Jack turned in time to see a cluster of women headed straight for him, each of them obviously ready to claim the next dance.
He glanced down at his empty hands and contemplated a mad rush for the bar. Then his gaze hooked on a familiar redhead exiting the dance floor barely an arm's length away.
She's not your type, cowboy.
Damn straight. She was like all the others, frilly and feminine and out to find herself a future husband.
With one exception. Unlike all the others, she wasn't headed his way. Why, she hadn't even smiled at him when he'd caught her eye from across the room.
For whatever reason, it seemed as if Paige Cassidy wasn't the least bit interested in him. And it was a shame, a damned shame, for anybody to look so uptight on such a happy occasion. She needed to loosen up, and Jack needed an escape.
He took two steps and reached for her hand.
* * *
"What are you doing?" Paige blurted when Jack Mission slid his arm around her waist and steered her back out onto the dance floor.
"Last I looked," he said as he swung her into his arms and started to move, "it was called dancing, sugar."
Paige fought to keep from stepping on his toes, her senses overloaded by so much male heat. He was too close and this was too sudden. Just what the heck did he think he was doing? He hadn't even asked her to dance!
"I don't really think—"
"It ain't about thinking, sugar. It's about moving. You can move, can't you?"
The way he stared down at her, one blond eyebrow arched and a twinkle in his liquid gray eyes, stirred her indignation. "Of course I can." And she'd spent good money to make sure of it.
"Then prove it."
She had two choices. She could pull away, which wouldn't be easy because Jack Mission had a very strong grip on her waist, or she could calm down, concentrate and make it through the next few minutes without embarrassing herself. "What dance are we doing?"
"I'll let you pick."
"It doesn't work that way. Whichever dance we do is based on the speed and tempo of the song. This is a two-step. We should be going faster."
He tightened his arms and drew her even closer. "Feels plenty fast to me."
"It's too slow, and too close." She pushed against his chest and gained a few blessed inches of distance. There. Now she could breathe. More importantly, she could think. "We need speed and distance for this particular tempo."
"Feels like just the right amount of distance to me."
If only. Instead, Jack Mission filled her line of vision, surrounded her with his warmth and his scent and the hard, steady feel of his heart against hers—
The thought careened to a stop as she missed her step and stomped on the toe of his boot. Dread welled inside her. "Oh no."
"It's no big deal."
"I missed a step."
"I didn't even notice."
"I never miss a step."
"Never say never."
She glared at him. "You're throwing me off."
"Who? Me?" He grinned, a slow, heart-stopping expression that made her heart skip and her feet stall long enough for her to stomp on his foot again.
"Doggone it."
"Sugar, you need to relax."
"If you'll just tell me what dance you're doing, then I wouldn't be messing up."
"Are you always this uptight?"
"I'm not uptight. I just like to know what I'm doing."
"Darlin', just relax and breathe."
Breathe? Was he crazy? Dancing wasn't about breathing. It was about counting and watching your steps and…
Her thoughts trailed off as Jack pressed his hand into the small of her back and killed the few inches of distance she'd managed to gain. Soft curves met hard muscle and the air rushed from her lungs. Her nostrils flared and she drew in a deep breath. Bad move. His scent drifted across her senses, intoxicating her and she forgot all about trying to keep the rhythm and found herself taking another long breath. And then another.
He smelled of worn leather and virile male seasoned with a touch of danger that prickled Paige's nerve endings and sent a rush of excitement through her.
"That's better. You were way too stiff."
"I was in a classic dance form."
"It looked more like you had something stuck up your—"
"Good posture," she cut in. "That's lesson number one."
"Says who?"
"Earl Sharp at Earl's Dance Extravaganza. Lesson number two—" she said, trying to pull away again, but his hold was too strong. "There should always be a good six inches between you and your partner."
"That's no fun."
"But it's the correct way to do it."
"And not much fun. I like to have fun."
"And I like to know what I'm doing." Paige thrived on it. She never, ever wanted to feel out of control again, and Jack Mission definitely made her feel that way.
He winked and her heart fluttered. "You're doing just fine," he told her. "Maybe a little heavy on your feet, but I like the way you're stroking my shoulder."
Her fingers clenched as she became instantly aware of her hand moving back and forth across the soft tuxedo material covering his broad shoulder. His grin widened.
"So which rule talks about stroking, darlin'? Four or five? Or are you just improvising?"
"Yes. I mean, no. I didn't mean…" She frowned. Explanation? She had no explanation other than the fact that Jack Mission had made her forget six weeks worth of nightly dance lessons in less than two minutes. She'd stomped on his feet twice – better make that three times – and she'd forgotten everything she'd ever learned, especially the all-important fact that Jack wasn't her type.
Her traitorous nipples seemed to have an altogether different opinion.
As if he felt the throbbing tips press into his chest, he gave her a knowing smile and dipped his head, his lips brushing her earlobe. "You know, maybe you're not as uptight as you look."
"I am not uptight."
He eyed her for a long moment. "Darlin', you're as uptight as they get. An uppity up if I've ever seen one."
"I am not," she insisted, forcing her thoughts away from his delicious smell and the feel of his body against hers. She managed to concentrate for the next moment, until the song finished, and she finally, finally managed to pull away. She was about to turn and walk away, then her curiosity got the best of her. "So what's an uppity up?"
His grin was heartstopping. "Kiss me and maybe I'll tell you."
At his words, a rush of heat went through her and sent her pulse fluttering. For a brief moment, she imagined the press of his lips against her own, the whisper of his breath on her mouth, until her common sense intruded along with a healthy dose of righteous indignation. "Kiss you?" She shook her head. Was he serious? "For your information, I don't even like you." On that note, she turned to walk away.
His deep chuckle followed her. "Why do you think I asked you to dance?"
* * *
Chapter 2
«^»
"Hey there, Jack. Jimmy and Deb leave you here to clean up all this by yourself?" Red Bailey clapped Jack on the back and twisted one end of his graying mustache as he waited for Jack's mother to finish saying goodbye to Judge Baines, the man who'd officiated at the wedding ceremony.
"They left me." Nell Ranger, the Mission housekeeper and the closest thing Jack had to family next to his mother and brother, rushed by carrying a box overflowing with trash. She wore a blue dress pinned with a crushed carnation corsage. "Those two young'uns have a lot more sense than to expect this boy to clean up after them. Why, he never picked up his underwear way back when and I'd give a pretty penny that things haven't changed much."
Jack feigned a look of outrage. "Get ready to fork over the penny, darlin', 'cause I haven't left a pair of underwear lying around in years."
Nell stopped in the middle of gathering several dirty crystal plates and eyed him. "You mean to tell me you finally turned over a new leaf?"
&nbs
p; "Not exactly." He gave her a wink as he shrugged off his jacket. "I stopped wearing the damned things."
"Just to get out of picking them up, I'm sure." Nell shook her head and proceeded loading her arms with dirty cake plates.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you're blushing, Nell Ranger." Jack tugged his bow tie loose and stuffed it into his pocket.
"Nonsense." She deposited the plates on a nearby tray. "I gave up blushing the day I went to work for your momma. Why, if I had a nickel for every time you or your brother said something outlandish, I'd be a rich woman."
"Rich, huh?" He slid his arms around her bountiful waist and gave her a hug. "I've always wanted to find myself a sugar mama." He kissed her cheek before she shooed him.
"Just never you mind trying to help. I've got Myrtle and the girls coming over to get this place in order just as soon as they take off their Sunday best."
"I'd be glad to help."
"And drive those old biddies to distraction with all those winks and smiles when I need to get some work done? No, thank you. You just take yourself off to bed right this very second. I declare, after roaring in here barely a half hour before the ceremony, you must be dead tired."
Amen. Which could explain why he'd done something so foolish as to challenge Paige Cassidy to kiss him. No matter how good she'd smelled.
His nostrils flared at the last thought. Her scent, all apples and cinnamon and warm woman, clung to him and he fought back a wave of need.
Yep, exhaustion made a man do foolish things, and Jack should know. After his wife had passed away, he'd spent the next six months barely eating or sleeping. He'd drank his way through those days, only to open his eyes one morning just outside of Vegas and find himself married for the second time to a woman he'd known for barely two hours.
Never again.
He was getting some shut-eye and forgetting all about Paige, how sweet she probably tasted and how he really, really wanted to find out firsthand.
At least for tonight.
Challenging Little Miss Uppity Up had been the most fun Jack had had in a helluva long time. Judging from the desire burning in her gaze for those few stunned moments before she'd summoned her anger, she was just as intrigued at the prospect of playing a little game of liplock with him. Just as turned on.
For the time being, of course. Paige had made it very clear that she didn't like him. That, alone, made her the perfect woman to help him sate the lust eating him up from the inside out. A last she felt as intensely as he did. He'd been with enough women to make him somewhat of an expert and he could spot a hungry woman at twenty paces. Paige needed some relief as much as he did. Not to mention, she didn't have any romantic notions about him. He'd given up romance years ago when he'd watched the preacher throw the first handful of dirt onto his first wife's casket. His only wife.
I don't even like you.
Yep, she was perfect, all right, which meant that come tomorrow, Jack intended to pay her a visit and see what he could do to get Paige Cassidy to accept his challenge. Soon. Jack had never been long on patience.
He could only hope Paige was just as impatient. Otherwise, it was going to be a heck of a long stay in Inspiration.
* * *
"I have to have them," Paige told the young man sitting at the desk opposite hers. "Now."
He leaned back in his chair, his ankles crossed, his feet encased in a pair of orange flip-flops that matched the orange flowers in his Hawaiian print shorts. Wally, Deb's former copy boy, might have been laying out at the beach rather than sitting in the small office that housed Inspiration's only newspaper, the Inspiration In Touch.
Paige wiped the sweat from her forehead. It felt as hot as a day at the beach. Hotter thanks to the lack of windows and the lifeless air conditioner in the far corner.
"Would you just hold your horses?" Wally took a long sip on the straw sticking out of his glass of iced tea before shifting his attention back to the magazine open on his lap. "What's the big hurry?"
"I've got an SAT meeting in a half hour and an hour's worth of work to do before then. I need to see the notes on your article so that I can write the copy before I go."
"Do it later. It's the beginning of the week. The issue doesn't go out until Friday."
"And I've got a week's worth of work budgeted until then. We'll never get the paper out on time if we leave everything until the last minute. There's work to do."
"You work. I'm on strike on the grounds of unbearable working conditions." Surprise lit his eyes as he glanced up at her. "Hey, did you know a woman gave birth to a fifty pound baby boy last week in Gentryville, Kentucky?"
"You actually believe what you read in those tabloids?"
"I do," said the fifty-ish woman sitting at a nearby desk. Dolores Guiness knew everything about everybody and was only too glad to spill every juicy detail each week in her Around the Town section, also known as The Gossip Column. "Not everything, mind you. But those trashy things do print decent articles on occasion. Like that presidential wannabe and the floozy a few years back. Then there was all the hoopla about Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, some of which was garbage, but a lot of it panned out."
"But a fifty pound baby?" Paige looked at the woman in disbelief.
"It could happen. Myrtle Simpcox's niece over in Stafford knew this woman who had a neighbor who actually gave birth to twins that weighed twenty-five pounds each. Put 'em together and bam, you've got your fifty pound birth."
"See?" Wally shot her an I-told-you-so look.
"I still don't think it's a good idea to put too much faith in The Tattler. Now a real newspaper—" she tapped the copy on her desk. "That's a different story. Real papers report real news. They have a responsibility to readers." She eyed Wally "Responsibility? Do you remember that concept?"
He gave her an exasperated look. "So what are you trying to say?"
"That you have a responsibility not only to our readers, but to Deb. She left you in charge because she trusted you."
"She left me to roast in this hell. I can't think in the heat. Give me air conditioning and I'm a super reporter. Until then, I'm struggling to keep my body temperature at a decent level. Want some raspberry tea? Jenny from the diner brought it over."
"She still have the hots for you?"
"Unfortunately." He shook his head. "By the way, you're making my life miserable."
Said misery had resulted from Deb's infamous column – Deb's Fun Fact for the Week – which Paige had inherited a few months ago when Deb had traded in her wild single woman status in favor of her upcoming marital bliss. The fun fact was a line or two of savvy love advice for the single women of Inspiration, such as "Sweeten Up Your Sweetie with Sweet Rolls" or "Light his Fire with Lingerie." Since Wally was one of the few bachelors in town, the single females of Inspiration had targeted him as the perfect candidate to test out the weekly fun fact. The tea was courtesy of last week's "Tickle his Fancy with Iced Tea."
"You should be thanking me."
"For robbing me of my privacy? For destroying my peace and quiet? For creating a town full of stalking sex-starved women?"
"On behalf of the women in town, I resent that. Privacy is overrated. Now hand over the notes."
"They're in the top drawer."
"The one right next to you?"
"Yep."
"The one barely six inches away from your right hand?"
"That's the one." He turned the magazine and studied the picture of the woman and her fifty pound bundle of joy from several angles. "True or not, this looks awful painful to me."
"I'll tell you what's painful," Dolores piped in from the corner, touching a hand to her gray coil. "I let Ida Louise over at the Cut-n-Curl frost my hair and I swear, she pulled out more than she colored."
"Well you wouldn't catch me letting Ida touch one hair on my head," Wally broke in. "The woman's as blind as a bat…"
The conversation continued and Paige let out an exasperated breath before stomping over to
Wally's desk and hauling open his drawer. Retrieving the notes, she headed back to her own desk and sank down into the seat. Sweat slid down her temples, her neck, and she grabbed a napkin to blot the moisture.
Wally shot her a knowing look. "Told you it was better to keep still in this heat."
"Deb's going to kill you when she finds out you sat on your butt all week while the world passed us by."
"At the rate things are going, this heat's going to kill me a heck of a lot sooner than Deb will. Besides, she's a thousand miles away. How's she going to know if I took a siesta in the dying heat of the afternoon?"
"Because Little Brother's here watching you," Dolores said.
Paige blotted her forehead. "Don't you mean Big Brother?"
"She means Little Brother." Jack Mission's voice floated into the room and tickled the hair on the back of Paige's neck. She opened her eyes to see him standing in the doorway looking dark and delicious, leaning against the lemon yellow colored doorframe.
Wally's feet hit the floor. Papers rustled and his tea glass nearly toppled over. "I was, um, just doing a little research for a travel article."
"For a trip to Gentryville, Kentucky?"
"No. I mean, yes. I mean, I've always wanted to go to Kentucky. And speaking of going, I've got to do the 'This Is Your Neighbor Interview' with Loretta Marks. She's the new Sunday School teacher from Austin. Later."
"I wouldn't have thought he could move that fast considering the heat," Dolores said. She leaned back in her seat, aimed her handheld fan at her face and eyed Jack. "So what brings you here?"
"Returning my tux."
"Last I looked, Earline's place was up the street. You're at least a block out of the way."
"I needed some exercise. Say, Dolores, is that a new hairdo?"
Her curiosity faded into a sheepish expression. She touched a hand to her hair. "Why, yes. I mean, it's still the same style, but I had a new color job done just this past week."
"My compliments to your colorist." He tipped his hat and Dolores actually blushed.
Paige blinked just to make sure she was actually seeing correctly. Dolores Guiness never blushed. She made other people blush all the time with her know-it-all attitude and her all-seeing eyes, but never succumbed to turning red herself. Paige blinked a second time just for good measure. Sure enough, there was no mistaking the stain pinking Dolores' chubby cheeks.
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