She’d swear the air moved behind her. She didn’t even have to turn around to see who it was.
Rafe was still wearing the sunglasses. His jeans were dirty, but that wasn’t the difference from this morning. It was that size thing again, the way he seemed to grow bigger. Possibly the werewolf transformation.
It was acting. She didn’t care. Because holy hell, did it ever work for her.
His hair was wet again. Why was his hair wet, when his jeans were dusty?
“Problem?” he asked. “Lily?”
“I don’t have a problem,” Trent said. “Except that I was talking to the lady.”
“Seems to me,” Rafe said, “that you were bothering the lady. Or maybe just boring her to death.” Which made Lily smile. Rafe even made testosterone battles casual. That was a gift.
“You know what?” Trent said. “You can get lost.”
“Can I help you?” the kid behind the counter asked, because the family was heading to a table, having finally succeeded in submitting the Longest Order in History. There were only five of them, including the baby. You wouldn’t have thought it was possible.
“Somebody’s calling you,” Rafe said. “Go on.”
“Listen, buddy,” Trent said. “I don’t know who you are, but…”
“I’m fine,” Lily told Rafe. She’d swear somebody was five seconds away from taking a swing, and it wasn’t Trent. He looked like he was four seconds away from figuring out that this guy didn’t care that his grandfather had started the lumber mill. Also that said guy was about to deck him. She wanted to watch. On the other hand, she didn’t want Rafe to get in trouble.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Trent told her. “I’ve got this.”
She looked at him, thought of five possible things she could say, including, I’ve already been married to an asshole once. I’m all done. Or maybe, There’s nothing you’ve got to give me that I haven’t thrown in the garbage already. She settled on, “Let me put it this way. I’m not interested. I wasn’t interested last month, I’m not interested now, and I’ll never be interested.”
He was turning red, and she didn’t care. She told Rafe, “I’m fine. I’ve got this,” stepped around Trent, and told the kid at the counter, “One medium skinny iced cappuccino and one large caramel latte, please, Aidan.”
“Sure,” the boy said. “You want that to go?”
“I want it so much to go,” Lily said, “that you can’t imagine.”
She risked a glance behind her and almost laughed. Trent, she’d swear, had never had this much of an out-of-body experience in his life. That is, he wanted his body to be somewhere else, but wasn’t sure how to get his ego there along with it.
Rafe didn’t give him time to work it out. “I’ll bring you the coffees, Lily,” he said. “Be right over.” Then he gave Trent another blank look from behind the sunglasses, stepped around him with deliberation, and told the kid, “And a blueberry kale smoothie with protein powder.”
Lily left.
Rafe held the cardboard container in one hand and pushed the glass door open with the other. The three brass bells tied to the handle gave a merry chime, and Hailey looked up from behind the cash register, smiled at him, then turned back to the two women she was ringing up.
He didn’t see Lily, but she had to be here. He took a guess that the large caramel drink was Hailey’s and set it on the counter beside her as unobtrusively as he could, reminded himself that he was here to be anonymous, and took another step into the depths of the Aladdin’s Cave of Things Men Like. A dusty-rose velvet curtain around the corner to his right was shoved aside with a rattle of rings, and Lily came out carrying an armful of garments that she proceeded to hang on a rack.
Ah. Fitting rooms. She hadn’t seen him. He headed over there, watching as she pinned a white bra onto a padded hanger. The bra was…different, with a ribbon bow at the top of each cup. A bow that looked like it was fastening the lace fabric to the slim band along the top.
Seriously? You tied the cups closed? That was a sexy little thing.
She still hadn’t seen him. He said, “I can’t decide if it’s sleazy to say something about that or not. I do hate to be sleazy.”
She jumped a mile, yelped, “Ow!” stuck her thumb into her mouth, and said, “Don’t do that! Take this. Here.” And thrust the bra, dangling by one strap from a tiny brass safety pin, at him.
“Right,” he said. “Hold this, then.” He handed her the cardboard tray with their drinks. “One of those is yours. You need me to pin it?”
“Yes, because if I get blood on it, I just bought it for my personal collection, and it’s not my size.” She was inspecting her thumb. “Still bleeding. Hang on.” She detoured over to Hailey’s counter, grabbed a tissue that she wrapped around her thumb, took the drinks out of their container, then came back, inspected Rafe’s progress with the bra, and said, “Close enough.”
“My pinning skills are subpar, that what you’re saying?” he asked, hanging the thing up on the bar again before he could sneeze on it. “I warn you, it’s been a rough day on the ego. This might be the breaking point. Could be I’ll cry.”
She was giving him that smile again, the one that showed her dimples. “Not you,” she said. “Way too tough. That was good back there.” She handed him his drink. “Except for that ‘blueberry-kale smoothie’ thing. It doesn’t exactly sound like, “Whiskey. Neat.”
He laughed out loud, and her dimples went deeper. “I fight so much better when I’m well nourished, though.”
“He’s horrible.” She took a sip of her coffee and looked up at him through her lashes. It was effective. “But I had it covered.”
“I saw that. Same as that first night, with that fella with the cuff links. Consider me the exclamation point, then. The cherry on top of the ice-cream sundae.”
She stopped sipping her coffee and flirting with her eyes and studied him. “So the sundae is me shutting him down? Really?”
“Yeah.” He drank his smoothie like the casual guy he wasn’t right now. “It is. You could call it a two-scoop sort of thing. If I get to watch you do that, and then I get to step in myself, and watch him leave? Definitely two scoops. I could be getting addicted. It could be an issue.”
“That hard day and all. Why are you dusty?”
He’d rather have talked about his damsel-rescue techniques. He scratched his nose, took another sip of his drink, and said, “I’ll tell you if you’ll explain how somebody could possibly tie those little ribbons on that bra into those neat bows every time. It’s bothering me.”
“I thought you weren’t being sleazy,” she said.
“I’m not. I’m being analytical.”
She took another look at her thumb, apparently decided that she was done bleeding, discarded the tissue and set down her coffee, then flipped around the hanger with the bra. “Hook and eye. You don’t untie the ribbons. You just…” She flicked the little bow with her thumb, and the lace covering the not-breast beneath fell open into her waiting palm. “Like a nursing bra,” she told him. “But…not. Exposable. You see.”
The blood had left his head. Unfortunately, it had gone elsewhere. He leaned against the wall in a would-be casual fashion, crossed his ankles, sipped at his drink, and thought, Cool down, mate. Aloud, he said, “Yeah. I get it.”
She wasn’t looking at him. She was fastening the cup back into the band again, then moving on to another bra on her rack, clipping it into place with its own safety pins and saying, “It was an experimental purchase. Nothing sleazy, like crotchless panties, because this isn’t a porno store, and I think suggestive is sexier than blatant. That’s the market I’ve aimed for.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I agree. That that’s where you are, and that it’s sexier. Because that bra is about the sexiest little thing I’ve ever seen, especially because it’s white. If it were black? No. But in white…” He sighed. “Yeah.”
“Pretty,” she said, “but you aren’t expecting her to
be naughty until you see it. And especially—until you figure it out.”
“The prize,” he managed to say.
“That’s what I thought.” She was re-hanging nightgowns now, only giving him a glance from time to time. He was watching for that glance. “Could you answer a question for me?” she asked. “Or a couple? I was just thinking that I should get a…” She cleared her throat. “A man’s opinion. I do get male shoppers.”
I’ll bet you do, he didn’t say. “Sure,” he said instead.
“And anyway,” she said, “I’d like to know if what I think would please men actually would. If you see what I mean.”
“Keeping in mind,” he said, “that I’m just one man—fire away.”
She pulled the bra hanger off the rack, held it in front of herself, and unfastened the cup again, keeping the little bow held delicately between finger and thumb. Her nails were rounded ovals tinted the palest pink. Even her nail varnish turned him on. She said, “First thing. Are hooks and eyes actually sexier than snaps, or does it just feel like it because they’re more old-fashioned? Like undoing her corset?”
Bloody. Hell. He angled his hips, crossed an ankle again, then jumped and uncrossed it.
“What?” she asked, checking him out more closely than might be wise.
“I may have fallen off a horse today,” he said. “Never mind. I’d rather talk about this.”
“I thought you were limping,” she said. “And dusty. Seriously?” Some more smiling, but of the non-dirty kind. She was laughing, in fact. Brilliant. “On your first lesson? Really?”
He said, “Excuse me? There’s a perfectly logical explanation. When you ride a motorcycle, you grip with your thighs, especially if you’re doing anything hard. Riding fast. Dirt bike. Racing. Et cetera. You’re not hanging on with your hands. You’re controlling it with your thigh muscles as you lean into the turns.”
“But if you’re riding a horse…” she said.
“Then you’re giving it two signals at the same time,” he said. “Ask me how I know. A go-ahead with your thighs, and a please-stop with your hands. Which is me hauling back on the reins, until my horse—and who starts a fella off with a horse named Thunderbolt who’s nineteen feet tall and has a grudge against humanity, I’d like to know—decided he’d had enough and reared. I know the word now, you see. Reared. Means he stands up on his hind legs and you fall off. And he didn’t just do it once. I’m not a natural.”
She’d started to laugh for real, and he had to grin. “Yeah,” he said. “That was my day. Afterwards, I found a beach and stripped down to my undies and got in the water, is why I was wet. First, I stank of horse, and second, I hurt. If I was hiding the tears as well, that’s my secret. I also nearly got flattened by a logging truck. And since I’ve confessed all that, how about asking me some more sexy questions about lingerie? Better than aspirin.”
“That does sound like a bad day.” She was trying not to laugh and to look sympathetic, but it wasn’t working. “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested for indecent exposure, too. Here in Montana, we do not swim in our underwear. And how could the instructor let that happen more than once?”
“Said it took her twice to figure out why I’d be doing something so stupid. You could call her a proponent of the ‘failing up’ method. Or as she puts it, ‘You gotta do the dumb things to know what they are.’ I’m all good on that front, apparently.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, still looking like she was trying not to giggle. “You’d better drink your smoothie.”
He lifted his plastic cup to her in a toast and then obliged, and she asked, “So what’s the answer to my question? Hooks and eyes,” she elaborated at his raised eyebrows. “Why sexier. If sexier.”
“Show me again,” he said, and when she did, he said, “Yeah. Definitely. That does it. What would it look like if it were a snap?” She showed him the motion, and he shook his head. “Too fast. Too easy. You don’t get that sliding feeling, like her clothes are falling open. Besides, every bloke remembers the first time he unhooked that bra strap. That’s a red-letter day.”
“You’re being Australian again,” she said.
“You’re distracting me. I’m sure American bl— guys remember it, too. If he’s seventy, he remembers it. That’s muscle memory.”
“Pavlov’s dog,” she said. “Stimulus and response.”
He couldn’t swear it, and then he could. He was seeing something under the stretchy fabric of her dress. A stimulus, and a response. Her bra must be lace, or just thin. And he was definitely seeing a response.
“I wanted to ask you,” she said, hanging the bra up again, and if there was more color in her cheeks? Well, yeah. You bet there was. “About white. Another question I had about it.”
“About…white,” he said.
She cleared her throat again. “Summer display, for the window. I had an idea. Pale blue panties and bra. Soft. Cotton. And then I thought…if I put a short white silk robe over them on the mannequin, would adding a pair of stockings with white lace tops still look sweet and accidentally sexy? Or over the top to full sex? The porno store?”
“Maybe you could show me,” he managed to say. He was a sophisticated man. He was fourteen long years out of Queensland. And still, his tongue felt two sizes too large for his mouth. Why had he said that? If she showed him, he’d have to walk somewhere, and unless he got his body calmed down, Hailey, at least, was going to be able to measure him for condom fit. Not Lily, because she was looking anywhere but. They both had their gazes so firmly locked on each others’ faces, in fact, that they could probably draw them by now.
“I’ll bring it over,” she said. “How’s that?”
There was a couch here, he realized when she was gone. Loveseat sized, pink, and velvet. He’d been standing practically in front of it and hadn’t even seen it. He sat down, crossed his left ankle over his right knee, and managed to be able to endure it. Not so bruised here.
A much better position, all in all.
Lily hurried past Hailey as a customer left the shop with a tinkle of brass bells. There were three women browsing, though, and she needed to get involved. She should… She told Hailey, “I’m coming. Just a second.”
“Hon,” Hailey said, “I’ve got it. This is my best day at work in a long, long time. You go on.”
Lily heard her. Sort of. But she was gathering garments, too, and walking to the back with them, to the husband-seat where Rafe had sat down. He started to get up, winced, and she said, “Never mind. Stay there.” And realized what she was seeing.
Her dad teaching her and Paige, when they’d been fourteen, what to expect from a man. “When you come into the room,” he’d said, demonstrating, “he should stand up. Not at home. But when you’re out, at a restaurant? You bet he does. If he can’t be bothered to stand up, he can’t be bothered at all, and he’s the wrong man.”
She and Paige had laughed, afterwards. “Like I can see Augusto Sanchez standing up when I come into Algebra,” Paige had gasped. “Oh, Augusto. My hero. Out of touch much, Dad?”
And yet, right now? Rafe had tried to stand. Even though it hurt.
Actor, she told herself, but the voice was getting fainter all the time. “Stay there,” she said again, going for her Chuck-command tone and failing miserably. She didn’t want to order him around. She wanted something so entirely different.
He was still wearing the sunglasses, she thought at the very moment when he took them off. His eyes were the wrong color, brown again, but she didn’t care.
“I like that better,” she said. “So I can see you.”
“Show me,” he said, and if his voice was the werewolf’s? She was good with that.
“So here you go.” She hung them on the rack and got herself under control again. “Robe. Short. Silk, just because it’s prettier, and for the contrast of fabrics. Cotton panties, because they’re soft.” She hung them from the bottom of the robe hanger. A light cotton knit, soft as a cloud. Ice blue with a thin ri
bbon of white lace overlay along the waistband. “Actually a thong,” she said, showing him the backside, “because they’re the narrowest at the hip and the highest cut, but you won’t see the back.”
“Working so far,” he said. “Front, back, and everything. In fact, you could stop there. Want the male traffic? Oh, yeah. Hang that thong down at the right spot, with that robe over it?” He sighed. “You just did it.”
“Not the porno store,” she reminded him.
“Right. Show me the rest, then. You’re killing me, but I’m happy to go.”
She hadn’t looked at his body while they’d talked, and she wasn’t doing it now. His voice still sounded lazy. Casual. But there was that tension again, the bunching in his muscles that she’d feel if she touched him. The same as in the café, and completely different. That laser focus, too. On her.
She held up the hanger with the bra. You could focus yourself, miss, she tried to tell herself. To Rafe, she said, “Soft cup. Cotton knit. Summer comfortable, matching the thong.”
“Male point of view?” he asked. “I already told you. Just the thong and the robe. But, sure, it’s all good. Truth be told, looking at pretty lingerie in a shop window is never going to reach “horrible” on most men’s scale.”
She picked up the packet that she’d laid on top of the rack, unfastened the tab, pulled the contents out, and let both thigh-high stockings unroll. Fine as gossamer, soft as a whisper. White lace on top, and barely a shimmer beneath. She held them under the thong with both hands and asked Rafe, “Yes? Or no?”
He let out a breath in a slow, measured exhalation. “My brain cells have fused. I can’t.”
She waggled the stockings. “Come on. Really? No garter belt required. Too sexy anyway?”
“All I’m thinking,” he said, “is how much I want to see that on you. That’s all. I can’t.”
She tried to fold the stockings around their cardboard insert again, saw her hands tremble, and faced it. She was soaking wet, desperately aroused, and about to embarrass herself.
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