by Miley Maine
She didn't ask any more questions, so I pointed out the sunroom and then took her upstairs.
I was impressed by her no-nonsense manner. She didn't make a lot of small talk, but she listened to every word I said. She also didn't try to ingratiate herself with me, which was nice.
That was an unexpected consequence of becoming Sheriff -- people in this town were always trying to get in my good graces.
I'd had a problem with the women in town pursuing me too. I know that made me sound like I considered myself a playboy, but I really didn't. I tried to be a gentleman, like my father had taught me. But apparently that encouraged certain women. My sister said that they mistook my friendly ‘hellos’ as interest. Nothing was further from the truth. I had no interest in dating right now. Before I could date, I was going to have to get a handle on the insomnia and the nightmares. There was no way I would rope a woman into dealing with that.
I told her what the pay would be and the hours that I needed her. “If you want the job, you're hired.” I’d run a background check later this week.
A beautiful smile passed over her face. “I do want the job, thank you. I can start as soon as you're ready.”
“I'm ready today.”
“Do you have any allergies?” she asked.
I wonder why that mattered. “No.” I needed to get back to the office and finish some paperwork. I tried to communicate that to her without using words, but she didn’t leave.
Then she spoke again. “Sheriff, do you know of any places that are renting rooms for a reasonable price?”
So that’s why she was hanging around. She didn’t have a place to stay. “You can live here,” I said.
Dammit. The words that just rolled out of my mouth. I had never intended to hire a live-in maid.
She could be completely crazy. But hell, I’d lived in a war zone on and off for years. Surely I could handle my 110 pound maid living in my house. It wasn’t like she posed any type of threat to me.
“That would be wonderful,” she said. “I just moved here today and I haven't gotten a chance to get to know the town yet.”
“I'll show you around,” I said. Once again, the words just spilled out of my mouth.
“I really appreciate that.”
I started walking to the front door and she followed me. “We'll take my truck.” There was no way I was going to drive her around in the sheriff's vehicle. As it was, plenty of people would have questions if they saw me with a beautiful young woman in my car. I didn't care though; I'd already made the offer and I wasn't going to take it back.
Ava climbed into my truck, hoisting herself up into the passenger seat. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead of me. I drove her around town, pointing out the grocery store, the veterinarian's office where I took Sadie, the hairdresser that most of the women in town use, the post office and the cafe where most people ate.
The entire time I drove, I was very aware of her, and how good she smelled, and how pretty she was. I even like the sound of her voice.
I wanted to know what brought her to Pine Hills, but I didn't ask. She might be moving into my house, but there was no reason for me to get overly familiar with her.
I had a feeling she wouldn’t be here too long.
Chapter Seven
Ava
After our awkward ride around town, Tyler took me back to his house.
“Do you have any luggage stashed somewhere that I need to help with?” he asked.
“No, everything I have is in the trunk of my car.” I realized how sketchy that made me seem. But Tyler didn’t ask any questions. He really took taciturn to a whole new level. Maybe I’d just spent too much time around reporters and journalists. None of them ever stopped talking, or asking questions.
Tyler didn’t bother to lock his truck, although I noticed that he’d locked the sheriff’s car, which was probably smart. He walked straight to my car, and waited for me to pop the trunk. As soon as the trunk was open, he lifted both of my suitcases.
I stood back and watched the muscles in his biceps flex.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” he said.
I gave him what I hoped was a confident smile. “I'll get started on the house.”
He nodded and then he was gone.
Inside the house I sat down at his kitchen table. I'd forgotten to ask him about connecting to the Wi-Fi, so I pulled out my laptop and used my phone as a hotspot. Cleaning a house couldn't be too hard, but I had no idea what to do. I’d never cleaned anything in my life, certainly not an entire house.
I typed ‘best methods for house cleaning’ in the search box. Thousands of hits popped up. There were videos, blogs, articles and books. This appeared to be a pretty popular question online. I clicked on the first link that was written by a professional house cleaner.
‘Gather your supplies,’ was the advice that article gave. I found the vacuum under the stairs. There was also a broom and a dustpan. I looked in a laundry room, but only found laundry detergent. Under the sink, I found cleaners labeled wood polish, and another kind of spray that said it could be used on glass and granite. In the pantry, I found paper towels and a stack of washcloths.
The article also said, ‘clean from top to bottom.’
I put everything in a pile on the floor. I eyed the sink. The article didn’t mention a pile of dishes as part of the equation, but Tyler said those were a priority.
After quickly skimming a how-to guide on loading a dishwasher, I figured I’d start there. My mother had always insisted that her crystal be hand washed, but I somehow doubted Tyler was that picky. He also didn’t seem to have any crystal; most of his dishes were plastic, with the exception of some fancier dishes stored in a china cabinet. The plates were easy, but the cups kept bumping into each other, and none of them were the same size. I had the impulse to go buy him a new set of dishes to streamline the process of loading the dishwasher, but dismissed the idea.
Tyler said I didn’t have to cook, but if I was going to be living here rent-free, then I needed to do more than scrub the sink to earn my keep.
Finally, after several attempts, I had the dishwasher loaded, and I was able to close it. I found one of the tablets and popped it into the dispenser and pressed ‘start.’
Next I was going to sanitize the sink and countertops.
The silence in the house was deafening, to the point of being distracting. I considered playing some music from my phone, but ultimately I chose a cleaning video that claimed to provide motivation for reluctant cleaners. I wouldn't say I was exactly reluctant, but I definitely needed a tutorial.
After a few minutes, my mind wandered. Maybe I could find a story to concentrate on while I hid out in Pine Hills. I was going to steer clear of exposes for the time being. But maybe Tyler wouldn’t mind a feature written up about the role he played in the town as sheriff. He’d said he worked all the time, so maybe he’d be willing to be interviewed.
I laughed to myself. I seriously doubted it. I’d only known him for half a day, and I could tell an interview would be the last thing he’d agree to. Maybe the friendly librarian would be willing. Even if she wasn’t, I owed her a thank you for getting me this job.
Ava, snooping around town is what got you chased out of Chicago.
I didn’t regret it though. I’d gathered a lot of information. When I felt like it was safe, I was going to hand it over the FBI. Maybe they’d be able to use some of it.
Maybe once I learned to cook, I’d bake the librarian some cookies as a thank you gift.
Chapter Eight
Tyler
Having Ava living in my house was… interesting. She was quiet, and she seemed to be very observant.
She put my stuff back exactly how I liked it, which was nice.
I found that I liked watching her. She moved with an energy that I envied. I tried not to stare, but sometimes I couldn’t help myself. Once, she caught me looking. But she hadn’t seemed to mind. She’d merely tossed her shiny hair, and she’d
smiled at me over her shoulder.
I wasn’t home much, but when I was, I found that I was turned on almost all of the time. Just having her nearby was enough to get my cock hard most nights. She’d only been here for five days, but I had already adjusted to having her in the house.
I’d miss her if she moved on.
So she was captivating, but she was odd. And there were several things about her that I couldn’t find an easy explanation for. Like the high-end laptop. It was brand new, and it was the top model offered for the current year. She also had a new smartphone, the matching watch, and the newest bluetooth headphones. I had to assume she’d had a lucrative career before she ended up working for me, or maybe she’d had wealthy parents who’d passed away.
Her car and her laptop were expensive, and so were her phone and accessories, but her clothes were not anything special. They were new, but they were cheap.
I wasn’t complaining though.
On Tuesday afternoon, I stopped by the house to bring Sadie home. She’d had a fun morning supervising a 5K race with me, but afterward she was tired and hot. As I stepped into the kitchen, I saw Ava’s laptop open. I didn’t intend to look at her screen, but the screen brightness was turned all the way up. The webpage was titled, ‘how to mop a floor.’ The words were in a large font -- I couldn’t miss them.
Was that a code phrase for something? Didn’t everyone know how to mop? My mother had made me learn when I was about seven years old.
She’d ruffled my hair and said, ‘a man needs to know how to keep a house running.’ It was hardly rocket science.You only needed a mop, a bucket and whatever you were going to clean the floor with.
Hoping it wasn’t some code for making drugs, I turned away from her screen.
I’d turned away just in time. She came into the room, mop in hand, and smiled at me.
I was shocked to find that I liked having her in the house. Her presence was unobtrusive. But late at night I could hear her typing frantically. Her keys didn’t make a lot of noise, but the sound was unmistakable.
She was cooking all the time too. I continued to insist that cooking wasn’t required, but she attacked it with a vengeance.
She was an adventurous cook too. Last night, she’d made salmon with asparagus. Tonight there was a wonderful aroma coming from the kitchen when I walked in.
I opened my mouth to say, ‘what’s for dinner?’ but I closed it immediately. I didn’t want her thinking I had come to expect her to make dinner, even now that she’d been doing it for the last five days.
“I made spinach enchiladas,” she said.
I inhaled again. “They smell great.”
She even had taken to setting the table. Each day was a little more elaborate. “You can go ahead and sit down,” she said.
I sat down and picked up my glass of tea. Instead of the misshapen plastic cups I’d collected from the gas station, my iced tea was now in what looked like a glass mason jar. I picked it up and took a sip. Yep, it was a real mason jar.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I picked up a set of six jars at the resale shop for $1.”
“I don’t mind at all.” I’d gotten pretty familiar with the resale shop lately. They had all kinds of furnishings, even more than our local hardware store, and the resale shop was more convenient than driving into the city to visit one of the giant chain stores. And cheaper too.
I’d given her a prepaid Visa card with $300 for the groceries. I’d prefer for most of that to be spent on food, but if having a mason jar as a glass made her happy, I could handle that.
Yesterday, the cheap clothes had been missing. She’d worn a pair of sleek looking skinny jeans that she wore with a flowing white top. Sometimes she even cleaned while wearing it. Tonight, she had on flowing black pants and a fitted red top.
There was no way she didn’t come from money. Anyone who’d grown up poor would never be able to clean a sink while wearing that outfit.
Her table manners were also perfect. Not that I knew much about manners. My mom had insisted I do cotillion when I was twelve, along with several of the other boys from town. I’d been horrified of course. I’d begged and pleaded not to go, but my mom was resolute. She wanted me and my friends to shape up and learn to be gentlemen.
In an old drafty barn that someone had cleaned up, we stumbled our way through a semester of waltzing, two-stepping, and line-dancing. At the end of every dance, we’d have to sit down at a table and practice our manners. The girls all sat together, leaving the boys to cram in together and tell dirty jokes in hushed tones.
The boys’ manners were atrocious, my own included. So while I’d picked up very little of the information, Ava clearly had been through some kind of similar training.
My years of deployment had not been kind to my table manners either, although the military balls that I attended when stateside did require me to brush up a little.
“Did you go to Cotillion?” I asked.
Her head jerked up. She licked her lips. “Not exactly.”
What the hell did that mean? “You must have learned etiquette somewhere.”
“It was an ever-present part of my family life,” she explained.
“So your parents were pretty formal.”
“You could say that.”
She obviously didn’t want to talk about her family. Maybe they’d been real assholes.
“Thank you for dinner. It was delicious.” I still had some paperwork to finish, but it would be a lot easier now that I’d eaten such a filling meal.
She got up with her plate in her hand. I stood quickly. I touched her wrist. “Let me do the dishes.”
She glanced down at my hand on her bare skin but didn’t pull away. “It’s literally my job to do the dishes.”
“You cooked.”
“And you paid me to do it.”
She was just inches away from me, but she wasn’t stepping back. And to my shock, I found that I didn’t want her to step away.
I hadn’t been with a woman since I’d been discharged from the military. I hadn’t even considered the possibility. My nightmares hadn’t magically disappeared, and I still had a huge yellow lab that slept in the bed with me at night.
But having Ava this close was making me want to try. I took one step closer, giving her the chance to step away if she chose. She didn’t move. She stayed where she was, with her piercing gaze staring right at me.
Immediately, I was rock hard. For years, I’d been able to control my physical response to attractive women. Yet with Ava, I had no control whatsoever. I barely knew her, but my body was at the mercy of my intense desire for her.
I was going to kiss her. I brought one hand up and laid it on her cheek. Her skin was warm and flushed. I moved my hand farther back, threading my fingers through her hair, and cupping the back of her hand. I kept a grip on her hair, and guided her toward me.
I skimmed my lips over hers, just tasting her. Her lips were sweet from the Shiraz wine she’d had with her dinner. She always mentioned what kind of wine should be paired with a certain kind of dish, even though she didn’t consume much wine at all.
It was another sign of her probable wealth. No one in Pine Hills knew about wine. But none of that mattered right now. All that mattered was the feel of her lips against mine.
I tugged her closer. “I want you.”
Her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. “I want you too.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. With the hand I had in her hair, I tilted her head to the side and deepened the kiss.
With my other hand, I grabbed her round little bottom. I cupped her ass, squeezing the firm flesh beneath my palm. She moaned, and scooted closer to me, until her lithe body was slotted right up against mine.
I rolled my hips, pressing my hard cock against her front.
She let her head fall back. Her lips were parted, and her eyes were closed. She smelled like apples. It must be the kind of shampoos she used. Moving on from her lips, I b
uried my face in her thick hair and inhaled.
Yes. Apples. I kissed my way down her jaw, and nuzzled her neck, right under her ear. She smelled delicious. I inhaled again, memorizing her scent. I needed to get my cock inside her body, but I didn’t want to rush this time with her, in case it was the only time we slept together.
I let go of her backside and brought my hand up to her lower back. I got my hand under her shirt, placing my palm on her warm skin. I skimmed my hand up, until I felt the back of her bra. I unhooked the clasp, and let go, letting the slip of fabric fall away from her body.
I pulled my hand around to her front, until I could get my hand on her breast. I traced my fingers over the round swell and then brushed over her nipple.
She shuddered in my arms. “Tyler.”
“You like that? Wait until I get my mouth on you.”
She swayed, and I let go of her hair to wrap one arm around her waist. I pushed her shirt up, exposing her breasts to me. I didn’t hesitate, but closed my lips over her nipple, sucking hard.
She cried out, and her entire body sagged as I held her weight.
I needed to get her in a bed soon, but I was enjoying this too much to interrupt the moment.
I stooped down to whisper in her ear. “Are you wet?”
She moaned. “Yes. So wet.”
I kissed her on the lips again, pushing my tongue into her mouth. “Have you done this before?”
She nodded. “It’s been awhile. But yes, I have.”
Thank God. I didn’t have the time or the patience to walk a virgin through her first time. I wanted her naked on my bed, writhing on my cock as soon as possible.
I lowered my head again, putting my mouth over her other nipple. I flattened my tongue and licked, flicking back and forth over that tight peak. Her arms came up around me, clutching my back. She dug her short nails into my shoulders.
Still mouthing at her breasts, I shoved one hand down to her pants. The pants she wore were soft and flowy, with no button or zipper to navigate. I pushed my hand into her panties, down to her waiting pussy. She stepped apart, allowed me more access.
