Her heart thundered in her ears, and her cheeks burned.
Oh. Shit.
Focused only on escape from the men’s bathroom, she whirled around and slammed right into an immovable object in the hot-blooded form of Logan Martin.
She bounced back and teetered on her heels.
Only his strong fingers wrapped around her bare upper arms saved her from falling backward. Electricity sparked across her skin, leaving nothing but jumbled nerves and half-melted objections in its wake. She thought she’d been vaccinated against his brand of hotness, but it looked like she needed a booster shot.
All her know-better-nows turned to ash under the heat of his touch, each finger burning an imprint on her skin. Her nipples pebbled, the hard points pushing against the unlined lace. Being this close to him was like sitting under a hotness heat lamp. In the desert. At high noon. The potency made her panties wet and her belly light. The last man she should want just had to be the one man she’d never been able to forget.
She should step out of his embrace. At least cross her arms to cover her exposed flesh and block out the bam-chica-bam-bam porn music playing in her head.
“Logan.” His name escaped her lips with far more breathiness than the low-down cur deserved, but damn she couldn’t help herself.
As slow as molasses in January, his lazy perusal inched its way up from her lace-covered breasts, continuing upward, across the bare expanse of her heated skin to her face. What she saw then had her rethinking her life choices. His brown eyes had darkened to black pits of want and desire, but there was more than animal lust there. And that scared her out of her mind.
She should back up. She should scream. Hell, she should be halfway down the hallway like a bat out of hell.
He zeroed in on her mouth. Her heavy, aching breasts nearly brushed against his shirt buttons.
“Miranda.” His lips were only a few scant inches above hers. Close enough that she could feel him without them even touching.
Everything south of her neck turned molten, blocking out the weak SOS her brain emitted. Miranda’s lips parted as if of their own volition, and a tiny sigh escaped her.
Water hit the tile floor and splashed against her leg. The sink!
Whipping around and out of Logan’s embrace, Miranda turned off the faucet and yanked out the sink’s stopper.
The creak of the bathroom door opening and shutting echoed in the small room. Her gut twisted. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed her suspicion.
Logan was gone.
Her fingers rubbed against her un-kissed and still-yearning lips. It was a blessing, really. He was the enemy. The one guy she could never give in to. Not again. With a white-knuckle grip, she twisted her shirt and squeezed out the water. Her hands shook as she unwound the material and dropped the sopping mess into the empty sink. What in the hell had she been thinking?
She pulled several sheets of brown paper towels from the dispenser, hard enough to shake the plastic holder on the wall, and dropped them to the floor to soak up the spill.
He was a Martin for God’s sake. And not just any Martin. The one who not two hours ago had turned her down for the loan she desperately needed. The one who’d taken her virginity and said nothing while the town whispered about how “that Sweet girl” had led him astray.
She balled up the paper towels and tossed them toward the trash. They hit the wall above the can with a hard thunk and fell into the bin.
“You’re a class A moron, Miranda Sweet.” She glared at her reflection in the mirror.
Her bottom lip shook. She stood in the men’s restroom, practically naked from the waist up and her hair going every which way. The shirt she’d meant to clean was a wadded up, water-logged ball in the sink. Yeah, par for the course for someone from her family.
Closing her eyes, she sucked in several cleaning breaths. She had to turn the brewery around, earn her corner office and get the hell out of this town before it turned her into just another crazy Sweet.
There was no way she’d be able to dry the shirt enough to wear. Luckily, she was parked only a block away. She grabbed her jacket, slipped it on, and fastened both buttons. The black blazer’s deep V showed off enough cleavage to qualify for one of her sister Olivia’s magazine covers, but it would have to do. She would just have to bust a move out the The Kitchen Sink’s front door.
Pulling open the bathroom door before she lost her nerve, Mirada hustled into the hallway.
“We can’t let her ruin this deal,” a man grumbled, his voice wafting out from inside the private dining room. “The last thing Salvation needs is to have another Sweet messing things up in this town.”
She jerked to a halt outside the partially open door.
“I say we sue,” a woman said.
Miranda huffed out a breath, sending a chunk of hair flying up. For what? Not toeing the stuffy town line? She balled her hands into fists as heat bubbled up in her belly. The bastards. She’d been in town for twenty-four hours and they were already trying to run her out on a rail.