Damn, he’d dug such a deep hole that he’d need an extension ladder to climb out.
Mattie stared into the entrancing amber eyes that were embedded in that all too handsome face and heard her grandfather’s words echoing in her ears. According to Pops, every risk ignored was a chance never taken. Challenge the rules, he’d said, don’t meekly accept them. Pops advocated grabbing for the gusto.
Should she or shouldn’t she kiss Joe? This was really tricky, after all. She was the manager, and he was the hired assistant. If she up and kissed him, would he kiss her back because he thought his job might be in jeopardy or because he truly wanted to? If he kissed her—and he looked as if he, too, was pondering the prospect, for whatever reason—would he wonder if he was putting his job at risk, a job he claimed he was pleased to have.
Catch twenty-two, she thought. This was the proverbial two-edged sword, yadda, yadda.
After what seemed a century of standing on uncertain ground, wrestling with consequences, Joe traced the curve of her lips. Mattie’s knees wobbled unsteadily beneath her.
“Mattie, I think we’ll both feel a lot better if we just get this over with. You’re the boss, so you need to call a time-out from the job. It is after hours. Despite my good intentions, I just don’t think this good-buddy relationship between us is going to work. I’m too damn aware of you as a woman. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”
Mattie didn’t pretend to misunderstand what he meant. Apparently, they were on the same wavelength here. He was wondering, as she was, if an experimental kiss would relieve the sexual tension that had been building since he set foot in the store.
Yes, Mattie had tried to ignore the frissons of desire that assailed her when he was in close proximity. Which was like trying to ignore an emotional cyclone spinning around you all the livelong day. Impossible.
“I’m thinking that you’re thinking that you don’t want to step on a land mine of sexual harassment by kissing me,” Joe murmured huskily. “You’re probably thinking that I’m thinking I might risk losing my job—which you know I really like—if I kiss you first and you end up not liking it very much. So, what say, we meet in the middle like two consenting adults. All rules and regulations will be dispensed with for the moment. If things don’t work out, we’ll just slip back into our roles as boss and assistant, chalk this up to an experiment gone sour, and get on with our lives. Sound fair to you?”
“And if this experiment isn’t sour?” she asked, afraid to breathe too deeply for fear the tantalizing scent of him would wrap itself so completely around her senses that her brain would fog up and she’d lose the common sense she’d spent thirty years cultivating.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he murmured, his voice rough and raspy. “The suspense is killing me, Mattie. On three. One, two—”
Repetitive, staccato raps on the glass door forced Joe and Mattie to leap apart.
“Yo, Mattie! Yoo-hoo, it’s me, Gladys Howser. Are you still in there?”
Mattie didn’t know whether to curse or bless her impatient customer. “Coming!” she hollered.
When Mattie sailed off like a flying carpet, Joe half collapsed against the desk. Damn, he probably should have kept his trap shut, but his unruly hormones had stormed his brain and executed a coup d’état. He’d wanted to kiss that cute little elf. Badly. Worse than badly, he amended. It was as if he were starving for the taste of her and wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d sampled her petal-soft lips.
“You’re nuts,” Joe said to himself, then scowled. “Just goes to show how desperately you needed this vacation from the office. Of all the glamorous women you’ve dated, you go bonkers over a tomboy who smells like paint and sawdust rather than expensive perfume, a tomboy who dresses in faded jeans and T-shirts instead of sequined evening gowns. And to complicate matters she actually works for you, despite what she thinks. She also thinks Double H is a money-grubbing executive whose bottom line is profit. Have you left anything out?
“Oh yeah, you’re a devious, lying impostor, and Mattie is too damn sweet and tenderhearted to deserve your deceit. If you had the sense God gave a gnat you would hand in your resignation and hightail it back to the city.”
“Joe!” Mattie called on her way down the center aisle. “There’s been a change of plans. Gladys wants her new painting and shelves hung now. Her bridge party has been changed to seven o’clock this evening to accommodate one of her friends. I need a rain check on supper.”
Joe nodded agreeably. He figured this was for the best. Fate had intervened, or perhaps the powers that be in the universe decided that that kiss was a very bad idea. But you couldn’t convince his rowdy male body of that, not without a bolt from the blue that fried him to the tiled floor.
“I’ll count the till and lock up,” he offered. “That is, if you trust me.”
She smiled, stared him squarely in the eye, and said, “I trust you, Joe. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t have been on the threshold we were standing on five minutes ago, either.”
Now he really felt like a card-carrying jerk. He had lied to her, deceived her, misrepresented himself, and she trusted him. He suspected each and every one of her acquaintances felt the same way, when honored and graced by Mattie’s trusting nature. Hurting someone like Mattie Roland ranked right up there with the seven deadly sins that could earn you a one-way express flight to hell.
Gee, maybe he should author a book on how many ways there were for a man to screw up without really trying, he thought to himself.
While Joe was counting the till, he heard someone pounding on the back entrance that opened into the alley. “Now what?” he muttered crabbily.
He yanked open the steel door to see five elderly men staring back at him. The Roland Gang, he presumed. He appraised the ringleader, who leaned on his three-pronged cane. Pops wore knit jeans that were snagged with twigs and a faded cotton shirt that emphasized his sunken chest. Pops had a full head of silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses and an attitude that shouted spirit.
J. D. Grayson would fit right in with this bunch, thought Joe.
Behind Pops stood four men—more or less bald—sporting spare-tire paunches, glasses and outdated clothes. Joe nodded a greeting to them.
“So you’re Joe,” Pops said, still appraising him astutely. “So, whaddya think, boys?”
Boys? thought Joe. That obviously implied these old codgers were enjoying their second childhood.
“Looks all right to me,” said Fred. “What do you think, Herman?”
Herman raked Joe up and down—twice. “Decent stock, I’d say. What’s your vote, Ralph?”
“Okay by me,” said Ralph. “What about you, Glen?”
Glen’s gaze narrowed solemnly behind his thick glasses. “You got a criminal record, son?”
“No, do I need one?” Joe asked straight-faced.
“A smart ass, I like that,” Pops said. “Has Shortcake seen this side of you yet?”
“Shortcake? As in Mattie?” Joe guessed.
“Yup. So has she?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t hold back on her, son. Make sure she knows the real you, right off. Always better that way.”
Joe inwardly grimaced. He couldn’t follow Pops’s good advice. Joe had already lied six ways to Sunday.
“I saw Mattie drive off a minute ago,” Pops said. “Figured that clunker truck parked back here belonged to