Roxanne Claire - Barefoot by the Sea

For a moment, she stared at him, a thousand emotions erupting like a volcano in her chest. Disbelief and excitement and desire and disbelief and longing and—yeah, mostly disbelief.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Well, I’m not really trusting by nature, so I’m fighting the sensation that you might be full of shit.”

He laughed. “I deserve a chance.”

Did he? “And you’ll probably get one, but what happened?”

He lifted both brows. “I want the job.”

“So you’re suddenly Prince Charming? After being guarded, evasive, and walking out in the middle of an interview?”

He curled his fingers around her hand and sighed with resignation. “I guess I’m going to have to do some seriously high-quality groveling.”

“Major high,” she agreed.

“Let’s start with dinner tonight. We can finish the interview.”

Obviously, he didn’t know she’d called all his references and they glowed like polished gold, and he certainly didn’t know about the wedding planners and the urgent need for a chef. Instead, he’d come to grovel and take her to dinner.

“I’ll give you time to clean up and change for our date,” he said, as if she might be looking for an excuse to say no.

As if a groveling man offering dinner and looking like a sex god fell into her lap on a daily basis.

“I thought it was an interview,” she said.

He shrugged. “You call it an interview, I call it a date.”

“I call it a pretty remarkable turnaround for the guy who suggested a one-night stand of tongue-tattooing the last time we talked about going out.”

His smile was sinfully slow and so damn confident. “Haven’t you ever changed your mind about something, Tessa? Ever looked at a situation in the light of day and realized you’d need a new approach to get what you want?”

She tried to ignore the little thrill of his words and be smart about this. “What about trust?”

He lifted his brows. “What about it?”

“Did you change your mind about the advice you gave me in the bar? Or don’t you remember when your one word about trusting you was ‘Don’t’?”

She could have sworn a little bit of color left his face. “How else are you going to know if you should or not unless you have dinner with me?”

She couldn’t argue with that logic. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.

I think he’s kind of crazy, Lacey.” Tessa whispered into her cell phone, hoping the running water drowned out any chance of him hearing her. The bungalow where she lived on the edge of Casa Blanca’s property wasn’t big, and right now John Brown was prowling about her living room, waiting for her to shower and dress for a dinner date.

“But he did accept the job.” Lacey was completely stuck on the wrong point.

“Not technically yet, but this has nothing to do with work.” Tessa shook wet hair back to look in the mirror.

“Are you sure?”

“Should I wear makeup?” The question was more to herself than Lacey, but her friend gasped softly.

“Makeup? I’m sorry, I thought I was talking to Tessa Galloway.”

“Very funny.” She took a breath. “He’s all dressed up in khakis and a button-down shirt.”

“Bet he looks hot.”

“There are no words. And he came out to the vegetables and…” Kissed my hand. “Started courting me.”

“Courting?” Lacey laughed. “Who does that anymore?”

“I know, right? He’s up to something, I’m sure of it.” Tucking the phone in her ear, she pulled open the bathroom drawer to root for anything she could put on her face. Way in the back, she spied the mascara and blush Zoe had made her buy for Lacey’s wedding.

“You thought that this morning when he wouldn’t tell you anything, now he wants to take you to dinner, presumably to tell you all the stuff he didn’t tell you this morning, and you don’t trust him again. Listen to yourself, Tess.”

“Well, look at him.” And she had. Stared like he was a two-headed alien, as a matter of fact. “How can you trust a guy who looks like that?”

“’Cause he has some tattoos and hair that touches his shoulders?” Lacey tsked. “I told you, you are asking the wrong woman.”

So true. She let out a sigh and unscrewed the mascara wand, turning the foreign object in her hand. “I’m so not ready for this.”

“For what? For sex? For fun? For a hot guy on a cool night? For another chance at love?”

She rolled her eyes. “For mascara. And, please, love, Lacey? The man wants sex. He must have decided that since we’re going to work together, he has to pay for dinner first. But it’s still sex.” She opened her mouth in the “O-face” she’d seen Zoe make for mascara ever since they were roommates in college.

“And that’s a problem, how?”

“Seems like I called the wrong number, too.”

“What?”

“I thought I called Lacey but apparently I got Zoe.” She swiped the brush, darkening her lashes.

“Zoe isn’t the only one of your friends who wants you to know the pleasure of four orgasms. In an hour.”

She laughed, smudging the lid. “Shit. Who would do this every day?”

“Maybe five orgasms.”

“Excuse me, Lacey, you’re the mature one of this group. Aren’t you supposed to be wishing me happiness and not orgasms?”

“They usually go hand in hand.”

Tessa didn’t answer because she was too busy licking her finger to get it wet enough to wipe the mascara off. Which was stinkin’ waterproof. “Damn it,” she murmured, looking around for lotion. “I’m so ill equipped to do this.”

“Take a deep breath and relax. He’ll wait for you.”

She did as she was told, or tried, puffing out a lungful of air in a long, slow sigh.

“Now what’s really the matter, Tessa?”

Now she sounded more like the former RA nurturer Tessa had loved since the day they’d met in the dorm. “What’s the matter is…” She closed her eyes, and dug deep. “He’s all wrong.”

“But he’s all right.”

“This is not a country song, Lace. He’s not what I want in a man.”

“Too sexy? Too big? Too interested? Too funny? Too talented? Yeah, I see the problem.”

“I mean it,” she insisted, frustration growing. “He’s a drifter who drives a motorcycle.”

“The Ducati that was parked in front of the resort this afternoon?” Lacey asked, blowing out a whistle. “Speaking of orgasms, I think Clay had one just looking at that bike. He drives that? He’s taking you out on it?” Her voice rose in utter incredulity.

“He drove it over here but I’m going to take us in my truck,” she said. “And what I’m saying is he’s a man who wants nothing like I want. Roots, kids, stability.”

“He told you all this in an interview when he wouldn’t answer personal questions? Interesting.”

Tessa ignored the sarcasm. “I can tell from looking at him.” She finally cleaned her eyelid, and did one more cursory swipe of mascara brush, and then tackled the blush compact. She didn’t need it; nature colored her cheeks enough around this guy.

“Looks can be deceiving,” Lacey said. “I have two words for you.”

“I know what two words they are, Lace. Clay Walker.”

“Precisely. Could I have been more wrong about him when I met him? Remember how hung up I was on his age and looks and his relentless determination to get me naked? Well, I wasn’t wrong about that.”

“And you have the brand-new baby to prove it.”

“Need I say more?”

Tessa dropped the makeup brush. “How about something that sounds like ‘Be careful’ or ‘Have a good time’ or ‘Don’t fall for the wrong man.’”

“You don’t know he’s wrong. You don’t know what kind of man is under all those muscles and hair and ink.”

Tessa laughed. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Exactly. You need to find out more about him.”

She was right, but still. “I can tell he’s a drifter without even asking. I talked to three former employers in three different states.”

“But they said he was a great chef and a…”

“An upstanding citizen,” Tessa supplied. “Two of them used exactly the same phrase.”

“Well, there you go. It’s nearly unanimous.”

“But doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Tessa asked, giving voice to one of the questions that had been bugging her ever since she’d made the calls to his references. “An upstanding citizen? Who says that unless they’re running for office?”

“He didn’t say it, they did. And it’s probably because he looks exactly the opposite and they want to assure you that he isn’t going to steal the booze or dip into the cash drawer.”

Oh, she was making entirely too much sense. “Lacey, do you or do you not want me, and all of your employees, which now includes a new head chef, to be focused on the most important weekend guests since we opened the resort?”

“Of course I do,” Lacey answered. “But you’re not going to stop growing great food because you’re falling in—”

“I am not in love!”

“—bed with the new chef.”

She burned during a second of silence. “That’s at the root of this, isn’t it?” Tessa admitted into the phone. “For him, it’s probably about sex and for me, it could never be just sex.”

“Hey, you’re the one on the sperm hunt.”

“He already said he wouldn’t be the supplier.”

“In a bar, after some scotch, when he had no idea he’d ever see you again.”

Tessa grabbed a comb and started untangling her wet hair. “So, it’s even more impossible now when he knows he will see me every day at work. He’s officially off the sperm-donor list.”

“All the better.”

The comb stuck in a knot. “What do you mean? You know how much I want—”