Page 7 of The Marriage Deal (Sunset Falls #1)

LITTLE MISS POPULAR

brIGGS

The woman is everywhere, surrounded constantly by people or a pack of dogs. Since the night of the town meeting, I’ve been wanting to talk to her. My excuse? Returning her scissors, though it appears she’s found herself another pair.

I swing my truck into the empty parking lot of Falls Pub and Bar.

The red flowers she’s chosen to plant against the dark blue paint and richly stained timbre are a bright, seductive contrast. Perfect for the ambiance of the location.

Ambiance is something I pick up on easily, doing what I do.

Ambiance is half of a successful business.

Product is the other half. And no matter how great the product, if people don’t feel good being where they need to buy, from who they need to buy it, they don’t buy.

My eyes shift from the flowers to the woman. She’s showing off toned legs in another pair of ball busting shorts, though these ones are spandex and keep only the secrets her oversized white T-shirt hide.

“The bar is closed. Pub opens at eleven.”

She’s not pleased to see me. From my back pocket, I produce her pink scissors. “Thought I’d return these.”

“After you stole them?” She swipes them from my hand. “Do you know how hard it is to find pink scissors?” She lifts the replacement pair which are a standard blue, a look of ire in her pretty eyes.

“Can’t say that I do.”

“It’s hard.”

I nod to the blue scissors she brandishes between us like a little sword. It takes considerable work not to laugh at her. “I can imagine.”

She makes a noise of feminine frustration that is cute as hell, flipping the scissors around on a finger as she takes a step toward me. “You’re so—”

I take my own step and her words die on the tip of her little pink tongue. My pitch drops as she inhales a sharp breath at my sudden closeness.

“Do you remember why I took your scissors, Lilah?” I don’t miss the surprise that flashes in her eyes at my use of her name. I also don’t give her time to fumble for an answer before I give it to her. “You were being unsafe with them. Unsafe in a way that could get you hurt.”

A quick flash of something I don’t like ignites her eyes. She hugs the scissors to her chest, shuffling back a step. “Is that a threat?”

What the fuck?

“No.” How could she have mistaken my words like that? “I would never hurt you. Hence why I took your scissors in the first place.”

She expels a breath that tastes faintly of fear. “I don’t think I like you.”

“The feeling is mutual.” It’s not exactly a lie. I’m attracted to the woman, but she drives me wild in a way I can’t say I like.

Still, I can’t take my eyes off the sour puckering of her pretty pink lips or the wrinkle in her furrowed brow.

With a shake of her head, she tears her eyes easily from me to return to her pot.

She holsters the blue scissors in the pocket of her shorts and clips a wilting flower with the pink scissors.

I wish I could look away from her so simply, but the woman is hard to look away from.

It’s more than her beauty, though. It’s the raw wild that surges beneath.

Like a riptide, just waiting to pull an unsuspecting man out to the sea of her.

Waiting to drown him in an ocean of obsession and reluctant need.

I slide my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, unable to keep from watching her as I lean against a timber pillar. “Have dinner with me.”

She shoots me an evil eye. “I thought you didn’t like me.”

She clips another flower. I watch.

“I don’t need to like you to have dinner with you.”

She straightens, narrowing her eyes. “Are you fishing for hate sex, Mr. Alder?”

I almost choke on the raw wave of her that those words slam into me. The vision those words evoke of her, naked and bent over as I pound every ounce of hate I have into her. I clear my throat. “I proposed dinner, not sex, Ms. Bellamy. I’m open to negotiation, though.”

The woman doesn’t even bother to blush. She regards me with the kind of wild a man can’t hope to contain.

The kind of confident wild that inspired her to jump from that cliff into the water at the end of the burning falls.

It’s the kind of wild that inspires living at its core.

The kind of wild I’ve never managed to capture for myself. Probably never would.

Her hand slides up to her waist, hiking the hem of her shirt high enough to give me a damn good visual of the curve of her hip, and the outline of the scissors she put there.

“Why do you want to have dinner, Mr. Alder?”

“Briggs, Lilah. You’ve called me Briggs from day one, when you tortured me with the experience of meeting you.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s a reluctant twitch to those soft, full lips that I memorize. “Why are we having dinner, Briggs?”

Hell, I like my name on her lips. “I have a job proposition for you.”

“I have a job.”

“A better job.”

She takes offense to my words. “I like my job. I don’t have to deal with you while I do it.” I cock a brow and she amends on a cute as hell pout, “Usually.”

“Hear me out,” I implore as she turns back to her plant.

She sighs, but doesn’t spare me a look. “I’m listening.”

This woman. “Over dinner, Lilah. Hear me out over dinner.”

I like the sound of her name on my tongue, too. The way it rolls. The soft, seductive weight of it.

She’s trouble and I’ve always been so careful to steer clear of trouble.

“Why?”

“Already told you, I have a job to offer you.”

She shakes her head, but it’s not a refusal shake. More of an ‘I don’t know’ shake. A shake of bewilderment. “I mean why do you want to offer me, specifically, a job? All we’ve done is argue.”

“Maybe because you won’t be able to argue once I’m your boss.”

“Aww.” She gives me a smile that spells mischief. “You’re cute and delusional.”

“You think I’m cute?”

“I think delusional men are adorable.”

So quick with that sharp tongue. “Lilah.”

She gets to business. “You’re not offering me a job to stop me from arguing with you, Briggs. So, why, then?”

“The town likes you.” She doesn’t expect my answer, and the notching of her head on her shoulders in surprise tells me as much. “You’re little miss popular, a finger in all the jars.”

“I don’t have a finger in any jars.”

“You do,” I tell her matter of fact. “And that’s why I want you.”

Her chest inflates on a sharp breath at the words, and that’s when I see the first ever blush I’ve clocked forming in her cheeks. It’s diluted, hardly there, really. But it is still exquisite.

I want to do something to make it deeper, hotter, more consuming. I want to do something to make that blush one she can’t deny with her sharp tongue, always locked and loaded with a cutting quip.

She clears her throat and I fight my grin. I can’t help but wonder if this is the first time she’s ever been lost for words.

“I’m free tomorrow night.”

“I can’t persuade you for tonight?”

“Don’t push your luck,” she warns. “Tonight is wine night. We do it once a week.”

“I don’t know what wine night is. But it proves my point.”

She cocks her head. “What point, again?”

I take a backward step in the direction of my truck. “Little miss popular.” I swing up into the cab, and call, “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven.”

“You don’t know where I live.”

“Everyone in this town knows where you live, Lilah.” I don’t know what it is about my words, but they deepen the pink in her cheeks.

Blood rushes south at the sight of her standing there in her shorts and oversized T-shirt, her hair mussed in a knot on the top of her head with bewildered pink in her cheeks.

I imagine it’s what she might look like in the morning after a night with me.

Only, it’d be my tee she’d wear. Nothing else.

Christ. I need to get my head screwed on straight.