“Aaron, you can’t just leave the poor girl in the car like that. It’s hot as shhh-sugar outside.” Mandy cut her eyes toward Mike, but he was too busy entertaining the jailed Elly through the back window of the SUV to pay attention to her. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And thanks for not ratting me out to Mike.”
Aaron looked affronted. “Hey, I’m no snitch!” He spread on that smile that made Mandy fear for the structural integrity of her panty elastic.
She swallowed down the boulder-sized lump forming in her throat, only to feel her stomach revolt at the sudden addition of a heaping handful of fresh nerves. The man cleaned up good, and it affected her. It affected her a lot. Maybe it was her clothing store background, but a man who knew how to buy slacks that actually fit really turned her on. The fact he actually had an ass didn’t hurt, either. It was far more evident in his belted black slacks than it’d been in the baggy shorts he’d worn the day before, although she did recall there being a bit of flesh there when she’d squeezed. She ran her tongue over her lips involuntarily before catching herself.
He mirrored the act and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head to fix his hazel gaze on her.
She suddenly felt a bit faint, and walked away fanning her face with her hands. Retreating was cowardly, but she didn’t care. Her pride was at stake and she was being sucked into a goddamned black hole of charisma. She made a beeline for a station wagon three rows over and squatted down next to the back tire on the far side, putting her head between her knees before commencing with a deep breathing exercise.
He’s not for you. Don’t touch him. He’s not for you. Don’t touch him.
She kept repeating the mantra in her mind, over and over again until she was reasonably certain she could deflect his charms. When she stood, he was still leaning against the front of his SUV, looking in her direction with an eyebrow cocked.
Well, get on with it.
She waved him over. It was as good a time as any.
“This car came in from an auction yesterday,” she said, trying for a confident tone, but sounding like a clarinet with a bad vibrato.
He grunted and bent down to stare into the window. “What can you tell me about it?”
She cleared her throat and felt her blood pressure ebb. As long as they kept the conversation on business, she could deal. “Not a damn thing other than the fact it’s a Volvo.”
“Hey, that’s a lot.”
“Liar.” She folded her arms over her breasts as he stood and smiled at her.
Don’t touch him. He’s not for you!
“I told you I’m hopeless with cars.” She backed up a few paces toward the trunk to get out of his field of gravity. “I can’t tell one model year apart from another if they’re within five years.”
“It’s okay. You’re cute when you’re hopeless.”
Her cheeks burned. He just had to go there. “Only when I’m hopeless, huh?”
He lifted his broad shoulders in a dramatic shrug and made his grin even broader. “Drive it?”
“Absolutely,” she said, glad for the distraction.
He caught the key she tossed at him and shifted the front seat back to accommodate his long legs. “Same place as yesterday?” His eyes cast downward to the low v-neck of her dress.
She worked her lips from one side of her face to the other and stole a glance over to the trailer. Archie was at his window again. She gave him a little wave. Archie shook his head and walked away.
“Why, think you need to test the struts?”
“Yeah, your struts.”
“You don’t hash words, do you?”
He shrugged. “We know where this is going.”
“We’re going to drive down Highway 17 so you can put some stress on the engine of this grocery-getter.”
“That’s all, huh?”
She closed his door and harrumphed before walking around the hood of the car.
So many mixed signals. Does he want to employ me or lay me? He can’t have both, can he?
She pondered that while pulling open the front passenger door. Was there a law against fraternization or did management types just strongly recommend against it? She’d never encountered the situation when she was at Ermine’s. As far as she could tell, none of the staff had been that kind of friendly to each other. She certainly didn’t get on like that with the store’s co-general manager. He was a married man with two grown kids and a pack-a-day smoking habit that made his hands smell like an ashtray.
She took one more peek at the office window and found Archie’s distended belly pressed against it. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was wearing a scowl that could cut glass. She opted out of stoking the angry bull’s temper for once, and just got into the passenger seat of the car.
Aaron started pulling out before she even had her seatbelt fastened.
“Aaron, I think Archie may suspect something. Mike isn’t his favorite son, but still he’s usually pleasant to him. Last night at dinner he was downright surly to the guy. When Mike asked him to pass the creamed corn, Archie nearly flung it across the table.”
“Think Mike said something to him?”
“Doubt it. Mike keeps a secret really well, so I don’t think he would have told Archie you’re trying to recruit his best guy. He did seem like his interest was piqued. Mike, I mean. We talked about it a bit before I went out.”
The clench of his jaw tightened, but Mandy didn’t know what part of what she’d said had prompted his annoyance. Not that she understood men all that well, anyway. Maybe she was reading things into the situation that weren’t there.
“That’s good to hear, I guess,” he said as he focused his attention on the highway. “He said it’d take a lot to get him to back out on the job offer he’s already accepted, but if I could sweeten the pot a bit he’d reconsider. Speaking of sweet pots, tell me about how you felt about what you discussed with Tina last night? Sorry for interrupting your evening, by the way.”
She shifted in her seat and smoothed the hem of her dress over her knees. “Don’t worry about that. I ended up taking my friend home early. She was trashed.”
“Hmm.” His jaw relaxed when he turned down onto that bumpy dirt road once more.
They were quiet until they the car was far enough down the path to be out of sight from the highway. He cracked the windows and turned off the ignition.
“Tell me what you thought?” He pulled his silver-plated pen out of his dress shirt’s pocket and spun it between those long, sun-kissed fingers.
She fixated on that strong hand, imagining all the places she would have him put it.
He’s not for you, don’t touch him.
She cleared her throat and crossed her legs in the other direction. “I was intrigued. It sounds like an interesting opportunity.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and put his back against the door. “That’s the lame-ass politically correct brush-off line. Tell me what you really thought, Miranda.”
God, did she love the sound of her name from his lips. If he were to whisper it in her ear, she’d likely combust. She pushed her bangs back from her eyes and risked a glance at him. He grinned, so she turned toward her window again.
“I don’t have a problem with the job. It sounds great, actually. Perfect for me. I’d get to flex some of my managerial muscles and maybe develop some new ones. And it’s not like I’m going to find another store to hire me.” She added that last bit in a mumble.
“But?”
“But I have some concerns about whether or not I’d be able to get along with my boss.”
“Concerns” was putting it mildly, considering the tawdry dreams she’d had the night before. They’d made her wake up with a soaked shirt and a sudden compulsion to drop to her knees and beg God not to smite her where she lay, because really? She thought they’d probably get along just fine … with her bent over his desk, or maybe in a locked supply closet, or …
He nodded and straightened up to push his door open without a word. When he appeared at the passenger door, she held her breath waiting for him to drop the first shoe.
“We get along perfectly well.” He reached into the car, wrapped his fingers around her waist, and gave her a gentle but firm pull out of the seat to press her body against his.
She let out an embarrassing little squeak at his hardness pressed between them.
“Don’t you agree?” He dragged his fingers down her hips to crumple the fabric of her dress up higher and higher. Once her thighs were exposed, he eased his knee between them, widening her stance, and stimulating her lace-covered crotch.
“I’m undecided. I think we have the wrong wires crossed here. I want the job, but we can’t be having sex on the side. What would people think?”
He brought his mouth down to hers and teased his tongue in between her parted lips. Obviously she wasn’t putting up a very effective blockade. Hell, she’d let the enemy in close without even so much a warning shot off his bow.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, holding her face firm against his, giving her no leeway, although she didn’t really want any. What girl in her right mind would slip away from Aaron Owen? She’d thought she’d be the one to resist him because she had to, but fuck if it wasn’t impossible.
His lips bore a hint of flavor from the black coffee he’d politely sipped at Archie’s behest. Combined with the musky notes of his cologne and the slight undercurrent of motor oil he’d had the previous day, too, the effect was all masculine — Aaron’s special brand of it.
When his fingers breached her panty elastic and rough palms abraded the delicate skin of her abdomen, she put her head back even more and breathed out a shaky breath.
“People aren’t going to think anything, sweetheart.” He slid his hands up her back and around her ribcage to the base of her breasts. “They’re not going to know”
What?
It took every ounce of willpower she had, but that admonition was the spur she needed to swim out of her haze. She placed her hands against his chest and gave him an ineffectual little shove backward. He was just too damned big for her to get much leverage.
“I don’t want to play secret lovers with you, Aaron. I’m one of those girls who gets easily attached, and this — ” She indicated their disheveled states. “This is a recipe for disaster.”
“You’re thinking too hard, Miranda.” He drew her close once more, this time slipping the neckline of her dress down with the edge of her bra to expose one nipple. His hot tongue danced over it as her worked his free hand up the back of her dress and into her panties.
She whimpered when his finger breeched her aroused sex. “Stop it! That’s not fair.”
“It’s not meant to be. I want you, Miranda. I’ll take what I can get.”
“I think you could do a lot better than feeling me up in an overgrown field.”
“You’re right.” He licked across the valley of her cleavage and paused at the lacy boundary covering her other breast. “You deserve better, but I don’t know how to do this anymore. Especially not with all the constraints I’ve got against me.”
“Do what? What is it you don’t know how to do?” Her voice was breathy, because he had dropped to his knees there on the grass and lifted the bottom of her dress.
He gave perfect eye contact while hooking a finger into the wet crotch of her panties. “Date.”
“Oh. I don’t think this counts as a date.” Not unless I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.
“No, it doesn’t.” He nudged backward her a few inches so her rear was against the passenger-side front door. When he wrapped his strong fingers around her ankle and pulled her foot free of her panties she had to grip the car behind her to keep her legs from going to jelly beneath her. Next, he put her leg over his shoulder and looked up at her with a dare in his eyes. “This madness you’re currently experiencing is the result of you wearing that tight skirt yesterday and the way your thighs looked through the slit when you bent over.”
He flicked a finger over her clit.
She whimpered.
“And that shirt you were wearing. Oh, sweetheart, that shirt. It’s amazing what a little water can do for the imagination.” He teased her with one slow, circular lick, touching nothing that mattered but causing her sex to clench with anticipation all the same.
“Jesus.” She blew out a shuddering breath and strengthened her grip on the side mirror’s stem. “And what do I get tomorrow for wearing this dress today?”
The more accurate question should have been “What am I going to do to you tomorrow for you wearing those slacks today.” Crouched in front of her as he was, she could see his impressive thigh muscles flexing and clenching as he asserted his control over her body. And control it was. She wouldn’t dare move.
“I don’t know. Maybe you need a spanking. If it looks that good to me, it probably does to every other guy, too. That won’t do.” He flicked his tongue at her pert nub and smiled when she whimpered.
“Why not?”
“When you work for me, I’ll have you kitted out in the finest sackcloth and burlap money can buy. That should keep the jackals from ogling you.” He took it wholly into his mouth and sucked it as if it were a honeysuckle flower filled with sweet nectar.
She managed to ease her death grip on the car and raked her fingers through his thick hair, clamping her fists in it and holding on for dear life when he slipped two fingers into her. He didn’t seem to mind the pulling, and she wondered if having his hair yanked was a common occurrence for him.
“I haven’t agreed to work for you yet.” The job hardly seemed relevant at the moment.
He obviously agreed, because he continued tormenting her clit with his tongue and didn’t ease up until her legs began to wobble. She hissed his name and pulled his head back by the hair to force his face up to meet hers.
“Damn you.”
“Damn me, huh?” He scissored his fingers inside, creating a delicious pressure that had her motor running once more. “Oh, it’s only a matter of paperwork, sweetheart. Just tell me why you got fired from your last job.”
“What?” She dropped her leg from his shoulder, swatted his hand — with some reluctance, there — and planted the sole of her espadrille on his shoulder. He didn’t move a hair from her prod. “That’s really none of your business.”
He raised one of those golden brown eyebrows and pushed his sunglasses back onto his nose. “Isn’t it? I’m trying to offer you a job, here.”
“Seems like you’re trying to do a lot more than that.” She found her panties in the grass and shook them out while Aaron got to his feet and wiped the grass off his knees.
“You’re right. I’m not denying that.”
“And you don’t find this strange in the slightest bit?” she asked while pulling the passenger door open. She climbed into her seat without waiting for the answer.
He lowered his head into the open doorway. “I’m not contesting that, sweetheart. I agree it’s an unusual circumstance. I want to hire you, and I want to make love to you. Why pick one over the other?”
Make love, he said. Make love! She harrumphed.
He was brazenly staring into her cleavage yet again, so she crossed her arms over her chest. “And how many other women have you hired that way? Hell of a signing bonus, right? Getting to screw the boss?”
That beaming smile. He was laughing at her.
She vowed to make him pay for it.
“None. I learned in kindergarten to keep my hands to myself. I learned sometime after that to keep everything about my business aboveboard. Transparent. Given the circumstances with my father being who he is, I tend to have extra incentive to keep my nose clean.”
“But not your tongue.”
“Funny. I like you, Miranda. I think I’ll keep you.”
She rolled her eyes and crossed her legs at the knees. Traitorous body! The idea of being kept by a man that sexy was a pretty damn heady thing, but experience had taught her that eventually, they all got bored. They all dumped her.
She clamped her thighs a bit tighter. “Are you buying this car or not?”
“Yes.”
“Super.”
When he was in the driver’s seat again and had his seatbelt pulled across his lap, he turned the air conditioner up high and started to carefully turn a U in the field. Once well on the way to AA1A, he put his right hand on her thigh and gave it a squeeze. When she didn’t object, he whispered, “I think you’ll say yes.”
She looked over to find his expression an absolute blank. “To what?”
“Anything I want, sweetheart.”