She Drives Me Crazy. Leslie Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ the faint pink outline his touch had left on her skin, then let his gaze travel down the rest of her.

      The first thing he noticed was that she was not built like a brick…well, she wasn’t stacked. He hadn’t seen many porn flicks in his life—never needed to, if truth be told—but one thing he remembered: the females starring in them appeared to be a plastic surgeon’s best friend. Not this one.

      While average height, her ridiculously high heels put her at just a few inches shorter than he was. Not hippy. She was nicely curved—had some particularly fine northern curves—but was certainly nowhere near as well-endowed as he’d expect from an X-rated movie queen. So she definitely wasn’t the downright bovine creature pictured on the billboard.

      But the legs. Oh, boy, the legs and that thin little strip of gold dangling above her left ankle nearly had him gasping for breath. This woman could probably have any man she wanted at her high-heel clad feet.

      “Have a foot fetish?”

      A rueful grin spread across his lips as he raised his eyes to meet hers, which were still hidden behind the glasses. Her enigmatic, close-lipped smile told him he’d been caught staring.

      “Something like that.” When she made no move to remove her sunglasses, he leaned closer. “What about you? Doing the Jack Nicholson thing?”

      She looked confused.

      “Traveling incognito?” he asked, gesturing toward her sunglasses.

      She shrugged. “Is it working? Am I blending right in?”

      He choked out a laugh. “Yeah. Like an ant in a sugar bowl.”

      “Are you saying I’m sweet, or are you comparing me to an insect?”

      “Oh, I’m certain you’re sweet, darlin’. I doubt this town has seen so much cotton-candy sweetness in one package in a very long time.” He waited for her response, wondering why he enjoyed baiting a complete stranger.

      “Do you like cotton candy?”

      “Love it,” he replied, narrowing his eyes and shooting her a dangerous look he hadn’t used on too many women recently. “Melts on the tongue and tastes so good.”

      She swallowed. Once. Then leveled her gaze on him from behind the dark lenses. “Liar.”

      “Am I?”

      “Cotton candy makes you throw up and you know it.”

      Her voice held a note of certainty and Johnny suddenly realized she wasn’t flirting. She was speaking fact. This time, when his eyes narrowed, it wasn’t flirtatiously, but in concentration. “How do you know that?”

      “Same way I know about your appreciation for nice legs.”

      He didn’t say a word.

      “Not to mention your thing for ankle bracelets.”

      This time it was Johnny who nearly gasped. Who the hell is she? He felt like he should know. There was something familiar, something that was nagging at him about her voice. He couldn’t really know her, could he?

      “Lucky guesses,” he said, testing her.

      She shook her head. “Nope.”

      She lifted her hand and raised one index finger, straight up, then crooked it at him, beckoning him closer. Johnny couldn’t resist. Sliding one foot forward, he leaned as near to her as he could get without actually touching her. He nearly felt everyone else in the store shifting forward, too, but ignored them.

      “How do you know?” he asked when he was close enough that the tip of his shoes came within a hairsbreadth of her bare toes. Her deep, even breaths reached his cheek.

      She leaned up, almost on tiptoes, and Johnny bent closer. Her perfume, light and flowery, wafted from her warm, creamy skin. It called out to him, something in his brain recognizing the scent and making his whole body grow tense and aware, before his brain could analyze why.

      His lips were mere inches from her temple, and he focused hard, trying to figure out the strange feeling of anticipation gripping him.

      Then she whispered, “Because you told me. Right before you stole my favorite gold butterfly ankle bracelet right off my ankle.”

      And suddenly he knew. Even before she stepped back and pushed her silly sunglasses onto the top of her head with the tip of her index finger, revealing her golden-brown eyes, he knew.

      “Emma Jean.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE WORLD certainly kept spinning, and the clock probably kept ticking and the sun likely kept shining and the town of Joyful definitely kept whispering. But right here, right now, for Johnny Walker, time stopped. A decade disappeared. Ten years fell away. And he looked into a set of eyes he’d never thought to see again, though he’d seen them in his brain nearly every day since.

      “Son of a bitch.”

      “Hello to you, too, Johnny,” she said with a tight smile.

      He didn’t return the greeting. “So,” he murmured, knowing she’d be able to hear the edge in his voice. “Emma Jean Frasier has done what she swore she’d never do—return to the pits of hell disguised as the hills of Georgia.”

      “And what do I find, but the devil waiting here to greet me,” she said, her expression not nearly as jaunty as her tone.

      He tsked. “Still sassy.”

      She cast a disparaging glance at the spaghetti sauce can in his hand. “And you’re still a big spender. Don’t tell me—you have a hot date tonight? My, you always did entertain with style.”

      He instantly remembered their one date. As her eyes shifted away from him, he knew she was kicking herself for bringing up such a loaded subject.

      “Guess I should hurry right out to that field over by the Nelson place to pick a bouquet of wildflowers.”

      Her quickly indrawn breath told him his jab had hit home. And suddenly, seeing a flash of hurt in her eyes, he regretted the comment. Coming back to Joyful couldn’t have been easy for Emma Jean. Not with the way she’d left. Correction…the way she’d run away.

      The thought helped him thrust off the moment of remorse.

      “I have to go,” she insisted, trying to push past him. The brush of her arm against his sent a jolt of hot awareness rushing through him again. As they froze, face-to-face, breath to breath, he mentally tripped again into the world of Emma Jean Frasier’s sweet, caramel-eyed stare. Without warning, his senses went on overload, filled with a sudden, quick stream of memories.

      Hot summer days when it almost hurt to draw the thick air into his lungs—particularly as he watched her walk down the road in her tight shorts and tighter tops. The way the sunshine caught the sparkle of gold in her long, honey-colored hair every time she walked by.

      And that one incredible night. The cicadas taking up a nighttime chorus as they sat and talked for hours. СКАЧАТЬ