Perfect Kiss (8 page)

Shit
.

Instead, he grabbed his jeans from his clean clothes pile, and while he searched through it for a suitable shirt, he pulled his pants up.
Jackpot
. He spotted a red piece of material under his socks. Just as he retrieved the crimson cotton t-shirt, the floor shook beneath him, which it did whenever there was a knock on the front entrance of the bar.

Double shit
.

Shelby was here. Shirt in hand, he almost tripped over his own feet as he stepped into his boots and rushed out of his apartment. A strange feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. It was not the same one he’d felt the day before. This one was more unsettled. The only time he’d ever experienced this sensation was the one and only time he’d ridden a roller coaster. His stomach had dropped long before the cart he’d been strapped into had.

So did this mean he was…nervous?

Damn. He wasn’t some adolescent teen who was asking his crush to the big school dance. He was a grown-ass man who owned a bar and what would soon be hailed as Hope Falls’ first B&B. Unfortunately, reminding himself of that fact did nothing to take away the racing of his pulse or the rolling of his stomach.

The thud, thud, thudding of his boots echoed off the narrow stairway as he took the steps two at a time. It matched the hammering of his heart against his ribcage. By the time he’d made it to the bottom of the stairwell, he was out of breath. Which he knew had a lot more to do with the nerves playing havoc on his respiratory system than it did with the actual physical exertion he’d just expended.

After turning the key in the lock, he found Shelby with her back turned to him, her coffee-colored hair falling over her shoulder—not unlike the fireplace fantasy that had just played in his head. Except in front-door reality she was clothed, so he guessed that part was different. That didn’t stop his body from responding to the similarities. He felt his jeans tightening by the second.

“Finally! I was thinking that you’d flaked or some…” She turned towards him, her face level with his chest. Stilling, her eyes lifted and when they finally reached his they widened and her lips parted, which his body read as
sexy-as-hell
.

“Sorry,” Levi apologized, his voice sounding huskier than he’d meant it to. “I was in the shower.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, her mouth still hanging open as her words came out in a daze. “I can see that.”

Looking down, he did a double take when he noticed he was half naked. Damn. Part of the blame for his absentmindedness could lie in the fact that he hadn’t been sleeping all that well and his schedule was all out of whack now that he’d closed the bar to work on the cabin during the afternoon hours. But that would’ve been bullshit. And Levi made it a point to live his life as bullshit-free as humanly possible. If there was one thing he could give his father credit for, it was that. Levi wanted to be the exact opposite of his lying, scheming, lowlife father.

While putting his shirt on, he heard a squeak that sounded so high-pitched that he was sure it couldn’t have come from the brown-haired girl standing in front of him. But, when his shirt cleared his head and he looked at Shelby, he found her eyes even wider than before, her cheeks now tinged with pink, and her hand slapped firmly over his mouth. She looked…guilty or embarrassed.

“Everything okay?” Levi’s brow arched.

“Ummm…yep… It was just…um…” Waving her hand in front of her face dismissively, she sighed in frustration. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Blowing out a frustrated sigh, Levi felt the fan of Shelby’s minty breath on his face. Her forefinger trailed briefly beneath her mouth as if she was showcasing them. The sultry movement may have been innocent, but that didn’t change the fact that it had caused his eyes to lock on her pink, full lips like a missile locking on its target.

The energy between them was sizzling with electric energy.

Levi wanted to speak. He had things he wanted to say. But when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

Shelby swallowed and the motion snapped Levi out of his trance. His eyes rose to hers and if he wasn’t mistaken her pupils dilated under his stare. He couldn’t form a sentence, much less a word, if his life depended on it and she looked like she was currently experiencing shell-shock from their undeniable chemistry.

So they stared at each other in silence, until Shelby straightened her shoulders and stood taller.

“Can I come in or are you planning on having me serve drinks from the porch?” The sarcastic tone in Shelby’s voice made a grin pull at Levi’s lips.

This girl just did something to him. Made him feel things he’d never felt before. She was different in the best way possible.

“Okay, smartass. Let’s go.” Levi held the door open as he turned to the side to let Shelby enter. He immediately recognized the same aroma that had sent his heart racing like it was at the Grand Prix all those months ago and forever turned his world upside down.

“So…do you make this a habit?” she asked in a shaky voice as she made her way farther into the dining area.

Levi was having a hard time concentrating on anything other than the fact that Shelby’s movements were affording him the perfect view of her perfect, round, heart-shaped ass. It was molded like a piece of art in the jeans she was wearing, which were worn in all the right places.

“Huh?” He knew the second the sound left his mouth that he wasn’t going to win any “Player of the Year” awards. A smooth operator he was not—at least, not around Shelby.

“Do you normally close the bar down to shower midday, or was that purely for my benefit?”

“Oh, no. I was doing demo on…” Levi didn’t finish his thought. He had no idea why he suddenly felt self-conscious. First, he’d been as nervous as a schoolgirl in pigtails, and now, he was self-conscious.

This shit needed to stop. Now.

*

Hoping to pull off an aloof, casual demeanor that could not be further from what she was currently feeling, Shelby leaned against the wood bar top. She knew that her question and sarcastic attitude were her default ways to deflect her embarrassing—scratch that,
mortifying
—reaction to Levi’s putting on his shirt. She’d squeaked. Like one of those mice in her favorite Disney movie,
Cinderella
.

She hadn’t done it on purpose. It had just tumbled out of her mouth like apples out of a grocery bag at the sight of his muscled biceps, rippling as he inadvertently flexed while lifting the lucky cotton over his head. Never before in her life had she been so jealous of an inanimate object. The sight of his chiseled, bare chest, glistening with droplets of water, was the sexiest thing she had ever seen—until a minute later. Then holy hot sauce! Those muscles in action were, by far, much sexier than when they were still.

Levi was walking, breathing porn live and in the flesh—made especially for women.

Trying to hide her inappropriate thoughts was made all the more difficult considering that Levi was staring at her with eyes that made her feel like she was an ice sculpture in a sauna melting into a lust puddle.

Since before the sun had peeked up over the Sierra Nevadas this morning, Shelby’s day had been filled with dirty diapers, crying, and drool as she’d helped Amy with Peyton and Paige. Tonight, she’d thought that, by coming to the bar, she’d be leaving all of that behind. But when she’d laid eyes on a shirtless Levi, she was oh…about ninety-nine point nine percent sure she had been drooling like a newborn. She’d even lifted her hand and brushed her finger under her lips.

“I’m opening up a B&B.” Levi spat out.

Shelby knew that words had just come out of the two most perfect lips she’d ever seen, but for the life of her, she just couldn’t process what those syllables meant. She’d heard them. And she was fairly certain that they were, in fact, all part of the English language; but she had no idea what he said.

“What?”

Clearing his throat, Levi rolled his broad shoulders back, and Shelby noticed that his jaw flinched. It occurred to her that she must have irritated him by her question. Unfortunately, all the room in her consciousness that would normally care about that fact was currently all being used up by her body’s reaction to his face hardening.

His sinfully sex-brooding, all-kindsa-hot alpha expression sent his considerable sex appeal shooting straight at her like a laser beam to the area located smack dab in the middle of her shaky legs, and lit her body up like a Christmas tree. How in the name of Punky Brewster did one tiny tense of a jawbone cause her body to respond Madonna-“Like-A-Virgin” style, touched for the very first time? Especially considering the small, but vital, fact that he hadn’t even touched her!

“That’s why I took a shower.” Levi’s deep voice held an extra layer of bravado that was dripping with swoon-worthiness. After clearing his throat, he continued, “I was working on the cabin in the back of the property. I just bought it and I’m going to turn it into a B&B.”

“Wow.” Shelby was at a loss for words for so many reasons in that moment, not the least of which was her overactive libido.

No matter what the cause, it didn’t change the fact that she had no idea how to respond to Levi’s announcement. That declaration easily ranked as one of the top ten last things in the world she would’ve ever expected to hear come out of his mouth.

This morning, Amy had told her that Levi actually owned JT’s Roadhouse. That had been a little bit of a surprise because she’d thought he was only a bartender—but it hadn’t been too shocking. He definitely fit the role of both bartender and bar owner. But to say that he didn’t scream
bed and breakfast owner
was like saying that just a few people knew about
Fifty Shades of Grey
. It was a gross misrepresentation.

“Yeah. So, tonight, you’ll just be shadowing—”

“Hold up,” she interrupted him, shaking her head back and forth. “You can’t just tell me that you…
you
”—she motioned up and down his tall athletic frame—“are going to open up a B&B and then move on with the conversation like you told me that you had Cheerios for breakfast.”

He just stared at her. Nothing was giving her even the slightest clue of what he might have been thinking. She immediately started second-guessing herself. Did she hear him wrong? Was he teasing her? Was this a mess-with-the-new-girl bar hazing?

Narrowing her eyes, she felt her defenses flair up like her niece’s temperature when she was teething. “Are you
really
opening up a B&B?”

“Yes,” Levi clipped. His posture stiffened even further.

For the second time since this conversation had begun, she became aware that Levi was irritated, upset, or…something.

“What’s wrong?” Shelby had no idea why he would be upset. Her first instinct was to apologize. Would that have been her first instinct a year ago? Nope. So, instead of offering up an empty “I’m sorry” as a knee-jerk reaction, she waited to see what he had to say.

Getting back to her true self was probably going to entail a lot of fighting her first instinct, and even then, she wasn’t exactly sure she’d ever be herself again. Still, she had to at least try.

“Nothing,” Levi stated flatly.

Shelby might not be certain of a lot of things right now, but she absolutely certain that he was lying through his teeth. Something was most certainly
wrong
.

That’s when she heard herself use a phrase she never, in a million years, would have guessed would ever come out of her mouth. It was something her sister had always said to her and Matt when they were growing up. It used to irritate her, but now, she felt that it was the perfect thing to say.

“Look, you can tell me you don’t want to talk about it. You can tell me that it’s none of my business. But don’t lie to me.”

“Okay. Fair enough. But that goes both ways.” Levi’s stare was razor sharp. Intense. That look was definitely a seven-layer cake and Shelby had no flippin’ clue what
any
of the flavors were.

Tilting her head to the side, she tried her best to read between the lines and decipher his hidden meaning. Even though she was not totally sure she knew what she was agreeing to, she hesitantly replied, “Fine.”

A satisfied smirk lifted on Levi’s lips, but before she could comment on it, it disappeared. Poof. Vanished. No sign of said smirkage anywhere to be seen. She probably would’ve addressed his split-second expression, but two customers, apparently regulars, walked in and, in the blink of an eye, her first bartending shift officially began.

Chapter 6

‡

A
s the night wore on, it became abundantly clear being a “regular” was the norm here, not the exception. Once she thought about it, of course it made sense. Hope Falls was a small town. JT’s Roadhouse was the only bar. Yes, this town was a tourist destination, but most of the time, the out-of-towners were here to ski, fish, hike, or antique-shop—hanging out a local bar was probably not on most of their vacation agendas.

The work was steady and not too hard. It wasn’t like JT’s had a sophisticated cocktail program Shelby was expected to learn. The most exotic drink she’d made all night was a Long Island Iced Tea. It was just busy enough so that things didn’t lull and she got bored, but not so busy that she felt overwhelmed.

The one and only complaint she had was that the area behind the bar was a little too close for comfort. Although she knew that this wasn’t actually the case, she felt like
every
single body part of hers had brushed, touched, or generally rubbed up against
every
single body part of Levi’s. It was unnerving, to say the least. Not to mention the fact that she’d never before found a man’s laugh as distracting as Levi’s deep rumble was.

One time tonight, when he had been down at the other end of the bar, she’d heard him chuckle and it had made her forget how to make a cosmopolitan—one of the easiest drinks in the world to make. Her mind had gone as blank as a clean whiteboard and she’d had a hell of a time trying to figure out what she was supposed to be doing.