Need You for Mine(18)

He was the kind of guy who liked to set the pace—for everything. Even worse, he only had two speeds: Superman and How you doing? The former he used to fight fires, and the latter he used when sparking them. But since Harper was itching for a fight, he was wasting his good moves.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He took a leisurely sip of his coffee, savoring it for a moment, while a gentle summer breeze carried the sweet scent of ripe grapes through town. “Helping you sell a Honeysuckle demi-cup and matching boy-shorts,” he said, his eyes dropping to the vee of her dress. He ran his thumb over the edge of her dress near her collarbone.

She swatted his hands away. “She’s not a customer, and I’m not selling her a bra-and-panty set. She is a sales rep and . . .” Her voice trailed off because Adam’s eyes had drifted down. Maybe there was something to the red rule. It was something she could investigate later, after the rep agreed to the original terms.

“What are you doing here?” she asked again, this time annoyingly breathless. Which had zero to do with the way his work shirt clung to his chest and arms. Or that he’d arrived at the store on his big red engine, which was glistening in the sun beside them and making him look bigger than life.

“I came for my jacket,” he said, looking into the shop. Harper glanced over to watch the flurry of sunbonnets and man-hammocks swarming the register. “I left it the other night, and I need to get it back. It’s my uniform jacket.”

“Sorry, I haven’t seen it.” There wasn’t an inch in that shop that Harper hadn’t dusted or decorated since last week.

“It was hanging by the dressing-room door.”

“Nope.”

At her easy dismissal, he leaned in slightly and grinned. “Maybe you can help me look for it?”

“I’m a little busy right now.” She pointed inside the store where every bifocaled eye now stared back. A few faces were even pressed to the window.

Completely unfazed, Adam waved to his adoring public, then turned his back on them, getting eye-to-eye with Harper. That’s when the phone cameras came out, arthritic fingers ready to shoot. “How about tonight then?”

Adam’s gaze dropped to her lips, which immediately began to tingle—stupid lips. Even stupider were her feet. Because as Adam closed in, coming so near that she could smell the hot summer morning on his skin—she didn’t step back.

Nope, with a six-foot-plus wall of testosterone and yummy male coming at her, her brain short-circuited, and her feet went the wrong way—they closed the distance instead of creating more of it.

She licked her lips, making the tingling worse, because all she could think about was him licking her lips. Again.

Maybe taking a little nibble of his in the process.

A surprised but positively wicked spark lit his eyes and he laughed, low and rough, as if he knew exactly what direction her thoughts had taken.

Harper resisted the sexual vortex pulling her in, reminded herself of how many ladies his lips had charmed, and suggested, “Why don’t you ask Baby? She may have seen it.”

“I’d rather find it with you.” The man didn’t even have the good manners to look embarrassed.

“Sorry. Busy.”

Adam didn’t look deterred—in fact, he looked determined—but he asked, “Is Baby around?”

“She doesn’t work here anymore,” Harper said, feeling a heavy dose of guilt push down on her. “She was let go.”

Adam’s smile fell and his face went slack. “I got her fired?”

“Baby got herself fired,” Harper said, because even though Adam didn’t help matters, she truly believed people were responsible for their own choices. And Baby chose to put her job in jeopardy. Not Adam. “She was using the shop for personal, uh, aspirations, and that goes against shop policy.”

“Baby might have invited me, but I said yes to the after-hours party,” he admitted, his voice laced with disappointment, surprising the hell out of Harper. “I didn’t think it through, and I willingly participated in the against-policy . . . aspirations. And now she’s fired.”

He sounded genuinely remorseful, appalled even—at himself—and that had to mean something. Maybe it was proof that under the life’s-one-big-pillow-fight attitude he had permanently tattooed to his forehead, Adam had a softer side. That his shallow interests in women were nothing more than a cover for hidden depths.

“It all worked out. My grandma wanted her back, but she’d already landed her dream job down the street,” Harper said gently, placing her hand on his to reassure him that he hadn’t single-handedly led Baby into a life of unemployment and debauchery.