Just One Look (20 page)

Chosen?

No. Stop it!

With fierce determination, Stormy reminded herself of certain truths. Now was not the time to fall into that old mental debate. Not tonight. She owned her decisions. She'd moved on. She liked the person she'd become when she'd finally grown up.

You're just scared.

When she got scared, the temptation to brand an L for loser on her forehead was overpowering. Put a sock in it, she scolded herself.

Stormy zipped her dress then studied her reflection in the full-length mirror. She was lucky. Sure, she had some tiny lines around the corners of her eyes, but her throat was still firm, as were her legs, and the aforementioned arms. Her boobs didn't droop. Yet. And her stomach was still flat. Not bad for a woman who turned fifty today. But was it good enough to be naked later with a man younger than she?

No, she couldn't do it. She was insane to even be thinking about it.

Her hands shook as she pulled the pins from her hair. If only she hadn't let Libby talk her into this Wine Country Weekend. If only she was at home, alone. Like all the other nights for as long as she could remember. If only she could stop thinking about sex.

Sex with him.

With his large hands touching her.

Everywhere.

If only she hadn't kissed him. But the heat in his eyes had drawn her. She felt like a moth that had already made the acquaintance of the flame and was over-heated from the encounter.

Stormy groaned. Heaven help her, but she wanted to be naked in his arms.

What was she going to do? If she had a brain in her head, she'd pack up and leave. Or at least stay in her bungalow and not answer the door.

Run away or stay?

The mirror reflected her indecision. Stormy sighed and smoothed the red silk over her breasts and down her body. A body that seemed to have grown a few million more, ultra-sensitive, nerve endings since she'd met Jack Butler, the owner of the winery.

What would it feel like if Jack touched her like this? A shiver of sexual awareness raced up her spine. The dress made her look as blatantly sexual as she felt.

A knock on the door made Stormy jump. A heavy pulse beat between her legs. Decision time.

Hide or open the door?

Old Enough To Know Better
by
Joan Reeves

Book 1: The Good, The Bad, and The Girly Novella Series

Available September 2011

Book 1 of
Texas One Night Stands

Every woman makes mistakes.

Susannah Quinn glared at the door to the Sheriff's private office. Yep, every woman makes mistakes, but most women didn't have to put up with a constant reminder of their not so brilliant actions. And most women didn't have
their
mistake showing up at
their
office, flaunting tanned muscles and polluting the environment with clouds of testosterone and male arrogance.

Of course, mistake didn't quite describe what she'd done. No tiny lapse in judgment for old Susannah Quinn. When she decided to throw common sense out the window, she didn't mess around. Her fair skin flamed at the memory.

Temporary insanity was the only explanation for her behavior. If temporary insanity was a legal defense in criminal court, shouldn't she also be able to escape punishment for her lapse in judgment? Instead, she had her mistake aka D. E. Hogan show up, right on her doorstep. That was cruel and unusual punishment if she'd ever heard of any. That kind of redress might be banned by the U. S. Constitution, but, apparently, in the grand cosmic scheme of things, it was still being dished out. What was even worse was that Hogan turned out to be the new consultant for the Murphy's Cove Police Department down on the coast. To make matters worse, he just had to drop by the Sheriff's office every blasted day.

Susannah picked up her coffee cup, an oversized white mug emblazoned with red letters:
Deputies do it in mirrored sunglasses!
She drained the lukewarm black coffee. Muttering beneath her breath at the injustice of it all, she slammed the heavy ceramic mug down.

"What's wrong with you this morning?" asked Grace Collier.

"Nothing." Susannah didn't look over at the dispatcher for fear of encouraging her. She'd known Grace, her best friend's mom, all her life and loved the outspoken woman, but she wasn't interested in being on the receiving end of one of Grace's well-meaning lectures.

The ringing phone saved her. Grace punched a button. "Dispatch. This is Grace."

Susannah ignored the conversation, knowing it was Grace's friend Eunice who ran the Courthouse Cafe across the street. The woman called every morning so she and Grace could discuss yesterday's episode of their favorite soap opera. Soap news ranked at the top of the list of excitement here in Vance.

There was never any criminal activity in Alton County. Other than high school seniors climbing the spindly old water tower to spray paint Class of whatever on the rusty tank. Sometimes, a few years passed before a kid got an itch and a can of spray paint along with the desire to immortalize his graduation from the consolidated high school that served most of the small towns in the county. Nothing ever happened in this narrow slice of coastal prairie far west of Houston. That was the way her uncle Barney Drummond, the Sheriff of Alton County ever since Susannah could remember, liked it. Life here moved as fast as a crawling turtle.

Not much occurred even down in Murphy's Cove, the county's richest town. Besides, the resort town had its own overpaid police department to deal with the few year-round residents as well as the many rich divorcees who mobbed the coastal enclave for the rich and perpetually bored.

The only hotbed of activity was over on the four-lane highway that sliced through part of Alton County. That's where the real action was. Susannah sighed. If catching speeders could be considered action. Disgruntled at her lot in life, she tried to return her attention to the report she was typing. Unfortunately, that reminded her of her temporary insanity.

"Just Hogan," he'd said when her uncle the Sheriff had introduced him. Susannah had shaken his hand as if she'd never laid eyes on him before.

Until Hogan, she'd had only one secret in her life. It had caused her humiliation and anger. Now, she had something else to hide. Ironically, Hogan was the only person on earth who knew anything about her first painful secret. One thing about being hurt, humiliated, and angry. Those emotions sure helped squash the warm tinglies that assaulted certain parts of her anatomy every time Hogan walked through the door. If only those painful emotions had changed her body's instinctive reaction to him.

Another sigh escaped her. There was just something about Hogan. If she'd been a woman given to flights of fancy, she'd have called it love at first sight. But she didn't believe in love. Much less love at first sight. She knew enough about human sexuality to know love at first sight was nothing but pheromones. Calling it smell at first sight would be more accurate. It was just basic primitive sexual response.

Whatever you called it, Susannah would do anything to keep Hogan from learning how susceptible she was to him. Her delicate chin squared in resolve. She might not be able to run away now that he was in her county, but she could stand and fight. Or take cover behind cynicism and sarcasm. Whatever worked.

"Just try to be agreeable, and the day will pass easier," Grace advised.

"Being agreeable is what got me stuck transforming Hogan's chicken scratch into a report. If this report's for the Mayor of Murphy's Cove, why can't Mr. Hotshot Consultant get someone in that police department to type it?"

"Maybe he likes the way you glow like a red warning light when he hands you his notes."

"It's the principle involved. I'm a deputy, not a secretary."

When Grace just chuckled, Susannah frowned. "Well, I am. Or I would be if I were given half a chance. Stop laughing. This isn't funny."

"You're too danged serious. Lighten up. Be nice to Hogan. After all, he was pretty gracious about that little faux pas as you call it."

"He was not! He was obnoxious and overbearing. I'll tell you what his initials stand for. D is for demanding. E is for egotistical. To top it all off, he got Uncle Barney to tear up the ticket."

"Tickets," Grace corrected. "One for parking. The other was for a cracked tail light on the Suburban he was driving. At least that's what you said."

"Tickets then. And the tail light was cracked." Susannah hoped Grace attributed the crimson that stained her cheeks to anger. That day, meeting Hogan again, here in her town, had shaken her. After her uncle had introduced him, Hogan had possessed the nerve to ask her to lunch. Fear had flooded her. Fear that he thought they could have a fling. Fear that he didn't want a fling. Most of all, fear that she might not be able to keep her hands off him.

When she'd declined his offer, his eyes had mocked her. She'd pretended to be absorbed in the fax from the state police that she'd been reading.

In a voice so soft she'd thought perhaps she'd imagined it, he'd said, "Coward."

Alarmed that he'd nailed it so perfectly, she'd not dared to look up. Moments later, the door had opened and closed. He'd left without challenging her further.

Later, returning from lunch, she'd seen a black Suburban pull up and double park behind the cars filling the diagonal slots in front of the Sheriff's office. She honestly hadn't realized it was Hogan driving until she'd walked over to ask the driver to park in the lot across from the courthouse.

His blue eyes had gleamed with amusement. And with something else. Something that made her breath catch. Suddenly, the heat of the July day intensified. She knew what Hogan was thinking. She could read it in his gaze as clearly as she could feel it in the pulse points of her body. And that really scared her. If only he hadn't looked at her that way. If the corner of his mouth hadn't lifted in that little smile.

All it had taken to send panic chasing after the shiver of sexual awareness was his softly spoken question. "Don't you think we have something to talk about, Susy?"

The timbre of his voice and the heat in his gaze were like flame to dry tinder. Terrified at her body's response to everything about him, Susannah had backed away. She shook her head. "Don't call me Susy." She knew her quavering voice must have matched her "deer in the headlights" expression.

"No heart to heart talk today? No problem. I'll be here a few weeks. We've got time."

Susannah had felt all the blood drain from her face. She'd felt hot and cold all in the same moment. She could find no words to counter what she viewed as a threat. To be honest, there was a traitorous part of her that wished she could leap into his arms. Into his bed. But that would be disastrous.

All she'd had to do was make a joke about that night. Pretend that she was sophisticated. Unfortunately, she'd lost the ability to put together a coherent sentence, much less a smart, hip response to defuse the situation. So she'd taken refuge from his searching gaze and husky voice by whipping out her ticket book from her khaki shirt pocket. Gruffly she'd explained he was illegally parked. She'd only intended to write a warning. But Hogan had flirted. He'd winked and softly said, "Are you sure you don't want to go someplace private and talk about this, Deputy? Maybe we can work something out?"

That had just increased her panic. In a flash she saw a future she dreaded. He'd finish his job at Murphy's Cove and shake the dust of this small town. If she yielded to her emotions, he'd leave her with nothing but regret. She'd ripped the ticket out and handed it to him. He'd laughed.

The sound was the match to her fuse. She seared him with a glance and walked around the Suburban, making a pretense of inspecting the lights on the rear of the Burb just to buy her panicked brain more time. In her most official voice, she said, "Your right rear tail light is cracked."

"Well, gee whiz, Officer," he said in a parody of a Texas drawl. "You sure as shootin' better write that up. Can't let a lawless desperado like me get away with anything."

His mocking voice spurred her on. Retribution was a bitch with a ticket book in hand. Ripping the second ticket from the book, she handed it to him with a flourish. "As you wish."

"You must not have been in uniform longer than a nano second, or you'd know you don't give tickets to other law enforcement personnel. It's not professional."

His jeering words burned her. She'd wanted to smack him with her ticket book.

Fortunately, her uncle had arrived just then. It hadn't taken the Sheriff long to get the picture. He'd tsk tsked a bit, taken the tickets from Hogan, and stuffed them in his pants pocket. She'd known her uncle would tear the tickets up. And he had.

Battle lines were drawn that day. When Hogan dropped by, he alternated between flirting outrageously and treating her like a child. She countered with whatever put-down fit the occasion. She was just counting the days until he packed up and went back to wherever he'd come from. Until then, her best defense was a good offense.

Still, it hurt that her best friend's mother seemed to side with Hogan. "Grace, you don't think it's right for Hogan to act as if he's above the law, do you?"

"Oh, pish. You're too young to be such a stickler for rules. Just once I'd like to see you thumb your nose at responsibility."

Grace's outburst surprised Susannah. "You make me sound like a, well, like a stick in the mud. A pompous stick in the mud at that."

"Kids should be kids, but you skipped over that and went straight to adulthood. You're too serious to moralize like this."

Surprised, Susannah asked, "Do I really sound so self-righteous?"

"No, hon, no." Grace smiled and held her thumb and index finger close together. "Well, maybe just a teeny bit. You gotta quit judging people and how they should or shouldn't act. And quit assuming responsibility for other people. You've been doing that since you were seven. It's time to live your own life. Let others live theirs. Good golly. Have some fun. Stop being as unyielding as a clod of sun-baked mud."