Perfect Kiss (10 page)

*

Shelby was crossing her fingers, toes, and eyes that Levi would start talking and she wouldn’t have to turn around. She needed a minute—or ten—to get herself together. Blinking several times, she tried to hold the tears that were pooling in her eyes at bay.

There is nothing to cry over. Levi just made an observation. That’s it.

Sure, it felt like he saw her—
really saw her
—when no one else did. Sure, there was no reason he should think she was a fighter. Sure, there was no explanation that her behavior as a fourteen-year-old freshman in a play that bombed four times should have made him look so full of pride. And sure, just one look from Levi made her feel safer, more secure and protected, than she had in oh…forever. But still, there was no reason to cry over it.

“My parents were on and off a lot my whole childhood.” Levi paused as he cleared his throat.

At the raw, raspy quality of his words, Shelby spun around without giving the fact that she still had tears in her eyes a second thought. On pure instinct, she needed to make sure he was okay. Even if that meant he would see the evidence of her emotional state.

What she saw was not what she’d expected.

Good news: It didn’t matter that she was being a big crybaby. Levi’s head was turned to the side and he was staring out the large picture window to the left. He wasn’t looking at her.

Bad news: That gave her time to fully appreciate the h-o-t
Playgirl
pose he was standing in. Well, at least on
him
it looked like a
Playgirl
pose. On any other guy, it probably would have looked totally innocent, not like the greatest temptation she’d ever seen. Her eyes weren’t the only things watering anymore. Her mouth was now producing saliva at an uncontrollable rate as she stared at the sexier-than-sin sight in front of her.

Solution: Look away. Turn around. Run out of the cabin.

Apparently, Shelby had no interest in solving her current predicament, because she didn’t do any of those things. Nope. She just stood there. Her eyes filled with tears and her mouth filled with drool.

Classy.

The worst part about the whole thing was that she didn’t even feel any embarrassment that this was what her life had been reduced to. Every cell in her body was too busy dealing with what her eyes were processing.

Levi was physical perfection. She’d already known that. But somehow, seeing him like this took his perfection to an almost mythical-godlike level. His hands were resting on the doorframe above his head, which caused the backside of his biceps to be showcased.

Shelby had never considered the underside of a man’s arm to be particularly appealing, but she had been naïve in her exclusion of this particular hidden gem of sexiness. The strong lines and lick-worthy dips that ran down the underbelly of Levi’s upper arm, were puddle-inducing sexy. The longer she stared at it, the deeper the pulse between her legs became.

How was it possible that Levi was just as sexy with his shirt on as he was with it off? That just wasn’t fair. How was she supposed to spend any amount of time, much less several hours at a time, during her shifts and survive?

“Most of the time, it was better when Charles was gone.”

Levi’s words snapped Shelby’s mind like a rubber band that had been pulled taut then let go back from the lust cliff she’d been standing on the edge of. Her eyes darted up to his face and she saw that he was still far away, staring out the window. She found herself holding her breath at what he would say next. Somehow, she knew that, whatever it was, it was significant that he was sharing it. Like he was pulling back a curtain he never let anyone see behind.

“Until I was around six, he’d show up every year or two for a couple of weeks, sometimes a month. Usually, things would be okay for a few days. Then he and my mom would start fighting. He’d turned our lives upside down, take whatever little money my mom had been able to scrape together, and then vanish. One day, he’d be there, and then, one day, we’d wake up and he’d be gone.”

Levi lowered his arms and crossed them in front of his chest. His eyes met hers, and now, she was holding her breath for an entirely different reason. The intensity in his stare was paralyzing. There was so much emotion behind the deep, caramel pools of his gaze. Even if she’d wanted to look away—which, at this moment, was the last thing she wanted—she didn’t think she’d be able to.

“I don’t have any normal father-son memories of him teaching me to ride a bike or tossing the ball around. He never talked to me about the birds and the bees or showed me how to shave or ride a bike.

“When I was six, he showed up, and at the time, I remember thinking that this time was different. He seemed more…present. He wasn’t going out every night and stumbling in after three a.m. drunk. He was having dinner with us. He even picked me up from my last day of second grade and said he had bags packed. We went and picked my mom up from work together and he surprised me and my mom by taking us on vacation.

“We went up to a small B&B and stayed for a week. It was great. He and my mom were getting along great. We did normal family vacation things. We went fishing. Hiked. Played board games. I thought that it was going to be like that forever.

“But it didn’t last. The day after we got home, we woke up and he was gone. My mom went to bed and stayed there. At the time, I thought she was sick, which I guess she was, if you count depression. Then, a couple of months later, my mom found out she was pregnant—with twins. After my brothers were born, my entire life changed. I wasn’t just looking out for me and my mom anymore. I had to grow up even faster than I already had.”

“I’m sorry.” The words flew from her lips before she could stop them. She hadn’t meant to interrupt what Levi was telling her, and she hoped he continued.

“It was what it was. I’m not complaining.” Levi’s jaw tightened. “But that week was more than just my only happy childhood memory. It was also like the last week I was a kid.”

Shelby felt so honored that Levi had shared this with her. She didn’t know him that well, but from what her brother and Amy and several other people had said, he was a fairly private person. No one knew a lot about his past.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah. I haven’t ever said any of that out loud before. Actually, I never even really thought through my motivation. I just knew what I wanted and I barreled ahead. Now that I have, it seems kind of pathetic.” Levi grinned, but it wasn’t happiness behind his smile.

“No.” Shelby stepped forward and placed her hand on his forearm. “It’s not pathetic at all. Really, it isn’t.”

She wanted to say how sweet she thought it all was, how much his story had touched her. But she didn’t. She knew that he wouldn’t want to hear that—at least, not right now.

His eyes dropped to where her hand rested on his arm, and she felt his muscles jump beneath her touch, which sent those trusty Levi-tingles shooting up her arm. In one second, the energy between them shifted. What, a moment ago, felt like a cocoon of closeness and acceptance now felt intimate in a completely different way.

“Thank you for saying that.” Levi’s deep voice vibrated through her.

Her gaze shifted down to his perfect lips, and she swallowed over the lump in her throat that the sight caused. She felt herself being drawn to his mouth like a magnet pulled to metal. Her fingers tightened around the taut skin on his muscular forearm as she lifted up on her toes.

One kiss. What could one kiss hurt?
A small voice in her head piped up.

Luckily, the louder voice she liked to call Reason, shouted over that other voice.
Everything. It could hurt everything.

Falling back down on her heels with a thud, Shelby pulled her hand back and then pushed past Levi’s large frame, which was taking up the entire doorframe.

“I have to go. I forgot I told Amy I would do some laundry tonight,” she lied as she made the hastiest exit in history.

As she speed-walked to her car, she tried to shake off the effects of the almost kiss that were playing havoc on her senses. She was lightheaded and dizzy. She might have even been mildly hyperventilating.

In that moment, she knew she needed to make a rule if she was going to have even a fifty-fifty chance of making it another week without jumping Levi. No more alone time. People were great buffers for sexual chemistry. And that was
all
she and Levi had. Sexual chemistry.

Yep. Sexual chemistry and nothing more. That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

Chapter 8

‡

L
evi was doing his best to concentrate on the customers in front of him as they told him about their rafting trip. He hoped that he appeared to be listening. He wanted to give them his attention, really he did, but his mind was rebelling against that desire.

When Levi had offered Shelby a job three weeks ago, he had done it with the best intentions. Well, mostly. The truth was that he had wanted to make sure she was okay. He’d needed extra help and she’d needed a job. Also, he knew that if she was in town, all he’d be doing was wondering when he would see her again.

Now, he wasn’t so sure he’d made the best decision.

On one hand, she seemed stronger every day, more like the girl he remembered. The customers loved her, and she was able to work more hours than Tessa had, so she’d proven to be an even bigger asset than he’d originally thought. Plus, her sales were impressive. That girl could upsell anything without seeming like a salesperson.

But, on the other hand, Levi was pretty sure he was going to die. True, he’d never heard of any man dropping dead from blue balls, but he would put money down that he was going to be the first recorded case.

“I bet you say that to all the girls.” Looking over her shoulder, Shelby winked at Casey and Eli—two guys from the firehouse who had been in every night since she’d started working and flirted with her relentlessly—as she pulled two longneck beers from the cooler Levi was standing in front of.

He hadn’t heard what the guys had said to her, but he could imagine. As irritated as it made him to see Shelby get hit on a hundred-plus times a shift, Levi couldn’t blame the guys. Hell, if things were different, he’d be doing
a lot
more than just throwing a few pickup lines her way.

A few weeks back, when he’d shown her the B&B and they’d had that moment, he’d been seconds away from crushing his mouth to hers and taking her up against the “load-bearing wall.” She brought out a side of him no other woman ever had.

Levi had always been laid back when it came to the opposite sex. Sure, he took the lead in bed, but that was mostly because that was what most women liked. Not because they inspired that in him on a primal level. Shelby brought out a raw, carnal, base instinct in him and they’d never done anything more than just kiss.

He’d hoped—naïvely—that the more time he spent around her, the less potent she would be. But that wasn’t the case. If anything, with every minute he was around her, he felt himself falling deeper and deeper under her spell.

A spell she seemed to be completely oblivious to.

Since almost kissing him in the cabin, he’d definitely felt like he’d been placed firmly in the friend zone. Or was it the boss zone, since she worked for him? Either way, it was the platonic zone. Which was exactly where he belonged. His mind knew that. Unfortunately, parts that lay lower south on the landscape of his body, had other ideas.

“Can I get another rum and Coke?”

Levi nodded at the pretty redhead sitting at his end of the bar. She’d been in the last two nights. He knew that she was in Hope Falls for the week for a corporate retreat. The participants were staying at Mountain Ridge. Next year, he hoped they would also be staying at the B&B.

“Here you go.” Levi set the drink down in front of her.

After taking a sip, she set the glass down and ran her finger around the edges. Her eyes were cast down towards her drink as she asked, “Sooo, are you two together?”

“What? Who?”

Lifting her gaze, she nodded towards the other end of the bar, where Shelby had about six guys’ undivided attention. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“Oh, no.” Levi shook his head. He had the urge to tell her that they were just friends or that Shelby just worked for him. But if there was one thing he’d picked up over the years he’d spent behind this bar, listening to people, it was that once you try to start explaining or defending something, you usually just end up sounding like you were trying to hide something.

“Really? You seem like… I mean, the way you look at her…”

Levi just smiled and remained quiet. He knew that this stranger was right. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been acutely aware of the fact that he couldn’t stop glancing over at Shelby, staring at Shelby…

Over the redhead’s shoulder, he noticed that one of the guys who was in the group playing pool motioned for another pitcher of beer. Nodding, he grabbed a pitcher and began filling it.

“Well, is there a Mrs. Hot Bartender?”

Levi’s lips pulled into a broad smile. This girl was not like the normal girls who came in here looking to hook up. She was pretty in an adorable kind of a way. Even though Levi didn’t know exactly what she did, he’d heard her on several business calls and she definitely had her shit together. He was definitely attracted to her, and she might be exactly what he needed to keep his mind from obsessing over Shelby.

He shut the tap off and turned fully towards her, leaning on the bar. “No. No Mrs. Hot Bartender. What about you? Is there a Mr. Sexy Redhead?”

A faint blush rose on her porcelain cheeks. “Nope.”

“I’m Levi.” He reached out, and when her fingers wrapped around his hand, he was happy to note that he
did
feel a spark of interest from the man downstairs. It was a small flicker, but hell, it was more than he’d felt for anyone besides his off-limits co-worker since the night he’d met her.

“I’m Adina, but my friend’s call me Dina.” Her green eyes sparkled as she smiled up at him.