She took a moment to admire the way the puddle of panties glowed in the moonlight like the mucus of a diseased alien before turning back toward the fence—
And running right into Lula’s gardening stool, knocking it to the ground.
Mia froze, silently praying that the falling stool hadn’t been as loud as she thought, but then she heard it—the scrape of chair legs against a hardwood floor, coming from the second floor of Tea for Two.
“Shit,” she cussed beneath her breath, leaping the fallen stool and sprinting for the gate. She reached the picket fence and vaulted over, but when she landed on the other side, and started for the curb, she was jerked back into the boards.
The fence rattled, and Mia cussed again as she reached behind her, fumbling to liberate her tee shirt from the top of the fence post, cursing her decision to embrace the retro trend and wear an oversized cropped shirt over her purple spandex tank top. She had just wiggled free, when Tea for Two’s front porch light flicked on behind her, casting jagged, fence-post shadows across the sidewalk.
It was a deadly omen if Mia had ever seen one.
Without risking a glance over her shoulder, she sprinted off the curb and across the street, gunning it for the protection of the Blue Saloon’s hedge with everything in her. Her fists pumped like pistons and her thighs burned with the force of her exertion, but she knew she wasn’t going to make it before the door opened behind her, not unless she did something drastic.
Later, Mia would blame it all on the whiskey, but in the heat of the moment, diving into the bushes and rolling onto the parking lot pavement on the other side seemed like a perfectly acceptable plan. Sure, she might end up with a few scrapes, but she would escape without being made as the Panty Bandit, and that would make it all worth it. The fact that anyone with half a brain would know that the prank-inclined owner of the lingerie shop was responsible for pantying downtown didn’t matter. If no one caught her in the act, she would still have plausible deniability.
And so she jumped, diving arms first through a narrow opening in the hedge, bracing herself for impact with the pavement on the other side. But instead of flying through the air, and starting her roll as she lost momentum, Mia collided with a wall of firm, human flesh.
Mia stifled her bleat of surprise—Lula was no doubt standing on her front porch by now, and her hearing was excellent—but the man she’d body-slammed let out a loud “Oof” as she toppled him. The man’s larger form cushioned her fall, but Mia winced as his body collided with the pavement.
That had to have hurt.
“So sorry,” she whispered, scrambling to get off her poor victim, but only succeeding in slamming her kneecap against his before she fell on top of him again.
He cried out in pain just as Lula called, “Who’s there?” from across the street.
“What the—”
Mia’s hands flew to cover the man’s mouth, trying to silence him.
“—hell is going on?” he finished in a way-too-loud voice, his lips moving beneath her hand.
“Shhh!” she hissed. “Please, be quiet.”
“Who are you running from?” he asked, at the same moment Lula shouted—
“Do I hear your voice Amelia Louise Sherman?”
Panicked, Mia knew she had only one course of action. She couldn’t see much in the shadows behind the bushes, but the man beneath her had recently shaved, and smelled of leather and soap—something crisp that reminded her of floating the Rio Grande in springtime. He was obviously clean, and in excellent shape, if the rock hard chest she was sprawled on top of was anything to judge by. She had probably kissed worse in her lifetime, and right now there was only one way she could think of to shut him up before he lured Lula off her porch and across the street.
“Did you hear me?” the man asked, his voice so deep it made Bubba’s sound girly in comparison. “Are you okay? Who are you—”
Mia leaned in, covering his mouth with her own, silencing him with a kiss.
At first his lips remained hard, immovable—chiseled marble every bit as muscled and unrelenting as the rest of him. Mia’s pulse spiked with anxiety, worrying that she had just added assault-with-unwanted-lips to her list of sins against this man, but then it was like a switch flipped inside of him. His mouth came to life beneath hers, and Mia’s blood pumped faster for reasons that had nothing to do with nerves.
The stranger’s big hand threaded through her hair, pulling her closer as his tongue slipped between her lips, swirling through her mouth with a skilled sensuality that took her breath away. He tasted of salt, summertime, the desert wind, and a dozen mysterious, manly things she couldn’t put names to. She only knew that they made her body ache, her fingers dig into his shoulders, and her tongue spar eagerly with his. He was…delicious, and each taste of him only made her want more. She angled her head, deepening the kiss, moaning softly when his fingers fisted in her hair, tugging at her scalp as his free hand skimmed down her back.
Down, down, until his wide palm cupped her bottom and Mia’s nerve endings sizzled, even as a voice in her head insisted this was getting out of hand. She didn’t even know this man’s name, or exactly what he looked like. He was a complete stranger, who had been wandering around The Blue Saloon Hotel parking lot in the middle of the night. For all she knew, he could be an axe murderer, or a Peeping Tom, or a closet stamp collector, or one of those guys who aspired to eat an entire car, piece by piece.
Or he could be a genuinely nice guy looking for a consenting adult to take home and pleasure all night long with his wickedly talented tongue. And while Mia had no doubt this man would deliver in the bedroom, she wasn’t in the market for a one-night stand, or a boyfriend, or anything else. She’d made a promise to herself when she came back to Lonesome Point—no romantic entanglements. Between her gruesome family history, and the nightmare she’d lived through in Los Angeles during her last year of graduate school, she knew better. The only way to keep everyone safe was to keep her relationships with the opposite sex purely friendly.
Thankfully, just as she was trying to figure out how to extricate herself from the man’s arms, when something stubborn inside of her insisted it would rather stay and kiss him senseless, she heard footsteps coming from the far side of the parking lot. If she were lucky, it would be Bubba and Ross, returning from their mission. If she were unlucky, it would be Tallulah, circling around the shrubs with her shotgun, intent on punishing the defacer of her precious garden gnomes.
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.