1
Three days before Christmas, City Planner Cami Bennett looked at her reflection in the Town Hall employee bathroom mirror and gave herself the silent pep talk. You can do this. You can do something besides work your tail off. In fact, having fun is just like work, only . . . better.
Probably.
Oh, who was she kidding? She liked the big O’s—order and organization.
Orgasms would have been a nice addition to that list, but due to being a little uptight—and, okay, a lot anal—those kinds of O’s were few and far between.
Now the big city hall annual Christmas party was later tonight, a masked ball where “fun would be had by all,” and she was required to go.
Oh, goodie.
It wasn’t that she was the female equivalent of Scrooge, but more that everyone at work always seemed to go on and on about the holiday ad nauseum—decorations, gifts, travel plans. Somehow, they’d all built themselves personal lives as well as careers, something Cami hadn’t managed to do, and Christmastime just emphasized the failure on her part. She hated the pressure of the parties, the expense of buying her family gifts they didn’t need or want, and, most especially, the loneliness.
Until now she hadn’t had much time to think about it, not with the huge town shake-up that had involved the mayor and his very pretty boyfriend’s private sex tapes being stolen and posted on the Internet for perusal by anyone with $29.95. It’d been the biggest scandal Blue Eagle had seen in decades, and no one yet knew how the rest of the town’s staff was going to fare when all the cards finished falling.
Especially since the now-ex-mayor’s boyfriend had turned out to be two weeks shy of legal age and the son of the D.A.
Ouch.
The front page of the Sierra Daily had showed a picture of Tom Roberts, stripped of his mayor’s title, being led out of his office in handcuffs.
Talk about airing your dirty laundry in public.
A couple of councilmen had been dragged through the mud as well, one with a paternity scandal and the other with a bank scandal. Both accusations looked false, but were ugly nevertheless.
Morale had never been lower in Blue Eagle.
A soft sound came from one of the bathroom stalls, a sort of . . . mewl. “Excuse me,” Cami said to the closed door. “Are you okay?”
The only answer was a whimper.
Concerned, Cami moved closer. “Do you need help?”
“Oh, God. Yes!”
Cami bent down and looked beneath the stall. She could see a pair of Jimmy Choo black toeless pumps, the ones Cami had drooled over in Nordstrom’s but had not bought, choosing instead to pay her mortgage for the month.
Facing the opposite direction of the Choos was a pair of men’s black leather dress shoes, equally expensive, and Cami went still. She knew a man who wore shoes like that. Ned Kitridge. He was a city councilman, and her casual date for the past two months.
Embarrassment warred with fury.
Fury won.
Before her eyes, the woman’s pumps lifted off the ground and vanished. There was a thunk against the stall door, and a long female sigh of pleasure.
And then the sound of a zipper.
In shock, Cami watched as an empty condom packet hit the floor.
Steaming, horrified, she staggered back. Even the bathroom was seeing more action than she.
And with Ned, Ned, a man who hadn’t made a move on her, not once in six dates!
As her ego hit the floor next to the condom wrapper, Cami grabbed her purse and exited the bathroom, nearly blinded by an unhealthy mix of anger and mortification. But could she just slam out of the building? No. She couldn’t abandon her compulsive, organized, anal routine. Hating that she couldn’t, she meticulously shut off her adding machine and the light over her drawing board, glancing at the new sticky note on her computer.
Cami,
I need to talk to you before the ball. Meet me in the conference room at 7:45.
Ned
Yeah, she just bet he needed to talk to her! Only a few moments ago, she had assumed—hoped—he’d actually pick her up at her place so they could go to the ball together. For eight weeks now, he’d driven her crazy with his need to take things slow. Slower than a-snail’s-pace slow. Slower than icicles-melting slow. So-slow-she’d-been-losing-interest slow.
And yet in that bathroom, he hadn’t seemed to be taking anything slow.
Don’t think about it.
The others on her planning team—Adam, Ed, and Lucy, usually all too happy when things were going bad for her—had told her to be patient with Ned because he was a great guy.
Well, Ms. Choos apparently thought so, too. Damn it, even more than tearing Ned apart, she wanted some sexual action.
She wanted the man-induced orgasm.
As she left the building, steam coming out of her ears, she didn’t see another soul. This deep into the year, the nights fell early in the Sierras. In pitch blackness, she made her way through the parking lot, the icy air cooling her off. With a few hours before she had to be back for the dreaded Christmas ball, she should hit downtown and knock off the list of gifts she needed in order to make a showing at her parents’ house for Christmas dinner.
After all, she hated an undone to-do list.
But she was too shaken from the Ned-screwing-in-the-bathroom scene to stop. Plus, it was snowing lightly, just enough to dust all the windows on her car, hampering her vision. She pulled out her ice scraper from beneath her driver’s seat and attacked her windows, but the ice stuck stubbornly. Giving up, she got into her frozen car and cranked the heater, which fogged the windows, adding to the visibility challenge. Things kept getting better and better. Forced to roll down her window to see, she stuck out her head.
But the falling snow blocked her view. So did her own iced-over car. Damn it. She put the car into reverse and slowly eased off the brake—wait.
Had she seen movement back there?
Again she stuck her head out the window, but all she could see was snow flurries. Hell. Luckily, she knew she was the only one in the lot, so with another light touch on the gas, she crept out of the parking space and—
Crunch.
Oh, God! Oh, damn! Jerking her car into park, she leapt out of the car with her heart in her throat and came nose to nose with a man—scratch that. Nose to broad chest. “I’m so sorry!” she said, trying to blink the white flakes from her eyes to see past the man’s long dark coat and hood. “I—”
“You weren’t looking.”
“I couldn’t see—”
“I honked.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Are you in that much of a hurry to get to the Christmas ball?” he asked.
It suddenly sank through her agitation that she knew that frustrated male voice. Craning her head back, she lifted her gaze past broad shoulders and stared up into a pair of slate-gray eyes filled with annoyance.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
Not him. Anyone else on the planet but him.
The him in question pushed back his hood, his dark hair glistening with snowflakes, making him seem even more fiercely intense and devastatingly handsome, if that were possible. Cami imagined even the most hardened of women would sigh over those chiseled features and that rock-hard body.
But not her. Nope, she was entirely unmoved.
Because in addition to the fact that he stood on her last nerve, he was the newly appointed mayor.
Her boss.
Her nemesis, Councilman Matt Tarino. They’d worked together in planning for two years before he’d moved on to councilman six months ago, and in their time together, they’d done nothing but gone head-to-head. He was the bane of her existence.
And now he was mayor. That he was tough as nails and cowed to no one when it came to getting fair share and equal housing for the lower-income population—her pet project—didn’t matter. Nor did the fact that he’d been an excellent city planner, an advocate for all that she herself fought for.
Not when he was everything her orderly, organized, rule-loving brain couldn’t fathom. He had no patience for precedence, rules, or expectations, and adding insult to injury, he seemed like sin personified, possessing a charismatic presence that conquered worlds, parted seas—and women’s legs—with a simple smile.
It drove her crazy.
Logically she knew that these feelings were coming from the little fat kid inside of her, the one guys used to cruelly call Whale-Tail, but she didn’t care. He was just far too perfect. Everything about him made her want to gnash her teeth into powder.
And now, Merry Christmas to her, because she’d crunched his front fender and taken out his right headlight, and quite possibly ruined her life and her career—which was her life. Closing her eyes briefly, she opened them again and looked anywhere but into Matt Tarino’s frustrated face. That’s when her gaze landed on his feet.
Specifically, his black leather dress shoes.
Not Ned in the bathroom with Ms. Fabulous Choos, but . . . Matt?
And just like that, her humiliation vanished, and so did the ball of nerves lodged in her throat. “It was you,” she breathed. “You were the one in the women’s bathroom!”
He blinked. Snowflakes fell from his long, dark lashes. “What?”
It made perfect sense. Women were always talking about him, sighing over him, drooling over him . . . “I heard you two in the stall,” she said in disgust, crossing her arms. “Now, I’m sorry I ran into you, but truthfully, you’d distracted me. Get a room next time, sheesh!”
A slow shake of his head. “I can assure you, I don’t frequent the women’s bathroom.”
She didn’t believe him, of course, but his denial did mean that she had to take full responsibility for her own stupidity. Damn, she hated that. Sighing, she rubbed her temples. “Okay, fine. You’re being discreet. I get it. I’m sorry about your headlight. I’ll have it fixed. Just let me get my insurance information—” She turned toward her car, but he took her arm and pulled her back around.
He was always doing that—that being whatever he wanted. In fact, she figured if she looked up “alpha male” in the dictionary, she’d find his picture there.
“You’re looking like a Popsicle,” he said. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
Unexpected decency. That, too, made her self-righteousness difficult to maintain. She wished he’d be an ass about this, but even she had to admit that while Matt defined stubbornness and mule-headedness, he also possessed integrity in spades. She’d seen it in action, when he ran town meetings, maintaining the voice of reason, even if it had a sarcastic edge.
She also knew him to be wild, daring, and a complete rebel at heart. So much so that no woman had ever tamed him.
Cami had never even considered trying, especially since she was too competitive to give him the upper hand, in or out of bed.
After all, he was unlike any man she’d ever been with, or wanted to be with—not that she had much to go on. He was just a little uncivilized, just a little politically incorrect. Not afraid of a battle.
And she so wanted to say not decent.
But he was still holding onto her arm, guiding her off the icy asphalt and into her car.
“Matt?” The female voice came from the pretty blonde sticking her head out of the passenger side of his car. “What’s taking so long?”
Cami rolled her eyes and muttered beneath her breath to Matt. “Probably you should have stayed in the women’s bathroom.”
“Her car wouldn’t start. I’m giving her a ride home.”
“And don’t forget the ride in the bathroom.”
“I wasn’t in the bath—”
“Whatever.” She tried to pull her door shut, but his big body was in the way.
“Are you going to be careful?” he asked.
“Move, or lose a body part.”
“Just don’t hit reverse until I get out of your way,” he said with a smirk, wisely stepping out of her way just as she slammed the door.