Somebody's Ex (2 page)

When she didn’t comment, freak out,
or even apologize, he tipped his head. “Were you threatening to sic your dog on
me?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t have closed
the door.” She made a placating little moue. “I’m sorry about the door. I
couldn’t open it. Then it just...” She spread her hands. “It just popped.” Like
the snaps on her skirt.

Instead of answering, his gaze
dropped to her skirt, and she realized she hadn’t properly snapped all her
snaps. She reached down, but then his gaze rose to her breasts which were now a
little too close to falling out of her low-cut spandex top.

The man was ogling her. And she
liked it. She hadn’t been ogled in a long time. A look at him revealed buff
thighs, chiseled abs, nicely shaped chest muscles and brown hair streaked with
several shades of blond, probably from days spent working out in the sun.

“You’re leering at me,” he said. “I
feel like a cheap piece of meat.” He still glowered, but the hint of a smile
curved his lips. He put on his sunglasses before she could detect an answering
glimmer in those intriguing eyes.

“Not cheap. Very expensive.” Her
voice came out deep, husky, and way too seductive. Damn. There went her mouth
again, spouting off before her brain had time to catch up. Her pops, and Mick,
really hated her tendency to babble.

But Holy Moly, she’d just flirted
with a man who’d almost creamed her and her truck. Not to mention squishing the
dog. Of course, it wasn’t the guy’s fault. But, well, he could get the wrong
impression about her with a comment like that.

“I didn’t mean that the way it
sounded.”

She sure as hell had, David hoped.
He’d lost his irritation the minute she’d bent down to button her skirt.

She was a wet dream come true. Long
blond hair, brilliant blue eyes, plump cherry lips, and a pair of ta-tas the
sight of which damn near knocked him upside the head. And if he looked at her
bare legs one more time, he’d expire in unfulfilled lust.

It didn’t matter a whit that she
was ditzy. He could have killed her. The thought of that beautiful chest
crushed between his bumper and her door gave him heart palpitations. He still
hadn’t come down off the adrenaline high, which explained his explicit wayward
thoughts.

A man, however, couldn’t be blamed
for becoming fascinated by such a lovely creature, especially with that pretty
blush blooming on her cheeks.

David pulled his thoughts out of
his shorts. “Stopping almost in the middle of the road probably isn’t a good
idea.”

She rolled her eyes, her long
lashes catching his attention. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” She looked at the
side of her dusty, beaten truck. It might have been rust-colored or a
long-since faded red. “I ran out of gas.”

Ahh. Why did women seem perpetually
out of gas? He eyed a can in the truck bed.

She quirked her mouth wryly. “I’m
pretty sure it’s empty.”

He hefted the container and sure
enough, it weighed almost nothing. “Might be a good idea to keep it full.” He
glanced at her face. “For emergencies.”

She closed her eyes and heaved a
sigh, scrambling his thoughts all over again.

“If one were prepared for every
eventuality, life would be like having to watch Julia Roberts in
Pretty
Woman
every day. Not that
Pretty Woman
is bad, but once in five
years is enough.” She tipped her head, her hair falling across her breasts.
“Gives you a chance to forget the ending.”

He agreed with the chick flick
assessment. But how could she forget the ending? Didn’t all chick flicks end
the same way? She went on, though, before he had a chance to ask.

“Then again, if it were Vin Diesel
in
Pitch Black
...” Eyes closed, arms held slightly away from her body,
she shuddered. He almost lost control as her husky voice swept through him.
“Well, twice a day wouldn’t be enough.”

Pitch Black.
Definitely
sounded like a movie to have a girl watch on a Friday-night date.

She shook herself. “Where were we?”
Then she batted her pretty blues. “Oh. I was going to ask if you could help
me.”

He squeezed between her truck’s
rear and his bumper to set the can in his bed, then opened the passenger door.
“Hop in.”

She glanced back at the dog face
staring at her through the rear window of her truck. Some sort of Husky breed,
he presumed, wearing a beseeching expression.

“I can’t leave Royal.”

“He can hop in the bed.”

She tipped her head from side to
side, then said, “
She
is strictly an in-cab girl. You know, dust and
dirt in her poor little eyes. I can wait here”—she did that batting thing
again—“if you wouldn’t mind bringing the gas back.”

He’d have to come back anyway,
unless he forced her to walk, and he wouldn’t leave her. Mom would flay the
flesh from his bones if he did.

He slid his eyes to his cab-plus.
“Bring her on.”

She smiled. Whoa, Nellie. The
knock-em-dead beam almost blinded him with its brilliance. With that smile, the
lady could get a man to do for-freaking-sure anything.

She yanked hard on the door, and
the dog sprang out, its leash trailing, to bounce all over the concrete. “
Bli
,”
she said. Obviously a command, the dog now froze in place.

Not a Husky, much smaller, he
wasn’t sure of the breed, but she was pure something. Just like her owner. The
woman grabbed her backpack, then the leash, and led the animal over. Sniffing a
boot and a pant leg, the dog seemingly pronounced him trustworthy and started
snuffling the truck tires.

“She’s really very good. She won’t
drool all over the seats. This is Royal.”

The dog actually looked at him as
her name was said, as if she understood she was being introduced. “What breed?”

Leaning over, she put the dog’s
paws on the bottom sill of the open door. “Hoppe,” she murmured in that odd dog
language, then patted the interior carpet. Royal scrambled into the back behind
the seats. “She’s a Norwegian Elkhound.”

“Never seen one before.” But it
explained the lilting commands the woman used. He’d have guessed Swedish, but
presumed the two languages were similar. Multilinguistic. Maybe the woman
wasn’t as ditzy as he first assumed.

“So you speak to her in Norwegian?”

She huffed, hands on her hips.
“Well, duh. That’s the only language she understands.”

Was she kidding? The blue sparkle
in her eyes said yes. “And you are?”

“Randi Andersen.” She gripped his
proffered hand firmly.

The warmth of her skin left a
lasting impression with him.

“David Jackson.” He flourished his
hand. “Hop in.”

She looked at the height of the
sill, and he had the perverse vision of helping her in the way she’d helped the
dog. His hands on her hands, his body pressed to her backside.

“You need a hand?” Oh man, he’d
give her one.

She raised a brow. “I’m fine.” She
waited expectantly.

David didn’t move, entranced by her
blue eyes.

“All right. I can see you’re going
to make me say it. Unless you want the shock of your life, I am not getting up
in this truck until you back off.” She looked down pointedly at her short
skirt, then the height of the truck’s sill.

Shock wasn’t what he felt, but he
was a gentleman, at least in deed if not in mind. He backed off and rounded the
end of his truck, the image of the snaps on her skirt popping open.

His body might never recover from
the vision.

Mortifying, but really, how else
was she supposed to say,
Shove off, buddy, before I flash my privates.
As it was, Randi barely got her skirt back in place—as in place as it could be
due to its brevity—before he climbed into the driver’s seat.

Was he clueless or had he been
waiting for the peep show? Maybe a bit of both. Nice. But not too nice.

David Jackson. Such a nice, normal,
boy-next-door name. Not like Spike or Slick or Hellboy. Or Mick. David was a
Mr. Nice Guy name. He looked the part, too. Clean-cut, no two-day-old whiskers
on his chin or holes in his jeans. His white truck was spotless, and his
fingernails were clean.

Though she did have a thing for the
bad-boy type—much to her everlasting damnation, torment, and wicked delight.
David seemed the kind of guy of whom her dad might actually approve.

Pops never liked Mick, but he’d
liked her divorce less.
Now you are just somebody’s ex.
She could still
hear his derogatory tone. She shoved away the voice of disapproval.

While not a bad boy by any stretch
of her limitless imagination, David was quite hunky. Not to mention the
military-style boots. She had a thing for boots.

His nose twitched. “What’s that
smell?”

Her vision of him in boots and
military uniform winked out. She rolled her eyes right, then left.

“My perfume?”

Mr. Nice Guy who was driving her
all the way to town and back again glanced at her. Then he gave her a devilish
smile. “There’s no way you smell like”—he sniffed—“skunk.”

“Royal thinks she’s a mighty
hunter. The skunk won.” Maybe she should have told him before he let the dog in
the truck. “It won’t get on your carpet. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

She did just that, the crossing
part, not the dying part, then realized that was a big fat mistake when his
gaze dropped to her stretchy spandex top. She just could not seem to do or say
the right thing with this guy.

Talk about the dog, without the
hand gestures.
She stuck her hands under her thighs. “She usually sleeps on
the bed, but it was so warm last night and she was panting and squirming around
and I’ve never seen her so hot and bothered and...” She stopped, stuck on an
image of hot, bothered, panting, squirming animals on her bed. And it wasn’t
Royal.

David tugged off his sunglasses,
dropped them in his lap, and glanced at her with those black-sand eyes of his,
heating her from the inside out. Her nipples tingled, and she didn’t have to
look down to know they were stark against her spandex top. Her skin flushed
from her throat to her cheeks, and she licked her lips. He watched that, too, before
finally dragging his gaze to the road.

Holy Moly. When would she learn to
keep her mouth shut? “I give up. I’m not talking anymore. Nadda, zippo,
nei
,
nyet
.”

David Nice Guy laughed. It was
nothing like Mick’s laugh, which had sounded like Snidely Whiplash toward the
end of their marriage. David’s was deep and full and tingled in her belly.

Royal obviously felt the same tummy
tingle because she leaned forward to stick her nose in David’s ear. Which made
Randi laugh. Then they were both laughing.

He had the nicest laugh. And he had
an even nicer gaze when he was letting it roam all over her upper body.

Randi batted at Royal’s snout.
“It’s impolite to stick your nose in a man’s ear until you know him much
better.”

David shot her a sideways glance.
“And just how well does she need to know me before it’s okay to nose my body
parts?”

“Your ear, probably a couple of
weeks. Other places, it’s always impolite.”

The side of his mouth quirked.

Give it up.
She wasn’t
capable of shutting up nor of saying the right thing. But it didn’t matter.
She’d made him laugh.

“Thanks for helping me with the gas
thing.”

“You’re welcome.”

What a nice, polite guy. David
wouldn’t be sticking his nose where it didn’t belong on short acquaintance.
Mick hadn’t known please and thank-you from “get your fat ass in there and get
me a beer.”

She stopped herself just short of
asking if David liked her ass. “I’d like to repay you somehow.”

He was silent a long moment.

Her skin prickled waiting for his
answer.

“How did you want to repay me?” A slight
harsh note laced his voice, then softened as he added, “I don’t accept cash for
saving a damsel in distress.”

He probably saved damsels a lot,
which deserved more than a coffee or a donut.
She
wanted more than
coffee and donuts.

She’d come back to Willoughby a
year ago for a lot of reasons; helping her parents, getting her life in order,
divorce recovery, self-esteem recovery. Settling down, whatever that meant. She
felt far from settled. Maybe, like her father always told her, she needed a man
to take care of her. A nice guy, not a Mick who, while he could be sweet as
banana cream pie and make her fall in love all over again, had a mean streak a
mile wide. He had never beat her, but he knew just the right words to make her
feel as dull and as stupid as a potato. Nice guys didn’t do that. Nice guys
cherished, loved, and protected. They made a girl feel special. Didn’t they?
Here was her chance to find out. Her dad would be pleased she’d finally set her
sights on a nice guy.

Randi smiled and jumped in with all
her wits about her. “Dinner. Tonight. If you’d like.”

David tipped his head, the look he
gave her lasting longer than the other glances. They were nearing town, and she
noticed Royal pressed a wet doggie nose to his side window.

Finally, David answered. “Dinner
sounds good. I’ll pick you up. What time?”

“I meant I was going to make you
dinner. Picking me up on the side of the road deserves more than restaurant
fare. How about seven?” That would give her time to clean the house.

He maneuvered into Four Corners
Garage, pulling up to the pump and shutting down the engine before he answered.
Then he retrieved his sunglasses from his lap and slid them up the bridge of
his nose.

“Seven sounds fine.”

Holy Mack Moly, she’d just invited
a man over for dinner. And she didn’t know how to cook. She’d call her mother
for the recipe for Norwegian meatballs as soon as she got back from the vet.
The store was closed on Monday, and her mom was sure to be home. Meatballs
couldn’t be that hard to make.