Twelve Dates of Christmas: The Ballad of Lula Jo (Lonesome Point) (11 page)

Either way, Mia didn’t want to get caught with her tongue in a strange man’s mouth.

“Someone’s coming,” she whispered against his lips, flattening her hands on his sculpted chest and pushing him away.

But as she left the circle of warmth they’d created and scrambled to her feet, she couldn’t ignore the wave of disappointment that washed through her. It had been so long since she’d been close to someone, since she’d had anything but a hug from a friend, or a kiss on the cheek from her gram after brunch on Sunday. She hadn’t realized how much she craved this kind of intimacy. How much she longed to touch and be touched, to lose herself in someone’s strong arms, and for the first time since everything started to go to hell with Paul, to feel a little less alone.

“What’s up?” Bubba kept his voice low, but he didn’t hunch behind the bushes as he crossed the parking lot near the hedge. It was too dark to see his face, but Mia could imagine the suspicious look he was shooting in her new friend’s direction. Bubba was protective, almost to a fault, and the man she’d just finished kissing looked like someone a girl might need protection from.

The stranger was now on his feet, and looking even bigger than she’d estimated him to be. He was at least six foot three—just a hair shorter than Bubba’s six four. But whereas Bubba was built like a man who hustled up electric poles for a living and scaled mountains in his spare time, the stranger was built like a man who lifted cars off trapped kittens for a day job and hurled boulders around for fun. With impossibly broad shoulders, thickly muscled arms, and a chest Mia knew was carved from a hunk of solid rock, he was an intimidating specimen.

He would have been flat out scary, if Mia hadn’t known that he kissed with as much tenderness as confidence, and that his touch made only promises, no demands.

“Um, nothing’s up,” Mia whispered, hiding how flustered she felt by taking a peek over her shoulder at the shop across the street. “I had a close call with Lula, but it looks like she’s gone back inside.” She turned back to the men. “My new friend helped me out. New friend, this is Bubba, Bubba, this is—”

“Sawyer,” the stranger said, holding out a hand, sparing her the embarrassment of confessing she didn’t know his name.

Bubba clasped his hand and gave it a firm shake. “Robert Lawson, but everyone calls me Bubba. You staying at the hotel?”

“Yeah, checked in this afternoon.” Sawyer released Bubba’s hand. “I was having a hard time sleeping, so I figured I’d grab something to eat, but everything around here looks closed. You two know if anything’s open close by? A diner or something?”

Bubba gave Sawyer directions to the truck stop diner by the highway, the only place in town open twenty-four hours, while Mia squinted into the darkness and cursed herself for not eating more carrots as a child. Her eyes had adjusted enough that she could see Sawyer was bald, and had a nicely shaped head, but she couldn’t make out much of his face. Just the ghost of high cheekbones, and the sharp right angles of a jaw that was every bit as hard as the rest of him.

Sawyer thanked Bubba for the directions and shook his hand again before turning back to Mia and adding in a more intimate tone, “I would say goodbye, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Oh, right, um…Mia.” She thrust a flustered arm toward him. “Mia Sherman.”

“Nice to meet you, Mia.” His warm, dry palm engulfed her hand, sending a shiver of awareness prickling across her skin. “Hope I’ll see you around.”

“I’m sure you will. It’s a small town.” She pulled her hand from his, and crossed her arms, willing her body to simmer the heck down. “But I won’t run you over again. I promise. That was a
one-time
thing
.” She hit the words hard, hoping he would understand that she was talking about the kiss, as well as their collision. “I don’t usually go around diving through bushes in the middle of the night so…don’t worry.”

“I won’t,” he said, a cocky note in his voice Mia didn’t care for. “You two have a nice night.”

And then he turned and swaggered across the parking lot. Literally
swaggered
, like the hero of an action film, off to fight the bad guys, and probably blow up a few buildings while he was at it.

Mia wanted to yell that there was no need to swagger on your way to get greasy eggs at a truck stop diner at three in the morning, but then Sawyer stopped beside the vintage Shovelhead Harley Davidson that Ross had been drooling over earlier in the evening, and swung one muscled thigh over the seat. He mounted the machine with an easy grace that made Mia’s mouth go dry, and things low in her body envy the leather between his thighs, before gunning the chopper to life, and guiding the purring bike out onto Main Street without a backward glance.

“Am I crazy,” Bubba said, as the rumble of the Harley’s motor faded into the distance, “or were you kissing that guy before I walked up?”

“Where’s Ross?” Mia asked, affecting greater concern than she felt for the man, who was probably at her place making nachos as she spoke. “Is he okay? Did you two get caught?”

“Because it looked like you were kissing him,” Bubba said, obviously not prepared to let the subject drop. “I kind of hope you were, Mia. This schoolmarm thing is a dumb idea.”

“Spinster, not schoolmarm,” Mia corrected. “And it’s not a dumb idea; it’s my destiny.”

Bubba stepped closer, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I get that you were in a bad place when you came home, babe, but you know that curse isn’t real, right? I mean, what happened to your gram was just bad luck.”

Mia bristled, but she refused to have this discussion again. She and Bubba had had the same argument a dozen times in the past year, and every time, it ended badly. Bubba came from a long line of mostly practical people, who lived off the land, and Mia came from a long line of cursed first daughters, who lived a real life ghost story, and both of them were too stubborn to entertain the other person’s point of view. It was better to table this line of questioning, and forget she’d ever kissed Sawyer. He was just another tourist. He’d be gone in a few days, and then everything would be the way it was before.

It was a strangely sad thought, but comforting, too.

At least that’s what Mia told herself.

“Is Ross making nachos?” Mia shrugged Bubba’s hand off her shoulder and started across the parking lot. “Because I’m starving.”

Bubba sighed, but fell in beside her. “He was chopping up onions and cilantro when I left.”

Mia moaned in anticipation. “Oh, good. I love them with cilantro.”

“I told him to throw some cookies in the oven, too. Just in case we needed sweet after the salty.”

“Sounds perfect,” Mia said, but as she and Bubba walked through the warm night, with a sky full of diamonds twinkling overhead, and a gentle breeze kissing their skin, she wasn’t thinking about nachos and cookies, or even good friends and beer.

She was thinking about kisses that made your toes curl, and a man who tasted like long summer days and hot summer nights.

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