She frowned.
Sweat didn't usually tickle. Not like that.
She moved to shift the car into drive and something dark scurried over her windshield. "What the-"
A line of fire ants marched across her steering wheel.
Anna shrieked. She threw the car into park and tumbled out of it. "Get off! Get off!" She raked her hands over her arms and hopped on her clogs to shake the little buggers off. The prickles moved to her back, up her neck, into her hair. She knew the ants couldn't be up there, there'd only been one or two, but she scrubbed at her scalp anyway.
"Ma'am? You okay?" A guy leaned out the side of a red car behind her. She was blocking one of the exits.
"Oh, yeah, sure, you betcha." She wiggled her itching toes. "Sorry. It'll just take me a minute to get out of your way."
Her car's engine whined. Heat radiated off the hood and wrinkled the air. The backs of her knees tingled as if a hundred ants had gathered there for an impromptu Riverdance.
A car door shut behind her. "Need a hand?" he drawled in a local-boy kind of way.
"Everything's fine. Thanks." Because she carried insect-killer in her car all the time in case her car came down with a case of the ants.
It took some effort to not reach for her phone. This was the kind of thing Neil would've taken care of for her. And it pissed her off that she wanted to let the man approaching solve her problem.
She was an independent woman, dammit. She'd fix this herself. She squared her shoulders, marched to the edge of her door, and hit her trunk release. She scooted around the car to survey the potential ant weapons in her trunk. She had to have something useful. Maybe she could club them one by one with her jumper cables. Shoot her emergency flares at them. Drop the box of Neil's junk on them. Label them to death with the label maker.
It'd worked on her marriage.
And there was that stingy feeling behind her eyeballs again.
Long runner's legs ending in flip-flop – clad feet entered her blurred vision. "You got some friends there."
If Neil had to leave her, he should've done it somewhere else. Somewhere without fire ants, somewhere more hospitable to her Norwegian coloring, somewhere with halfway intelligent locals. She shot her audience a look she should've tried on the ants. "Where I come from, they're called a nuisance."
Instead of shriveling up and dying, he flashed her a goofy grin. His dark-lashed eyes creased in the corners.
Those lashes and the mass of just-long-enough-to-be-curly hair on his head were proof positive a man could have brains or looks, but not both.
And that tingly sensation along her breastbone was proof positive she had no business being single. First she agreed to a date with Rodney, now she was getting hot over a redneck.
She was supposed to be worrying about the ants. Class. Her life.
He scratched his curly hair and surveyed her neatly organized trunk.
As if he could wield her jumper cables better than she could against an army of fire ants.
Instead, he swung her Windex out of the trunk like a gunslinger preparing for a showdown, then tucked her paper towels under his arm.
"My car is very-" she started, but then it hit her.
He wasn't going to clean it.
Carbon-based ants, meet ammonia.
Forgetting simple chemistry principles was not a good omen for her degree.
Wanting to watch her unexpected helper go to battle against the ants wasn't a good omen for her sanity.
Her skin flushed as if she were standing inside Hell's boiler room. She reached for the Windex, but something stopped her before she could get close enough to grab it.
Something that tasted suspiciously like fear.
Not of him.
Of herself.
"I'll do it," she bit out. She flicked her fingers up, gesturing for him to hand over the Windex.
"Ain't no trouble." His gaze wandered down her body, and she felt a whomp in her chest beneath the tingles spreading to her rib cage.
"Be a shame to mess up them pretty clothes," he said.
"I can handle this," she said firmly. She gestured to his car. "There's another exit two rows down. I've taken enough of your time."
His eyes were big and blue as her wounded heart, but when he squinted at her like that, they went a shade darker to cobalt. "Now I'm sure it don't matter none to you, but my momma'd have my hide if she heard I abandoned a lady with critters in her car."
Anna stifled a whimper of frustration. She swiped at her forehead. She'd probably drown in her own sweat before she managed to wrestle the Windex out of his hands.
If she could get brave enough to get within touching distance of him. "I don't know your momma, so you don't have anything to worry about."
He scratched his hair again, and she felt an intense desire to claw out that part of her that wanted to know how it would feel between her fingers.
Rebound, her brain yelled.
Something more primitive was still clamoring about his hair.
… Excerpt from SOUTHERN FRIED BLUES by Jamie Farrell ©2013
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Kelley Schmidt for naming Will's assistant, Cassidy. Also thanks to Shari Bartholomew for letting me borrow Wrigley's name, and to Sacha Coutu for letting me turn her into a psychic for the purposes of this book. To Rebecca Whaley for naming Will's old dog, Bandit, and to Dee Vandermolen and Corie Glenn for inspiring the names of Mari Belle's dogs, Chicken and Biscuits. And speaking of Mari Belle, thanks to Debbie Oxier for suggesting Marigold and to Summer Hagy for suggesting Belle when I was struggling with finding just the right name for Will's sister. Y'all outdid yourselves.
A big shout-out to Rachel Harris for letting me mention Cherish, Louisiana, and Tyler Blue and his song, "Rain Dance." (And if y'all haven't read Accidentally Married on Purpose, you should!)
An amazing, overwhelmed thanks to my Feisty Belles Fan Group. You ladies make my day, every day. Love you, Belles!
A special thank you to Luke Bryan (whom I don't know, sadly enough) for his weekly LBTV episodes, which I watched religiously in the name of research for this book. And on a related note, thank you to my hubby (whom I do know, happily enough) for only snorting a little when I made that declaration about watching LBTV solely for research purposes.
To Kelsey Browning and Maria Geraci, y'all are my rocks in this business. Hugs!!
And finally, to my family. I love you!