Perfect Kiss (9 page)

Amy once described having a similar phenomenon occur since she’d had the twins. She called it having “baby brain.” So Shelby guessed that what she had suffered from was “lust brain.”

“Last call!” Levi’s announcement was followed by the sound of none-too-happy patrons that didn’t want their night to come to an end.

Shelby cashed several customers out and cleared her unofficial side of the bar. As she began counting her tips for the night, she realized how nice it felt to know that she was going to have money in her account and she wasn’t going to have to account for it.

About three months after she’d moved in with Kevin, he’d started checking her bank account every night. After a while, that habit had escalated to him placing an alert to be sent to his phone whenever she used her card. Now, even only being a few weeks out of the relationship, it sounded crazy to her to think that she’d allowed him to do that. But, in her defense, it hadn’t happened overnight. It wasn’t like she’d moved in with him and then he was online checking her account balance and having alerts sent to his phone that same night. It had happened gradually. Slowly. Methodically.

With every passing day, Shelby had felt more and more like she’d been brainwashed. Maybe she had. Or maybe she’d just been a certified, bona fide, dumba-fide idiot.

Either way, she promised herself that it would
never
happen again. A man was never going to have the kind of control, access, or power over her life that Kevin had possessed.

“Great job tonight.” Levi’s deep voice affected her like it had an annoying habit of doing; vibrating through her like she was sitting on top of a washing machine on spin cycle.

A chill ran down her spine, and immediately, the dark cloud that represented the last year of her life lifted. Taking a deep breath, she turned to him and squared her shoulders as pride—and another emotion she was choosing to ignore—filled her chest.

“Thanks.”

Shelby knew that the road back to herself was not going to be a short one; it had already been fairly windy with quite a few bumps in it. And she wasn’t sure how long it would take her to
feel
again. But just being there tonight, serving drinks, and making her own money had given her a sense that she was heading in the right direction. And, full disclosure, her new boss certainly didn’t hurt her journey one little bit. He definitely paved the path, making a smoother ride.

He did, however, make her feel things other than confident. Like, for example, when he’d opened the door…shirtless. That sight had rocked her to her core. Literally. She’d felt a tremor that had to have registered at least a 7.5 on the Richter scale right smack-dab in her center. It had caused her to momentarily forget what day it was, what time it was, where she was. Basically, his off-the-charts hotness had given her temporary amnesia.

Just when she’d recovered from that natural disaster, her shift had begun, and it had been filled with a variety foreplay pack of passing glances, seductive stares (okay, that adjective might have been in her mind), touches, and brushes she and Levi had exchanged all night. Since Levi had opened the front door of the bar tonight, she’d been feeling more than a little off balance, and Shelby wanted to level out the playing field, so to speak.

As she wiped the countertop down while Levi walked around the bar to lock the door, inspiration struck on exactly how to go about achieving that goal—and perhaps even tip the scales slightly in her favor. Before she’d had a chance to process whether or not the idea was brilliant or ridiculous, she heard herself asking, “So tell me more about this B&B.”

When Levi didn’t immediately respond, she lifted her eyes and found that he’d stopped mid stride about a foot from the door. His shoulders looked bunched up with tension, which might’ve been a bad thing on someone else, but on Levi, the posture merely served to showcase his broad, chiseled, muscular back like it was a billboard advertisement. The lines beneath the thin red cotton material were bad enough, but now that Shelby had firsthand knowledge of exactly what that skin looked like sans shirt… Well, let’s just say the scandalous images running through her head were not of even in the ballpark of appropriate thoughts to be having for her boss.

The second he began moving again, Shelby absentmindedly wiped beneath her lips, horrified when she found, to her great dismay, that there was moisture there.

Damn. She seriously needed to get a grip on this whole drooling-over-Levi’s-every-sexy-move thing. If she didn’t, she was afraid she’d have to borrow one of the twins’ burp cloths, and that was not a cute look for a grown woman.

After turning the lock on the wooden door, Levi turned slowly. “Do you want to see it?”

“Yes,” Shelby answered automatically.

The grin that pulled at Levi’s full lips sent Shelby’s stomach tumbling faster than Jack and Jill down the hill as her mouth watered like a dam had burst.

Yeah. She definitely needed to get this drool-reflex under control.

Chapter 7

‡

W
hat the hell was I thinking suggesting this?

Levi’s heart was beating double time as the leaves crunched beneath his work boots. His palms were sweaty as he pulled his key out of his pocket. He hoped like hell that none of his anxiety was showing. The last thing he wanted was for Shelby to know what he was feeling.

He tried to write his nerves off as totally normal considering that Shelby was the first person who would be seeing the cabin. Well, unless you counted Lauren, which he didn’t because she’d shown him the cabin, not the other way around.

Honestly, Levi wasn’t sure what was louder: the soles of his boots echoing off the wooden porch steps or his heart pounding so hard that it felt like it was trying to make a prison escape through his ribs. His breaths were shallow as he placed the key in the front door and turned it. Stepping inside, he flipped the light switch to the on position. All Levi could hear was a loud buzzing in his ear and the heavy and the insistent thudding of his heartbeat, but he could feel Shelby move behind him.

The bar had felt different tonight. It had been filled with a singularly unique energy. It wasn’t a great mystery what the new element that had shifted the dynamics was. It was Shelby.

Every minute they’d worked together, no matter where she’d been, he’d sensed her. Sure, that could easily have been explained by the fact that the bar was not that large. Although that was the most logical answer to the phenomenon, it didn’t exactly ring true to him. It seemed more likely—not logical, but likely—that his sixth-Shelby-sense had more to do with their connection than vicinity.

Levi had heard once that every living thing put a signal out. It wasn’t just radios or televisions that operated on wavelengths—plants and people did too. If that was, in fact, the case, then it felt to him like he and Shelby were both tuned in to a frequency no one else had access to. He knew that it sounded ridiculous, but that was honestly what he felt.

Not that it mattered, even if that were the case. Nothing could happen between himself and Shelby. Tonight, he’d seen a glimpse, a tiny spark, in Shelby’s expressive baby blues that had reminded him of the woman he’d met over a year ago. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it had vanished.

In that moment, his suspicions had been confirmed on a gut level. She
was
like that injured little bird his younger brothers had found when they were kids. Something had damaged her in the last eighteen months. Something had broken her wing.

He knew that whatever—or, more accurately,
who
ever—was responsible for shattering her spirit was also responsible for the black eye she was working overtime to cover up. Thinking of anyone laying a hand on Shelby sent a tidal wave of rage racing through Levi’s veins.

“This place is…” she trailed off.

Turning on his heel, he saw that Shelby’s eyes were wide and her lips were parted.

“I know it needs a lot of work—” he began to explain, but she interrupted him.

“No.” She shook her head back and forth, and the citrusy smell of her shampoo drifted through the air. Her voice was tinged with awe, and for some reason, the sound sent pride swelling in his chest. “It’s amazing.”

Turning his head, Levi tried to see the space through fresh eyes. Since the first time he’d seen the cabin, he’d had blinders on. He hadn’t paid attention to what it looked like right now; he’d only seen what he knew it could be after he transformed it. More than once in his life, he’d been accused of having tunnel vision, only seeing what he wanted to, not what was really there. He thought that maybe that was the case now.

Shelby walked through the small front room, stepping over the debris that was piled up in the corner from the demo he’d done in the kitchen earlier that day. After peeking her head around the wall that divided the front room from the small dining area, she moved down the barrier that separated them and knocked on the wall.

“Is this a load-bearing wall? If not, you should take it out. It would really open up the space and let a lot more light in.”

Levi was momentarily at a loss for words. His mind was reeling from her use of “load-bearing wall.” For some reason, those words coming out of Shelby’s full lips was one of the hottest things he’d ever heard.

“How do you know about load-bearing walls?” As soon as he asked the question, he immediately recognized it as being ridiculous and borderline chauvinistic. He might as well have tagged “little lady” on to the end of it.

Knowing he at least partly deserved it, he braced himself for the wrath of Shelby, who, if he remembered correctly, had quoted Gloria Steinem not once, but
twice
during the few hours they’d spent dancing the night away.

Hoping to head off any blow-up, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

To his surprise, instead of calling him on his line of questioning, she shrugged and even looked apologetic as she brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “No, it’s fine. I worked as stage crew and built sets in the drama department in high school and college. Some of the other students that were set builders were architecture majors.”

“I would’ve thought that you would have been on the stage, not behind the scenes.” Levi wasn’t sure why he’d said that out loud. It was just that Shelby shined like she walked around with a spotlight on her. She had what he’d heard people call the “it” factor.

Looking down at the floor, he noticed that she was shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Then, raising her gaze to him, she nodded.

“Yeah, that’s how it started. I got cast in the lead role of
Chicago
freshman year of high school. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me and the drama teacher, Mr. Bisbee, I suffer from severe stage fright. A fact that, in a rather humiliating twist to my tale, was not discovered until opening night. I stepped out on stage and froze. Could not move a muscle.”

As bad as Levi felt for Shelby, she had the fire of a fighter in her. Or she used to. Thinking that she’d just thrown in the towel after one failed attempt didn’t feel right to him.

“And that was it? You never tried again?”

Shelby laughed and shook her head. “No. I wish I had, but no. Sadly, I
insisted
that it was a one-time thing. A fluke. That it wouldn’t happen again. I begged, pleaded, demanded that I have another shot. So the next night, I’m pretty sure it was against his better judgment, but Mr. Bisbee let me take the stage again.”

Letting out a sigh, she leaned her shoulder against the doorframe as a small smile lifted her lips. “Let’s just say that I had a repeat performance. Which you would think would have made me learn my lesson, but oh no. Not me. I revised my role as the speechless statue not once, not twice, but
three
more times. And I probably would have done it a dozen more if Mr. Bisbee hadn’t put his foot down and said that there was no way, in all good conscience, that he could continue to let me fall flat on my face.”

For the second time in less than ten minutes, pride swelled in Levi’s chest. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Shelby’s brow furrowed, and she tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Just that I wouldn’t think you would be easily deterred. You’re a fighter.”

A hurt expression flashed across her pretty features. He wanted to say something to smooth over the insensitive comment he’d just made, but unfortunately, his mouth was too full with his own foot.

“So, what made you want to open a B&B?” She turned and walked into the kitchen.

It was obvious she wanted to change the subject. As much as he wanted to question her, to find out everything that had happened to her over the last eighteen months, to hold her and tell her that no one would ever hurt her again…he knew he couldn’t.

Shelby stood in the middle of the kitchen looking at the half-torn-down cabinets, her back to him. Her long, shiny, brown hair hung loosely down her back. His eyes roamed down the slope of her back, which was pronounced by the tight, ribbed tank top she was wearing. The glowing skin that peeked between the hem of her shirt and her jeans was less than half an inch, but it was more alluring than a centerfold spread.

Levi’s palms tingled with the desire to reach out and touch her there. Instead, he stepped into the doorway he planned on adding a swinging door to and lifted his arms, wrapping his fingers around the frame above his head just to be safe.

Breathing in through his nose, he thought about her question. Deep down, hidden under the layers of self-protection he’d covered it with, lay the answer. One he hadn’t even entertained since he’d started chasing this dream. Somehow, Shelby’s fragility, her vulnerability, had unearthed it and brought the truth to the surface of the murky waters of his being. For a reason he didn’t want to explore, he found himself sharing the details with her.

Words he’d never spoken to another person came spilling out of him. It was like she had an invitation to his soul. The only problem was that he didn’t remember giving it to her.