Chapter One
What he needed was a fast girl. With the right tools and a little patience, he’d have her stripped down and ready to ride in no time.
That ’69 Pontiac GTO he’d spotted at auction last week was exactly the kind of sweetheart he was looking for. He’d get his hands on one of those babies as soon as possible.
His Cadillac lurched forward with a neck-wrenching crunch and there went his fantasy and his morning. He’d been back in town less than forty-eight hours and some bozo had already rear-ended his car. An omen?
Then came the metallic sound of his bumper hitting the asphalt, and his gut cramped the way it did when he occasionally overindulged in beer weenies.
Cameron sucked in thick Texas air, but the humid stuff did nothing to soothe the sudden burn in his belly. He should’ve crawled back into bed. The signs had all been there. Shower water icy enough to permanently shrink his balls. Nothing but tap water to pour over his cereal. Boxers the color of Pepto-Bismol after a run-in with a red T-shirt in the washing machine.
His mom always warned him to wear clean underwear in case he was ever in a car accident. Cameron might flirt with other types of danger, but he wasn’t stupid enough to disobey Emmalee Wright. He climbed out of his prized possession, a 1963 Caddy convertible with butter-soft leather seats and fins big enough to propel a shark. The car’s door handle caught the back pocket of his jeans, and well-washed cotton gave way with a thread-popping rip.
Of all the days to mind Mom’s advice.
“Welcome frickin’ home,” he muttered. Jesus, bare-assed or half of Shelbyville ogling his pretty-in-pink underwear?
Give me bare-assed any day.
His car sat in two pieces in the middle of his hometown’s busiest intersection, and people were already craning their necks to stare out the front windows of McIntosh’s drugstore and Bitsy Miller’s beauty shop. What a way to kick off his career as a respectable business owner.
He stalked to the back of his car to inspect the damage. Cracked taillights, ruined bumper and buckled trunk. Goddammit. Now he definitely wouldn’t pick up the garage keys from Scooter Kaynes on time.
The source of his latest run-in with Monday morning madness, who’d almost run him over in her shiny Escalade, was Alice Ann Shelby. Cameron hadn’t seen her in years, but he’d recognize that white-blond hair anywhere.
Without a doubt, God was a woman. Because a man wouldn’t have thrown him into this mess with the princess of Shelbyville. That big SUV with its oversized grille guard and without one damned scratch was probably her latest indulgence from Daddy, the town’s self-appointed king.
Squashing the urge to cover his butt cheek with his hand, Cameron stepped over the bumper sprawled like shiny roadkill behind his car and headed toward Allie. Why wasn’t she removing her fanny from her car? Surely she realized she’d hit something.
He peered closer. Her forehead was resting on the steering wheel. Jesus, was she hurt?
He rushed over and jerked open the Escalade’s driver’s side door. The fear jumping in his belly boiled over into purely pissed off. Hurt, his ass. She was punching buttons on her cell phone like a madwoman.
Cameron swung between the urge to throw back his head and laugh and the urge to beat his head against her hood and bawl. Neither made much sense, seeing as the headache he’d been courting since 7:00 a.m. was currently drilling a hole the size of Dallas through his left eyeball.
“Allie, you okay?” a boy hollered as he and two friends barreled down the sidewalk on skateboards, jumped over the curb and into the intersection.
Allie’s attention finally shifted from her phone, and she lowered her passenger side window. She scrambled across the console and leaned so far out the window, Cameron couldn’t help but check out the sight of her grade-A ass thrust into the air. If she didn’t watch out, she’d end up lying on the asphalt along with his bumper. Relief and disappointment warred inside him as he ogled the backside of her thin white pants. If she’d worn a skirt today, he would surely know the make, model and color of Allie Shelby’s panties.
“Ben, why are you skateboarding in the road?”
The lead skateboarder hitched up his baggy shorts and pointed toward Cameron. “Um…I’m pretty sure you nailed that guy.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him and plopped back into the driver’s seat. Looking at her heart-shaped face was no real hardship either. Her long lashes were a few shades darker than her hair. Her eyes were light brown at the center and brightened to dark blue at the rims. Those eyes had always struck him as a little unsettling.
His survey caught on her mouth. Yep, God was a woman and Satan was a man. Because a mouth like hers, with full unpainted lips, was certainly made for sin.
Those lips formed a startled O, causing his dick to sit up and take notice. Just perfect. He didn’t have time this morning or room in his life for a distraction. And this woman was a walking, talking Barbie doll of a distraction.
The kid called to Allie, “You gonna be okay for softball practice?”
Her attention swung away again. Did she have any idea they were blocking a four-way stop and traffic was stacking up? “Don’t worry. I’ll bring Popsicles,” she promised.
Apparently not.
A prissy little thing like her on the ball field with a crew of thirteen-year-old boys? That he’d have to see to believe. Standing maybe all of five-three and weighing 110 pounds, Allie didn’t strike him as an athlete. But his brain teased him with the memory of her dexterity as a high school JV cheerleader. Not that he’d paid much attention, but he’d had to kill the time somehow since his brother, Jamie, never made it off the bench during any of those games.
Cameron whipped off his sunglasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Screw acupressure, he needed drugs. “Princess, do you think you could stop arranging your social life long enough for us to pick up the missing pieces of our cars and exchange insurance cards?”
He sounded like a real asshole, but damn it, he’d planned to be at Scoot’s—now, his—garage fifteen minutes ago. His plan had most definitely not included losing either parts of his beloved car or his mind. Thanks to this woman he was losing both.
She dug around in her purse, flinging out a tube of lipstick and a tampon in her hurry to find something. God, what next? Maybe she had party invitations for all the gawkers. “I’m so sorry. I guess I was a little sidetracked this morning—”
Cameron’s patience went down the crapper. “What the hell were you doing when you plowed into me? Yapping on your phone scheduling your next pedicure?”
The startled, harassed expression on her face flickered to an expression that looked suspiciously like hurt. By the time he checked closer, it was gone, replaced by something flat and disinterested. Staring down from her perch inside the SUV, Allie pointed toward his car. “Is that Big Bertha?”
He had his brother to thank for his Eldorado’s damned nickname, and Allie’s reference to it had his blood cruising even hotter through his veins. He’d forgotten how fast info snaked through a town this size. Cameron’s inarticulate response came out a cross between the hiss of his mother’s teakettle and the grind of a busted transmission.
“I’m sorry,” Allie said. “She looks like she could use a little mouth-to-mouth.”
“If you’d been paying attention to something besides you and your phone, my car wouldn’t need any medical attention.”
Those sexy lips flattened and her focus shifted to her hand, admiring her perfectly polished nails and the big-ass emerald on her ring finger. She was pretty enough to make a dead man look twice, but she had high maintenance written all over her in those fancy calligraphy letters. Not his kind of woman. Not anymore.
“Who, me? Be concerned about someone besides myself?” Her words were flippant, but her face remained immobile.
Cameron’s mom had also taught him and Jamie to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. He glanced at Allie’s feet. He wouldn’t make it a quarter mile in those strappy sandals, but he could apologize. “Look, if you’ll agree to pay for the damage, I’ll—”
Her phone blasted a pop tune from some grown-up boy band, and she had the bad manners to answer the damn thing.
“Allie speaking.”
A tinny voice talking a mile a minute came from her phone.
“This isn’t a good time, Mildred. Tell Dad I’ll talk with him later.”
She cut Cameron a quick glance, but he wasn’t going to wait around for her to schedule her post-softball social life. Turning to stalk away, he momentarily forgot that his jeans flaunted a gaping hole.
“Cameron, wait, I—”
“I’ll be in touch, princess.”
Someone gawking from the sidewalk called out, “Why, Cameron, what cute dimples you have in your cheeks.”
Based on Allie’s chuckle behind him, he was pretty sure her attention was fixed on his ass, not on his face. Good, maybe she wouldn’t notice the color in his cheeks matched his BVDs.
