. Hell, bring in a unicorn because at this moment all the embarrassment and mortification vanished. “I don’t even know where we are,” she said, breathless.
“The back of that take-out menu says Broken Bow, Oklahoma,” he told her, nodding to a couple of menus stuck to a bulletin board with tacks near the kitchen sink. Yeah, the couples who stayed in this lover’s cabin probably didn’t plan to venture out during their whole stay. Drop the supplies at the door and go was more likely their approach once they spotted that heart-shaped tub and platform bed.
“Uh, the last place I remember is Texas,” she said.
“Dallas?” he asked and she nodded. “There’s a start. We must have met in Dallas. Of course, I can’t even figure out how to get back there because I still can’t find my phone.”
“Same. Do you have a map in your car?”
Tony flashed her an embarrassed glance, so Hayden knew the answer was no. Her grandparents had embraced technology as much as the next person, but when it came to navigation, Grandma Taylor insisted on paper. Every year, she gifted Hayden with a new and updated atlas in case technology failed. But Betty had only mentioned one car, and chances were that it was his.
“Maybe Betty can loan us a map,” he offered. “Or we can stop at a gas station on the way out of town. You in?”
Was she? Hayden could only do damage control if she knew exactly what she’d done last night. And that meant she had to stick with Tony. “Yes—we have a plan,” she said, hopeful for the first time that day.
Five minutes later they stepped out together on the wooden planked porch. Two rocking chairs swayed in the breeze. In the distance, the trees loomed tall and lush, so different from the flat terrain of Texas where she’d grown up. Two hawks flew a lazy pattern above her head and the sound of locusts filled the air.
She pointed out two squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of a tree. “You know what’s strange? I’ve lived in Texas all my life, and have never been to Oklahoma. You’d think at least once I would have crossed the border.”
“I’ve never been to Oklahoma, either. Something we have in common.”
“Tony, I bet’s that’s how we ended up here,” she told him, gripping his arm. The muscles beneath her fingertips bulged. “I can’t believe how excited I am to realize that.”
“It sucks not feeling in control. Not knowing what you’ve done.”
Something dark and regretful lurked in his tone—as if he’d weathered a similar situation in his past. She gave his arm a squeeze before dropping her hand down to her side. Until this moment, Tony had been teasing or reassuring. But since waking up, she’d only been concerned about herself. Hayden hadn’t given a second thought to how he must be feeling. Instead, she’d pegged him as that dude—the kind of man who congratulated himself on getting lucky. But there was more to him than that.
“I’ve been kind of a bitch to you, haven’t I?” she asked as they approached a larger cabin marked Office.
He gave her a wink. “It’s okay—I can handle a few knocks.”
Hayden laughed as the front door opened and Betty walked out to greet them. “Hey, you two lovebirds. That’s just the way you were last night. Covered in stink but still laughing. Although you smell so much better this morning, but it’s nice to see the smiles are still there.”
“Thanks for helping us out. We didn’t seem, uh, strange to you last night?”
Betty just laughed. “Honey, you were covered in skunk, of course you seemed strange. But
no odder than any other high-on-love couple.”
High on...what?
“We didn’t leave our phones with you?” Tony asked.
“No, just the car. Mike’s bringing it around now. Maybe you left your phones in the car. By the way, I used my homemade air freshener in it last night and again this morning. Lilac and pine. Between that and the breeze, I think you’re good.”
Car tires crunched on the gravel and they all turned to watch a bright red car with black polka dots painted on it—it was a ladybug on wheels. “That’s your car?” she whispered.
“I was hoping that was yours,” he groaned.
Oh, crap.
She’d had about a million questions to ask Betty and Mike and every single one of them vanished the moment a ladybug car neither of them owned rolled toward them. Mike slid out of the car and handed Tony the keys. Ugh, as if the keys belonged in Tony’s hand.
“That’s a tight squeeze, Tony. Not sure how you’re comfortable wedged behind the steering wheel. But anything for the ladies, huh?” Mike asked as he draped an arm around Betty’s shoulders and kissed her temple.
“Oh, well...” Tony mumbled.
Get out of here. Now. Before Mike and Betty began to ask questions that would lead to 9-1-1, handcuffs and a single phone call. Hayden didn’t know which was worse. The prospect of that jailhouse phone call or that she really had no one to phone. She might as well dial the HR person at Hastings Engineering because she definitely wouldn’t be working there after she was arrested.
She swiped the keys from Tony’s hands. “Actually, I do most of the driving. He’s the navigator.”
The other couple laughed.
“Speaking of navigating, you wouldn’t happen to have an extra map?” Tony asked.
Mike nodded. “Follow me. I think I might have one in the garage.”
Betty handed Hayden a small bag as they watched the two men walk away. “Some homemade cookies for the road.”
“Thanks,” she told her, distracted by Tony’s muscular legs and firm—
“Uh-huh.” The other woman smiled.
Had she just been caught staring at a man’s ass? By someone who could be her grandma?
“Glad it goes both ways between you two. That boy is enchanted by you. He’s a keeper.”
Hayden didn’t know which was more startling. A six-foot plus man being referred to as a boy or that he’d appeared enchanted by her. What a sweet word. How would it feel to have a man like Tony enchanted by her? Very agreeable as long as they were using words Jane Austen would write.
“Yeah, he’s something.”
Hayden slid into the driver’s seat as Mike and Tony rounded the corner, map in hand. At least that was one problem they’d been able to solve.
Tony joined her in the car with a strained smile. Oh yeah, they were driving off in a car that neither of them owned.
“Did we steal this car last night?” she asked through clenched teeth that hopefully looked like a smile to the waving Mike and Betty.
“I’m going with we just borrowed it from a new acquaintance, since no one I know drives a ladybug car.” He glanced up from the map as she shifted the car into Drive and headed down the gravel path. “I’m assuming none of your friends do, either?”
She shook her head.
“According to the map, this is a private road that winds through the trees for about a mile. Pull over when you no longer see Betty and Mike’s fence line.”
Hayden drove another quarter of a mile until the friendly white fence turned to barbed wire. “Maybe we stashed our phones in the glove box,” she suggested as she pulled off the main road and put the car in Park.
Tony twisted the knob and as the glove box sprang open, dozens of green bills plopped onto his lap. “Holy shit.” Several more stacks of neatly piled cash remained in the glove box. “There has to be at least two thousand dollars in here.”
“I’m hoping that’s yours,” she said, afraid to hear the answer with the way their morning began. Her bank account currently sat at a nice, minimum-deposit requirement of fifty bucks.
He shook his head. “Nope. Your guess as to where this came from is as good as mine.”
Her throat began to tighten. “We’ve got to ditch the car. Wipe it down. Remove all trace evidence we were even here,” she told him, desperately trying to recall helpful hints from every crime movie she’d watched in the past decade. “Maybe we can give the rest of the cash to Mike and Betty so they forget they even saw us.”
Tony reached for her hands and drew them into his. “Hayden, would you normally steal a car?”
She exhaled in a deflated hiss. “Well, no.”
There was that reassuring smile of his again. “Something weird happened to us last night, but we wouldn’t do one-eighties on our personalities.”
She relaxed against the seat cushion. That was the first really good news she’d had since the coffee.
“Our phones aren’t in the glove box. Maybe we put them in the trunk to keep them safe,” he said, as he reached for the door handle.
“If we weren’t worried about stashing the money in the car, I doubt we would have been worried about the phones.”
“True, but I’ll check anyway.”
She popped the trunk so he could search. A minute later he crouched outside her window. “Nope, nothing.”
The sun glinted off his dark hair. She really wanted to touch it. Run her fingers through it. It would help to take her mind off their situation. Of course it also helped that he was such an easy distraction. What was it he’d said about himself? Couldn’t fault his taste? Yeah. Same here, buddy.
“Tony, I might steal a car if the circumstances really warranted it.” Where had that sobering thought come from? Wherever it had originated, she wanted to shut that part of her brain down before her mind added any other irritating revelations.
“Only after you left a note and promised to return it with a full tank,” he told her with a wink.
She pulled a piece of fluff off her shorts. “Well, that goes without saying.”
“Hayden.”
His voice gently urged her to look up. She raised her gaze to his and sucked in a breath. Something heated and elusive stirred inside her.
The humor faded from his eyes and he stiffened. “You feel it, too.”
She could only nod, and twisted in her seat so she could stare down the road and not at him. Her heart raced and her mouth was dry; she was having a serious case of want.
Hayden’s grandma was fond of sayings about closed doors leading to open windows—this morning had felt very much as if she’d run into a closed door, but that smile of his was like a fresh breeze through an open window.
“Hayden, I don’t want to get back to the city and forget all about this...this thing between us. I don’t know what it is, but I know it doesn’t happen. At least not to me.”
“Me, either,” Hayden admitted. She glanced his way, memorized every part of his strong profile because she didn’t want to forget this beautiful man. But then she didn’t really have to. She wasn’t playing the avoidance game this time. Last night, call it instinct or lack of inhibitions, but something had drawn her to this man. And so far that hadn’t been misplaced; he’d proven to be concerned for her and had given her space when she’d needed it.
Oh, Hayden could tell herself she’d stick with Mr. Abs because it was an adventure or that she wanted to make sure there weren’t any, er, indiscreet pictures that could derail her career, but if she were being truthful, intuition also told her she didn’t have to be guarded around this man.
She got out of the car to stand beside him. “Let’s find out what happened to us,” she said.
He flashed her that amazing smile of his and her skin grew warm. Memories of waking up in his strong arms and feeling the heat of his naked body against hers flooded her senses. Made her nipples tingle. But she had no memory of kissing him, breathing him in and tasting him. She wanted to change that. Right. Now.
&n
bsp; “We could always do the old trick of making out to jog our memory,” he suggested, his voice playful.
She lifted a brow. “That’s an old tactic, is it?”
He nodded. “Tried and true, dates back way before the Jazz Age—”
Hayden cut off his words with her lips. He stood there rigid, his mouth unmoving. Then his arm encircled her waist, drawing her flush against his body. She pressed against him, and he groaned. His lips parted and she slipped her tongue inside his mouth, tasting coffee and pumpkin and something delicious that could just be Tony.
“You taste good,” she whispered against his lips.
“So do you. Amazing. Um...not that I’m complaining, but that came out of nowhere.”
“Not that you’d believe me, but I don’t usually indulge in my impulsive side. But any guy who uses the Jazz Age as an excuse to make out is a man I’d try to jog my memory with.”
“Actually I know all kinds of history,” he told her with a wink.
“All except ours. Speaking of...? Did you remember anything? I got nothing.”
He made a faux flinching movement that was too charming. “You got nothing? Surely I was better than that.”
She patted his arm. “Oh, you were a lot better—okay no. I’m not falling for that ruse. I’m keeping my opinions of your kiss to myself.”
“How will I know if I’m doing it right?” he asked, all innocence. Yeah, like this man held any doubts about his technique.
Hot. Sensual. Carnal. And those were just the first three words that popped into her head to describe the kiss. “I’ll tell you what, if I come back for more, then you’ll know if you’re doing it right.”
“Fair enough.” He eyed the front seat. “As uncomfortable as this car is, I think I should drive.”
“Why?” she asked.
His eyes softened, and a rueful smile touched his lips. “Because if we’re caught I can make them believe you had no idea I’d stolen the car. Only one of us gets arrested.”
It was strangely chivalrous. Hayden reached up, sank her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck so she could draw him nearer. The reality of his kiss was way better than the fantasy.
