Duets™

Two brand-new stories in every volume…twice a month!

Duets Vol. #101

Popular Darlene Gardner serves up not one, but two quirky stories this month in a very special Double Duets volume. Join the fun as she focuses on past loves—the One Who Got Away and the One Who Never Left. Would you ever look for these people? Darlene always spins “a delightful tale with an engaging set-up and lovable characters,” says Romantic Times magazine.

Duets Vol. #102

Boxers or briefs? That’s what every woman wants to know about the sexy hunk in her life. Talented Delores Fossen tells us the answer and more in the hilarious Truly, Madly, Briefly. Joining Delores this month is newcomer Katie Gallagher, who hails from North Carolina, but has set her very first story in Tried and True, Kansas. Enjoy this tale of a runaway fiancée and the sexy sheriff who nearly arrests her on the way!

Be sure to pick up both Duets volumes today!

Truly, Madly, Briefly
Delores Fossen
Tried and True
Katie Gallagher

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Truly, Madly, Briefly

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Tried and True

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Truly, Madly, Briefly

“The Full Monty,” Bobbie declared.

She tapped the toe of her meringue-colored heel on the tile floor. “Catalog number 233A. See-through-front bikini brief for the man with nothing to hide. Contour-hugging, barely-there backside for a rakish and yet daring display of your manly assets. Available in Exposed Ebony and In-the-Buff Buff.”

Jasper gasped. “But you said no man could ever look good in The Full Monty.”

She gave her hand an indignant little wave. “I said that before I met Aidan.”

Touché. One for the lady in pink. Flattered, taken aback and slightly confused, Aidan went and held the door open for Jasper to leave.

“This isn’t over, Bobbie,” Jasper insisted. “We’ll talk about it when I pick you up on Sunday afternoon for the picnic and watermelon thump.”

“Bobbie’s going to the picnic with me,” Aidan stated.

“I am?” she questioned.

“You are.” He nodded. After all, he’d already agreed to go. So what if it meant he had to play the Twango-Drifter game a little longer? He’d, ahem, suffer through it, especially since his cohort was none other than one Bobbie Fay Callahan!

Dear Reader,

I love a fish-out-of-water story, and I think it’s a great premise for not only comedy but a sizzling romance. For example, in Truly, Madly, Briefly I take Aidan O’Shea, a cute Boston cop who has sworn off women, and plop him in a small Texas town where the females significantly outnumber the males. Estrogen is heavy in the air, and it doesn’t get any lighter when Aidan meets Bobbie Fay Callahan, the manager of Boxers or Briefs, a factory that makes risqué men’s underwear. Bobbie’s immediately attracted to Aidan, but after being jilted twice, she’s decided she needs another man about as much as a longhorn needs panty hose.

So Aidan’s sworn off women. Bobbie’s sworn off men. That means they should have no trouble pulling off a pretend relationship meant to rid them of unwanted suitors—right? Well, this is romance, so there is a problem or two. Aidan fights the attraction between them. Bobbie fights it even harder. Neither win, but they certainly have fun losing and manage to steam up Texas along the way.

Let me know what you think of Truly, Madly, Briefly. You can e-mail me at fossent@earthlink.net. I’d love to hear from you.

Delores Fossen

Books by Delores Fossen

HARLEQUIN DUETS

94—THE DEPUTY GETS HER MAN

To SARA, the San Antonio Romance Authors—sisters, goddesses, friends

1

The Twango: Catalog Item 231B. Comfort, style and illusion—all rolled into one bottom-shaping, stomach-minimizing brief. Available in Foxtrot Red, Cha Cha Gold and Midnight Mambo.

IF IT HADN’T BEEN for the missing case of size triple-X Magic Magenta thong underwear, Bobbie would have kept her distance from Deputy Aidan O’Shea.

Yes, indeed.

As it was, she had to put aside thoughts of lotteries, love and lust so she could report a possible crime. A really weird crime but a crime nonetheless.

She peered through the window to make sure the deputy was in his office. He was. And he was alone. He had his back to her, the phone squished between his shoulder and neck. It gave Bobbie an unrestricted view of the bottom-snuggling khakis that some had dubbed the item of clothing most eligible for removal. Not that anyone had personal knowledge of such removal, but it’d given the town fuel for fantasies.

When the bell on the door jangled, Deputy O’Shea glanced over his shoulder, and Bobbie eased inside the office. She motioned for him to continue with his conversation.

“Yes, I have that,” he assured the person on the other end of the line.

Ah, the Boston accent. It was pure music to her ears, which were accustomed to Texas drawls. It made her thankful that Boston had actually agreed to the six-week law-enforcement exchange program. Liffey, Texas, however, had gotten the better part of the deal since Bobbie’s cousin, Wes, was already on his way to his exchange station. That put Aidan, eye candy extraordinaire, right in front of her.

“But you’ll actually have to come to the office to press charges, Miss Determyer,” Aidan went on. He paused. “No, you’ll have to come here to do that. With Sheriff Cooper still out with the flu, I can’t leave the office unless there’s a crime in progress.” Another pause. “No. A funny feeling in the pit of your stomach doesn’t constitute a crime.”

Bobbie sank down in the chair in front of his desk and just listened. She couldn’t stop the little trickle of heat that made its way through her. It was stupid, really stupid, but just hearing his voice made her go all warm and gooey. Too bad warm and gooey were the very things she had to avoid—hot fudge sundaes excluded. Deputy Aidan O’Shea was a temporary fixture in town, and she didn’t want to mess with anything temporary.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

Pulling herself out of her daydreams, she got to her feet. “You probably don’t remember me—”

“You’re Bobbie Callahan, manager of Boxers or Briefs, the men’s underwear factory at 225 Everton Road. You’ve had four parking tickets in the past six months. One citation for jaywalking. Yesterday, you were a no-show for your dental appointment. And you have an overdue library book titled The Joys of Swamp Tours through the Everglades.”

So he did know a few things about her after all. Rather embarrassing things. Sheez. What a town of tattletales.

It probably wouldn’t do any good to mention that her cousin had issued each and every one of those parking and walking citations and that he’d done it just to aggravate her.

“I paid the tickets,” she explained. “And I’ll reschedule the dental exam and take care of that library book first thing in the morning.”

But apparently he wasn’t finished. “You’re also the winner of the Aidan-o-rama lottery.”

Oh. That.

Bobbie should have realized that he’d catch wind of something as ridiculous as the ill-contrived lottery put together by a bunch of women with obviously too much time on their hands.

Heck, Aidan had probably known the winner within seconds after Henrietta Beekins plucked Bobbie’s name from the hat. Or rather the gallon-size Crock-Pot that Henrietta’s lottery committee had used to hold the 137 slivers of paper.

Aidan glanced down at the Hank’s Feed and Bait desk calendar. “I didn’t think the lottery thing was supposed to start until tomorrow morning.”

“It isn’t. I mean, I guess it is. I’m really not sure. Look, I didn’t even enter that stupid lottery.”

Mercy, it sounded like a bona fide fish story. But the truth was she hadn’t entered the lottery that would have given her a whole week of sole pursuing rights for the hottest guy in town—Aidan O’Shea.

Nope.

Bobbie hadn’t even considered entering it. After tangling twice with Jasper Kershaw, she needed another man about as much as a longhorn needed ultra-sheer panty hose.

“My uncles thought they were doing me a favor,” Bobbie explained. “They were wrong, as they usually are when it comes to meddling in my personal life. I have no intentions of pursuing you tomorrow or any other day. Not that you’re not worthy of pursuit. But I’m just not in the market for a man. Any man. I’m sort of taking a hiatus from romance and, um, all that other stuff.”

From the deputy’s crisp nod, it seemed he was pleased with her babbling. “Is this because of the travel agent who jilted you twice?”

She hadn’t dared to hope that he hadn’t heard about Jasper’s jiltings either. Despite Aidan’s arrival merely a week earlier, he’d probably heard the fiasco discussed in complete fiasco detail. Jasper and she were still one of the town’s hottest topics. “Let’s just say it’s jaded my outlook about any and all future relationships.”

Jaded, jinxed and junked them.

Again, he nodded in approval. “Your uncles,” he commented. “I met them.”

From the way he pulled his rather well-shaped mouth together, it hadn’t been a pleasant meeting either. Since Bobbie didn’t want to speculate about what such an encounter would entail, she settled for an inquisitive sounding “Oh?”

“They were in here this morning.” Aidan unwrapped a small candy-striped mint and popped it into his mouth. “They tried to talk me into modeling for the Boxers or Briefs Internet catalog.” He paused. “I declined their generous offer.”

“Oh.”

Well, that was to be expected. Still, she couldn’t fault her uncles for trying. Aidan O’Shea appeared to have a first-class rump, and there was a shortage of those around Liffey. Actually, there was a shortage of fully functioning males under the age of fifty. With those cool sea-green eyes, rich chocolate-colored hair and lanky six-foot-tall build, Aidan more than qualified as both male and functioning. He was the stuff that dreams were made of.

Or in her case, nightmares.

For some reason he kept reminding her that she was indeed a functioning female. Not good. Not good at all. Her hormones, and other female parts, would just have to find some other way to amuse themselves.

“How’s Sheriff Cooper?” she asked, hoping to get her mind off functioning things.

“As sick as a small hospital.”

“Oh. That sounds pretty sick.”

Aidan nodded. “Let me guess. You’re here to file a complaint about—” He held up one finger. “A Beeping Tom. And you want me to come immediately to your house so I can check it out.”

“Uh, don’t you mean Peeping?”

“No. I mean someone who drives slowly past your house and beeps his horn in a suggestive manner.”

Bobbie frowned. “No. I’m not here to report anything like that. Call me naive but I didn’t even know a horn could sound suggestive. Guess I’ve lead a sheltered life, huh?”

He didn’t seem amused by her comment. A second finger went up. “You’ve had a possible UFO sighting, and you want me to stand guard inside your house tonight.”

She shook her head.

He lifted a third finger. “Your cat’s stuck in a very big tree, and you want me to go to your house to see if I can coax it into coming down.”

Bobbie wrinkled up her nose. “You get a lot of complaints like that?”

“Loads.”

Sheez. And she thought she’d had a rough day, what with the vanishing underwear. “No, actually I’m here because a case of merchandise is missing from the warehouse.”

Aidan blinked, probably stunned at the possibility of a real crime. “And you want to report it?”

That didn’t seem to be a trick question. “Sure.”

None of the skepticism left his eyes. “What kind of merchandise?”

“Thong briefs.” She felt the blush make its way from her cheeks to her daffodil-gold toenail polish. After five years of managing Boxers or Briefs, she probably should have been more accustomed to discussing risqué Magic Magenta underwear with a man, but Bobbie had never quite gotten the hang of it.

His eyebrow rose.

It didn’t help because she figured that minor facial adjustment was a request for more information. When his other eyebrow slid up, Bobbie knew she was right.

She nodded. Shrugged. And shuffled her feet. “The design is called the, uh, Gigolo. It has a loose silk front with a nearly invisible, um, understring thingamajig.”

She had to give it to Aidan. Other than those raised eyebrows, he didn’t have a reaction. No smirking. No cough to cover up a snicker. He just sat there with his shoulders squared and a cop’s demeanor plastered all over his incredibly cute face.

“Any other identifying details regarding this merchandise?” he asked.

Bobbie gave him the stock number. What she wouldn’t mention was that the sales pitch for the Gigolo was a garment to insure easy access to your family jewels. Nope. She’d keep that little gem of advertising wisdom to herself.

“The case contains three dozen,” she added. “All in magenta. And, uh, all in size triple-X.”

Still no smirk. As if it were the most mundane crime of his entire career, Aidan extracted a form from the letter tray on his temporary desk, and grabbed a pen. He’d hardly gotten past the first line when the door flew open. The knob and the bell smacked against the wall, and the sudden rush of wind sent papers scattering.

“You have to come right away!” Maxine Varadore announced. She wriggled herself between Bobbie and Aidan but not before giving Bobbie a what-the-devil-are-you-doing-here? glare.

Bobbie glared back, but then she’d had a lot of practice glaring at Maxine, especially since she’d recently fired the woman from her seamstress job at the factory. Maxine had an uncanny knack for squeezing her size-fourteen butt into a pair of size-six jeans, but she’d been an absolute disaster at decorative stitching and boxer fly assembly.

“He’s busy doing a report,” Bobbie informed her.

Maxine flicked her off with an icy glance and a piqued lift of her makeup-slathered nose. “You’re not my boss anymore, so I don’t have to listen to you.” When she turned her attention back to Aidan, she tossed in a whimper and batted her mascara-gummed eyelashes for good measure. “My poor little kitty, Sue-Sue, is stuck in that big hackberry tree in my backyard. You need to get her to come down. I’ll warn you though, it might take a while.”

Aidan gathered up the scattered papers and dumped them onto the center of the desk. His gaze eased to Maxine. Then to Bobbie. There was a you-didn’t-believe-me-huh? look in his eyes. Bobbie conceded his point with a shrug. So, this is what he had to deal with on an hourly, perhaps minute-to-minute basis. She actually felt sorry for him.

“Miss Varadore,” Aidan said at the end of a sigh. He picked up his pen and got back to work on the report. “I don’t do kitty rescues. And at the moment, I’m attending to Miss Callahan’s situation.”

Maxine huffed. It was enough to extinguish candles on a birthday cake at the senior citizens’ home. “You might have won the lottery, Bobbie Fay Callahan, but you weren’t supposed to start hanging around him until tomorrow morning. That was the deal.”

“I didn’t agree to the deal,” Bobbie let her know. She tipped her head toward Aidan. “And neither did he. I’m here on official business.”

“Yeah, like I believe that. You don’t even own a cat.”

Aidan stood and dropped the pen onto the desk. “But she does have a situation that requires my official attention. So, if you’ll please excuse us…”

Bobbie would have seconded that, but her pager went off. While Aidan continued his explanation, and while Maxine continued to plead her case for a full-scale kitty rescue, Bobbie rifled through her purse, pushing aside the fist-full of travel brochures, to locate the vibrating flamingo-colored device. One look at the tiny screen, however, and she pressed the green button to stop the noise. She snapped her purse shut again.

“Jasper,” she mumbled under her breath. But she obviously didn’t mumble it softly enough because both Aidan and Maxine looked at her.

“Jasper Kershaw’s back in town?” Maxine asked, her voice filled with hope.

Bobbie nodded. “He got back a couple of hours ago.”

To be specific, it was two hours and fourteen minutes. Six people, excluding Jasper himself, had already phoned to tell her about the jilting fiancé’s return. Bobbie vowed to quit answering her phone. Too bad she couldn’t turn off her pager, but she was hoping for a call from the warehouse to say they had managed to locate the case of missing thongs.

“And you’re getting back together with Jasper?” Even more hope abounded in Maxine’s voice.

“No!” Bobbie answered so fast that she risked having her teeth fly out of her mouth. And her assertion was one-hundred-percent true. Too bad Jasper hadn’t quite figured that out yet. In the past two hours and fourteen minutes, he’d called or paged her seven times.

Maxine tsk-tsked. “You’ll get back with him. You always do. Of course, that’ll cancel out the lottery so we’ll just have to have another one to figure out who gets first dibs on Aidan. But this time you can bet your britches that I’ll be the one drawing that name from the Crock-Pot.”

“This is just a guess, but I don’t think the deputy wants a lottery,” Bobbie pointed out.

Bobbie’s pager went off again. She glanced into her purse and saw Jasper’s number highlighted on the screen. She smashed the button to stop it and shut her purse in a hurry.

Darn it.

The man was obviously aiming for a round three, which wouldn’t happen. After being left at the altar not once but twice, she’d learned her lesson regarding Jasper Kershaw.

“The report?” Aidan reminded Bobbie. It was no doubt also a reminder for Maxine to vamoose because he ignored her and got to work. He studied the form a moment. “Estimated value of the missing merchandise.”

“Four hundred and thirty-two dollars,” Bobbie gladly answered.

Maxine leaned over the desk, examined the form and rolled her eyes. “Gimme a break. You’re saying someone stole a case of triple-X Gigolos? Yeah, right. Nobody, but nobody in this town wears a size triple-X.”

Apparently realizing that she’d just given away a rather intimate detail of her not-so-private love life, Maxine hiked up her chin again. “I’ll be back,” she warned, casting another glare in Bobbie’s direction.

Bobbie would have breathed a lot easier if her pager hadn’t gone off again. She didn’t even look. It was Jasper. It had to be. No one else could possibly be that annoying.

“Would you care to use the phone?” Aidan inquired.

“No, thanks. I have a phone in my purse.” Bobbie reset her pager again and sank back down in the chair across from him.

He gave her a considering glance. “Does this mean Jasper Kershaw will be coming in here to file a missing person’s report because he can’t get in touch with you?”

She shook her head. No missing person’s report. But it did likely mean that Jasper would pester the heck out of her. Why couldn’t he have just stayed on the run, and away from a telephone? The man certainly knew how to use speed dial.

Aidan turned the form around so that it was facing her. “Check to make sure I have all the facts right and then sign at the bottom—”

The phone rang, and he snatched it up while he handed her a pen.

“A Peeping Tom who drove slowly past your house and beeped his horn, you say?” Aidan asked the caller a moment later. “And you’d like me to come to your house to check out things?”

Bobbie would have tried to convey some sympathy if her pager hadn’t gone off again. This time she did look. And it was Jasper.

“Great day in the blooming morning!” she grumbled. This was past pestering and into a whole new realm of aggravation. She took the pager from her purse, stabbed the off button and tossed it in the trash can next to the desk.

“You believe I’ll have to spend the night at your house in order to catch this beeping Peeping Tom?” Aidan continued, obviously repeating what the caller had suggested. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.

Bobbie did the same when her pager went off again. She’d obviously not turned it off after all. The metal trash can rattled and echoed the series of annoying, pulsing beeps. It was the proverbial back-breaking straw, and she didn’t have to be a camel for it to be majorly effective. She ripped her phone from her purse and punched in the numbers. Jasper answered on the first ring, but the only thing he managed to get out was the hel-part of hello.

“Don’t call or page me again,” Bobbie warned. “As far as I’m concerned, Jasper Kershaw, you’re no better than highly contagious foot fungus, and I’ll do whatever’s necessary to avoid you.”

Obviously engulfed in his own battle of wills, she heard Aidan continue with his call. “No, I’m afraid I can’t come out, Miss Martindale, since this person only beeped and didn’t come onto the premises. My advice is not to undress while standing in front of an open window.”

“Bobbie,” Jasper crooned as if she hadn’t just issued a really disgusting insult. “It’s good to hear your voice. We need to talk. Where are you? I’ll be right over.”

“No, you won’t,” Bobbie said at the very moment that Aidan concluded, “No, I can’t.”

Their gazes met. In the swirl of all those shades of tropical green, Bobbie saw the same frustration, the same aggravation, the same why-the-heck-me? look that she was sure she had in her baby-browns. Without taking her gaze from his, Bobbie clicked off the phone. Without taking his gaze from hers, Aidan placed his phone back onto the desk.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

He squinted one eye. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

It seemed a reasonable request, but it could lead to a thoroughly embarrassing moment if they weren’t on the same frequency here. After all, Bobbie had been thinking something totally ridiculous.

But perhaps necessary.

“You first,” she insisted.

Their phones rang again. Her pager rattled and beeped from the trash can. They didn’t answer any of the annoying communication devices. Bobbie and Aidan just stood there with their gazes locked.

“Look, we hardly know each other. Heck, we’re practically strangers, but maybe we can help each other out,” Bobbie suggested.

“Maybe.”

It wasn’t the most enthusiastic response she’d ever received, but it was a start. A start that just might buy them both some time to regain their sanity.

“I’m not looking for anything remotely romantic,” Bobbie added. Since the rattling and beeping were driving her to the brink of madness, she reached into the trash can, calmly removed the pager and smacked it with her foot. It took three good stomps before it shattered into a dozen flamingo-pink chunks. “I’ve had enough romance to last me a couple of lifetimes. And this is more than just a guess, but it appears you’d like to avoid any more kitty rescues and Beeping Tom reports.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

Bobbie took a deep breath, hoping a good analogy would come to mind.

It didn’t.

Unfortunately, a bad one popped right into her head and found its way straight to her suddenly chatty mouth. “It’s sort of like the Twango, one of Boxers or Briefs’ best-selling products.”

From the look on his face, she’d dumbfounded him. “The Twango?”

The bad analogy just kept coming. “It’s a satin-lined, control-top foundation garment for men.”

He just stared at her.

Bobbie probably should have shut up, but the non-stop ringing of phones gave her enough courage, and perhaps the insanity, to continue.

“The Twango,” she explained, the slogan slipping right off her tongue. “Comfort, style and illusion—all rolled into one bottom-shaping, stomach-minimizing brief.”

All right. So, that wasn’t her best attempt at explaining things.

But then, sadly, it wasn’t her worst either.

Rather than keep digging a hole that was getting awfully deep, Bobbie took a step back and waited to see if Aidan O’Shea was desperate enough to snap up her offer.

2

The Drifter: Catalog Item 421. A machine-washable cotton-spandex brief for the man on the move who wants to keep things in place. Available in Stop Sign Red, Alert Amber and Go-get-’em Green. Comes with complimentary Boxers or Briefs travel toothbrush.

“THE TWANGO,” Aidan said under his breath.

Heaven help him.

So that he wouldn’t have the urge to demolish his phone the way Bobbie had her pager, he turned off the ringer. Besides, he needed a moment of quiet so he could think straight. He was almost positive this was one of those situations where he needed a clear head.

“Comfort, looks and illusion,” she repeated as if that would help.

Well, it wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped Bobbie Fay Callahan would offer. Aidan had thought maybe she could put an end to this lottery business by canceling it. He’d further hoped that she would tell the ladies of Liffey to stop calling him about everything from faucet drips to flat tires. He just couldn’t understand why the female population had taken such an interest in him.

Or why they had such a distorted view of the duties of a law-enforcement officer.

However, at this point, he was open to suggestions—any suggestions—that would make his life easier and quieter. He hadn’t had more than fifteen minutes of peace since he’d arrived a week earlier in what was supposed to be a sleepy little town where peace and quiet were plentiful.

“It’s not often a man finds himself compared to an item of underwear,” he commented.

A lobster-red blush covered her cheeks. It matched the color of her skirt and silky top. “You think I’m a candidate for the loony bin, don’t you?”

Absolutely. Her, her uncles and, seemingly, three-quarters of the town.

While Aidan was trying to figure out how to put that observation into kinder, gentler terms, Bobbie just kept right on talking. “Okay. So using the Twango probably wasn’t the best comparison, but stay with me here, and I think I can explain this better.”

Good. She had a hundred-percent chance of doing that, because so far she hadn’t made an eyelash of sense.

Bobbie turned off her phone before she continued. “I want the illusion that my love life is good. Very good. That way, it won’t give anyone, including my uncles and Jasper Kershaw, the right to feel they can monkey with it. And maybe, just maybe, the same could happen for you.”

Aidan certainly hoped this sounded better when he said it aloud, but he wasn’t counting on it. “What exactly would we have to do to stop people from…monkeying with us?”

She shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “We’d have to pretend to go through with the lottery, of course. We’d do the Twango, so to speak. And remember, the Twango is a garment of illusion. I’ve seen before and after pictures. Trust me, it flattens even the worst beer guts, and I mean the worst. It’s even better than the Drifter, and the Drifter’s twice the price.”

“The Twango and the Drifter,” he managed. Heaven knows why he repeated the names of the comparative items, but Aidan had no idea what else to say.

Bobbie stuck out her hands like balancing scales. “The Drifter is for men who don’t want a lot of wiggling around when they’re on the go. Like you. You don’t want people pulling and tugging at you.” She slightly lifted her right hand. “Now, couple that with the Twango, and you’ll see what I’m getting at here.”

Part of him—the part controlled by logic and sound reason—wanted to issue Bobbie a polite good-bye and send her on her delusional way. But he heard a little voice in his head. That little voice, along with the vivid memories of what the past seven days had entailed, made him want to learn more about what she was proposing.

And it had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the fact that she was reasonably attractive.

No way.

He absolutely, emphatically, would not allow himself to be set up in a relationship, and that lottery business smacked of a set-up in its purest form. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought it originated with members of his own family.

Still, Aidan clung to the notion of peace and quiet. His notion of paradise had been lowered significantly. He’d settle for simply getting through a shower or a meal without the phone ringing.

“What would I have to do for this Twango-Drifter Plan?” he asked.

She hesitated. Tipped her amber-brown eyes to the ceiling. Fidgeted. And started to nibble on her glossy bottom lip. So, this had likely been an impromptu idea on her part, or else he’d have to do something so thoroughly ridiculous that she could hardly get out the words.

“Well…” And Bobbie hesitated again. She twirled a strand of her shoulder-length, ginger-colored hair around her finger. “To make it believable, I suppose we’d have to spend time together.”

“I don’t have a lot of time as it is.”

He wasn’t counting on that to change much either after the sheriff returned to work. Of all the calls Aidan received since Sheriff Cooper had gotten sick, not one of them had actually been for the sheriff. And no calls had come in to the night deputy, Sam Teton. That likely had something to do with the fact that Sam was seventy-one, had only three strands of hair and could, and did, spit watermelon seeds through the gap in his front teeth.

Her eyebrows flexed. “Hey, I got it. Maybe you could just come to my house after work and watch TV for a couple of hours. Actually, you wouldn’t have to do much of anything other than let people think something’s going on between us. I could even turn off the phone if you’d like.”

It sounded like, well, paradise. Or maybe it sounded like something too good to be true.

“What about your uncles? They live with you.” And that would likely mean he’d have to spend time with them as well. If his first impression of them was correct, having them around wouldn’t give him much of a reprieve from the lunacy. Instead, it would put him shoulder-deep in it.

“It’s a big house with two wings and separate entrances. I live on one side, and they live on the other. You wouldn’t necessarily run into them.”

Aidan looked for flaws in her proposal and soon found one the size of the Himalayas. After all, Bobbie was the winner of the lottery. A lottery he’d sworn to ignore. Maybe this was just her way of making sure as the winner that she got her shot at him after all.

He shook his head. “As good as the offer sounds, I’d better pass. Thanks anyway.”

“Oh.”

But it wasn’t a plain, ordinary oh. Nor was it a question to ask why he’d come to that decision. It was a hurt, embarrassed oh.

Heck.

One look into her eyes and he confirmed that. He’d lived with his six sisters, a mother and a grandmother long enough to know when he’d stepped in something he should have stepped around.

“It’s not that,” Aidan assured her.

But it was hard to put into words exactly what that was. He couldn’t very well tell her that he was tired of women, could he? No. That’d make him sound like a wuss.

Which he wasn’t.

He just wanted a little vacation from the fairer sex and the constant matchmaking of seemingly every woman in the entire city of Boston. Just because he was thirty-three, why did everyone think he was ready to settle down?

He. Wasn’t.

And he wouldn’t let others dictate that for him. Monkeying indeed. If anyone monkeyed with anything, he’d do it himself, and he damn sure wouldn’t use the word monkeying when he did it.

“This arrangement wouldn’t be, uh, right,” Aidan continued. He could almost taste his own foot in his mouth, and it wasn’t very appetizing. “I mean, I like my privacy.”

“I see. Of course. I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She moistened her lips in a nervous gesture that made him want to find a large rock and hit himself on the head. He hadn’t intended to hurt her feelings.

“It’s not you,” he reiterated. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch her. For comfort naturally. It had nothing to do with her warm brown eyes and sensuous mouth. Nope. Absolutely nothing. Even if he had a thing for warm brown eyes just like hers.

And he really had a thing for sensuous mouths.

She nodded and tipped her head to the missing merchandise report. “You’ll look into that, please?”

“Of course.” He might even frame a copy of it when he was done. It was the first true job-related assignment he’d had since his arrival in Liffey.

“I just want to make sure I don’t have an employee with sticky fingers,” she added. “The floor manager, Rudy Tate, will answer any questions you might have. I’ve listed his number there at the bottom of the form.”

And with that, she turned to leave. Aidan had a three-second debate with himself. Stop her. Don’t stop her. Tell her why her plan made me squirm. Don’t tell her. Apologize for hurting her feelings. Don’t apologize. Touch her. Don’t touch her.

Especially don’t touch her!

He was still adding more issues to that mental debate when he saw Maxine Varadore making her way across Main Street. She was headed straight for the office, probably to press him again to come and rescue her kitty.

Among other things.

“Have a nice day, Deputy O’Shea,” Bobbie said over her shoulder. “And don’t worry about this lottery stuff. I have no intention of pursuing it.” She would have made it out the door if Aidan hadn’t stopped her.

“It isn’t you,” Aidan let her know—again. He swore under his breath and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his khakis. “It’s just—I have these six older sisters, and they’re always…monkeying with my life.”

Heaven’s bells, why couldn’t he stop using that frickin’ word?

He regrouped and tried again. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction for me to back off when someone suggests anything to do with romance.”

Slowly, Bobbie turned back around to face him. “I understand. Believe me.”

She probably did. After all, he’d met her uncles. God knows what kind of torments they’d put her through, all under the guise of insuring her lifelong happiness.

She eked out a smile. “It’s all right, really.”

The mental debate started again in earnest. And Aidan was losing big-time. The losing went up a considerable notch when Maxine stepped inside.

She glanced at Bobbie and huffed noisily. “Are you still here?”

Maxine didn’t wait for Bobbie to confirm the blatantly obvious. She whipped her attention to Aidan. “Can you pretty-please come and rescue my poor little Sue-Sue now? She’s been up in that tree a long, long time. I’m sure she’s getting awfully hungry.”

Gone was the snippy tone that she’d used to address Bobbie. In its place was a silky purr that had scalding steam rising from it. It was enough to make Aidan take a step back and inform her that he didn’t wear size triple-X underwear either.

“I can’t leave the office unless there’s a crime in progress,” Aidan insisted.

It was a line he’d found himself repeating often, and he was glad he could use it as an excuse right now. However, Sheriff Cooper was due back in a couple of days, and Aidan’s excuse wouldn’t be worth the sudsy scum left inside an empty beer mug.

What then?

There were four weeks, six days and a couple of hours left on this particular exchange tour. Four weeks, six days and a couple of hours that would no doubt make it seem as if he’d lived in monastic seclusion in Boston.

He hadn’t.

But it seemed the women of Liffey could outdo even his own family when it came to forcing romance on a man, and his family had had thirty-three years of practice. Just how proficient would these Texas women be after another week or two of lottery-like shenanigans?

And when the heck had he started using words like shenanigans?

“My little bitty kitty?” Maxine coaxed. She crooked her finger. Smiled. And winked, revealing an eyelid caked with about a kilo of turquoise eye shadow. “Come on. I’ll even make you a big tall glass of iced tea. Or something.”

That wasn’t all she was offering. No way. Aidan recognized that lustful gleam in her eye. A year or two ago, he’d have done his level best to fan that gleam into a scorching blaze. But not now. Like Bobbie, his fanning activities were on hiatus.

“Uh…” And that was all he managed to get out. He didn’t want to hurt Maxine’s feelings, but then he didn’t think he could survive another kitty rescue.

Aidan looked at Maxine. Then at Bobbie. This was probably a case of the lesser of two evils. Still, if Bobbie could pull off a Twango-Drifter relationship, then she would have his undying gratitude.

“Well?” Maxine again. She gave her finger one more seductive crook.

“I need to rest up for tomorrow,” Aidan heard himself say. “For the start of the lottery. I’ll be spending every waking hour of the next week with Bobbie.”

Maxine snapped her shoulders so straight that he heard joints crack. “You’re actually going through with that stupid nonsense?”

Aidan nodded. He glanced at Bobbie again. Her mouth had dropped open, but beneath all that dumbfoundedness, he saw a glimmer in her eyes as well. Not lust. No. Not this. This was something more akin to hope.

“You bet,” he answered.

“But, but, but—” It took Maxine a couple of seconds of sputtering to remember how to say more than just that one objection. She fluttered her fingers in Bobbie’s direction. “But she already has a boyfriend.”

“No, I don’t,” Bobbie insisted.

Maxine turned her still-hopeful and somewhat pathetic gaze to Aidan.

“She doesn’t,” he piped in, hoping it’d give Maxine motive to leave. “Besides, a deal is a deal. Bobbie won the lottery, and therefore she has my undivided personal attention for an entire week.”

He thought he saw flames dance across Maxine’s mud-brown eyes. “Then you’re in for a very dull week. Ask Jasper Kershaw if you don’t believe me. He’s jilted her twice.”

And with that totally irrelevant comment, she turned on her heels and headed out the door.

Aidan figured Bobbie would lose her composure over such a tacky confrontation. But she didn’t. She didn’t even spare Maxine a parting glance.

“Hope her little bitty kitty will come down from the hackberry before the week is up,” Bobbie commented, a touch of humor in her voice. She checked her watch. “Oh, I gotta go. I’m meeting a client over in Dalton City. Listen, why don’t you drop by my house after work so we can iron out the details of our plan?”

Heaven help him. Now it was called our plan. Just like the term blind date, it made him itch.

“I’ll put out the word that you’re officially off limits to the women of Liffey,” she assured him. “It’ll go faster if you do the same.”

Aidan managed a nod before Bobbie all but sprinted out of the office. It took him a second before he realized what he’d done.

Well, heaven’s bells!

Hadn’t this been exactly what he’d tried to avoid? He’d actually been talked into monkeying with his own life.

3

The Naughty Guy: Catalog Item 451A. A cheeky but classy traditional-cut faux silk brief in nontraditional colors. A subtle way to make a not-so-subtle impression. Available in Brazen Brass, Rowdy Raspberry and, for a limited time only, Scandalous Scarlet Stripes.

GREAT. Now, there were three dogs, two cats and an ornery raccoon following her. As if she hadn’t already had an eventful day, now she had to put up with this.

While Bobbie turned down the narrow road that led to her house, she continued to fan herself with the latest copy of Travel-or-Bust Monthly. Maybe, just maybe, the icky scent of the massage oil would fade before Aidan came over to discuss the details of the Twango-Drifter Plan. A plan that had plagued, tormented and needled her the entire afternoon.

Geez Louise, what the devil had she been thinking when she suggested that brilliant idea?

It was one of the worst ideas she’d ever had. Well, not counting the time she’d let her best friend, Crystal, talk her into getting her navel pierced. But this was definitely the second worst.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she repeated to Mr. Eidelson, the client she’d met with only an hour earlier. “I believe I made that clear before I left. I’m sorry, but Boxers or Briefs will not be marketing your Sensuous Musk Massage Oil.”

She rolled her eyes when the man had the nerve to ask why. Bobbie gave her phone headset an adjustment so he’d clearly hear her every word. “Well, for one thing, your product stains like crazy. And I’m not just talking about the big splotch it left on my skirt either. My thighs, palms and kneecaps are purple as well. I stopped at the gas station and tried to scrub it off, but it seems to have embedded into my skin.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Mr. Eidelson said. “The bottle slipped right out of my hand.”

Yes, and that slip had sent a pint of the industrial-strength massage oil right into her lap. In addition to the goop causing her an uncomfortable drive home, it now appeared the musky scent was attracting critters.

And speaking of critters, she saw Jasper’s devil-red sports car when she turned into the driveway. Even in the already dusky light, it didn’t take her long to spot him. There he was, leaning against her mailbox as if he had every right to be there.

She issued a mumbled goodbye to Mr. Eidelson and tossed the headset phone onto the passenger seat.

“Bobbie,” Jasper greeted when she stepped from her car. “I’m glad you’re finally home. I’ve been waiting for you.” He lifted his nose in the air and sniffed. “Say, what’s that smell? A new perfume, huh? Guess the animals like it. It’s a little strong, but I could get used to it.”

She ignored his idiotic observation and turned to see if the other critters were still there. They were, and they were gaining now that she’d stopped. Bobbie rolled up the travel magazine in case she had to ward them off. Not that she planned to hit them, but waving the glossy pages around and shouting might work.

Jasper walked down the flagstone steps to join her. “Say, that really is a great perfume. You oughta wear that more often.” He sniffed her again. “By the way, something must be wrong with your phone. I’ve been trying to call you for a couple of hours.”

“I had your number blocked.” Bobbie kept her attention on the animals. One of the cats and the raccoon didn’t look especially pleased when they realized she wasn’t a potential girlfriend.

“I know you’re angry about what happened,” Jasper said as if his latest jilting were only a mild inconvenience instead of the life-altering, humiliating experience that it had been. “But I can explain everything.”

“I don’t want an explanation.”

She grabbed her purse and headed for the house, taking the steps two at a time. The critters didn’t come any closer, but Bobbie didn’t plan to take any chances. Besides, she wanted to get away from Jasper more than she did the animals.

Unfortunately, Jasper followed her. Bobbie barely managed to get inside the house and slam the glass storm door between them.

“I got scared,” Jasper prattled on. He pressed his face right against the glass, making himself look a little like a severely mashed Mr. Potato Head. “I guess I wasn’t ready to settle down.”

“Too bad you didn’t let me in on that little revelation before I showed up at the church.”

He shrugged. “Hey, what can I say—I’m human. I make mistakes.”

She wanted to throttle him. Eight months earlier, the man had left her high and dry to face 179 guests, a food-laden reception and an unpaid limo driver. Worse, Bobbie had learned later that he’d actually gone on their honeymoon trip to London—a place she desperately wanted to visit. Then, rather than return to Liffey and try to grovel his way back into her good graces, Jasper had been working in his father’s travel agency in San Antonio.

“You’re leaving,” she insisted. “And I don’t want you to come back. Our relationship is over, and we’ll never get back together again, understand?”

Jasper nodded but then reached inside the pocket of his perfectly tailored jacket and brought out a thick envelope. “It’s an itinerary,” he announced. “For our trip to Paris. I’ve already paid for everything, including a stay at a five-star hotel. Dad says I can have as much time off from the agency as I need so we can leave as early as next week. All you have to do is say yes.”

He flashed that dimple-enhanced smile that had once done a fairly decent job of melting her toenail polish. Today, her nail polish frosted over.

Bobbie was on the verge of telling Jasper exactly what he could do with that blasted travel itinerary when she heard the voices. Male voices.

She peered over Jasper’s shoulder and saw something that sent her stomach plummeting to her purple kneecaps. Her uncles and Aidan were leaving the other side of the house, the uncles’ side, and they were headed for hers. Fortunately, they had their attention focused on the four-legged critters, so it gave Bobbie a couple of seconds to try to compose herself.

“Good-bye, Jasper,” she snarled.

His moronic grin slipped a considerable notch. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do mean it.” To prove her point, she aimed her index finger at Aidan. “That’s my boyfriend, and he’s here to pick me up for a…uh…date.”

The grin vanished. Jasper propped his hands on his hips. “Is this about that dumb lottery?”

“No.” And it was the truth. This was about the preservation of what was left of her sanity.

In the nick of time, Uncle Winston saved her from having to add some lies to that truth. “Hey, what’s that weasel doing here?” Winston called out.

“He’s leaving,” Bobbie announced. “He thought he could show up here and talk me into going to Paris with him. I’d rather have my tonsils removed by a toddler with a rusty spoon.”

“No, Winston meant the other weasel,” Uncle Quincy corrected.

“Huh?” Another glance over Jasper’s shoulder, and Bobbie saw that her uncle was right. There were two weasels. Jasper and a furry one that had joined the other critters. Bobbie thought the furry one might actually be Henrietta Beekins’ missing ferret, Sugarfoot.

As if they’d rehearsed it, her uncles walked forward, each of them latching onto one of Jasper’s arms. Winston and Quincy were in their late sixties, but both men were still in remarkable shape. Together, they lifted the wirily-built Jasper right off the flagstones.

“You’re not welcome here,” Winston informed Jasper. “We don’t take kindly to you breaking Bobbie’s heart. Leave now, or Quincy here just might put an uncomfortable knot in that Gigolo underwear that you’re so fond of.”

Quincy agreed with a gravelly, snarling growl. He was by far the smaller of the two, but since he’d been the state mud-wrestling champion in his prime, and since he had hands the size of SUV hubcaps, few people cared to argue with Quincy Callahan.

In no time flat, and with seemingly no exertion, the uncles had her former fiancé and reigning cow-dung champion headed toward his car.

“This isn’t over,” Jasper called out. “I’ll win you back, Bobbie. You’ll see.”

Ferrets would fly first.

When Jasper finally drove away, Bobbie stepped out on the porch again. From the doomsday look on Aidan’s face, he wasn’t so sure of this lottery stuff either. He’d probably come over to call the whole thing off.

“I’ll take a stab at what happened to you,” Winston said coming back up the steps. He towered a good twelve inches over his fraternal twin, Quincy, and even had a few inches on Aidan. Her uncle gave his ornate feather-banded Stetson an adjustment. “That purple blotch on your skirt is from Eidelson’s Sensuous Musk Massage Oil, right?”

Flabbergasted, Bobbie just stared at him a moment. “How’d you know that?”

Winston cast an uneasy glance down at Quincy. Both shook their heads. Both mumbled. Quincy finally motioned for his brother to continue. “We had a meeting with Mr. Eidelson a couple of years ago, before you took over the business.”

“And you didn’t warn me?”

They shrugged in unison. “We figured he’d have a new product by now,” Quincy offered. He didn’t wait for her to verify that there was no product other than the staining, stinky oil. He hitched a thumb in Aidan’s direction. “The deputy was looking for you.”

Since the cheerless look was still on his face, Aidan had probably been with her uncles longer than he wanted. Of course, there were times when five seconds was too long to spend with Quincy and Winston.

Bobbie caught onto Aidan’s arm and pulled him inside. “Thank you for bringing him over,” she let her uncles know. She glanced around the yard. It was dark, but she figured it wasn’t so dark that she’d missed his vehicle. “Aidan, where’d you park?”

“By the pond. I took the back way.”

So that he wouldn’t be seen. Oh, yeah. He was definitely ready to put an end to this.

Bobbie gave a farewell wave to her uncles, but they just stood there grinning at her. When a second wave didn’t get them moving, she issued a good-bye and shut the door. Later, she’d have to inform them that this visit from the deputy wasn’t the start of the glorious romance that they obviously thought it was.

The full impact of the Twango-Drifter Plan hit Bobbie the moment she turned around to face Aidan.

Oh, my. Oh, my, my, my.

He was certainly an eyeful in those snuggy jeans and crisp white shirt. And here he was. Right in the middle of her entryway—the last place an attractive man should be, since she’d sworn off men for all of eternity.

“I’ll save you some time here,” she started. “My second thoughts are having second thoughts. I figure you’re feeling pretty much the same.”

“I am.” The corner of his mouth lifted. Not a toenail-dissolving grin like Jasper’s. This one made her smile and feel warm and tingly inside.

“It sure seemed like a good idea at the time,” Bobbie continued. “Well, maybe it did. But I caught us both at a weak moment. Now that the phones aren’t ringing and people aren’t pestering us, well, the Twango-Drifter Plan doesn’t seem, um, necessary, does it?”

Aidan no doubt would have agreed, but before he could even get out a word, one of the cats scurried across the windowsill. It clawed its way up the screen and onto the eaves.

Bobbie shook her head. “Just for the record—I don’t expect you to do a kitty rescue.”

He smiled again. And just stood there. Bobbie tried not to look at him. She really tried. But her eyes seemed to have a whole different notion.

She took in everything about him that she didn’t want to notice. The way his dark hair languished against his tanned neck. The little flecks of blue and gray in his luscious green eyes. She probably would have started drooling if the rattling sound hadn’t pulled her out of her Aidan-induced trance.

She glanced behind her. A second cat was making his way up the screen.

Aidan motioned toward the plate-size stain on her skirt. “You might want to take care of that before you attract a bear or something.”

“Of course.” Strange, but she’d almost forgotten about the massage oil. “I’ll just grab a quick shower and change. I won’t be long. Then, we can talk about…well, about our situations.”

Naturally, that would mean coming up with a different plan, or maybe no plan at all. Aidan was a grown man, incredibly grown, and he certainly didn’t need her to fix his problems. Besides, she absolutely, emphatically, positively didn’t want another relationship.

Really.

Once she was safely in the bathroom and had the door closed, she placed her fingertips over the pulse on her neck to verify what she already knew. It was racing. And not just racing either. It was in a full gallop.

So, she did what any other female who had sworn off men would do. Bobbie blamed it on Eidelson’s Sensuous Musk Massage Oil.

AIDAN BLAMED his visit on basic stupidity. And, of course, politeness.

The bane of his existence.

Why he hadn’t ended this fiasco with just a phone call, he didn’t know. But he did know that he had to put this Twango-Drifter Plan to bed in such a way that it didn’t hurt Bobbie’s feelings. Of course, after her comment just moments earlier, it was clear she wasn’t very comfortable with things either. After all, her second thoughts were having second thoughts. You couldn’t get any more unsure than that.

While he waited for Bobbie to finish her shower, he ambled around the living room, glancing at the cheery yellow and lilac décor. There were posters of Big Ben, Mount Rushmore, Limerick Castle and the Grand Canyon. A huge stack of travel magazines lay on the coffee table. Apparently, Bobbie had a bad case of wanderlust.

“It’s an obsession,” he heard her say.

Aidan turned to see her in the doorway. She was barefooted and wore jeans with a cropped T-shirt. There was nothing especially attractive about the outfit, but it seemed to garner his attention. He cleared his throat and forced his attention to garner something else.

“What’s an obsession?” he asked.

“Traveling.” She walked closer, and he caught the scent of her soap. She’d washed her hair as well, and it fell in damp strands against her neck. Like the outfit, it wasn’t especially attractive, but for some reason it was appealing. Appealing in a make-me-squirm sort of way.

He cleared his throat again. “You travel often?”

“No.” She gave a heavy sigh. “I rarely go anywhere because I work six days a week. That’s why it’s an obsession—I only get to dream about it. I guess you’ve been a lot of places, huh?”

“Some. I joined the law-enforcement exchange two years ago. The first place they sent me was London to work at Scotland Yard.”

A wistful, longing look glazed her eyes. “Ohh. London. I suppose you’ve been to Hawaii, too?”

He nodded. And nodded again when she asked about Italy and France.

“You are so lucky,” she concluded. “The closest I get to places like that are my travel magazines. A pitiful substitute, I can tell you.”

She stuffed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Not the best maneuver. Of course, she probably didn’t know that it hiked up her top so he could now see her stomach. Not just her stomach though. Her navel.

And it was pierced.

Hmmm. For some strange reason, he found that intriguing. And sexy. It reminded him of things best forgotten. Things that involved slow, wet, lingering kisses in the general region of her navel.

Aidan was forced to clear his throat once again. If he did much more of that, Bobbie would think he was coming down with a cold.

He was about to tell her the Twango-Drifter Plan was a no-go and get the heck out of there, but the lights suddenly went off, plunging them into total darkness.

“Sorry. This happens all the time,” she assured him. “There’s a flashlight in the kitchen. I’ll get it.”

He heard fumbling around when Bobbie walked into the adjoining room. Aidan also heard when she bumped into something.

“Darn it,” she mumbled.

She repeated that when she bumped into something else, adding some “shoot’s” and “blast’s.” Apparently, Bobbie didn’t have good night vision. Of course, it was so dark that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

Another bumping sound sent him in search of her. “Need any help?”

Aidan stuck out his hands like Frankenstein to feel his way around.

“I know I have a flashlight in the drawer somewhere. Now, if I could just find the drawer,” he heard her say—right before he bumped into her. As bumps went, it was probably the best one he’d ever had. His Frankenstein hands were suddenly filled with her breasts.

“Oh!” she gasped.

Aidan said an entirely different kind of oh. It sounded more like a beached whale’s groan. Her cute little breasts fit perfectly in the palms of his hands. Touching them, however, was a big no-no.

He snatched his hands away and stepped to the side. “Sorry about that.”

She probably was sorry too, but unfortunately Bobbie stepped in the same direction he did. This time, his lowering hands skimmed over her waist. And the skimming didn’t stop there either. Their middles swished against each other. Man, did they swish. As swishes went, it was a prizewinner.

“Don’t move,” she demanded.

Aidan was sure he’d misunderstood her. They were touching from waist to kneecaps. Surely, she didn’t approve of that. His body did though. In fact, his body was rather pleased with the fact that it had Bobbie plastered against it. It was obvious he’d have to have a man-to-man talk with his body.

“My earring,” she explained. “You’re caught on it. Don’t move. It’ll hurt.”

He was nowhere in the vicinity of her earlobes. “Excuse me?”

“The earring in my navel—it’s caught on your shirt or something. Please don’t move.” He didn’t have to see her face to know there was a frown on it. Aidan could hear it in her voice. “It’s something my friend, Crystal, talked me into last month for my twenty-eighth birthday. Needless to say, it was a stupid idea. Then, the skin closed around the earring, and I can’t get the darn thing out.”

Aidan eased his hand between them and encountered the snagged earring. And some female flesh. Bobbie’s stomach was soft and firm at the same time. Best not to dwell on it though. Best not to dwell on anything that made his body feel like an overly productive furnace.

“It’s caught on my belt,” he let her know.

“Can you untangle it?”

Probably, but not without feeling around a lot. His body was about to volunteer him for the job, but Aidan vetoed it. His body had no vote here. It was already making some pretty bad suggestions.

“Your hands are smaller,” he answered. Which probably didn’t have a thing to do with anything, but it was the only semi-plausible reason he could come up with. “Why don’t you try?”

She did. With a vengeance. Bobbie stuck her hand between them as if she had no plans whatsoever to encounter him along the way. And she encountered him all right. Her agile fingers slid against his chest, stomach and even slightly lower—to the fly on his jeans.

All that encountering would have been okay—maybe—if he hadn’t been stirring like crazy beneath that fly.

“Flashlight,” he managed. “It’ll make this easier.”

Or at least it might get his eyes uncrossed.

Bobbie made a sound of agreement and reached around behind him to get to the drawer. Not the best position for them to be in. Now, all of her was plastered against all of him. Breasts. Stomach.

And most especially, other things.

The torment didn’t stop there either. Aidan could feel her warm breath on his neck. He could smell the scent of soap on her skin. That wasn’t usually a turn-on for him, but it apparently was now. Soon, he’d have to beg for mercy.

Or beg to have sex with her.

Aidan remembered who he was with—Bobbie. Nope, it’d have to be begging for mercy. There was no way he could become involved with her. She was one tempting morsel that he intended to leave on the proverbial plate of life.

She fumbled for several moments. Wiggled. And otherwise nudged and rocked. “Got it,” she announced.

Aidan was so worked up that it took him a while to realize she meant the flashlight. She clicked it on, and golden light sprayed between them. He could hope that she wouldn’t notice that their little bump-and-grind session had caused some changes in his body. Of course, she was definitely close enough to feel it if she moved just slightly to his right.

Part of him—a disgusting vile part—very much wanted her to move to his right.

And wiggle back and forth a little.

“Darn it,” Bobbie mumbled.

Heck! Had he said that wiggle part out loud? He hoped not. He didn’t stand a chance of coming up with a plausible explanation for it.

“What?” Aidan asked, his voice cracking.

“My navel ring’s not tangled on your belt but on some loose threads on the loop of your jeans. I don’t think I can get us apart. I’ll have to use the scissors.”

She might as well have said she was about to boil him in rancid snake oil. There was no way he wanted Bobbie near a certain part of his temporarily enlarged anatomy with a pair of scissors.

“Let me try,” he insisted.

The lights flared on. It wasn’t exactly the best time for that to happen. Now, he’d actually have to look at her while he tried to disjoin them.

She chuckled softly. “Weird things like this always happen to me.”

That wasn’t hard to believe. Bobbie definitely had a Calamity Jane, I Love Lucy thing going on. Still, this had to be a first. “You’ve caught your navel ring on a man’s jeans before?”

“No, but once when I was a teenager, I got my braces caught on some deep-pile carpeting. Don’t ask for details.” She put the flashlight aside and flattened her hand on his chest. “Lean back just a little, and let me see if I can do something about this. Hmmm.”

Bobbie stared down at the bodily connection.

Aidan was still aroused and hoped like the devil she wouldn’t notice. Of course, only blindness, paralysis or virginal naiveté could have prevented her from noticing something like that.

“It’s the Austrian crystal on the earring that’s actually caught,” she continued. “I think I can—”

When she didn’t finish her sentence, Aidan glanced at her. Except it didn’t stay a glance. Their gazes connected—and turned into a full-fledged stare.

“You wear boxers,” she mumbled. But then her eyes widened to the size of turkey platters. “Ohmigosh. I didn’t mean to look. Or to say that out loud.”

He knew the feeling.

“I mean, it’s no big deal,” she babbled. “It’s just there’s a poll making the rounds. Most people in town thought you were into briefs.”

“There’s a poll about my choice of underwear?” Aidan asked.

She nodded and swallowed rather noisily. “Last I heard, most people figured you for a Naughty Guy.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh.” She blushed. “That’s one of Boxers or Briefs’ products. Item 451A. A classy traditional-cut faux silk brief in nontraditional colors. It has an ad slogan that I’d rather not mention if you don’t mind.”

Aidan couldn’t help it. He had to smile. So did Bobbie, eventually.

Man, did she ever smile.

This was not good. Bobbie looked centerfold-sexy with that smile and her hair tumbling around her face. Her mouth was slightly damp, too.

Mercy, he couldn’t be thinking about kissing her. He just couldn’t be. This Twango-whatever idea, the one he didn’t want, was all for show. A faux relationship with faux kisses and faux feelings.

Too bad the heat stirring in his body didn’t feel so frickin’ faux.

It felt like a blazing inferno.

Aidan shook his head, hoping to clear it. It didn’t work. Nothing cleared, especially the sudden, urgent ache he had brewing below the waist.

Ah, heck.

He didn’t want that part of his body to get in on this. His mouth was already thinking things that were way out of line, but those thoughts were G-rated compared to all the stupid ideas that brainless part of him could suggest.

“Uh, Bobbie.” He’d just tell her to slap him, to make it a good hard one so it’d knock some sense into him.

“Yes?”

But she didn’t ask it like a question. It sounded more like an invitation. Of course, that was the opinion of that brainless part of him below the waist. Aidan could pretty much discount any interpretation it came up with.

He felt his head lower. Tried like the devil to stop it. Couldn’t. His eyes were already trained on her mouth. On her sweet, warm mouth.

Aidan couldn’t remember ever wanting a mouth this much. It was stupid to want it. Wrong. And reckless. Heck, after his earlier experience with her, it might even be hazardous to his health.

His head still dipped lower.

He decided to hope for a miracle because that was the only thing that stood a chance of stopping him now.

Apparently, he was about to kiss Bobbie Fay Callahan. And he was about a hundred percent certain that there’d be nothing faux about it.

4

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SHE WAS ABOUT to kiss Aidan O’Shea. Bobbie was too fuzzy-headed to think of why she shouldn’t be doing that. At the moment, it seemed right. It felt right, too. Of course, with him this close, making love with him on the kitchen table suddenly seemed right.

“Uh,” she got out.

She should stop this. This would complicate things that were already too complicated. However, with his mouth only a fraction of an inch away, all Bobbie could manage was another “Uh.”

“Uh,” he repeated.

So, they were both past the point of even simple coherent speech. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to talk anyway. She wanted him to kiss her until her eyelashes curled to tight little coils.

His eyelids lowered. Bobbie’s automatically did the same. She angled her head. Mercy. This would be good. She just knew it. A man who looked like Aidan could certainly send a woman jetting straight to the stars.

“Say, what’s going on here?” someone asked.

The soaring and jetting came to an abrupt halt, and instead Bobbie did a crash-and-burn. Mainly because it wasn’t soaring-inducer, Aidan, who was doing the asking. Even in her passion-induced stupor, Bobbie figured that out.

Their visitor was her best friend, Crystal, and her presence was both a blessing and a curse. Bobbie apparently wouldn’t get that eyelash-curling kiss after all, but freedom from a navel-ring attachment was only moments away.

The other downside to this situation was that unless Bobbie could convince her friend that absolutely nothing carnal was going on, then for the next six years or so, Crystal would torment her with questions about this incident.

Aidan tried to step back from her, but Bobbie caught onto his shoulders before he could do that. No sense injuring herself at this point.

“Crystal,” Bobbie said as calmly as she could. “What are you doing here?”

“I closed the salon early and thought I’d drop by and snag some leftovers for dinner. The front door was unlocked so I let myself in.”

As usual. Crystal’s self-invitations didn’t normally bother Bobbie. In fact, she usually welcomed them. But then, she’d never been caught in a near lip-lock with a cute deputy either. “You scared the life out of us.”

Crystal shook her head. “Mmmm. You sure that’s all I did? Because I think I might have interrupted something here.”

But Crystal dismissed it with the flippant wave of her hand. “Hey, what am I saying? This is you—Bobbie Callahan. Senior citizens without access to Viagra see more action than you do.” She picked an apple out of a wicker basket, levered herself onto the counter and started to munch. “So, what’s really going on?”

“Nothing, really. My navel ring got caught on his jeans,” Bobbie explained. “We’re having a little trouble untangling ourselves.”

Crystal stopped in mid-bite. “How’d that happen?”

“You don’t want to know,” Aidan mumbled.

Bobbie quietly agreed. “Crystal, could you just get us loose and stop asking all these questions?”

Crystal shook her head again, sending the heap of tiny tangerine-colored curls bouncing. “The idea of putting my hand on the front of his pants doesn’t appeal to me. Well, maybe it does a little, because he is on the hot side.” And with a chunk of apple still in her mouth, she winked and grinned at him. “But I wouldn’t feel right doing that since he’s sorta yours. I mean, you did win him in the lottery and all. That’d be like cheating if—”

“Crystal!” Bobbie said through clenched teeth. “Get us loose now.”

“All right. All right. Don’t go all crazy on me. I’ll get your big sharp chef’s knife from the drawer—”

“No!” Aidan yelled. “No scissors or knives. It’s time to put an end to this.” He reached between them and used his thumbnail to saw the threads off the navel ring. After a few seconds, he had them free.

Bobbie stepped back and pushed her hair out of her face. She didn’t look at Aidan. Couldn’t. And he no doubt felt the same. What in the name of heaven had she almost done? She wasn’t the kind of woman ruled by lust glands.

She wasn’t even sure she had lust glands.

Crystal stuck out her hand for Aidan to shake. “Crystal Pudney. You probably don’t remember me, but I own the Curl Up and Dye Beauty Palace over by the Piggly Wiggly on Main. We met the first day you got to Liffey.”

Bobbie waited for Aidan to rattle off a plethora of unsavory details about Crystal the way he’d done to her in his office. But he merely nodded. No comment on the fact that Crystal had missed gobs of appointments and had scores of moving traffic violations. Just the briefest handshake in the history of that particular form of salutation.

“I have to go,” Aidan announced.

“Oh. I’ll see you to the door,” Bobbie offered when he took off like a fighter jet in that general direction. She had to sprint after him.

Unfortunately, Crystal followed right on their heels. Shoot! Bobbie couldn’t very well ask for a moment alone with Aidan, or Crystal would think something was going on between them.

Which there wasn’t.

That almost-kiss had been a mere minor setback in her not-so-minor plan to swear off men forever and ever. It was also a hindrance to them dissolving their plan to rid themselves of romance and other assorted aggravations. But it wouldn’t happen again.

Nope.

Now, that she knew the potent effect of Aidan’s mouth, she’d just distance herself from those luscious lips. While she was at it, she’d subscribe to a couple more travel magazines. It would give her mind something else to do other than dwell on dwellings it shouldn’t be dwelling on.

“You’ll call if you find out anything about the missing Gigolos. I mean, the underwear?” Bobbie asked.

“Oh. Sure. Will do. Good evening, ladies.” At that same supersonic speed, Aidan turned on his afterburners and jetted out the door.

“And don’t worry about that, uh, other thing,” Bobbie called out to him. “We’ll discuss it some other time. Not tomorrow though. I’ve got a meeting in Austin. But soon.”

He didn’t even spare her a glance. “Okay.”

“Well, well,” Crystal said coming up behind her. They both watched as Aidan flew away. “I thought the Aidan-o-rama didn’t interest you.”

“It doesn’t.” And it was the truth. The lottery didn’t interest her.

Too bad the lottery prize did.

Crystal crunched into the apple again. “Hmmm. I figure one of two things could be happening here. You want to spend some time with Deputy Hot-Bod to get Jasper off your back. Or you just want to spend some time with Deputy Hot-Bod because he’s, well, a hot-bod. So, which is it?”

Bobbie wanted to be mortified by that question. She wanted to flat-out deny it. She wanted to gasp and look outraged. Too bad she couldn’t. Crystal would detect the lie right away. It was a knack of hers. A kind of heightened sensory awareness in the region of her brain that sorted out malarkey from truth.

Bobbie attributed it to Crystal’s overuse of hair dye.

“Aidan is interesting. And not just because of his good looks but because he’s traveled all over the world,” Bobbie explained. “And it did occur to me that Jasper might leave me alone if—”

“You were about to kiss Aidan when I walked in, and Jasper wasn’t around.” Crystal paused a heartbeat. “Guess you were practicing your pucker, huh? Or maybe you were just testing the durability of your lip gloss?”

Bobbie huffed. “I thought you were here to get some leftovers for dinner.”

Crystal giggled. “I rest my case. You’re sidestepping the questions, so that means you’re interested in Aidan. Can’t say I blame you, though, even if you’re too scared to risk getting another broken heart. After all, Jasper did pretty much turn you into an empty, broken shell incapable of future emotional entanglements and things like that.”

And with that hurled gauntlet, Crystal headed for the fridge.

It was a trick to get her to ’fess up, and Bobbie wasn’t about to fall for it. But she couldn’t just let it lie either. So, she lied. “I’m not interested in Aidan.”

“Whatever.” Crystal hauled out some lasagna and a hefty slab of mocha cheesecake from the fridge, and with her dinner in hand, she headed for the door.

“Don’t you ‘whatever’ me. I’m not interested in him. I’m really not. What do you think I am—stupid? I’m done with men.”

Crystal shrugged, pinched off a smushy dollop of cheesecake and popped it into her mouth. “Too bad. Aidan’s really something.” Crystal mixed her musings with some “mmm’s” as she savored the cheesecake. “That lean hard body. That strong angled face. That voice. Holy Moly, Aidan O’Shea sure has a way with words.”

Yes. He did have all those assets. Along with solid, muscular shoulders and great abs. Bobbie knew a little about his abs since she’d been plastered against them during that navel-ring debacle. Just thinking of him and his abs made her mouth water, so she helped herself to a dollop of the cheesecake as well.

“And those eyes,” Crystal went on. “Mmm. Make-me-sigh green.”

They could do that, yes. Too bad he was male, the very species that she needed to avoid.

“Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmmm,” Crystal concluded as she licked the cheesecake off her finger. “And I just bet Aidan looks darn good when he’s stripped down to his Naughty Guy briefs, too.”

Bobbie reached for more cheesecake. “He wears boxers,” she mumbled.

The realization that she’d just blown it came at the exact second that Crystal flashed a victorious grin.

“Gotta go,” Crystal insisted. She barreled out the door.

“Wait—”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul.”

No, but she’d tell people. Lots and lots of people. Liffey didn’t need standard communication devices with Crystal around. Her mouth could travel faster than the speed of light.

“What have I done?” Bobbie asked herself.

Talk about the ultimate crash-and-burn faux pas.

Within an hour, maybe less, everyone in town would know that she had intimate knowledge of Aidan O’Shea’s underpants.

5

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AIDAN CHECKED the phone again. It was working just fine. Ditto for his pager, the fax machine, his e-mail account and the bell on the door. They were all silent. Completely, utterly silent.

It was nothing short of a blessed miracle.

Here it was ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning, and there’d been only one kitty rescue request and only one plea for a flat-tire repair. The only other call had come from the mayor, who merely wanted to invite him to the town picnic, wranglers’ barbecue and watermelon thump.

Whatever the heck that was.

But even with the picnic invitation, claims on his time were down by more than ninety percent.

Aidan nearly shuddered at the thought, but was it possible that the Twango-Drifter Plan was a success after only forty-eight hours?

He sank down into his chair to contemplate that and read over the background reports he’d requested on his main suspects for the underwear theft. The fact that he was actually able to contemplate it in silence said loads about his situation. It was working, and that was both a blessing and a curse.

The plan had worked. Thank heaven—as, in halleluiah.

The plan had worked. Oh, mercy—as in, he was in deep trouble. The kind of trouble that could only create more trouble.

That near-kiss a couple of nights ago in Bobbie’s kitchen had clanged bells the size of boulders in his head. Bells that warned him to put some serious miles between him and her. Still, there was immense pleasure in finally having some peace and quiet.

If he stuck with the plan, however, it’d no doubt call for even more kitchen encounters. Even more navel-ring sightings. And yep, even more near French kisses. Which couldn’t happen if he hoped to keep his life uncomplicated. But maybe, just maybe, he could have his cake and eat it too if he could stay away from Bobbie’s mouth.

And take a lot of cold showers.

The door flew open, and Aidan braced himself for a kitty-rescue request. But this was no kitty owner. He got to his feet and came face-to-face with jilting Jasper Kershaw. From the surly expression on the man’s face, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t pleased about something. Aidan didn’t have to guess about that displeasure either. After all, Jasper had seen him at Bobbie’s house.

Jasper aimed an indignant, wagging finger in Aidan’s direction. “It’s all over town about your boxer shorts,” he accused.

Okay, of all the things that Aidan thought Jasper might say, that wasn’t one of them. Not even close. “Is there some sort of weird city ordinance that prevents me from wearing boxers?”

Jasper’s Adam’s apple began to bob at the same zealous speed as that wagging finger. “Quit playing Mr. Innocent with me. You know what I mean.”

“Uh, not really.” And even more, Aidan wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“I heard it from Maxine who heard it from Henrietta who heard it straight from Crystal that Bobbie knew you wore boxers. I don’t want to know how Bobbie came about that little tidbit, but I’m here to tell you that she’s hands off to you and anybody else.”

Contemplating that chain of communication, Aidan scratched his chin. He didn’t have to contemplate long. “I’m not exactly comfortable with you mentioning my boxers in the same breath that you mention ‘little tidbit.’ And I doubt Bobbie’s comfortable with you declaring her to be hands off.”

“Bobbie doesn’t know what she wants, and I won’t have you and your boxers confusing the situation, you got that? That means you back off so I can mend some fences with my future wife.”

That idiotic-sounding ultimatum didn’t set well with Aidan, and he’d already geared up to send this dense chowderhead on his finger-wagging way when he spotted Bobbie crossing Main Street. Her eyes widened, then narrowed to slits when she looked in the window of the office.

“Jasper,” she snarled, throwing open the door. She stepped inside and propped her hands on her hips.

Man, she looked good.

Aidan wanted to concentrate just on the riled expression on her face, but that was hard to do with her wearing that well-above-the-knee pink-lemonade-colored jacket and skirt. It gloved and hugged her trim body and made her legs seem to go on forever. To his suddenly parched mouth, she truly looked like a long, tall drink…of something.

Whoa.

Not good.

Aidan gave his head a hard shake and threatened it with a good wall-pounding if it kept up thoughts like those. It wasn’t a smart idea to think of Bobbie and satisfaction of thirst, any kind of thirst, in the same sentence.

“What’s going on here, Jasper?” Bobbie demanded.

He hitched a thumb in Aidan’s direction. “I’m here to tell Mr. Paddy Wrangler boxers that you’re off limits, hands off and otherwise engaged—to me!”

Aidan almost intervened. Almost. But that fiery look that shot through Bobbie’s eyes made him realize she wanted to fight this battle herself.

“Aidan has no need for the Paddy Wrangler,” she said, her voice low and edgy. Bobbie took a slow, calculated step toward Jasper. “His posterior is fine without enhancements. More than fine. It’s so fine that he could be a poster model for the Full Monty.”

Jasper gasped.

“Say what?” Aidan questioned. He wasn’t sure this particular comparison was one he wanted to have applied to his gluteus maximus.

“The Full Monty,” Bobbie repeated without moving her venomous gaze from Jasper. She tapped the toe of her meringue-colored high heels on the tile floor. “‘Catalogue number 233A. See-through-front bikini brief for the man with nothing to hide. Contour-hugging, barely-there backside for a rakish and yet daring display of your manly assets. Available in Exposed Ebony and In-the-Buff Buff.’”

Jasper gasped again. “But you said no man could ever look good in the Full Monty.”

She gave her head an indignant little wobble. “I said that before I met Aidan.”

Touché. One for the lady in pink. Flattered, taken aback and slightly confused, Aidan went to the door and held it open for Jasper to leave.

“This isn’t over, Bobbie,” Jasper insisted. “We’ll talk about it when I pick you up on Sunday afternoon for the picnic and watermelon thump. Maxine will be there, and she’ll keep Deputy Full Monty here occupied while we spend some quality time together.”

Bobbie suddenly looked ready to trim Jasper’s sails. Maybe because he was feeling particular generous—and ornery—Aidan slipped his arm around Bobbie’s waist. “Actually, Bobbie’s going to the town picnic with me.”

“I am?” she questioned.

Aidan nodded. “You are. It’s Sunday afternoon around three.”

After all, he’d already agreed to the picnic, and he didn’t want to have to face Maxine and the other Liffey women alone. He figured Bobbie felt the same about Jasper. So what if it meant they had to play the Twango-Drifter game a little longer? What were a few more days in the grand scheme of things?

And so what if he’d apparently lost his mind?

To add a tad more insult to Jasper’s obvious injury, Aidan leaned in and planted a quick kiss on Bobbie’s glossy mouth.

Hmmm.

Strawberry-flavored lip gloss. It tasted as good as she looked.

“Oh, come on. You don’t fool me,” Jasper concluded. “You’re doing this to make me jealous.”

Bobbie dismissed him with a wave of her hand. Apparently wanting to add some insult of her own, she came up on her toes and gave Aidan an affectionate peck right on the lips.

She pulled back almost immediately, but not before Aidan felt the zap. It was like a mini jolt of saturated electricity from her mouth to his.

Aidan just stared at her. She just stared at him. Had she felt that zap as well?

His heartbeat started to drum in his ears, but even over the drumming, Aidan could hear Jasper drone on about Bobbie doing this only to get back at him.

Bobbie made a little sound of surprise, but it wasn’t surprise that Aidan saw in her eyes. Or even surprise that shaped her mouth when she blew out a strawberry-scented breath.

Nope.

This was something…hot.

Something smoldering.

Something fruity.

Something Aidan suddenly had an overwhelming urge to sample.

“I know you’re just trying to make me jealous,” Jasper repeated.

Without taking his hot gaze from Bobbie, Aidan latched onto Jasper’s shoulder and helped the man outside. He elbowed the door shut.

Aidan watched Bobbie’s eyelids flutter down. At first he didn’t know why she’d done that, but Aidan soon figured it out. He was making a move on her, closing the already miniscule distance between them.

Their lips touched. Breath met breath. He skimmed his hands down her back and edged her closer until their mouths met in full force. She didn’t resist. Bobbie slipped into his arms as if she’d done it a thousand times. And she kissed him. Really kissed him.

Uh-oh.

This was more than zaps. More than jolts. And even more than a bare-all Full Monty. It was a fruity-flavored blast of pure pleasure.

And Aidan felt what was left of his resolve fly straight back to Boston.

“MMM,” Bobbie moaned.

Aidan deepened the kiss, angling his mouth to hers. Bobbie did her own share of deepening and angling. Their tongues met. Fooled around a little. They just continued to fool around until she forgot she needed air to live. Gasping, she pulled away from him.

That’s when reality hit her like a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker.

She’d kissed Aidan! And not just any old ordinary kiss either. A French kiss. Nothing short. Nothing sweet. It’d been lengthy and incredibly, deliciously satisfying. The kiss of a real pro.

Oh boy, she was in trouble.

Aidan didn’t appear to have fared much better. He looked poleaxed, out of breath and a little dizzy.

“Wow. Guess we showed Jasper, huh?” Bobbie commented as casually as she could. Which wasn’t very casual considering she was breathing heavily and trying to lick the taste of Aidan off her lips.

“Yeah, guess we did.” Aidan was doing his own share of heavy breathing.

“Maybe he’ll finally get the message that I’m through with him.”

He nodded. “Maybe. And if this didn’t work, the picnic on Sunday will do the trick for sure.”

She nodded. “It should help you with your kitty rescue woes too since just about everybody in town will be there to see us together.”

Aidan nodded again. “This will help both of us in the long run.”

Bobbie didn’t dare return the nod. She was starting to feel a little like one of those bobblehead dolls. Besides, all the nodding, breathing and bobbling in the world wouldn’t ease the awkwardness—or the startling reality—of the situation. With that kiss, they’d moved well past the faux-pas stage and had done a Full Monty-ish blunder. The only way she could save face was to brush it off as part of their plan to make their lives romance-free.

But she didn’t have time to brush off anything. By the time she managed to gather some of her breath, Aidan had already gathered his.

“Uh. How’d you ever get hooked up with Jasper anyway?” Aidan asked. “He doesn’t really seem your type.”

Small talk. It was a good start while she tried to get her heart rate back under control. Bobbie stepped away from him, hoping a little distance would clear the pea soup in her head. “I blame it on Pavlov’s dog.”

Aidan quit looking uncomfortable long enough to look thoroughly confused. “Beg your pardon?”

“In hindsight, I think Jasper was just a conditioned response like Pavlov’s dog. I used to spend hours staring at all those posters in the window of his dad’s travel agency. Jasper was always there, sandwiched between the Parthenon and the Pyramids. I guess I just started to associate him with all those other feelings of wanderlust.”

“Wanderlust, huh?” Aidan commented. He put some distance between them as well. He went to the other side of the room and gave the visitors’ chairs an unnecessary adjustment. “That’s certainly a powerful stimulus.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, for me it is. And obviously for you too since you spend your life traveling around.” She checked her watch. Why, she didn’t know. Her vision was still too blurred to see the tiny numbers. “Where has the time gone? I really need to get back to the factory.”

“You didn’t say why you dropped by.”

She stopped midway to the door. “Didn’t I? Must have slipped my mind when I saw Jasper here.” And it was continuing to slip her mind.

Bobbie finally snapped her fingers. “The missing Gigolos? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. My assistant said you stopped by the factory this morning when I was in a conference call with our suppliers.”

“I was just asking a few questions. No one seems to know anything about the merchandise, but I’ll keep digging.” He picked a manila folder from his desk and handed it to her. “I requested background checks on several of your employees. It’s routine procedure.”

Bobbie thumbed through the papers in the file to find the names of all the supervisors and several newly hired warehouse workers. “You think one of these might be our thief?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But I want to add Jasper to that list. After all, the underwear vanished the very day he returned to Liffey.”

Bobbie nodded and handed the file back to Aidan. “Good job. Maybe you’ll catch this person before they strike again.” She opened the door. “Don’t worry about picking me up for the picnic. I’ll ride over with my uncles and just meet you at the park.”

“Sure.”

Since there was no way she could hold onto her faux composure a moment longer, she issued an overly perky goodbye and went on her way.

This was the last time she’d play kissy kissy with the studly Aidan. The absolute last. She had to be smart about this. No more Pavlovian conditioned responses. No letting wanderlust get in the way of common sense.

But that left Bobbie with one burning question.

Wanderlust aside, how was she supposed to get rid of this sudden bout of regular lust that she felt for Aidan?

“AIDAN, we’re sure glad to have you with us here in Liffey,” Sheriff Cooper commented. He downed another half cup of coffee and tackled the remainder of his Blue Plate Special—a hamburger just slightly smaller than Aidan’s head and a platter full of thick chili fries.

“I’m glad to be here. And I’m glad you’re feeling better.” Of course, with the volume of food the sheriff had just consumed, that feeling better status might not last much longer. After all, the man had only been out of his sickbed two days.

Both Sheriff Cooper and Aidan sat in the window booth at the Chew and Chow, the tiny but bustling diner on Main Street. Since the sheriff’s return to work, he’d insisted that Aidan join him for the cholesterol-laden lunches that were the diner’s trademark.

“You probably miss all the noise of the city,” the sheriff continued. “I guess you’re used to a little more activity than this, huh?”

Aidan shrugged and sipped his coffee. “It depends. Each assignment is different. Some are quiet like Liffey. Others are nonstop.”

And therein was the lure of his job in a nutshell. For him, different was good. Variety was even better. And in just four short weeks, he’d be gone from Liffey, and the Twango-Drifter Plan—and Bobbie—would be a dimming memory.

Well, probably.

She’d be as much of a dimming memory as he could manage to dim. Too bad he hadn’t had much success in dimming anything when it came to her.

Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could see her. Bobbie, in one of those snug little business suits. Bobbie, smiling at him. Bobbie, her mouth poised for him to kiss. And Bobbie, as she made those sounds of pleasure as he did all sorts of things with her.

Of course, that last part was pure imagination sprinkled with some fantasies, but he hadn’t been able to dim those raunchy musings either.

“I’ve been giving all this stolen underwear business some thought,” the sheriff went on, pulling Aidan out of his sprinkles and fantasies. He waved at a couple of elderly ladies who strolled past the window. One of them winked at him, and then at Aidan. “My thoughts have been straying in the direction of Rudy Tate, the floor manager at Boxers or Briefs. Call me old-fashioned, but there’s just something a little unnatural about a man who likes being surrounded by butt-enhancing underwear.”

Aidan nodded. It certainly wasn’t one of his top ten job choices. “Nothing came up on his background check, but I’m looking into his past employment records.”

The sheriff grinned and stuffed some more fries in his mouth. “I figured you’d be right on it. My detective skills are a little rusty since we hadn’t exactly had a real crime here in a dozen years or so, but I’m hoping you’ll put this to bed before your time with us is up.”

Aidan hoped the same thing. And that time was practically ticking away. Four weeks and counting. “What about Maxine Varadore? You think she could have done something like this?”

“It’s a good possibility,” the sheriff agreed. “She’s riled because Bobbie fired her, but from what I heard the woman just couldn’t sew a fly on straight. A man can overlook plenty of things in his Skivvies, but that’s not one of them. Seems Bobbie did us all a service by letting Maxine go.”

Aidan just nodded and moved on to his next suspect. “And then there’s Jasper Kershaw. He’s at the top of my list.”

Sheriff Cooper grinned some more. “Now, you sure that’s your badge talking, or does that have something to do with all the personal attention you’ve been giving Bobbie Fay?”

It seemed a good time to nod again and continue with the business at hand. “What does concern me about this case is that none of the stolen merchandise has surfaced.”

“Oh, it’ll turn up somewhere I’m sure. Hard to keep magenta Gigolos a secret for very long.” The sheriff finished his last French fry and eased out of his side of the booth. “I think I’ll head over to the counter to chat with Esther Lynn. Wanta come?”

Aidan glanced at the woman in question. She had more facial hair than he did and could probably arm-wrestle him into traction. “No thanks. I’ll just stay here and finish up my chili.”

“Suit yourself. I won’t be long.”

With the same easy pace as his drawl, Sheriff Cooper moseyed toward the counter. He’d hardly gotten there when Aidan’s cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt and answered it.

“Hi, Aidan. It’s Mom.”

It was one of those good news–bad news sort of deals. He loved his mother dearly, but she never called in the middle of the day unless she had matchmaking on her mind.

Aidan checked the time—something he usually did when he experienced one of her impromptu calls. Just how long would it take for her to let him know that she’d found him the perfect woman?

His mother started the covert attack with some chitchat about the weather in Boston. Aidan listened and watched as the second hand on the clock ticked on. He was betting she couldn’t make it a full minute.

“It’s been muggy…”

The sound of her voice faded when he spotted Bobbie coming out of the bank across the street. Aidan smiled before he could stop himself. Sweet Nantucket, she had on one of those short skirt sets again. Somehow, he had to find a way to make himself immune to her fashion choices.

“By the way,” his mother continued. “Did I mention that my new kick-boxing instructor is a woman? Her name is Tracy Hillman…”

Aidan checked the time. Thirty-nine seconds. His mother was obviously in a hurry today.

He just listened to the droning explanation about the toned and perfect Tracy while he watched the rather toned Bobbie make her way up the street. She stopped to say hello to a couple of people and even stooped down to give Mrs. Fortenberry’s poodle an affectionate rub behind the ears. The poodle looked ready to start drooling. Since Aidan had been on the receiving end of some of Bobbie’s attention, he knew how the pooch felt.

Bobbie was, well, moving for lack of a better word. No doubt about it. She was like a trim little package of temptation, and all of a sudden, temptation was something he was having a hard time resisting. In fact, such a hard time that he’d begun to consider the unthinkable. Would it be completely stupid for him to test the temptation to see just how far she could tempt him?

Or something like that.

It couldn’t be anything serious, of course. Or permanent. But suddenly he was giving some thought to—

“So, what’d you say?” his mother asked. “How about I invite Tracy over for dinner the next time you’re home?”

That jarred Aidan back to reality. The hot and steamy fantasies about Bobbie faded into the sunset. That call was just the reminder he needed. He’d adopted his no-rings-attached philosophy for a reason.

A good reason.

A reason he had a little trouble recalling when he looked at Bobbie again.

Oh, yeah. He didn’t want to be tied down by someone else’s game plan for life. No monkeying. No paddy-wrangling. Just living the way he wanted to live.

“I have to go, Mom,” Aidan insisted.

He hung up and closed his eyes. He could thank his lucky stars for that much-needed attitude adjustment. Bobbie Callahan was one package of temptation that would just have to stay unopened.

6

The Slap Stick: Catalogue Item 333C. Amuse your friends and significant other with this glow-in-the-dark Ruffy the Raccoon cartoon-print boxer. Wait until you see where we’ve put the punch line. Comes with detachable raccoon tail and is available in most sizes.

AIDAN STOOD in the parking lot and sized up the place. Davy Crockett Park was a zoo. Not literally. But there were enough people and activities that it looked like a huge ant farm gone awry.

Smoke billowed from several open barbecue pits. There were carnival rides, assorted amusement booths and a couple of people rolling watermelons down a hill. Others were thumping the melons to make music that no one could have possibly found enjoyable. And, of course, there were women. Lots and lots of women.

Estrogen was heavy in the air.

Aidan glanced around and, even with all the activity and other females, he spotted Bobbie right away. With a magazine resting against her knees, she sat under a sprawling oak. She seemed engrossed in whatever she was reading, but she was also talking on the tiny phone she had pressed to her ear. He caught a phrase here and there—O-ring thong straps, water-filled wonder pouches and heated bun enhancers. She was probably talking to a supplier.

Well, he hoped she was.

Just as Aidan got closer to Bobbie, Crystal hurled a Frisbee in his direction. He caught it, barely.

Crystal hurried to him, an enormous wad of pink gum cracking in her mouth. “I’ll make this quick. During the past week, I’ve been watching Bobbie and you get closer and closer. I like you, and I think you have a whole lot of potential for making her happy. I also think you two make a hot match. But if you hurt her, I will get even, no ifs, ands or buts about it.”

“But—”

“It won’t be pretty,” Crystal continued as if he hadn’t tried to speak. “I’m talking about a bikini wax that starts at your head and goes to the bottom of your feet. It’ll get particularly nasty and painful in areas that are most sensitive to you. Got that, O’Shea?”

“Yes, I do. And I can promise you that I don’t want to hurt Bobbie,” he simply answered. In fact, he didn’t plan to get involved with Bobbie in such a way that hurting was even an option.

“Good intentions don’t count here. Hurt her like that larvae-headed Jasper did, and I start heating the wax. A huge vat of it.”

And with that bizarre threat, Crystal snatched the Frisbee from him and walked away.

“A problem with Crystal?” Bobbie asked when Aidan joined her. She clicked off the phone and tossed it aside on the blanket.

“No.” But then Aidan caught sight of her outfit. There was the problem. Man, he might have to classify her clothes as deadly weapons. She wore denim shorts. The operative word being short. And a tiny little knit flowered top that not only accented her breasts but also showed a couple of inches of her midriff.

She smiled, caught onto his hand and had him sit next to her. “It looks like rain, but it’s still a nice day for a picnic, don’t you think?”

Aidan nodded. It was an even nicer day for planting some wet kisses on her stomach.

He mentally kicked himself. No sexy thoughts today, especially after that waxing threat from Crystal. Besides, with their luck, he’d get his tongue caught on Bobbie’s navel ring, and it’d require major surgery to get them untangled. Then everyone in town would know about his sudden, unexplainable navel fetish.

She put her mouth right next to his ear. “Everyone in town is here,” she whispered. Her hot, cinnamony breath brushed against his cheek and neck. “After today, I doubt you’ll get another Beeping Tom report.”

No, but he might have to deal with a permanent state of arousal.

Heck.

Why did he have this reaction to Bobbie? Why couldn’t his brain figure out that an entanglement, any entanglement, with her would be too high-maintenance? For better or worse, she had her roots firmly planted, and firmly planted was the very thing Aidan planned to avoid.

“I just got my latest copy of Travel-or-Bust Monthly.” Bobbie grinned and held up the glossy magazine for him to see. She began to flip through the pages. “There’s an article about Boston, and they talk about the swan boats in the Public Gardens. Sounds like a blast.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “They are.”

“Listen to this,” she continued. She wiggled closer until their heads, shoulders and hips were pressed together. “‘Glide through an urban oasis and feel your troubles slip away. Although a short ride, this trip through a sun-dappled lagoon will carry you to another time. Another place. All you have to do is relax and let the sun and city caress you.’”

“Caress, huh?” Aidan repeated.

Not the best choice of words when his mind was on other types of caresses.

“Afternoon, Bobbie and Aidan,” Winston called out. He was dressed in an Old West getup and was carrying an enormous mackerel-shaped watermelon on his shoulder. Five women of varying ages were following him, apparently vying for his attention. One of the females was using a walker and was doing her best to keep up.

“The seed-spitting contest is about to start,” Winston added. “Don’t miss it.”

Bobbie gave her uncle a distracted wave and got back to the article. “It talks about the museums and the shops. You are so lucky to have been born there.”

“I guess. But a lot of people would think you were lucky to be born here in Liffey.”

Her gaze met his. She blinked. And paused. “Do you really think I’m lucky?”

“Well, Liffey’s not a big city, but it’s thriving. And it’s, uh, quaint in a non-touristy sort of way.” At that exact moment, her Uncle Quincy hurried past them. He had a ferret on a leash. A ferret wearing a pair of tiny raccoon-print boxers complete with a fake bushy tail. “Well, it’s quaint, or something.”

What was left of Bobbie’s smile evaporated. “Yeah. Or something.”

So, she had a point. Liffey wasn’t exactly a normal place with normal residents. He’d seen a lot of weird things, but never a leashed ferret wearing raccoon-print boxer shorts.

“Have you ever thought about taking a break from the factory so you can travel?” he asked.

She shrugged and turned her gaze back to the magazine. “My uncles have owned Boxers or Briefs for nearly thirty-five years. It’s a family business, and since my folks died, I’m the only family left around to run it. My cousin, Wes, isn’t a good candidate because he’ll eventually have to take over for Sheriff Cooper. And I can’t very well ask my uncles to come out of retirement just because I want to travel.”

Family duty. Yep, he understood that. It was what brought him home for holidays and an assortment of births, weddings and funerals—or as he liked to call them: hatch, match and dispatch events. But Aidan also understood that wistful, longing look in Bobbie’s eyes.

Definite wanderlust.

He hated to tell her that it was an itch that was awfully hard to satisfy by staying in one place. Especially a place like Liffey.

Because he had an overwhelming urge to touch her, Aidan picked a piece of grass off her knee. What he didn’t do was move his hand even after he’d tossed the grass aside. He just sat there, touching her bare knee while she turned the page to a glossy picture of Beacon Street.

“I talked with Sheriff Cooper about the missing underwear,” Aidan informed her. Maybe if he discussed business, his brain wouldn’t dwell on Bobbie’s body. “He thought maybe we should take a harder look at Rudy Tate, your floor manager.”

She paused and pursed her lips. “I guess it’s possible he was involved, but I can’t imagine why he’d do it.”

“Maybe he’s selling it?” Even though Aidan didn’t want to speculate about how someone would go about finding an illegal market for thongs.

“Miss Callahan?” a man called out.

Aidan braced himself for one of the uncles, but their visitor wasn’t a local Liffey-ite.

“Oh, God.” Bobbie put the magazine in front of her face and tried to hide. “That’s Mr. Eidelson, the maker of that awful Sensuous Musk Massage Oil that attracted the critters. I hope he doesn’t see me.”

“Too late. He’s headed right for you.”

She groaned and yanked down the magazine. “I’m not working today, Mr.—”

“This won’t take long,” Eidelson interrupted. With a toothy grin on his too-thin face, he set a bright orange gift bag next to her. “It’s a sample of my new and improved Sensuous Massage Oil. Let me know what you think of it.”

And the man practically sprinted away. Bobbie groaned again, but that was the only protest she had time to make. Before the dust had settled from Eidelson’s departure, more visitors sauntered their way.

“Well, well,” the woman purred.

It was the queen of kitty-rescue requests and excessively tight jeans—Maxine Varadore. And to make matters worse, she had Jasper with her. However, despite her accompanied status, she had a come-hither look in her eye. Aidan had no intention of taking her up on that hithering, though.

“Bobbie,” Jasper said crisply. But his voice got a whole lot crisper when he spoke to Aidan. “Good afternoon, Deputy O’Shea. I see you didn’t take my advice about staying away from my fiancée.”

“Nope. I didn’t,” Aidan informed him.

Realizing this could turn ugly, or just plain stupid, Aidan got to his feet. It was probably a fluke and not some bad omen that it thundered at exactly that same moment.

Jasper slipped his narrowed gaze to Bobbie. “And I can see you’re still playing hard to get.” He didn’t give her time to deny that absurd claim. “Well, two can play at that game, darling.”

And with that announcement, Jasper hooked his arm around Maxine and hauled her against him. The lovers’ embrace perhaps would have been far more effective if Maxine hadn’t winked at Aidan.

Bobbie got to her feet as well. “Is there a point to all of this, Jasper?”

“Yes!” Jasper gave Bobbie a heated look and blew her a kiss. “The point is that one way or another, I intend to win you back, darling. You will be mine, and we will go on that honeymoon to Paris.”

Another wink from Maxine. “Plus, Deputy, the lottery’s over tomorrow, and everything will get back to normal. Bobbie won’t have dibs on you anymore.”

That threat alone was enough to make Aidan want to extend the Twango-Drifter Plan indefinitely.

Bobbie took a step toward the winking, puckering couple. They looked as if they had nervous tic disorders. “You know, I’m a little tired of all this dibs talk.”

“Yeah?” Maxine challenged.

“Yeah,” Bobbie countered.

Uh-oh. Hoping to stave off disaster, Aidan reached for Bobbie. Too bad that reaching caused him to step the wrong way. His foot landed right on the gift bag that Mr. Eidelson had left on the ground.

Aidan heard the too-familiar sound of breaking glass mere seconds before he got his first whiff of new and improved Sensuous Massage Oil. Ohmigod. Like a deadly top-secret-weaponized chemical agent, the reeking aroma engulfed them.

“Ewwww.” Maxine clothes-pinned her nose. Jasper began to fan his hands around.

Aidan took full advantage of the distraction and turned to Bobbie. “Why don’t we skip the seed-spitting contest and get out of here?”

“Agreed.”

She latched onto him, and they headed away from the smelly toxic spill. “I don’t have my car here. I rode in with my uncles.”

The first drops of rain splattered on them as they made their way across the baseball field. If Aidan had been thinking right, he might not have led Bobbie in the direction of his car. But the massage oil had obviously dulled his senses because that’s exactly where they ended up when the sky opened and it began to pour.

“I think Jasper and Maxine are following us,” Bobbie let him know as he stuffed her into the car. A jolt of lightning zipped across the sky.

Aidan climbed into the car and checked the rearview mirror. She was right. Jasper and Maxine were in hot pursuit.

But they weren’t alone.

Raccoons and squirrels scurried out of the trees and adjoining woods. Most went straight for the squished orange bag, but a couple of especially obstinate-looking raccoons made a beeline for Jasper and Maxine.

But that didn’t mean Bobbie and he had escaped disaster just yet.

Sugarfoot, the boxer-clad ferret, broke away from the crowd and headed for Aidan’s car. Obviously, enough of the scent had permeated their clothes for the critter to take notice and come after them.

It was like a scene from a Hitchcock movie.

So Aidan did the only thing he could do. He gunned the engine and put some distance between them, the amorous ferret and the human couple trying to catch them.

“Whew, we made it,” Bobbie said looking back at the chaos they’d left behind. She laughed.

Aidan probably would have laughed too if he hadn’t cast his gaze in Bobbie’s direction. With that simple innocent glimpse, he glimpsed at a lot more than he’d counted on glimpsing. Pressed against her rain-soaked, nearly transparent shirt, her rose-colored nipples had tightened. They were perfect little buds that his fingers itched to touch.

Oh, man.

He forced his itchy fingers into a death grip on the steering wheel. Talk about icing on the proverbial cake of needy things. Not only was he alone with Bobbie. And not only did she smell like bottled sex. She looked like bottled sex.

No, he didn’t need this.

He didn’t need her.

And as soon as his body started to soften, Aidan was sure he’d remember that.

BOBBIE STUCK her index finger in her nonlistening ear to shut out the storm noise so she could hear what the factory-floor manager had to say. Too bad she hadn’t waited until Aidan had gotten her home to take this call, but if Rudy Tate had just said what she thought he said, then this wasn’t something she could put off.

“There’s a whole case of triple-X Bold-as-Brass Sheikh Yerbootees missing,” Rudy repeated. “I’ve double-checked the inventory, Bobbie, and they just aren’t there. I don’t think I’m jumping the gun here if I say that someone’s taken them.”

She wrinkled up her nose. “You looked in the overflow stock room, I suppose?”

“Absolutely. But I only found some glow-in-the-dark Boogie Boxers, some fantasy briefs and a couple of cases of those seatless Casanovas—the ones with the padded red silk lips on the fly-front. But I tell you, there’s not a Sheikh Yerbootee in sight.”

Thank goodness Aidan couldn’t actually hear the bizarre phone conversation. It was a definite silver lining to an otherwise silverless moment.

Obviously, the thief had struck again, and he or she delighted in stealing underwear with weird, kinky names. Why couldn’t this sticky-fingered person steal Gladiator boxers or Happily-Ever-After briefs? At least those were items that she could comfortably discuss in public.

She’d have to make a report to Aidan, of course, but at least she wouldn’t have to give him a running commentary of their most bizarre inventory in the overflow stock room.

“A problem?” Aidan asked when she hung up and dropped her phone into her purse.

He stopped the car in front of her house. What he didn’t do was look at her. In fact, he hadn’t looked at her since they’d left the park. He sat soldier-stiff on the seat and kept his attention focused straight ahead. And he’d cleared his throat at least a dozen times. Maybe that massage oil had caused some kind of strange allergic reaction.

“That was Rudy Tate. He says there’s more vanishing underwear.” Bobbie glanced up at the sky and huffed. The rain was still coming down in buckets. “Why don’t you come in for a while, and I’ll give you the details? There’s too much water on the road for you to be driving back into town anyway.”

He hesitated but finally nodded. And he cleared his throat again. That time, Bobbie had a pretty good idea what caused that throat clearing and the hesitation. It probably wasn’t a good idea for them to be under the same roof alone, but the sudden storm hadn’t given them a lot of options. She didn’t want him getting into an accident after rescuing them both from Sugarfoot the ferret and her navel-lint ex-fiancé.

She covered her head with the travel magazine, and they made a mad dash into her house.

“This time there’s a case of briefs missing,” she explained as she tried to shake off some of the rain. Still, Aidan didn’t look at her, and he had his hands clenched by his sides. Definitely weird. What was going on? “Hold on and I’ll get you a towel.”

“Uh, were the briefs size triple-X?” he asked.

Bobbie opened the linen closet and yanked out several thick towels. “Yes, how’d you know?”

“Lucky guess.” He took one of the towels she offered and scrubbed it over his water-beaded face. Actually, he covered his entire face with it. “But it might be an important clue. Maybe size matters.”

Bobbie fought to stop herself from laughing, but she didn’t quite succeed. She playfully nudged his arm with her elbow. “I’ll bet that’s the only time a man’s ever admitted that to a woman.”

Aidan slowly lowered the towel. His mouth twitched, but he too lost the battle and grinned.

All that arm-nudging and grinning came to a grinding halt, however, when his gaze dropped. The moment might have been light, but they were right against each other. Arm touching arm. Their bodies only a couple of inches apart, and they were definitely sharing the same air space.

Not good.

Bobbie cleared her throat and stepped away from him. “Anyway, about those Sheikh Yerbootees. I mean, that’s the name of the underwear. Rudy checked around the factory, and the case is definitely missing.”

“Uh, Bobbie?”

There was a look almost of pain on his face. “What is it, Aidan?”

He motioned in the general direction of her shirt. “You’re sort of…well, I mean the rain…”

Bracing herself for the worst, Bobbie glanced down.

Yikes!

Her flowered print top was practically invisible. Ditto for her lacy push-up bra. In fact, the only things that were perfectly visible were her breasts.

She jerked the towel from her face to cover up, swatting herself in the eye during the process. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“I know. That’s why I decided to tell you.”

Bobbie motioned toward her bedroom. “I’d better go change.”

She managed to keep her voice calm enough, but on the inside, that was a different story. The intimate apparel gods were obviously having a good belly laugh at her expense. First, she had to discuss Sheikh Yerbootee underwear with Aidan. And then, there was that whole “size matters” thing.

But those were mere appetizers in the whole humbling underwear scenario of life.

Now, he’d seen her breasts in all their glory. Or rather their less-than-ample glory. She might never be able to look him straight in the eye again.

The phone rang the moment that she shucked off her shirt. “Aidan, get that for me, please?” she called out.

With her luck, it’d be Rudy with yet more news of missing underwear. This time, it would likely be a case of those seatless Casanovas with the attached padded lips. Or maybe some of the ultraclassy Cheek-a-boos.

Bobbie hurriedly changed and rushed back into the living room to face her fate. She came to a halt the moment she saw Aidan.

From the look on his bleached face, it was more than fate she’d have to face. Much more. It appeared he’d received some horrifying news. Maybe the entire factory inventory was missing, and she’d have to discuss each item in excruciatingly embarrassing detail.

“That was your Uncle Quincy,” Aidan informed her. “He said the rain washed out the road leading back to the highway, and they’ll have to stay in town tonight.”

Even though on the surface that didn’t seem as much of a calamity as missing Cheek-a-boos, Bobbie knew differently. If the road was gone, then that meant Aidan had to stay. At her house. With her.

Alone.

All night.

The Cheek-a-boos would no doubt have proven a lot easier—and much less hot—to handle.

7

The Buff Buns: Catalogue Item 339A. Ultra-sheer, silky-back, high cut briefs with a patented Feels-Like-Mink front pouch. Guaranteed to fool even the most discriminating eye and touch. Available in Simply Sensual Black, Champagne Gold, and for a limited time only, Snazzy Platinum Stripes dotted with rhinestone studs.

“IT’S NO big deal,” Bobbie mumbled to herself.

Really. It wasn’t.

So what if Aidan was spending the night? It wasn’t as if he were really spending the night. And if wasn’t as if she really wanted this to happen either. In fact, nothing about this was anywhere near really.

Really.

Besides, they were simply business partners, of sorts. Mere participants in a plan to get members of the opposite sex off their backs.

And so what if they’d kissed a couple of times? Those kisses were all part of the game plan and meant zip. Nada. Zilch. That was something akin to shaking hands to finalize a business deal, that’s all.

With her toothbrush still hanging out of her mouth, Bobbie glanced at herself in the mirror. She shook her head. It was a sad day in a woman’s life when she started lying to herself.

Those kisses meant more than zip. More than nada. Much more than zilch. And she knew it. They meant that despite all her precautions, she wasn’t immune to the opposite sex.

Or maybe it was just that she wasn’t immune to Aidan.

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