Burned by a Kiss (18 page)

She gazed at the dress, remembering Melly Shelby’s touching story Emma’s hands warmed at the memory, almost uncomfortably. She dropped the garment bag where it had been lying. “I’ll zip you away before I leave. First, ornaments.”

The salon itself looked as if it was caught in time, suspended until Sierra finally opened her wonderful shop. And it would be wonderful, Emma thought, touching the velvet tufted chairs grouped around the salon. The room was centered on the mirrors, so that a bride could try on her dream gown, and be the focus of everyone’s attention. Emma wondered what it would be like to want to be a bride.

She’d never thought of getting married. Men had asked her out, but the experience of being taken to dinner by people she’d known all her life and who were now beginning to cast their gazes at her in a new light was unsettling. She’d been the class nerd too long to see herself in the way she apparently seemed to her old classmates.

A twinkle caught her eye as she walked into the large storeroom. Boxes were neatly stacked, ordered with different labels. Emma didn’t stop to look at the boxes, though she suspected these contained all the things Sierra had collected in the barn at the ranch.

Instead she’d chosen to open a bridal shop, based on a dream.

Sierra didn’t believe in dreams. Sierra relied totally on herself.

She spied a twinkle again at the back of the storeroom and edged her way around the boxes to reach it, glad for the bright light in the room.

“What are you doing?” a male voice demanded.

She whirled with a gasp. “Jack Pearson! You scared the shit out of me!”

The tall teenager with the blond, buzzed head and clear green eyes shrugged. “What are you doing? This isn’t your store.”

Emma felt a sudden tremor of unease. “I’m here because Santana asked me to be here. What are you doing in here?”

He shrugged. “Saw the lights were on.”

The lights were always on for the sake of security. Sheriff Lee liked the shops kept lit around the square. She couldn’t explain why True Pearson’s younger brother bothered her so much. He had a face that was bland and unremarkable. You didn’t know what Jack was thinking until he opened his mouth. Some people in the town claimed Jack was a troublemaker, but she’d never seen any evidence of that.

Not that she was taking any chances.

“Thank you for checking on the store, but I would prefer if it you left.” Emma frowned. “How did you get in, anyway?” She knew very well she’d locked the door. Santana had insisted on it—though she would have done so anyway.

“The door wasn’t locked.” Jack shrugged again. “Thought somebody might be stealing something.”

“Why would you assume someone was stealing something?”

“Or they might be up to other kinds of trouble.”

Suddenly Emma felt very uncomfortable being alone in the back storeroom with him. “Everything’s fine. You can leave. I’ll tell Santana you checked on the store,” she said, hoping he’d feel that his efforts hadn’t gone unnoticed and would go.

She was surprised and a little weak when he meekly turned around and left the shop. The door closed with a whisper, and she flew to lock it, making certain this time to try the handle. It didn’t budge, and Emma sank onto one of the velvet chairs to collect her thoughts.

Suddenly, ornament-hunting held little appeal. She didn’t want to be in the shop any longer this late at night. There were only two ways into the shop, the front door, and a door at the back for deliveries. Jumping up, she hurried to the back, pulling on the handle.

It opened easily. Emma gasped, slamming it shut, locking it, turning the deadbolt.

Jack had come in from the back. He hadn’t known she was in here at all. She glanced around at all the boxes. If these boxes contained the items Sierra had collected over the years, then Jack might have been helping himself, knowing full well that Sierra probably had no catalog system. No one would ever know what, or if, anything was missing. And everyone knew Sierra had left town.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Emma glanced toward the back of the stockroom one last time, startled to see a twinkle thrown off the handmade dress. Or at least that’s what it looked like. She edged toward the dress, mesmerized. Reaching into the bag, she touched the fabric. Nothing happened, so she drew the gown from its bag and hung it on the rack to inspect it.

Emma wasn’t certain anyone would buy this gown, even at a garage sale. It was beautiful, old-fashioned in a lovely way.

She thought about Santana’s surprise marriage proposal, which he hadn’t mentioned again. She would love to wear this dress to marry Santana.

She pushed the unlikely thought away.

This dress—and shop—were simply magic beans. Sierra had likely borrowed what little money she had for this gown—and maybe even for this crazy idea of a wedding dress shop. Women who married in Star Canyon usually opted for something practical, like a skirt and jacket or a dress, and went to the justice of the peace.

Light music tinkled somewhere, a delicate chime that called to her. Emma smiled at the dress. “I believe in magic,” she said, “but your owner doesn’t. If you’re going to bring her good luck, you’d better get on it.” She smiled at the fancy of her thoughts. “I’m going to call you the magic beans dress.”

Silly to be talking to a gown. She was just occupying her mind. And she told herself the sudden urge to try the gown on was ridiculous, a waste of time.

She had no reason to need a dress for a wedding. She and Santana were the farthest thing from a couple.

Her deepest secret that she’d never shared with anyone, though, was that she was in love with him. Had been forever.

If there was anyone who needed magic, Emma supposed, it was her.

Besides, who would know?

She reached for the gown.

The front door unlocked and opened, and Santana walked in, his face strained. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said, putting the dress back on the rack, glad he hadn’t caught her trying it on. He took a chair, sighing tiredly. “Did you go to the station?”

“I did.”

She went to him, and he pulled her into his lap. He held her against his chest, and she nestled there, content to be in his arms. She remembered how difficult it had been to go into her father’s room and clean his things out. Sometimes that wistful nostalgia even caught her at the clinic, when she was among his favorite patients. “It was hard, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

He wasn’t going to say anything else, but Emma understood now that she’d been lost in a fantasy. She wanted more from him than he could give at the moment. Or maybe ever.

“Did you find Sierra’s ornaments?”

That had been the last thing on her mind once she’d seen the gown. “I’ll buy some,” she said brightly. “Tomorrow.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t know what else to say. He was quieter than he normally was. Something was definitely wrong, but she sensed he didn’t want to talk about it. “Jack Pearson was in the store tonight.”

“Why?” Santana asked, his tone sharp.

“I think he uses the back door to ramble around the shop.”

“Why would he want to hang out in a wedding dress shop?”

“I have no idea.” Emma shrugged as they locked up and left the store, slowly walking across to the Midnight Grill. “He startled me, and I didn’t think to ask too many questions. I was pretty focused on getting him to leave so I could lock the back door.”

Santana’s hand shot out, capturing hers. “He didn’t do anything to upset you? Frighten you?”

“No, not really.” Emma decided to skip the fact that he’d actually creeped her out. “I just wasn’t sure why he was there.”

“Probably because he loafs around town with nothing better to do than get in trouble, while True does all the work.”

“True thinks her brother hung the stars.”

“He didn’t. I’ll talk to him.”

• • •

“You have to go way back when the town was first founded,” Mary told them as she handed them menus they knew by heart, “to know that the Pearsons have always been slightly weird. Different, if you know what I mean.”

Santana had asked Mary if she’d seen Jack hanging around the square, and particularly Sierra’s shop.

“Their families came from California,” Mary said, “and before that, Australia. Came here with just about nothing, the early Pearsons did. They never forgot that, either. Felt like they didn’t fit in. The only one that never drove me straight up a tree is True, but then she’s from the Stafford family, and the Staffords are good people. Never really understood why True’s mother married a Pearson. Angel Stafford was a good woman. Think she could have done better, if you ask me,” Mary whispered. “Now what’ll you have?”

They ordered without looking at the menu, and Mary left.

“Are you worried about Jack?”

“I’ll mention to Sheriff Lee that he was in the shop. He shouldn’t be getting into businesses on the square.”

“Don’t you think it was a one-off maybe, since Sierra’s shop is empty?”

“It’s full of her stuff. She’s got all kinds of Sierra booty squirreled away in there. For all we know, Jack’s been selling it. That wedding dress you were holding—”

“Putting away,” she said.

“Right.” He winked at her. “I wasn’t suggesting you were going to try it on.”

She had been about to do just that when he’d returned. Emma looked at him. “So what about it?”

“I guess Jack Pearson could sell something like that, for example,” he went on, apparently done with teasing her for the moment, for which she was grateful.

“I guess,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t know what he was doing. He said he was checking on me, to see why someone was in the shop. I wondered if maybe he was planning on grabbing some of Sierra’s stuff, but I suppose a single wedding dress could disappear just as easily.”

His hand covered hers suddenly, warming her. “You could talk me into a private viewing, by the way.” He raised a brow. “It’s hard for a man to concentrate in a brightly-lit shop when anyone can walk by and look in the window, but I promise you, something about seeing you holding that dress made me want to…”

“Try it on yourself?” Emma teased.

“Babe, you’re asking for a spanking later.”

Mary set drinks on the table, waved to some newcomers, and dashed off.

“I’ll look forward to that,” Emma said demurely.

“A spanking?”

“If you don’t lose your nerve,” she said, all sweetness.

“My nerve is not what you have in mind, I’m pretty certain.” He massaged her fingers with his, then pulled away—as if he’d suddenly realized he was acting like they were more than just friends.

He sipped his beer as if they hadn’t gotten lost in the momentary teasing about the wedding gown. Which they had, and it had felt right. Emma knew it.

“Don’t back out now, big boy,” she said softly. “I can feel you trying to, but I promise you’ll like spanking me more than your wildest fantasies have ever allowed you to imagine.”

• • •

Santana’s breath hitched hard. Heat flared inside him, ran all over his body. She’d read his mind about backing away from her.

She was deliberately luring him—and he liked it. Against his better judgment that eluded him every time she got near him, and every time he thought about her, fantasized about her. Hell, resistance was futile, because sometimes, he forgot why he was resisting.

So since the lady was offering, a nice gentle,
thorough
spanking it was going to be. And then, he was going to make love to her the way she deserved: inch by slow scorching inch, all night long.

• • •

Nick sat in his penthouse overlooking Uptown, staring out the huge windows and seeing nothing. He was barely aware of the three couples circulating around him, and the sophisticated brunette who was trying to engage him in conversation. Her hand was on his trouser leg, warming his thigh.

His mind, goddamn it, was on a blue-tufted pixie of a girl with a sassy mouth and saucy personality back in Star Canyon. Or wherever she was.

His not-cousin. He wanted a family, a real one, so badly it hurt. His father, damn his mercenary and greedy hide, had handed him exactly what he wanted, in the most roundabout way. The last thing on his father’s mind was cementing family relations. He was interested in cementing power and the fortunes of the Marshall name. Politics was calling, and nothing said salt-of-the-earth more than a huge ranch.

Sonny Dark’s misfortune had been all gain for the Marshall side.

Only his father hadn’t calculated that Nick lacked the necessary ingredient for going in for the tiger-like kill. And Nick didn’t need more money or land, and he wasn’t interested in politics.

He was interested in family.

The twist was, Sierra was the last thing on earth he should ever want in a woman. The very last thing. But she sure as hell was no sister figure to him. They had no blood, no common background, had never shared a roof, except in Lightning Canyon, and even then he’d actually slept in his damn car.

He had never wanted a woman the way he wanted Sierra.

And she wasn’t interested in him, not one bit. Nor anyone else, as far as he could tell. He shouldn’t be thinking about her—not a thousand times a day—especially when there was a beauty right beside him, her hand edging dangerously close to her target. But he wasn’t going to sleep with her. It wouldn’t help.

He’d become infected somehow with the Dark eccentricities, and all he could think of was a woman with tats and a face piercing he shouldn’t want at all.

But she’d invited him into her bed. Oh, she’d fibbed a little and told him there were two beds in the room at Miss Sugar’s—but there’d only been one. She’d been more subtle about her invitation than the brunette who’d just scooted herself up against his side, pressing into him to get his wandering attention.

He couldn’t forget Sierra’s invitation.

She was right. He was a boring chickenshit, because a man who wasn’t a boring chickenshit would have jumped right into bed with her and enjoyed all the sass he could handle.

And thinking about that was the first time he’d had an erection all evening. Disappointing the brunette—what was her name?—he got up and went to pour himself a whiskey.