A Will and a Way (4 page)

“Do you?”

“Yes.” He shifted another inch closer. “I’ve seen you before, you know.”

She jerked a little and her forehead puckered, so he rushed to dispel her of any stalker worries.

“You were at a bus stop. You’re kind of hard to miss in that coat.”

“Is that why people keep staring at me?” She tossed her hair then fixed him with a laser-like glare. Despite the obnoxious coat and hat-flattened hair, she was magnificent when she got her back up. Like a peacock fanning its plumage. “Everyone wears so much black up here,” she said with a tiny shudder. “It’s like the whole world is in mourning. I prefer pink.”

She made her declaration with such conviction he had to smile. This strange and beautiful woman hadn’t walked into just any bar. She walked into his. Her bus stop companion wore Target bags, and she wore pink. Will knew right then there was no way in hell he’d be putting her on a plane with some other guy.

“They stare because you’re beautiful,” he corrected without missing a beat. “The coat just makes you stand out. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.” He looked directly into those vivid eyes. “Still can’t.”

Betty stared at Will, transfixed by the light in his dark eyes. He gave another one of those silent little laughs that makes a woman wonder what it would take to get one with audio. The lighter fluid she’d guzzled minutes before ignited in her tummy. She stared down at his hand. It was no surprise to see it was broad and strong, but she had to wonder why he was so tan. It was hard to imagine the sun shining on this town long enough to warm the skin, much less bake it.

“How come you’re so tan?”

His laugh turned out to be too good-natured to fit with the debauched movie star thing he had going on. Deep, and throaty, and ten thousand other adjectives sure to get her ejected from any Sunday school in the world came to mind. His hand rested lightly on her arm, his palm remained flat and his fingers extended. He wasn’t trying to hold or restrain her, but it anchored her to the moment. If she chose to allow it. He was giving her a choice, making it clear she could shake him off with little more than a twitch, if she wanted.

Like any woman in her right mind would.

“I suppose I’m tanner than you because I work outdoors most of the time.”

“Outdoors? In this weather?”

The horror in her tone seemed to tickle him because he laughed again. Another one of those rippling, ought-to-be-illegal rumbles that she could swear went right through his fingertips and sent a million volts of ‘yes, please’ barreling straight to her hoo-hah. Up close, she could see the strands of silver streaking through his dark hair. He wore the imprint of every scowl, smirk, and sleepless night in the creases on his forehead, but instead of detracting from his overall appeal, they only made him more attractive.

His smile spread like brush fire—a slow, wicked burn that ate up any token resistance she might have offered. Not that she planned to resist. She was there because she wanted a new adventure. A fresh start. A chance to determine her own destiny.

“I told you. It’s spring.”

And boy was she feeling it. Every hormone she had was zipping and zinging, flitting through her bloodstream like bees in a pollen frenzy. Donald was gone. Her marriage was in ashes. And, Lord, she was tired of being the good girl. Sitting there with him, she wasn’t some small-town widow who hoped no one noticed her gulping verboten glasses of wine. Will Tarrant seemed to think she was his fate. Who was she to debase him of that notion?

“I’ve been looking for signs everywhere,” she said in the breathy drawl she’d perfected before she’d entered the seventh grade. “Bunnies hoppin’ about, birds flyin’ in my window to help me dress, but so far….” She gave a helpless shrug. “…not a single young man fancying thoughts of love.”

“Would you settle for a not-so-young man with thoughts of lust?”

Betty caught her smile before it blossomed and dialed it back to something approaching demure. “Oh, my.”

She stared at his hand, absorbed in mapping the scars and marks obscured by a dusting of fine, dark hair. It had been so long since anyone touched her. Too long. Her skin prickled, though layers of fabric separated them. The noise that filled the barroom faded as her blood thrummed in her ears. The muscles in her arm jumped, but thanks to the geese that gave their undercoat so she could have an overcoat, he would never know.

Swallowing her nerves, she forced herself to look up. Bittersweet chocolate eyes shone with patient good humor, and one side of his mouth kicked up in a cocky smile. He knew precisely how affected she was. And he was toying with her.

She released a slow, measured breath, making sure she kept enough oxygen in reserve in case he hit her with another one of those heart-lurching assertions. “You are very direct, aren’t you?”

“I told you, this is Fate.”

The scar that bisected his upper lip gleamed white against dark stubble. She wanted to touch it. With her tongue. “I believe people create their own paths.”

Up until about six months ago, the statement would have been a load of pure horse manure on her part, but he didn’t need to know that. This was the new Betty. Bold Betty. The woman who was done playing the fool for any man. A woman to be reckoned with, as her grandmamma would have said. One who wasn’t afraid to take what she wanted from life, because she was damn well done giving.

He slid his hand down and wrapped his fingers around her wrist. Still holding on loosely. Still making it completely her choice. “I want to make a path with you, then.”

“Bullshit,” she said, fixing him with a challenging stare. “You want to get in my pants.”

Will looked down, and she resisted the urge to squirm under the scrutiny. So she hadn’t exactly dressed to impress when she decided to ditch her cracker-box apartment that evening. The yoga pants she wore tucked into her fake Uggs were clean, and at least she’d changed the sleepshirt dotted with sheep for a cable-knit sweater before she set forth on her quest for the grape.

“More than you can imagine.”

The lack of finesse behind his terse but scrupulously honest answer should have rankled, but it didn’t. If anything, the gravelly rasp in his voice infused the simple confession with an urgency that made her heart beat faster.

“I think you might underestimate what I can imagine.”

He lowered his hand to her thigh, and she almost sprang straight off the stool. “I would never underestimate a woman like you.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me.”

His hand crept a little higher, the tip of his middle finger tracing her inseam. “Tell me everything.”

“I don’t usually drink this much wine.”

He eyed the glass she’d barely touched. “I don’t usually have the chance to pass an evening at The Pump talking to pretty ladies, but sometimes you have to break out of your comfort zone.”

“You said you’ve been coming here for years. I’d have thought this
was
your comfort zone,” she said, a note of accusation creeping into her voice.

“The bar, yes. The company is what’s out of the ordinary.”

She shot him a sidelong glance. “I wouldn’t think you do too badly in that department, either”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, blinded as you are by my movie star good looks, but I’m not twenty anymore.”

She tried for wide-eyed mockery, but her voice came out wispy and girlish. “You’re not?”

“No. Thank God.” He laughed that tease of a laugh then leaned in to speak directly into the ear he’d loved and left just minutes before. “If I were, I’d have you pressed up against a wall by now.”

She should have been outraged. Any well-bred southern woman worth her salt would have been. But training and polish aside, she’d been born with nothing more than a daddy who’d struck it rich and married one those proper ladies in hopes of smoothing off his rougher edges. Maybe that was why this man made her blood rush rather than cool. His forward manner and frank words marked him as the worst kind of dog. Just the sort of man a woman with more than her fair share of mongrel blood avoided all her life.

A sip of wine gave her time to rein in the surge of need his brazen assumptions unleashed. “I imagine you know some of the people in here.”

She sensed his gaze on her.

“Most of them.”

“So this is a regular hangout bar. Like on
Cheers
,” she said, adding a flash of a smile to show she approved. Though she couldn’t imagine why she did. She’d just moved seven hundred miles to get away from the scrutiny Will probably felt every time he walked through the door here. “Do you like that?” And there she went with the questions again. “I mean, this is a big city. Anonymous. Do you like having a place where…” She trailed off, feeling like the country mouse cliché as a smile lit his face.

“Where everybody knows my name?”

“Where you feel comfortable,” she corrected with a sniff.

“Do you want anonymity? Is that why you moved here from….”

He circled his hand encouragingly, and good manners forced her to comply. “Percy, Mississippi.”

“Percy, Mississippi?” He moved the wine glass she’d been fiddling with an inch or so, and Betty automatically clasped her hands in her lap. “Did you come to the frozen tundra so you could blend into the landscape? Because, I have to tell you, it’s not working.”

A laugh boiled out of her like steam from a kettle. She turned to face this too-handsome man with the perfectly imperfect face and cruelly charming smile, and summoned her inner Scarlett O’Hara. “Are you saying I don’t belong here?”

“I didn’t say that at all. I was paying you a compliment.”

He leaned in closer, and she caught a whiff of aftershave. Her skin tingled. It had been a while since she’d had a man this close. Even longer since she wanted one. A thrum of anticipation beat low in her belly. She bit her lip to keep from blurting something embarrassing and tore her gaze from those dark, mesmerizing eyes.

“You strolled in this dreary old bar on a Tuesday night wearing your shiny pink parka expecting that no one would notice? Sweetheart, you’d have gotten less attention if a magician had pulled you out of his hat.”

This time, the indignation she felt was real. And hot. He was hot. Exciting. Her emotions zinged all over the place. She wanted him. She wanted to run. But overriding it all, she needed to prove to this man that she was anything but a timid woodland creature. “Are you calling me a bunny rabbit?”

He straightened as if having one of those ‘Eureka!’ moments guys in sitcoms and chick flicks were oh-so prone to, but the cynical twist of his lips ruined the ah-ha innocence he was meant to convey. “Not at all, but I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind petting you. Scoot a little closer.”

The sheer audacity of his command broke her, but she absolutely refused to give him any more reward than one short, incredulous laugh. “Is everyone so direct up here?”

He ran a knuckle over the back of her hand and every nerve ending in her body perked up. “I don’t see any point in lying about it, but I can add some subtlety if I’m offending you.”

He flashed a smile so disarming she snatched the glass from the bar and took a slug of Sister Laurent’s sexy Australian Shiraz to buy herself a little time. It didn’t help. She liked his bluntness. Liked the fact that he didn’t try to play it cool or act the fool. Admired the artlessness of his seduction. And it was a seduction. A practiced, practical assault on her defenses. How the hell was she supposed to arm herself against what she craved?

“I want you. I’ve wanted you since I watched you walk through that door. I wanted you the whole time I watched you watching me.”

His blunt admissions should have been off-putting, but they weren’t. They were downright refreshing, truth be told. She’d been born to breathe the little white lie, trained in the art of well-intentioned fibbing.
I love your dress. You haven’t changed one bit! No, I don’t mind that my husband was fucking the town whore and everyone knew it.
In all honesty, Betty couldn’t remember the last time she’d told the absolute truth.

“Betty?”

She jumped when he touched her leg. A streak of purple wine sloshed over the rim of her glass as she set it down a tad too forcefully. Before she could reach for a bar napkin, Will caught her hand and drew it to his mouth. Those dark eyes fixed on her, he pressed his lips to her knuckles then parted them slightly, sipping the wine from her skin.

“Good gracious, you are the devil, aren’t you?” she said as he released her.

He favored her with a crooked smile. “That’s what my poor, sainted mother used to claim.”

“I need to…I want….” she pushed off the stool.

She cast about, trying to catch the thread that might tell her what her next move should be. A burnt wood sign announced that the restrooms could be located down a barely-lit hall. The front door beckoned. She tried to move, but the soles of her boots were stuck to the floor.

Will stood, cupping a solicitous hand under her elbow to steady her. “What? What do you want?”

Him. She needed him. Though why she would or how she could was beyond her at the moment. She’d walked through that door not an hour before, not knowing there might be a fallen angel on the other side. A man who claimed he liked the way she looked in a pink marshmallow coat and furry hat. He didn’t know the first thing about her beyond her name. And he wanted her. Just her. And, good gravy, she wanted him, too.

“You,” she whispered. “I want you.”

Without giving herself a chance to second-guess herself, she grabbed his hand and pulled him off his stool as she started toward the back of the bar. The hall to the restrooms was narrow and dark, the walls covered in cheap fake paneling and the plastic on the overhead light so yellowed with age it glowed amber.

“Betty.”

He was still working on the second syllable when she turned and fell back against the rough wall. There, she learned her second lesson about Will Tarrant. Once he stated his intentions, he didn’t waste time gearing up for the follow-through.

His mouth was on hers before she could draw air. His lips were warm and startlingly soft. The force of the kiss pinned her to the wall. He slipped one hand around to the small of her back and drew her close. The second her hips met his, she parted her lips and the kiss exploded. The back of her head hit the wall. He cradled it in his big, broad palm and soothed the ache with a tempting, taunting swirl of his tongue.