Small-Town Redemption

“Take me to bed,” she told him, albeit a bit shakily. “Now.”

* * *

WHY HIM?

Kane sighed, the movement causing his shoulders to rise and fall, which in turn caused Red’s breasts to brush against his chest. She didn’t have a lot going on in that department, but she had enough for his body to notice.

Hell.

Reaching behind his neck, he tugged her hands apart, then set her away from him. “Sorry, Red. Not interested.”

He went into the kitchen, but not before seeing the hurt, the embarrassment, cross her face.

Not his problem, he told himself, pouring more coffee into his cup. It wasn’t up to him to soothe or coddle her. She’d come here, had come to him. He hadn’t asked for her attention or her clumsy attempts at seduction.

She stomped after him, the embodiment of a woman scorned, complete with narrowed eyes and red splotches coloring her cheeks. She’d come to him and obviously wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

“What do you mean you’re not interested?” she asked, sounding incredulous. Disbelieving. “You’re a man. I’m a woman.”

Sipping his coffee, he looked her up and down. Her hair, red as a clown’s wig and stick-straight, fell past her shoulders. Heavy makeup hid the freckles on her nose and upper cheeks. She’d done something to her eyes, had lined them in thick black, used dark shadow on the lids then coated her pale lashes with what looked to be several layers of mascara. Her lips were a glossy pink.

She looked like a kid who’d gotten into her mother’s makeup.

“Just what I meant,” he said. “Not interested.”

Maybe he’d been a little bit interested a few minutes ago. She was right about one thing; he was a man. And she had been plastered against him. Not that skinny women with bad attitudes did much for him, but her hands had been soft on his arm, her fingers warm. And, he had to admit, she smelled good, really good, her perfume subtle and sweet. A contrast to her do-me heels and the permanent scowl she wore around him.

Practically vibrating with fury, she slapped her hands on her hips, the move tugging her shirt open and giving him a glimpse of smooth, creamy skin and the edge of a lacy black bra.

His body stirred. It was that damn man thing again.

“Oh, no. You are not doing this to me. Do you have any idea how long it took me to straighten my hair?” she asked, jabbing at her head hard enough to drill her finger right into her brain. “I can’t breathe, my feet hurt and I paid one hundred dollars for this stupid push-up bra.”

He let his gaze drop to her chest for one long, lazy moment. When he raised his eyes back to hers, she swallowed visibly. He smirked. “You might want to get your money back.”

She blanched before color rushed into her cheeks. She opened her mouth, no doubt to lay him flat, but then she shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, which, admittedly, did some interesting things to those small breasts.

On second thought, maybe that bra had been a good investment.

She opened her eyes, the glint in the light blue depths warning him he may have made a misstep.

Wouldn’t be his first.

She stormed up to him, all painted-on jeans, long legs and bad humor. “We are going to have sex, you hear me?” To punctuate her statement, she undid the top button of her shirt.

Kane paused in the middle of taking another sip of coffee. Raised an eyebrow. It was a bluff, that single button. It had to be. She didn’t have the guts to undo another one.

He hoped.

“Right here,” she continued, proving him wrong by yanking another one free. “Right now.” And another. “So stop pretending to be noble and take what is being offered to you.”

She dragged her shirt off her arms and threw it on the ground like a football player spiking the ball after a touchdown. Held his gaze, her breathing ragged, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her pale skin fairly glowing in his dimly lit kitchen.

His body responded to the sight of the soft curve of her breasts, her flat stomach and the ever-so-slight indentation of her narrow waist, and he considered, seriously considered, doing just that. Whether it was due to her being half-naked, his recent sexual dry spell or simply his resistance being down didn’t matter. In that moment, he wanted her. It pissed him off, this sudden, vicious need to have her.

Again and again and again.

That’s what his father would have done. What Kane had been brought up to do. Take what was so easily offered, so carelessly given. He’d been born into a wealthy family. A powerful one. Raised to believe he was better than others by virtue of his last name and his father’s financial worth.

Throw in his looks, and there had never been a shortage of available females ready and willing to do whatever it took to make Kane happy. To get his attention, to be on his arm—or in his bed.

There was a time when he wouldn’t have cared that Red was his employee’s sister, that they barely knew each other. That she didn’t want him so much as she wanted to use him. He would have used her, too, then set her aside without another thought or care.

He liked to think he wasn’t that big of a prick anymore.

“Seriously?” Red asked through gritted teeth, her arms splayed as if to point out she was, indeed, partially naked and offering herself to him. “This is something you have to think about?”

“No,” he told her in all honesty as he set his mug down. “I don’t have to think about it at all.”

He closed the distance between them, noted how she started to step back before catching herself. She lifted her chin as if facing the grim reaper head-on.

Kane moved closer, stopping shy of actually touching her. “You want me, Red?”

Her eyes widened. She licked her lips. “Yes,” she said, holding his gaze, all stoic and brave, her pale skin beckoning him to touch, the pulse beating rapidly at the base of her throat enticing him to taste. Her scent wrapped around him, making him want something he had no business wanting, something he never would have even considered before she barged into his apartment and stripped off her shirt.

“You want me to touch you?” he asked, his voice rough, his caress whisper-soft as he slowly trailed his fingertips up her arms.

A blush started at the base of her throat, bloomed in her cheeks. He wanted to press his lips to the side of her neck, to feel the warmth of that color washing over her skin. She swallowed hard, then nodded once, a quick jerk of her head.

He’d known she was irritable, temperamental and overbearing. He never would have guessed she was also a liar.

He settled his hands on her shoulders, kept his touch light. Impersonal. “You want to have sex with me? You want me to make you come? Because that’s what I’d do if you were in my bed. I’d strip you bare,” he murmured, for some reason envisioning doing just that. In intimate detail. Scowling, he forced the image from his head. “I’d touch you everywhere with my hands, my lips.” He leaned in, put his mouth close to her ear. “My tongue.”

Gasping, she reared back, her spine hitting the counter with a sharp thud. She pressed herself against it as if that alone could stop his words, could stop him from coming closer.

It couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Not yet. Not until he’d made his point and made it well.

“Or maybe you don’t want something as ordinary as sex in a bed,” he continued quietly. Relentlessly. “Something as mundane as soft touches and reverent kisses.”

He nudged one thigh between her legs, ignored how she stiffened, her hands going to his chest. She didn’t push him away, stubborn thing that she was. But her fingers trembled against him.

“I...” Her nails dug into his skin. She cleared her throat. “A bed is...fine.”

“You didn’t come here for a tame experience. We could do it here, on the floor or the table. Or maybe you’d like it against this counter, hard and fast. Your legs wrapped around my waist.” His voice dropped, grew husky. “Me buried deep inside of you.”

She flinched, but it wasn’t enough, not when she hadn’t pushed him away yet, hadn’t tried to cover herself. Hadn’t slapped him, called him a few choice names and stormed off. Not when, for a moment, she’d reduced him to the man he used to be.

“I’d make you feel good,” he promised, tracing lazy circles just below her collarbone. She shivered. “You wouldn’t care that it was me on top of you. I could make you forget your name.” He paused, laid his palm flat above her breast, felt her heart beating, too hard, too fast. “I could make you forget him. At least for a little while.”

She opened her mouth, but he shook his head before she could deny what they both knew was true.

“I could do all of that,” he continued. “If I wanted to.” He stepped back, the move not as easy to do as he would have liked. One more thing he blamed on her. “I don’t.”

Her fingers curled, scraping his skin before she slowly lowered her arms. “You...what?”

“I don’t want to.” He kept his voice flat. Cool. Honest. “I don’t want you.”

Her throat working, she hunched her shoulders, curling into herself and staring at him like a puppy he’d drop-kicked. Guilt and regret nudged him. Told him he could have been more sympathetic. Kinder. Except he’d learned to reserve his sympathy for those who truly deserved it.

And that kindness would only be used against him.

Besides, this wasn’t his fault. It was hers.

All hers.

She yanked on her shirt. “You don’t want me? Fine. Great.” Her head bent, her hair hiding her face, she buttoned it. “But let me tell you something, buddy, you’re the one missing out here. Not me.”

That was better, so much better than the disappointment that had been in her eyes a moment ago. The hurt.

“Someday,” he promised, “you’ll thank me for this.”

Her head whipped up, her eyes narrowing. “And someday you’ll kick your own ass for passing up the opportunity to be with me.”

Lifting her pointy chin and haughty nose, she swept past him, regal as a queen.

Because he worried she might be right, because she’d come here and stirred up this unwanted hunger for her, he snatched her arm. Whirled her around to face him. “Should I be honored that someone of your high moral standing offered herself to me?” he asked, his voice silky despite the tightness of his jaw. “Grateful to help you prove you’re over some other guy?”

“Yes...I mean...no. I mean...I...” She tugged her arm and he let go. She stepped back, her top teeth worrying her lower lip. But she held his gaze. “This isn’t about anyone but you and me. I’m here because I...I’m attracted to you.”

There it was. The truth. Part of it, anyway, said in a rush. A guilty secret.

An attraction that was purely physical. If she ignored it long enough, the flash of heat between them would eventually flicker and fade. When presented with a bright, burning flame, the best thing, the smart thing, was to keep your hands to yourself.

She wanted to touch it, to feel its burn. A good girl taking a walk on the wild side. Rebelling against the endless repetition of her tidy life and daily routine, the expectations of others and her own boredom.

“You’re here,” he said, “because you thought getting laid would make you feel better.”

Her shoulders snapped back. But then, that seemed to be her natural stance—rigid. Uptight. Condescending. “You don’t know anything about me.”

He knew the last time she was at his bar, she and Sadie had fought about James Montesano, a local carpenter. That their argument had disrupted Kane’s night and upset Sadie enough that she’d ducked out of work three hours before the end of her shift.

“I know you want to piss off your sister. Find some other way than throwing yourself at a guy.”

Charlotte’s hands balled into fists. “This has nothing to do with Sadie.”

“Bullshit. You think sleeping with me will prove you’re over him? That you don’t care he chose Sadie over you? All you’re doing is embarrassing yourself.”

Her eyes welled. Her lower lip trembled.

Panic squeezed his spine. Had his palms sweating. He had no use for tears or the women who used them to get what they wanted. Women like his mother.

“Swallow those back,” he growled. “Or I swear to God I’ll toss your skinny ass out the window.”

“I wouldn’t cry over you,” she said with a deep sniff. “I wouldn’t waste one single tear. You’re not worth it.”

She had that right. “Good to hear.”

“You...you’re...”

“Could you spit out whatever you’re choking on so I can get back to my bed?”

“You’re an ass. A bastard. A—”

Someone knocked on the door.

Red, her mouth open, her eyes wide, leaped behind the chair, half crouching behind it. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

“Sorry but my X-ray vision is on the fritz.” He stepped toward the door.

“No,” she gasped, grabbing his hand. “For God’s sake, don’t answer it.”

More knocking, rapid in succession and annoying as hell.

“If I don’t,” he ground out, pulling free, “I can’t get rid of them.”

For the second time that morning, he opened the door.

And for the second time that morning, found an unwelcome visitor.

“I’m sorry,” Sadie Nixon blurted, her blond hair a wild mass around her face, dark circles under her eyes. “Did I wake you?”

“I run a bar that doesn’t shut down until 2:00 a.m. What do you think?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, sounding as if she was about to burst into tears any second. Christ, but this was not his morning. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

He raised his eyebrows at the suitcase she held. “I hear the Holiday Inn off the highway has affordable rates.”

He started to shut the door, but she blocked it with her foot. “Please,” Sadie said, much nicer than Red ever spoke to him. “Just for a night or two.”

Have her bunk with him for a few nights? No way. He didn’t get involved in personal problems, didn’t get personally involved with the people he worked with.

Or, in this case, the people who worked for him.

“You don’t want to come in here,” he said.

“I do. I really do.”

Maybe the only way to get rid of her—of both of them—was to let Sadie in.

Scratching his stomach, he stepped aside. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Thanks,” she said, brushing past him. “I promise not to—”

“You have got to be kidding.”

Sadie slowly turned, her eyes about popping out of her head when she saw her sister. “What are you doing here? Where did you get those clothes? I didn’t realize Nordstrom had a tart department.” She whirled on Kane. “And you. You should be ashamed of yourself. She’s just a child!”

“I probably should be,” he agreed. Would be if he’d gone through with some of the more lewd thoughts he’d had concerning Red. “But I’m not.”

He had more than his fair share of sins, but this wasn’t one of them.

Red stalked over to her sister, towering over the curvy blonde. “How dare you? I’m a grown woman, damn it.”

Sadie sniffed. “Then I suggest you act like one.”

“I don’t need to stand here and listen to this.” With a toss of her hair, Red snatched up her purse. “You’re in my way,” she told Sadie, who blocked her exit.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what, exactly, you’re doing here.”

“I’m not telling you anything. Now move. Or I swear, I will move you.”

Sadie narrowed her eyes. “I’d like to see you try.”

“And I’d like to see the backs of both of you as you leave me in peace so I can get some more sleep,” Kane said.

“Blame her—” Red jabbed a finger at Sadie.

He yawned. Rolled his shoulders back, then took them each by the upper arm and tugged them out into the hallway. He stepped inside his apartment and faced them. “Let’s not cast blame.”

He shut and locked the door, the soft click echoing in the stunned silence.

Stunned, blessed silence.

He walked to his room. He might not have been as gentle as he could have been with Red, but he’d done the right thing. Which wasn’t something that came often or, to be honest, easily. Mostly because he couldn’t care less about what other people thought was right. But, yeah, for once he’d made the morally acceptable choice.

Give him a freaking medal.

He kicked off his jeans and padded naked to the bed. Lying down, he linked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He blew out a heavy breath. Shut his eyes, but could still feel the warmth of Red’s fingers on his skin. Could still smell her. She’d invaded his apartment and now her ghost was sticking around.

Women. They never knew when to leave a man alone.

He rolled off the bed, yanked the window open, then flopped onto his stomach. All the cool breeze did was blow around her phantom scent so he pulled the pillow over his head. He tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, the memory of Charlotte standing before him in nothing but jeans and a bra imprinting itself in his mind. When he finally, gratefully, fell asleep, he dreamed of her. Of her long legs, bright hair and wary eyes.

And when he woke, hard and aching for her, he could have sworn he still tasted the whisper of her kiss on his lips.

CHAPTER TWO

Seven months later

BEHIND THE BAR, Kane wiped his hands on the towel he kept in his back pocket. Julie Moffat, law student by day and kick-ass waitress by night, wove her way through the crowd at O’Riley’s, a tray of cosmos in her raised hand. She delivered the drinks to a table of coeds celebrating a twenty-first birthday, said something to the girls then nodded toward the corner where two dudes raised their beers in a toast. By the time the girls smiled their thanks to the guys, Julie was back at the bar.

“I need four margaritas,” she told Sadie, “two regular, one of those no salt. One strawberry, the other pomegranate, both blended. And four shots of Cuervo.”

Sadie, already pouring tequila into the blender, raised her eyebrows. “Sympathizing, celebrating or just loosening inhibitions?”

“They’re celebrating,” Julie said with a nod toward the four middle-aged women at a booth by the dartboard. “The blonde in the mom jeans got some big promotion, finally getting out from under the ass-hat supervisor she’s had to deal with for the past five years.”

“Good triumphs over evil.” Sadie raised the bottle in a toast before setting it on the counter. “I love when that happens.”

Kane handed a customer two bottles of Corona, a lime quarter wedged in each one. “Give the ladies that round on the house,” he told Julie.

“Will do.” And with that, she and her asymmetrical dark hair and neck tattoo were off again.

Sadie poured herself a glass of ginger ale. “While I have your attention—”

“You don’t have my attention.” He pointedly took in her cheetah-print dress, the snug material hugging her curves. “But PETA called. They’d like to talk to you about that outfit.”

“Oh, ha-ha. Such wit. Ease your mind, my little animal advocate. No cheetahs were injured during the making of this dress.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve blinded half the people in here with those tights.”

She glanced down at the neon pink covering her legs. Grinned. “Just trying to bring a little bit of brightness to this dreary place. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do so next weekend as I need it off. That’s the whole weekend—two days. Two. Don’t try to schedule me for Saturday night and then claim you thought I meant only Friday.”

“You don’t seem to get how this works,” he said. “I’m the boss. I write the paychecks. I make the rules.”

And holy shit, but he had sounded just like his father.

“Yes, yes,” Sadie agreed pushing her fluffy blond hair from her shoulder. “You’re the big boss man. You have all the power in this relationship while I am just an employee, et cetera and so forth.”

“Glad you finally see things my way.”

“And as your employee, I’m giving you advance notice that I will be unable to work next weekend.”

“No.”

“You don’t seem to get how this works,” she said, throwing his words back at him with a sunny grin that made his left eye twitch. “I’m not asking for permission. I’m telling you I’m not working next weekend. James and I are going out of town.”

Sadie and James had become an official couple not long after Kane kicked Sadie and Charlotte out of his apartment last fall. They lived together. Why did they have to go out of town?

“You have to work.” He kept his tone calm. No sense losing his temper or his control. Though dealing with Sadie Nixon would be enough to make the most patient man lose his cool. “I already gave Mary Susan the weekend off so she could drive down to see her granddaughter in some school play.”

Sadie patted his arm, all faux conciliatory, as if the headache he’d developed wasn’t entirely her fault. “You’ll figure something out.”

“Do I have any other choice?”

Frowning, she pursed her mouth as if she seriously considered his question. “You could always close the bar. Hey, you could take a little vacation yourself. You haven’t had a day off since I started working here.”

He finished his water, tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. “You take enough days off for both of us.”

“So fire me.”

It was one of her favorite rejoinders, one she used mostly because she knew damn well he had no intention of doing it. He hated having anyone read him so clearly. If people knew you too well, they had the power to use that knowledge against you.

“Don’t think I’m not considering it.”

She laughed loudly, the sound somehow rising above the bar’s din. Several people—mostly men because, hey, pretty blonde in a tight, low-cut dress—glanced their way. “Oh, you slay me. You really do.”

“What’s so funny?” Bryce Gow, a heavyset elderly man with red cheeks and a bulbous nose, asked as he hefted himself onto a stool.

Sadie fixed his usual—rum and Coke—and set it on the bar, then leaned forward to tip her head conspiratorially toward Bryce. “Kane said he’s going to fire me,” she told the retired electrician.

Bryce’s expression brightened, but that could’ve been due to the fact that Sadie’s pose gave him an excellent view of her cleavage. “Fired shmired.” He sipped his drink, then patted Sadie’s hand. “Quit this dump—”

“Funny how this being a dump hasn’t stopped you from parking yourself on that stool every Saturday night for the past one hundred years,” Kane said.

Bryce, eighty if he was a day, and a regular long before Kane had ever set foot inside O’Riley’s—hell, before Kane, or even his father, had been born—glared, then turned back to Sadie. “You can work for my grandson,” he told her. “He’s a good boy. Respectful of his elders and his paying customers.”

Kane pulled yet another beer. “Last week you said he was lazy, ungrateful and running the company you’d built into the ground. You called him an idiot who’d touched one live wire too many and fried his brain.”

Bryce lowered his eyebrows. “At least he’s smart enough to appreciate good employees.”

“I am undervalued and underappreciated,” Sadie agreed with a sigh that was pure heartfelt drama. “I would quit in a heartbeat, but if I wasn’t around, poor Kane would miss me—”

“Poor Kane?” he mumbled, seriously considering sticking her head under the beer tap and giving her a good dousing. “Jesus Christ.”

She batted her eyelashes at him. “And I’d hate to see a grown man as pretty as him cry.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“So I’ve been told,” she said cheerfully. She blew him a kiss. “You know you adore me.”

The worst part? It was true.

“I’m heading to the back of the bar,” he said. “Give you and that big head of yours more room.”

He really should fire her, he thought, as he made his way to the other end of the bar. She was flighty and unreliable, showed up for most of her shifts late, and took too many breaks when she was working.

She was also a great bartender, cheerful and chatty, always ready with a joke, a compliment or a sympathetic ear.