Killer Kisses (31 page)

“Charlene J. Johnson. School bus driver in Baltimore. Halfway through your doctorate in neurosciences.” He thumped the chair down on the floor, and his voice became gruff. “What the hell you wanna do this for? Is this some kind of science project for you? An experiment?”

“No, it’s not like that at all. God, no, I love kids. I wanted to find a cure for my brother’s disease, but after my parents died…” Grief and loneliness welled up in her chest and throat, catching at her words. “My life—things—fell apart. Here I am. Broke and living in Eden on my Aunt Jessie’s farm. With her pig.” She took a deep breath, looked down, and willed herself not to cry.
I’ll never get a job this way.

“Does your brother like Trotter?”

She looked up in surprise, and flicked the tears off her cheeks. “What?”

“My big red friend, Trotter. Does he like him?” He smiled, and two canines that were just a tad longer than normal appeared.

The photo of Zack and Trotter came back to her. “He loves him. And, if I’m not mistaken, Trotter loves my brother, Joey, too. Almost as much as the porker loves rolling in mud puddles.”

Zack snorted. Then Charlene realized he was laughing. And found herself giggling. When they stopped snorting and giggling, she said, “I almost forgot, Jethro said to tell you to ‘remember your promise’.”

A slow, sexy smile crossed Zack’s face. He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, and frissons of excitement rippled up her back, raced across her neck and scalp, almost as if he were touching her.

He tapped her resume with one long index finger, and placed his other hand on his chin. “Your Aunt Jessie and I were good friends. She told me a lot about your mama, showed me pictures of her. And you. Like Miz Rebekkah said, you have her eyes. But I think you have her smile, too. Jessie said she was full of piss and vinegar. Left Eden and never came back.”

“I never met my aunt. Now I wish I had.”

A palpable silence filled the air, broken only by a fly’s angry buzz as it bounced against the sun-filled window.

Zack frowned, and his eyes glinted green. “What was your dad’s name?”

“Fred. Fred Johnson. He was a genetics researcher. My parents met at Hopkins when my mother was a student nurse.”

Zack nodded, a faraway look in his green—no blue—eyes. He stopped rocking, pulled the chair up, and put his elbows on the desk. “What’s your middle name?”

Whatever does he want to know that for? This is one heckuva strange interview.

“Jessie. After my aunt.”

“Okay, you got yourself a job.” He rummaged around on the desk, found some papers, and handed them to her. “Fill these out. School starts next week. You’re gonna need to learn the route in a hurry. Be here tomorrow, seven in the morning. Don’t be late. I’ve got to get you up to speed. And wear this.”

He pulled a long dress made out of the same material as his shirt from a drawer, and extended it to Charlene.
Ugh. Please don’t take photos of me in this dress.
As she took the old-fashioned jumper, his hand touched hers and heat blazed up her arm. Startled, she locked eyes with him. Sounds ceased, the room faded, and time froze.

Did he feel the same jolt of adrenaline from his ears down to his toes?

After an eternity of an unbreakable gaze, he swept her body with a long, assessing look. His eyes lingered on her breasts, while his tongue trailed a leisurely circuit across his luscious lips. She wanted to know if they were as succulent and soft as they looked.
She wondered if he was a good kisser.
Charlene’s nipples hardened and strained against the thin material of her blouse. An image of his mouth on her breasts, nuzzling, licking, and sucking, leapt into her mind—rendering her weak-kneed and breathless with lust.

The phone shrilled once and broke the spell.

Zack shook his head, and said in a husky voice, “You’ll probably need to let it out in some places, and take it in others. The last driver had a different um—figure.”

She forced herself to focus, stay in the present. “Why’d she leave?”

He put a baseball cap on his head and pulled the bill down, covering the upper half of his handsome face and those slanting, intriguing eyes. He shrugged. “It just didn’t work out.”

CHAPTER FIVE

~*~

Driver’s Education

The next morning she beat Zack to work, ten minutes before she was due. Her heart fluttered when she spotted him in the distance. She’d spent the entire night in a state of sensual arousal, her hands roaming her body, stoking the coals of excitement, but failing to satisfy her deepest needs. When she awoke, she looked at the other pillow on her king-sized feather bed, half-convinced her dream of being mounted and ridden by Zack to orgasm after orgasm was real.

She’d always had a powerful sex drive, surprising many of the men she’d dated. One particularly inept lover, initially full of braggadocio about his sexual prowess, called her a nymphomaniac when she demanded more. In the months after her parents’ deaths, she’d been too exhausted to even
think
about sex. With each passing moon, she’d felt no sexual desire—until now.

Despite all her sexual experimentation and one serious relationship, she had never hungered for a man like this. She stood next to her car and watched Zack’s fluid motions as he climbed out of his dusty pick-up truck and hid something behind his back. A rush of heat filled the core of her body, and she practically vibrated with anticipation. If she got through this day without tearing his clothes off, it would be a
miracle
.

He called out to her across the parking lot. “I like a punctual worker. Who’s looking after your brother?”

“Rebekkah.” Charlene had been surprised by the older woman’s immediate and positive response to her request for help.

Zack loped to her side in long, fluid strides. With a flourish, he produced a bouquet of daisies from behind his back. “Congratulations on your first day of work.”

Momentarily taken aback, she could only say, “Thank you,” in a squeaky voice.
Wasn’t that sweet of him?
She clutched the bouquet in her still shaking hands.

Zack pointed to a bright yellow school bus equipped with a lift. “There’s your ride.”

The vehicle was larger than she’d expected. The one she’d driven in Baltimore had been a little bus. Zack opened the folding door. Inside were a dozen dark metal bench seats with heavy padding, all with seatbelts. She noted space for two wheelchairs, and straps to secure them in place.

She whistled. “Pretty state of the art for a small town.” She ran her hand over the steering wheel. “Looks like new.”

He cocked his head, grinned and licked his lips, sending tremors through her thighs. “We may be country, but we know what’s
needed
.” His voice became husky on the last word, and he raised an eyebrow.

Did his eyes just change to green with orange sparks?
She blinked. Looked again. They were the same startling shade of blue.

“So, what do you say?” He patted the driver’s seat. “Let’s take this baby out on the road. You’re driving.”

“Aren’t you going to show me how it works? It’s different from the one I used to operate.”

“Experience is the best teacher. Key’s in the ignition.” He threw himself onto the bench seat behind the driver’s, gave her a lop-sided smile, and winked.

Was he flirting with her?
The unshakeable thought that he might be as attracted to her as she was to him made her heart stutter. Stirrings in the core of her body undulated from her stomach down to her inner thighs—and all points between. She slid into the driver’s seat, snapped on her seatbelt, clutched the steering wheel, and attempted to cage her wild urges.
No sex. Work. One foot in front of the other.

By dint of great effort and many gear-grinding, gut-wrenching minutes later, Charlene managed to get her rebellious body and the uncooperative bus under control. Sweat trickled into her eyes, down her back, and between her breasts as she jounced up and down the dusty hills.

“Follow this road, then make a left at the first intersection,” Zack directed. A manly smell tickled at her nose and teased her. It was almost hypnotic.

“I’ll introduce you to the mothers on the route,” he said as he fiddled with the label in the neck of her dress. “They’re gonna love you.”

She warmed at his light touch and feathers of desire stroked her spine. Each pothole and rock caused bounce added to her state of arousal.
Good God, I’m going to have an orgasm if he doesn’t stop that. Focus, Charlene, focus. You’re going to run off the road.

A dented aluminum mailbox perched on a wrought iron pedestal half-covered in clematis marked her first stop.

“Just stop here and honk,” Zack said.

Charlene leaned on the horn and waited. A few minutes later, a worn-out looking woman came down the dirt driveway. Half a dozen kids trailed after her—all tow-haired, blue-eyed girls in matching dresses.

Charlene opened the door, and the woman climbed up the steps.

“Zack! Who’s the new gal on the route?” The woman pushed strands of dishwater blonde hair off her face and shushed her little ones.

“Miz Jones, this here is Charlene Jessie Carter.”

“Just call me Charlene.”

The middle-aged woman eyed her up and down and turned to Zack. “Which is it? Jessie or Charlene?”

“She’s Jessie’s niece. Joanna’s girl.”

“Ahhh. Well, then, welcome to Eden.” Mrs. Jones smiled, showed gleaming white teeth, and bowed her head. “Learning the route?”

“Yep, I have a feeling she’ll do just fine.” Zack gave Mrs. Jones a two-finger salute on the brim of his gray baseball cap.

As she drove away from the Jones brood Charlene asked, “Where’s the little boy I’m supposed to pick up?”

“Oh, it’s a big job, bringing him down to the bus stop. Don’t worry. Come Monday, he’ll be out here, waiting for you.”

“And the girls? How do they get to school?”

“They go in earlier than the special needs kids, on a bigger bus.”

Each stop was the same. Each woman had a brood of blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls in matching dresses. Zack would say, this here’s Charlene Jessie Carter.” She’d say, “Call me Charlene.” And he’d add, “Jessie’s niece. Joanna’s girl.” At each stop, the mother gave her an odd little bow of the head.
What was that about?

As she drove, Zack reached over her shoulder to show her where to go, and brushed her cheek with his hand. She felt the heat rise in her face—not to mention elsewhere. She struggled to focus on driving and not on the disturbing reactions her body had to this man and his touch. “Tell me, have you lived here all your life?”

“Nah, I’m a newcomer. Only been here five years. From a couple towns over the mountains. Jethro took me in when I fell on hard times and sort of adopted me.”

She glanced in the rear-view mirror. “A little old to be adopted, aren’t you?”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “How old do you think I am?”

She shrugged. “Thirty?”

Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. “Close enough.”

“While we’re on age, I
have
to ask—how old
is
Jethro? He seems ancient. Is he in charge of everything? I can’t figure him out.”

Real laughter now. “Three days older than dirt would be about right, I’d say. Town elder and all that, but his power—let’s just say he’s not as strong as he used to be. Jethro knows Eden needs new blood.”

“Speaking of new…why aren’t there any satellite dishes on anyone’s homes? I haven’t seen a single television.”

He chuffed, almost to himself. “This area has bad reception, lots of problems with electrical things. Folks in Eden tell me it’s because of the old mining camp and all the underground tunnels. I’ll show you when we go past it on the route. You don’t want a break down there. Even radios don’t work near that place.”

“Does the school have computers?”

A hard laugh, almost a bark. “Yes, the Regional School has real live computers and cable television. That area doesn’t have the same problems we have in Eden. We’re not in the dark ages— we just have our own way of life. Not bad. Different. Simpler. Haven’t you ever wanted your life to be less complicated? People to be more direct?”

She flushed and knew her cheeks had to be apple-candy red. “I’m not sure I’m ready to handle that. I’m a city girl, you know.”

“Yeah, I noticed that about you right off.” He played with a strand of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. “But I won’t hold it against you. I’m hoping to
seduce
you to our way of life.”

Yes, he was definitely flirting with her. It had been months since a man had touched her, and she hungered for more. A vision of him in her bed, as Charlene nipped at his ears, neck, and other tasty places distracted her from driving.
Whoa! Slow down
! Her tame side chided her inner wild woman.
You hardly know this guy.
She shook her head and focused on asking more questions, instead of smelling his scent.