Dangerous (3 page)

I breathed in deeply and exhaled. My life was changing. I had grown as a person during the last year. I would miss Chance, but he and I agreed that we had grown apart, that we needed to separate, that we needed to experience new things in our lives. It wouldn’t be long and high school would be over.

This was my first job, and I was excited about my decision to save money for a car. It made me feel mature, responsible. I was starting a new phase of my life, and it felt good.

Stone

I stood at the edge of the back of the building and watched as Chance drove off. I was pissed off, and I didn’t even know why. I had baited Dara, tried to get a rise out of her, but she left me standing with no one to harass but myself.

I figured I was just in a bad mood because Jessie had called to cancel our date. She mumbled something about her brother needed her help tonight, but with Jess, you never knew for sure whether she was telling the truth. Not that it really mattered to me. Jessie was just a diversion, same as I was to her. That’s what made us so perfect for each other. Neither of us wanted a serious relationship. We just wanted to hang out, have a little fun, and then go our separate ways.
But it still left me with nothing to do tonight, and I’d be damned if I was going to go home to an empty house.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Dara’s voice interrupted my thoughts. Surprised because I hadn’t heard the back door open, I turned to look at her. “What is?”

“His car.”

“Is that how you decide who you’re going to date? By how nice his car is?” I knew I was baiting her again, but I just couldn’t help myself.

I watched her face, waiting for her to narrow her eyes at me or shoot me a bird or at least frown. Instead, she shot me a dazzling smile. “Have you seen the car
I’m
driving? What makes you think I need to date a guy for his car?”

The image of her struggling to get out of that antique, ugly-ass tank made me smile.

“You do have a point.”

“If you play your cards right, maybe I’ll take you for a ride,” she said in little more than a whisper, as if she were in unfamiliar territory.

I locked my eyes on hers. I could see her uncertainty, perhaps a little bit of horror that I might even take her up on it. I figured it was best to let her off the hook.

“I’ve never been very good at playing cards.”

She gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “Suit yourself.”

“I usually do.”

I tried to hide a smirk as she stood innocent-eyed, staring at me as if she had no idea what to say next. She clung so hard to the broken-down cardboard boxes in her hands that her knuckles were turning white. This was Dara’s lucky day. I decided to let her off the hook for the second time in the last five minutes. “Here,” I said, motioning to the boxes. “I’ll take those for you.”

Reluctantly, she handed them over, and I walked away, so she wouldn’t have to think of something to say. Puddles were scattered across the pavement between me and the recycling dumpster. The humidity made the air seem thick in the back of my throat. The sun was peeking out from behind the clouds and shockingly enough, it looked like it might even turn out to be a halfway decent day.

I slid the boxes through the horizontal slit on the dumpster and turned to head back into the store. Dara was nowhere in sight, so I assumed that she had taken her escape while she could.
Smart girl.

When I got back in the store, I was relieved to see that we had a few customers milling around. The break in the weather was probably responsible for that. Tom was busy training Dara on the computer system and the procedure for stocking inventory, so I went in my office to come up with a marketing strategy. Sales had been down. Without an effective marketing strategy, the store wasn’t going to stay open for long.

I brainstormed on ideas that might help get customers in. When I was finished, I printed it and went to find Tom. He was sitting behind the front counter with Dara at his side.

“You got time to talk about marketing?” I asked.

Tom did a face palm. “I do, but why don’t I go get a pizza? We can eat, and then maybe my brain can transition from boring tasks, such as spreadsheets and inventory, to the more exciting, creative world of marketing.”

“Deal.”
I knew he was being sarcastic. Tom lived for boring stuff, like spreadsheets. He didn’t have a creative bone in his body, but he and I would go through the process anyway.

A few minutes later, Tom left to pick up the pizza. Dara and I sat on tall stools behind the front counter.

“So what kind of marketing are you working on?” she asked as she took a paper towel and wiped the dust off the register.

“Our sales have been down. It usually picks up over the summer, but we need to come up with some ideas that will energize the store. We need to get our name out there and draw customers in.” I fidgeted with my ink pen, drawing circles on the paper.

“What are your ideas so far?” she asked, walking closer to me and looking down at the list in front of me.

“Loss leader,” she read. “What’s that?” she asked, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

“It’s when you sell an item at or below cost in hopes that it will generate other sales. Like if we sold a movie for ninety-nine cents and a customer came in to buy it and bought two other regular-priced movies while they were here.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. Man, she was standing close enough again that I could smell her perfume. I didn’t know what she was wearing, but it was highly effective. “You could have a date night sale to encourage couples to come in. Something like, buy an action-adventure
movie,
get a chick flick for ninety-nine cents.
Or maybe a girls’ night out sale.
I have a couple of friends who just got their cosmetology licenses through the vocational program at school. They could set up a table, and you could have something like spend twenty dollars and get your nails painted for ninety-nine cents. They would probably work cheap just to get the experience and to build up clientele.”

“Women would come in for that?”

“Women love to be pampered, and they love to shop. They would come.”

Considering how unsure of herself she seemed earlier, she was exuding confidence now. She really seemed to be in her element.

She continued, “We could also have a big Fourth of July blowout. We could have face painting, and braiding….”

“Braiding?”

“Yeah, like braiding hair. Little girls love that stuff, and if you can get the parents in here with the kids, then the parents will be shopping while we’re painting their little angels’ faces.
Cha-ching.”

I had to admit that she was a brainstorming maniac who was full of creative ideas. No wonder she did well in school.

“I thought we might add a kids’ section,” I said, glancing at one of my other ideas. “Maybe put all the children’s products in one corner of the room and bring in a couple of small tables with chairs. What do you think?”

“That’s a good idea. You know what else we could do?”

“What?”

“Add a snack bar.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.” I scanned the room, wondering where the snack bar could go.

“You think the owner would agree to that?” she asked, her expression serious, her green eyes focused on my face.

“I may be able to talk him into it.”

Tom finally showed up with the pizza. The three of us discussed marketing ideas during lunch, but I had a hard time concentrating. All I could think about was kissing those pink, sparkly lips. Her blond hair had finally dried, and it framed her face in soft ringlets. I had missed out on what had been said, but she looked up at me now, smiling,
her
green eyes focusing on my face before she shifted them to Tom.

I had no plans tonight. Part of me wanted to ask her out, but the other part had no interest in a girl like her. She would expect things. Jessie didn’t give a damn. She lived for the moment, never worrying about what the consequences would bring. And she didn’t care about other girls I dated. There was no clinging, no jealousy, no blowing up my phone. It was just the way I liked it.

I grabbed my water bottle and took a swig. Tom walked to the kitchen to get a drink.

I breathed in deeply, inhaling her scent. I could ask her now. There was the chance that she might say no. I could tell that she was out of her comfort zone when we were alone. But I could be pretty persuasive when I wanted to be, and I had no doubt that if I wanted to go out on a date with her tonight, all I had to do was decide what time to pick her up.

The logical side of me tried to kick in, despite the fact that it was being overridden by my male hormones at the moment. I had worked very carefully to stay away from girls like her.

My eyes flicked down to her soft, pink lips again, and I noted how the color perfectly matched her shirt. I found her incredibly sexy.
A date.
All I had to do was ask.

I stood up quickly, startling her as the stool scraped across the floor. I brushed past her and entered the kitchen. Tom was down on his haunches, sorting through things in the fridge.

“Tom, I’m leaving now,” I said, snatching up my motorcycle helmet.

“Okay,” he answered, never looking up.

I hurried out the back door, slammed my helmet onto my head, and rode a wheelie through the parking lot. I had to get the hell out of there. I needed my bike. It was my only crutch, the one thing that was familiar, comfortable,
reliable
.

My front wheel hit the ground, and I sped down the road, the hum of the motor calming me.

Chapter 2

Dara

My window was down, inviting the suffocating breeze to lick my perspiring face while it whipped my already-tangled hair into wild disarray. The air conditioner in Granny’s car hadn’t worked in years. It would be expensive to have it repaired, and Granny didn’t think the old car was worth putting that kind of money into. I didn’t think she really even minded not having air. It was only on my account that it was ever used at home. If it was up to Granny, the windows would be open and the ceiling fans would be turned on.

I pulled into the driveway, the gravels crunching under the tires.

Granny immediately popped through the screened door onto the porch in her bright pink polyester pants and hollered, “How was your first day?”

I got out of the car and smiled at her. “It was fun. Well, most of it was.”

When I reached the front porch, she dropped down into a white, wooden rocker and motioned to the one on the other side of the front door. “Have a seat.” My grandpa had made these rockers in his workshop out back. Sitting in them on the front porch was one of my Granny’s favorite things to do.

Tapping her tiny feet against the wooden slats of the porch, she pushed herself into a rocking motion. “Now what do you mean most of it was fun? What wasn’t fun about it?”

“I met a boy that goes to my school.”

“When I was your age, I would’ve thought that was the fun part.”

I smiled, trying to imagine my tiny, wrinkled, little grandma with white hair and knuckles swollen with arthritis as a seventeen-year-old girl.

“Was he cute?” she asked, her head bobbing as she rocked.

I thought about Stone, his dark hair, his ice blue eyes, his lean, muscular body. As I had already experienced, his handsome face could send a girl into near cardiac arrest. His masculinity had left me so very glad that I was born a female, and there was an aura about him that drew me in, making me not care about the consequences. Chance was a great guy, but Stone was everything that Chance was not…dark, mysterious,
dangerous
. Kittens were cute. Little girls with pigtails were cute. Somehow, that word just didn’t seem to describe Stone Hamilton.

“He’s the kind of guy that makes a girl forget her own name.”

“When do I get to meet him?” she asked.

“Granny!”
I exclaimed.

“And you still haven’t told me what’s not fun about him.”

“It’s hard to explain. He was just moody. He was super sweet one minute and storming out of the room the next. He seemed to be highly unpredictable, like he didn’t know how to act around me or something.”

Granny laughed. “He’s been bitten by the Dara bug. This should be an interesting summer.”

I couldn’t keep myself from rolling my eyes. Bitten by the Dara bug? That’s what Granny always said when she thought somebody was smitten with me. I understood why she said it. She was a doting grandmother, and she was very good at making me feel special. But I wasn’t ten anymore. Stone may be many things, but bitten by the Dara bug was not one of them. Heck, he wouldn’t even pretend like he was interested in riding in the same car with me. He was so not smitten.

“Honey, I’m going to go to the grocery store. You need anything?”

“Not that I can think of,” I answered, finding it hard to concentrate on anything but Stone.

She went in the house and came out a moment later with her purse. I handed her the car keys, knowing that she had been waiting all day to go see Mr. Milton. As she backed onto the main road, I waved goodbye, amused at her eagerness.