It Must Have Been the Mistletoe(55)

She was polite. She was even sweet. She texted like a maniac. She scanned the pages, somehow not getting nauseous, which made Tyler a little jealous. He couldn’t read in a moving car without tossing his lunch.

But by the time she’d settled down with the papers, a red pen and a blank notebook, he’d gotten no more out of her than when he’d started. When she began humming along to “Silent Night,” he gave up.

Thirty minutes later he left the freeway. Taking that as some kind of signal, Rita hit the bag once again, pulling out a cosmetic bag and going to work. In the ten minutes it took Tyler to reach the small bike shop on the far side of a strip mall, she’d transformed her face from naked to sultry.

He told himself he was feeling antsy because he needed to get out and stretch his legs. But since his third leg was stretching quite nicely on its own, he had to cop to self-delusion.

Killing the engine, he kept his gaze on the shop instead of looking at Rita again. “You want to come in?”

“Nah, I’ve got some things to do still,” she said distractedly. “I need to get into my stuff in the back, though. Okay?”

“Sure,” he agreed, jumping out of the truck in unseemly haste and hobbling toward the safety of men, bikes and the scent of motor oil.

After twenty minutes of BSing with his buddy, Roy, and a few biker pals, guilt set in. He’d thought Rita would have joined him by now. It was pretty damned cold out there. Telling the guys he’d be back, he headed toward the truck. Within a few feet he could see she wasn’t in the cab, so he rounded the bed.

He could barely pick her out in the crowd. Bikers were shoulder to shoulder with what looked like bankers from the S and L on the corner. Mixed in were a few gals with huge hair that he suspected worked at the beauty salon in the mall.

“What the hell…” He stared, slack-jawed, as Rita waved her hand, all game-show hostess like, over the array of vividly colored items spread across the tailgate of his truck.

“What the hell are these?” she clarified, stepping around two blondes to greet him.

Even knowing he was no better than one of Pavlov’s pups, Tyler swept his gaze over her face, now pinup-girl exotic. Her hair was still in a ponytail, but she’d done something to make it look all fifties’ movie-star flirty. She was still in the same jeans she’d worn earlier, but she’d replaced her red puffy jacket with a black studded leather one.

Tyler’s mouth watered.

“These are toys,” she said. It took him five seconds and the direction of her pointing finger to remember the question.

“Toys.”

“Sex toys.”

“I realize they’re sex toys. Why are they here? Now? On my truck?” He stared, fixated, at a foot-long, neon-green monstrosity with the head—and face—of a dinosaur.

Her laugh was all it took to rip his attention from the freakish dildo back to her. She ran her tongue over her upper teeth to hide a smirk, he was sure.

“I see you’re interested in the T-Sex—the dinosaur of dildos,” she explained, sounding like a TV commercial hawking a new model car. “Guaranteed to make your woman roar with pleasure.”

“What…”

“What am I doing with them? Selling them, of course.” She indicated the little slips of paper she’d tucked underneath each toy. He squinted, seeing she’d not only written up descriptions, but detailed suggestions for ways to use them, along with the asking price.

Tyler was grateful the icy wind was there to cool his cheeks before the heat became apparent.

Didn’t matter, though. Rita, probably having a special radar for that kind of thing, laughed.

She leaned forward and gave his cheek a soft pat. The smooth touch of her fingers made him want to grab her wrist and nibble his way up her arm.

“Don’t worry, big boy,” she purred. “You can have first dibs. I’ll even give you a good-driver discount.”

The only thing that kept Tyler from grabbing her by that tiny waist, tossing her in the bed of the truck and showing her just exactly how good he could drive was the six-and-a-half-foot biker in studded leather who’d tapped her on the shoulder and asked the price of a set of candy-cane-styled nipple rings.





4




“SEX TOYS?”

Rita tried not to giggle as she counted her cash. Tyler had been repeating that same phrase for the past half hour. Over and over and over. You’d think the guy had never seen a plastic rainbow cock ring before.

“Do you have a personal or moral issue with pleasure aids?” she asked, tucking her tongue in her cheek as she noted the sold prices on her inventory list. Woot! She wouldn’t starve on the drive home. Not too shabby considering only three of the people she’d texted had shown up. She’d sold more to the guys in the bike shop than anyone else. Maybe that’s why Tyler was freaking.