Marriage On His Mind. Susan Crosby

that with me everywhere I’ve gone these past four days. I went to the grocery store and opened shampoo bottles until found which one matched the scent in your cap, just because I needed to know. Even getting caught was worth the embarrassment.”

      “You...you got caught? Sniffing shampoos in the store?” She tried very hard not to laugh.

      He grinned. “Yeah, by a smug teenaged boy who stood there with his arms folded across his chest until I loaded every bottle I’d opened into a shopping cart and then followed me to make sure I bought them. But I needed to know everything I could about you. This cap was all I had. It’s hard now to give it up.”

      She swallowed. No one had ever laid siege to her before. She wasn’t the kind of woman men saw as a sex object. She was just Mickey, the woman whom people asked directions of, whom weekend daddies trusted to take their daughters safely into public rest rooms. She looked harmless. She was harmless. She was not the femme fatale that Jack seemed to be projecting her to be.

      Jack could see he’d flustered her, although he was mature enough not to gloat. He knew who she was. He knew how to find her. He could let her go—for now. “So long, Coach,” he said, maneuvering his crutches past her.

      “Wait a minute, Jack Stone,” she called. “Tell me why I should know you.”

      “You just think about it,” he called back, grinning. “I’ll be seeing you.”

      

      Mickey wrenched open the jar of fish bait and sniffed. Ugh! What an atrocious odor. Fish Love It! Guaranteed To Attract Even The Most Elusive, the store display had promised, while the jar label warned it was not for human consumption. As if anyone in their right mind would want to taste it!

      She held the jar at arm’s length, her nose wrinkling and eyes squinting. Dipping her thumb and two fingers into the jar, she extracted a smidgen of bait. The texture of clay, it rolled easily into a ball she could press onto the hook. She stared at her hand when the task was done, then dipped it in the water before resolutely wiping it on the ground, hoping the dirt would mask any lingering scent.

      Inexpertly, she cast the lure into the pool. Not happy with the location, she reeled it back in and tried again, twice, until she was satisfied with where it fell. She settled down on the bank, leaned against a boulder and finally relaxed enough to let her mind wander.

      Jack Stone. Why should his name be familiar to her? What did he know that she didn’t? He hadn’t been off her mind all afternoon, not as she had driven home from work, or changed into denim cutoffs, T-shirt and slip-on sneakers, or gathered up her brand-new fishing gear before hiking down to the stream behind her house.

      He knew her name now, and where she worked. She waited for the trepidation to come with the knowledge that he could find her easily. She felt only a glow spreading through her body. It wasn’t thoughts of Jack, she rationalized, but the five o’clock summer sun spilling through the leafy shelter of trees that was warming her. She closed her eyes and let the heat seep into her, relaxing, healing and even a little arousing. Her body began to tingle, much like a leg that has fallen asleep coming back to life with pinpricks of pleasure-pain.

      As she heard the jangle of dog tags and the patter of paws, she opened her eyes slowly, reluctant to stop her body’s awakening.

      “Woof!” The golden retriever barked in greeting as he nuzzled her neck with his wet nose and gave her a slow doggie kiss up her cheek.

      “Woof to you, too, Flee,” Mickey said, smiling and fending off his affectionate caresses. She’d made friends with the beautiful dog over the past couple of weeks, discovering his name on one of his tags, his address identifying him as her landlord’s pet.

      She really should go over and introduce herself, she thought for probably the twentieth time. But the woman at the property management company that had handled her lease said he was gone frequently, which was why he’d contracted the company to take care of the details. If Mickey had any problems, she was to direct them to the company, not to her landlord. She figured he wanted as much privacy as she did.

      She liked his dog, though, who offered undemanding companionship.

      “Flee, you mangy mutt!” a man’s voice called, accompanied by the sound of leaves being crushed underfoot in a slow, awkward cadence. “If you knock me down one more time, I swear I’ll—”

      Mickey dropped her fishing pole and scrambled to her feet as the man about to issue a dire threat came into view. “Jack!” she gasped, watching as he caught sight of her and grinned. He negotiated his crutches over and around rocks, twigs and bumpy terrain to come up beside her.