“He’s beyond gorgeous,” said Amy. “Look at that. Even a tattoo.”
Kasey screwed up her courage to take another look at her challenge du jour, who was currently mopping his face with his shirt. Sure enough, he had a tattoo on his upper arm that looked like a ring of barbed wire.
As she stared at that tattoo, her memory delivered the information she’d been trying to retrieve ever since her first glimpse out the window. She’d seen that tattoo twelve years ago, wrapped around the arm of her stepbrother Jim’s high school buddy, a dreamy guy by the name of Sam Ashton.
She could still picture the two teenagers out by the family’s budget-sized swimming pool, radio blaring as they worked on their tans before prom. She’d been the eight-year-old brat who’d spent the afternoon splashing them from her vantage point in the pool. Finally Sam had responded, diving in and giving her a thorough dunking.
The cut at the corner of her mouth had been totally her fault. If she hadn’t flailed around so much, she wouldn’t have whacked herself in the mouth with her secret decoder ring. The minute Sam had noticed she was bleeding, he’d rushed her into the house, both of them dripping all over her mother’s clean floor. Then he’d insisted on going with her to the emergency room, where the doctor had given her two small stitches.
Sam had sat right there, even though he’d looked decidedly green during the stitching process. He’d apologized about a hundred times. The next day he’d sent her a bouquet of flowers. That was when she’d fallen hopelessly in love as only an eight-year-old can fall for a sophisticated older man of eighteen.
After that she’d asked Jim endlessly when Sam was coming over again, but apparently finals and graduation had kept him too busy and he hadn’t made it back to their house that spring. Then Jim told her Sam’s family had moved to Oregon, and that’s where Sam would be going to college in the fall. Jim had left to join the Marines and the two friends had lost touch. Kasey hadn’t seen Sam again…until now.
“So, Kasey, what’s your game plan?” Gretchen asked.
Kasey blinked, pulling herself from the past, when she’d had a mad crush on Sam, to the present, when she was the designated Bad Girl from Beckworth out to put some serious moves on the guy. Aside from fighting her internal panic, she had to decide if there was the remotest chance he’d recognize her.
Probably not. Jim was her stepbrother, so they had different last names, and what were the chances Sam would remember a little pain in the ass named Kasey? Besides, she didn’t look anything like that eight-year-old. The scar was barely visible. Braces for her teeth, straightener for her frizzy blond hair and tinted contacts for her nearsightedness had all made a difference. Hormones and the good advice of Jim’s girlfriend Alicia, now his ex-girlfriend, had taken care of the rest.
Kasey had worked hard to look older and more experienced than she was. From her little red car to her sassy clothes, she’d created an image that required her to take charge of this assignment to snare Sam’s interest, and take charge fast.
“I think he looks hot, don’t you?” she asked Gretchen.
“Oh, honey, don’t you know it. And I need to hear what you intend to do about it. We have to live vicariously through you, so tell us your plan.”
“No, I mean he looks really hot.”
“That’s what I’m saying! So how are you—”
“I’m going to take him a nice cold bottle of water straight from the machine in the break room. I’ll get his attention first and then toss it up to him.”
Gretchen smiled. “Brilliant.”
“But then won’t he know we’ve been watching him?” Myra asked.
“He’ll know Kasey’s been watching him,” said Amy, “and I think that’s part of her strategy, right, Kase?”
It hadn’t been, but caught off guard, Kasey was happy to gather any words of wisdom on the art of seduction. “Of course.” She walked to her desk, grabbed some change from her wallet and headed for the break room, trailed by Gretchen, Myra and Amy.
“How’s your throwing arm?” Amy asked. “You don’t want to heave it up there like a weakling.”
“My arm’s good.” Kasey put the money in the machine and punched the button for bottled water. “My brother taught me to throw when I was a kid.”
“That’s lucky.” Gretchen nodded as the bottle thumped down the chute. “A wimpy throw wouldn’t help your cause.”
“You’d better get out there quick,” Myra said. “He’s starting up the saw again. He might not notice you down there if he’s cutting tree limbs.”
Sure enough, the whine of the chain saw drifted into the break room. Kasey thought fast. “Okay, I can deal with that.” She handed her bottle to Gretchen. “Hold on to this for a sec, okay?”
“Anything for you, toots.”
Kasey slipped out of her white suit jacket. Underneath she wore a stretch-lace shell that made the most of her breasts.
“That oughta do it,” Amy said. “Let him have it with both barrels, kid.”
Kasey had never been fond of the word kid as a nickname, maybe because it had been applied to her so often in the past. But she knew Amy didn’t mean it literally. Amy thought Kasey was in her mid-twenties, because that’s what Kasey had led everyone to believe.
“Thanks,” she said. “I will.” She took the bottle from Gretchen, then walked back into the office and tossed her jacket over her chair.
She didn’t even glance toward the window as she left the office, afraid seeing Sam there looking so yummy would weaken her nerve. The women in the office called after her with words of encouragement, while Jerry and Ed carried on some more about female chauvinists. Those taunts didn’t bother Kasey. She’d spent enough time observing her big brother to know that women had a long way to go before they caught up with the guys in that department.
What bothered her was fear, plain and simple. In theory, she was perfectly willing to do her share of ogling and assertive date-making. But to begin with Sam…that was more of a challenge than she could have envisioned in her wildest dreams.
If she could carry this off, though, without his ever knowing that she was the scrawny little pest he’d dunked in the pool all those years ago, that would be amazing. Making Sam drool would be more than a feather in her Bad Girl’s cap. Snagging the attention of a guy like Sam would be on the order of a damned plume.
2
ALTHOUGH SAM REQUIRED his workers to wear earplugs when they used the saw, he hated the damn things, so he fudged and left them out whenever he could get away with it. Fifteen feet in the air he could get away with it. That was probably the only reason he heard Carlos yelling at him over the loud buzz.
Turning off the switch with his thumb, he glanced down at his assistant. “What?”
“The lady wants to know if you’d like a bottle of water.” Carlos gestured to his left.
Sam pulled off his safety goggles and let them dangle around his neck as he peered through the branches. He almost dropped his saw. It was her, the woman with the red Miata.
Her blond hair gleamed in the morning sun. Not only that, she’d ditched the white jacket. That move was understandable in the heat, but the resulting view of twin beauties outlined by stretch lace had Sam grabbing for a tree limb to steady himself.
She