“You’re staring again.” Her words were quiet, wary.
“This time I’ll admit it. I was looking at your hair color. It’s natural, isn’t it?”
“Do I look like I can afford to have someone do it? You’re darn right it’s natural,” she scoffed. With a swoop of her hands she pulled the cap off her head. Although her hair shone with a layer of grease from Grandpa Joe’s, it still cascaded into a waterfall of natural spiral ringlets.
His breath caught in his throat as her hair fell to just above her breasts. Beautiful. What would it be like to run his hands through those golden tresses? He controlled his libido. This was not the time, and she was not the girl.
He found his voice. “Mine’s natural blond, too, and I’m sure people have told you how lucky you are.”
“Oh, all the time. I hated my hair when I was a kid, although now it’s not much better. Guys always want to check and be sure that I’m really a natural blonde, you know? And I just don’t go for that.”
He suppressed the groan at the image her comment evoked. But then a fierce band of possessiveness swept over him. It felt foreign, and he attributed it to the bet. He needed to win, and she was his ticket to success. The last thing he needed was for her to run off with some lowlife scumbag before he was finished with her transformation into a society darling.
“Well,” he said as the sun burst across the sky, “that’s that.”
“It was good,” Darci said, her manner again aloof. “Today’s my day off, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home now.”
So soon? He shoved that comment in the trashcan of his mind and stood. “Sure.”
He reached to help her up, but she’d already risen to her feet.
As she moved to brush past him, her mud-covered white shoes caught on a rock. She stumbled slightly, and instinctively he reached forward and caught her.
Although they were standing far enough away from the cliff’s edge, not one to miss any such opportunity, he pulled her toward him and wrapped her possessively in his arms.
“Safe and sound,” he whispered, but as he held her and felt the fire again flow through his veins, he wondered how safe he really was. Whatever was going on between them was an absolutely alien experience to him.
She sighed, and he knew she felt the intense energy zinging like electrons between them. “Darci.” He murmured her name, and then, bending his head just so, he brought his lips gently to hers.
He hadn’t intended to kiss her, and then a moment ago when he’d realized it was inevitable, he’d intended a soft, simple kiss. Instead, unknown sensations were shooting all the way down to his muddy shoes, and he had to investigate them. No way he could continue to kiss her chastely.
As her lips parted under his, he deepened his exploration of her mouth, sending his tongue to mate with hers. She tasted of Grandpa Joe’s, of sugar, no, it was honey, no—she tasted completely unique. She tasted divine. He brought his hands into her hair, threading the golden ringlets through his fingers as if the strands were the finest silk. He tipped her head back, sliding his lips down her throat before he kissed her mouth again. The kiss seemed endless, like light itself.
And then she was pushing him away.
“What?” he asked, reaching out like a newborn kitten whose mother had left.
“Someone’s coming,” she hissed. Her gaze shot to the bulge in his shorts. “Can’t you hide that?”
The absurdity of her question made her divine. “No, not easily I can’t.” He stood, unabashed. “This is what kissing you did to me.”
“Well, undo it. Think of your grandmother.” Her words were like a bucket of ice water over his head, and Cameron sobered quickly.
He followed Darci back to the path just as a uniformed policeman came through the opening.
“Why, hi folks.”
“Hello, officer,” Cameron replied. “Can we help you?”
“Well, maybe. We’ve been having some problems with prostitutes frequenting this park after hours.” The officer moved farther into the small open area. “Why, Darci! Is that you?”
NO. DARCI KNEW her face blazed crimson. She could literally feel the flush creeping up her neck, staining across her cheekbones. She turned away, shielding her face from the officer’s view.
Never had she known such mortification. She’d been caught making out with Cameron O’Brien! Even worse, now he thought she was a prostitute. Great.
“Darci?” The semi-familiar voice didn’t belong to Cameron, and the sinking feeling in her stomach plummeted faster than the Titanic.
“Why I’ll be. It is you! Darci Sanders!”
Slowly she turned, seeing the source of her current humiliation. “Hello, Chad.”
Chad’s gaze roved over her, taking in her puffy lips, her mussed hair, and worse, her pink waitress uniform covered with splotches of mud. God knows what he thought she’d been doing. Her face flamed red again.
“You two know each other?” Cameron spoke, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen over the small clearing. A blue-eyed gaze that had iced over held Darci’s.
“We went to high school together,” Darci replied. She focused on studying an ant that was walking across the ground carrying a leaf fragment. “Chad was a class ahead of mine.”
“But that didn’t mean I didn’t know Darci. Everyone knew Darci.”
“Really now,” Cameron drawled, his New York accent extremely clear. “It seems everyone still does.”
Darci gripped the edges of her dirty white apron. The ant had disappeared down his hole. He was safe. She wasn’t. Just where was a New Madrid earthquake when you needed one? A nine on the Richter scale might be enough to cause the ground to split and swallow her up.
“Yeah,” Chad volunteered. He readjusted his belt. “She helped out all the boys. A real sport, our Darci.”
The sport he referred to was homework, but from the perceptive expression on Cameron’s face, Darci knew the elitist Mr. O’Brien had taken Chad’s words at their worst. He’d never believe that she’d only tutored the football jocks for her National Honor Society service project. And it had been in math, not biology or anatomy.
“Anyway.” Chad coughed and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “This park doesn’t officially open for another hour.”
“We were just leaving.” Darci found her voice, and her courage. “We came here after a, a costume party, to watch the sunrise. Have you met Cameron O’Brien, owner of the Monitor?”
Chad peered suspiciously at Cameron. Then his face relaxed into a grin. “Your picture’s been in the paper. Great little weekly, the Monitor.”
“I liked it so much I bought the company.”
Chad missed the joke, that Cameron had quoted an old shaving advertisement. “Well, welcome to St. Louis, Mr. O’Brien. Seeing as you’re Darci’s friend, I’m not going to issue either of you a ticket for trespassing. We’ve had to be extra vigilant with this park lately. Seems there’s been some prostitution solicitations going on. Then when I saw such a fancy car in the parking lot, I knew I had to check it out.”
“Well, not us.” Darci gave Chad her most dazzling smile. “I just wanted to show Cameron the sunrise. You know it’s the best place in town to see it.”
Chad gave her a wink. “Mary Lou and I came here, but that was almost