Sex, Lies and Mistletoe (5 page)

“I really am blown away by how you’ve increased business here,” he said. “That whole aphrodisiac angle is really drawing them in, isn’t it? How’d you come up with that? Don’t tell me it’s from personal experience or I might have a heart attack.”

His flirty grin was easy, the look in his eyes friendly and fun. Pandora still inwardly cringed.

“Actually,” she corrected meticulously, her fingers defiantly combing through the soft, fluffy fur of the cat, “the recipes have been handed down from my great-grandmother. Do you remember her? She’s the one with all the experience.”

Pandora tried not to smirk when his smile dimmed a little. Nothing like offering up the image of a white-haired old lady to diffuse a guy’s sexy talk.

“How about dinner Friday night?” he said. “I’ll pick you up at seven and you can tell me all about your great-grandma and her recipes.”

What a stubborn man. But she was just as stubborn. She knew she had no reason to refuse—that she was getting a weird vibe wasn’t good enough—but still, Pandora shook her head.

“I’m sorry, but no,” she told him. Then, seeing the disappointment in his gaze, she tried to soften her words with a smile.

“I really wish you’d change your mind,” Sheriff Kendall said, reaching over Bonnie to give Pandora’s cheek a teasing sort of pinch. She gasped, her fingers clenching the cat’s fur. Whether it was in protest, or because the sheriff was just too close, Bonnie hissed and leaped from Pandora’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, stepping back so she and her cheek were out of reach. “I’m trying to focus on the store right now. I need to get us back on our feet before I start thinking about dating.”

“Okay. I understand.” He offered that friendly smile again and turned to go. Then he looked back. “Just so you know, though, I plan to keep coming back until I change your mind.”

Crap.

She waited until he stepped over Paulie, who carpeted the welcome mat like a boneless blanket of fur, and watched him slide behind the wheel of the police cruiser he’d parked to blocking the door. Then she almost wilted as the tension she hadn’t realized was tying her in knots seeped from her shoulders.

“No offense, boss, but you’re crazy,” Fifi declared, stepping next to Pandora and offering a sad shake of her head. “I’d do anything to date the sexy sheriff. I can’t believe you turned him down.”

What was she supposed to say? That her internal warning system was screaming out against the guy? That same system had hummed like a happy kitten over Sean.

So obviously, the system sucked.

She gave Fifi a tiny grimace and said, “I guess I might have been a little hasty turning him down.”

“A little? More like a lot crazy. Dude’s a serious heart-throb.”

Pandora grinned as the blonde gave her heart a thump-thumping pat.

“Okay,” she decided, squaring her shoulders against the sick feeling in her stomach. Just nerves about dipping back into the dating pond, she was sure. “I’ll tell you what. The next time he asks, I’ll say yes.”

Fifi’s cheer garnered a few stares and a lot of smiles, especially from the young man with shaggy brown hair who was watching her like an adoring puppy.

Well, there you have it, Pandora decided with a grin of her own. The town obviously approved.

Ten minutes later, Pandora was ringing up a customer and still worrying over whether Sean had ruined her for all men, when a sugary-sweet voice grated down her spine.

“My mother said there was a blown-glass piece in here she thought I’d like as a Christmas gift. She probably mixed up the store names again, though, poor dear. I don’t see anything in here I need.”

Crap. Pandora took a deep breath, gesturing with her chin for Fifi to close up the café for her. This would probably take a while. She’d gone to high school with Lilah Gomez, and eight years later the other woman still held the privilege of being Pandora’s least favorite person—which, given the events of this last year, was really saying something.

Knowing the importance of not showing weakness to her sworn enemy, she cleared her face of all expression and turned to the brunette.

“Your mother has excellent taste. Too bad she didn’t pass it, and the ability to dress appropriately, on to her only daughter,” Pandora said sweetly. She made a show of looking the other woman up and down, taking in her red pleather tunic with its low-cut, white fur-trimmed neckline that showed off her impressively expensive breasts. She raised a brow at the shimmery black leggings and a pair of do-me heeled boots that would make any dominatrix proud. “What do you call this look? Holiday hussy?”

“I’m the customer here. Why don’t you put on your cute-little-clerk hat and show me whatever overpriced joke my mother saw so I can reject it and go shop in a real store.”

“From where I’m standing, which is right next to the cash register, in the handful of times you’ve been in Moonspun Dreams you’ve never bought a single thing. So you’re not a customer. You’re a loiterer.”

Lilah responded with a haughty look. She’d never bothered with her frenemy act before. Probably because she knew that Pandora would see right through it. Instead, the brunette leaned both elbows on the counter and bent forward to say under her breath, “You’d know crime, now, wouldn’t you? What was it you were busted for? Something to do with drugs? Or was it lying?”

The only thing that persuaded Pandora to unclench her teeth was the fact that she couldn’t afford to get them fixed if one broke. Instead, she turned on the heel of her own unslutty boots and retrieved a blown-glass peacock, each feather shimmering delicately in the light.

Before she’d even set the piece on the counter, she could see the covetous spark in Lilah’s eyes. But instead of saying she liked it, the other woman turned her nose to the air and gave a sniff.

“It’s okay. Just the kind of thing I’d expect to find in this dingy little store.”

“The artist is one of my mother’s clients,” Pandora said, surreptitiously scraping the sale sticker off the price tag. She’d be damned if Lilah was getting thirty percent off. “Her work is currently in the White House and was recently featured in a George Clooney movie.”

Drool formed in the corner of Lilah’s heavily painted mouth. Her hand was halfway to her purse before she thought to ask, “How much is it?”

The desire to make a sale warred with the desire to kick the bitchy woman out of the store. But responsibility always trumped personal satisfaction for Pandora. Which was probably why women like Lilah, and Cassiopeia, Fifi and even old Mrs. Sellers, had a lot more fun that she did.

With one unvarnished fingernail, she pushed the price tag across the counter. Lilah’s eyes rounded and her lips drooped.

“Will you hold it? My mother hinted that she’d get it for me as a Christmas gift.”

“You want me to hold an overpriced joke?”

The woman’s glare was vicious, but she jerked her chin in affirmation.

Hey, that was fun. Maybe all Cassiopeia’s lectures about karma were true.

Before Pandora could decide whether to go for gracious or gloating, a loud roaring rumbled through the air.

She and Lilah both stared as a huge Harley slowed down, the helmeted rider turning his head to stare into the store. A shiver skittered between Pandora’s shoulder blades. Another out-of-towner? Usually tourism went dry in Black Oak between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s. It was probably someone visiting Custom Rides, the motorcycle shop that backed up to Moonspun.

“Company?” Fifi speculated, coming in from the café to stare, too.

“Must have heard about the yippee-skippy you’re offering up,” Mrs. Sellers predicted, heading out the door hand in hand with her tottering hunk of afternoon delight.

As one, Pandora sighed and Lilah sneered.

“That’s disgusting,” Lilah muttered.

“What is? The idea of two people enjoying each other’s company?”

“You know they’re sneaking off to have sex,” the woman said, hissing the last word as if it were pure evil. The over-blown brunette averted her eyes from the elderly couple as though she was worried that they wouldn’t hold out until they toddled all the way to their love nest, instead giving in and doing the nasty right there in the doorway.

“And sex is bad… Why?” Pandora put on her most obnoxious, innocently sweet smile. “From what I heard, you were having it a couple nights ago. Wasn’t it in the backseat of an old Nova parked behind Lander’s Market?”

Fifi giggled, forcing Lilah to split her glare between the two women.

Before she could spill her ire, though, the chimes over the door sang. And in walked Pandora’s worst nightmare. The sexiest man she’d ever seen, wearing black leather and a dangerous attitude. The kind of guy who could make her forget her own name, right along with her convictions, her vow of chastity and where she’d left her underpants.

Black hair swept back from a face worthy of a
GQ
cover. Sharp cheekbones, a chiseled, hair-roughened chin and vivid gold eyes topped broad shoulders and long, denim-clad legs that seemed to go on forever.

Pandora’s hormones sighed in appreciation as desire flared, smoking hot, in her belly. She wanted to leap over the counter and slide that leather jacket off those wide shoulders and see up close and personal if his chest and arms lived up to the promise of the rest of his body.

“Oh, my,” Fifi breathed.

“Hubba hubba,” Lilah moaned.

“Go away,” Pandora muttered.

The guy paused just inside the door, then knelt down to give Paulie’s head a quick rub before straightening and looking around. His narrowed gaze seemed to take in everything in one quick glance. Then his eyes locked on Pandora’s. Nerves battled with lust as she felt something deep inside click. A recognition. And that soul-deep terror that this was a man who spelled trouble in every way possible.

“LADIES,” CALEB GREETED, barely aware of the two women on his side of the counter. His eyes were glued on the sweet little dish on the other side.

Her hair, a dark auburn so deep it looked like mahogany, tumbled over her shoulders in a silken slide, the tips waving over the sweet curve of her breasts. She wore a simple white shirt that draped gently over her curves instead of hugging them, and tiny silver earrings that made her look like a sweet-faced innocent. From the fresh-faced look, she didn’t have any makeup on, either. Or maybe it just seemed that way because she was standing next to a gal who troweled it on like spackle.

“Well, hello there,” Spackle Gal said. The brunette, dressed as if she moonlighted on the stroll, minced her way across the floor to lay a red-taloned hand on his arm. “It’s a pleasure to have you here in Black Oak. I’m the welcome wagon, and I’d be happy to show you a good time while you’re visiting our little town.”

His brow arched, Caleb glanced at her hand, then back at her face. It only took her a second to get a clue and move her fingers back where they belonged.

“I know the town just fine, thanks,” he dismissed. His gaze went back to the sweetie behind the counter. “Apparently I don’t know everyone in town as well as I’d like, though.”

The brunette gave a little hiss. Caleb ignored her. Despite her clear message of a free-and-easy good time, he wasn’t interested.

He’d only come in to check the place out. Not because he was interested in… He looked around, wondering what the hell they sold here. This store shared the alley with what was apparently his father’s motorcycle shop. His dad had still been on the take when Caleb had lived in Black Oak, so his shop was new, and Caleb’s familiarity with this side of town sketchy.

So this weird store was going to be his new home away from home. By hanging here he could scope things out. Get the lay of the land, keep low for a few days and see how much intel he could scout. Then he’d decide if he wanted to let Tobias know he was in town or not.

“Some people aren’t as important to know as others,” the brunette said, trying her luck again by nudging close enough to press one impressive breast against his arm. Caleb was grateful for the extra protection of his leather jacket. “Why don’t you and I go to Mick’s for a drink and I’ll introduce you around.”

Caleb wanted to sigh. God, he was tired. Undercover standard operating procedure said take her offer. She was the perfect cover. A resident who probably liked her gossip, she could fill him in on all the townspeople. As blatantly sexual as she was, she might even have an in with the ecstasy crowd.

She’d obviously be happy to offer up any manner of information, favors and probably kinky acts, and walk away with a smile and no regrets the next morning. But he was tired of using himself, losing himself, like that.

And, dammit, he was supposed to be on vacation. A man shouldn’t feel guilty about turning down cheap sex while he was on vacation.

“I’m good,” he said, stepping away to make his rejection clear. From her glare, she got the message loud and clear. Color high on her cheeks, she shot an ugly look at the girls standing at the counter before heading for the door.

“You might want to slow down on testing your wares from the café, Pandora,” the vamp warned over her shoulder as she teetered out of the store. “Not only is that aphrodisiac crap in danger of making you sound like a slut, but you’re gaining weight.”