Tease Me. Dawn Atkins

a cut, a style and free advice at Celia’s Cut ’n’ Curl.”

      “So you worked over their hair and their lives. Sounds like pure hell.”

      “Lots of people value neutral help sorting out their troubles.”

      “I’d rather have bypass surgery.” Kelli had always quoted Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura or the latest pop psych book she’d inhaled. You’re repressing, blocking, deflecting. Hell, she’d made his quietness sound like a martial art. Now here he sat with Dr. Heidi in the making. His roommate. And she was looking him over again, trying to figure him out. Damn.

      “So what’s wrong with being a hairdresser?” he said to distract her.

      “Nothing. I’ll be doing hair part-time still. But if I want to be a therapist, I’ve got to do internships, get at least a master’s degree.” She lifted her head from her knees and looked at him more closely, eyes narrowed. Jeez, now she was reading his mind? He tried to clear any stray horny thoughts, just in case.

      Then she reached for a strand of his hair and rubbed it between her finger and thumb. “You could use a hot oil treatment.”

      “A what?”

      Her lips had wrapped around those words like they were pure sex. She seemed to realize it. And liked it, judging by the way her fingers slowed on his hair and her next words were soft and low and deliberate. “For your hair…It’s dry…. The ends are…damaged. I’d be glad to…do it…for you.”

      A couple of words dropped out in his head until he heard I’d be glad to do you. A charge shot through him like touching a live battery cable. Innocence was sexy, he realized. A million schoolgirl strip routines couldn’t be wrong.

      “You have such nice texture.” Now her voice was huskier. She was flirting with him. Damn.

      He imagined her fingers on his scalp, the snip-snip of her scissors near his ear, the tickle of hair sliding down his neck. Maybe he’d have his shirt off and it would cascade across his chest to his thighs like the brush of eyelashes. He pictured her lifting his chin, turning it to the angle she wanted, maybe with a little yank. He’d be eye level with those gentle mounds of breasts with their berry nipples that had tightened against her snug top as they talked.

      “Men neglect their hair because it doesn’t seem masculine,” she continued, blinking her big eyes, sending waves of lust through him. “You like engines, right? Think of your hair as an engine. You want it all shiny and tuned up, don’t you?”

      The woman was hitting on him. Great. Heidi was the kind of woman who saw sex as a first step to forever and the last thing he wanted after a hot night was to wake up to eyes like hers demanding wedding rings and babies and 401Ks. God, no.

      “So, a hair tune-up, huh?” he said to joke her away. “I’ll think about it.”

      She blinked. “Uh. Sure.” He’d made her feel foolish. He’d like to tell her she was plenty sexy, but he couldn’t figure out how to do so without screwing up the moment. He was off the hook. Leave it be.

      “Well, I guess I’d better start earning my keep.” She shook her head, her hair swishing back and forth, a thick curtain that would feel great against his…

      “Huh?”

      “I’m your housekeeper, remember?” She jumped to her feet so fast he missed the chance to help her up. “You just do what you’d normally do, Jackson, and I’ll turn this place spic-and-span.”

      She bounced out the door, a perky little cheerleader, who bobbed through life on the balls of her feet, wagging her pom-poms in everyone’s faces.

      That could be exhausting. How long would she be here? A couple of days probably until she worked something out with her boss. He could handle that, right? Even with the attraction?

      He tried to act normal, starting in on Gran Turismo, his favorite racing video game, but she kept zipping in front of him like some Tasmanian devil of a virgin French maid. Then she got out the vacuum—he didn’t know he even had one—and the roar got on his nerves.

      Not to mention the gasps of horror whenever she found any little distasteful thing. Pork rinds didn’t get good until the third day out…moisture made them chewy.

      He crashed his Mazda R-X 7 for the tenth time and looked at her. She’d bent to reach under the sofa, muscles rippling across the backs of her thighs and tightening that fresh peach of a backside. He forced his eyes back to the TV screen, feeling irritable.

      “This will be perfect,” she said.

      Out of the corner of his eye he saw her stand with a wadded cloth. She trotted away, but when he heard spraying he looked over to see her smothering his favorite T-shirt with some dusting spray—where the hell did she find that junk?

      “Hey, not that shirt,” he said, jumping up and grabbing the jersey out of her hands.

      “Sorry,” she said. “It looked worn out.”

      “It’s barely worn in.” He whipped off his tank top and pulled it over his head to prove his point, uneasily aware that she’d stared while he stripped.

      “See?” he said.

      “It’s full of holes and stained.”

      “It’s fine. It’s perfect.” Except the junk she’d doused it in burned his nose, so he’d have to throw it in the hamper.

      He hoped to hell Heidi’s boss had a spare room. Something told him the woman could mess up lots more than his favorite T-shirt.

      3

      HEIDI GRABBED the dish soap from among the cleaning supplies left from Tina’s regime and squirted pink liquid into the rushing hot water. It was all too surreal for words.

      Two hours ago, her happy new life had peeled away from the curb and now she was cleaning a stranger’s town house. A handsome stranger, whose bare pecs she’d admired and with whom she’d flirted by fondling his hair. She was losing her mind.

      How else could she explain hitting on a guy in the middle of the ruin of her life? Had to be an escape from the tension. When Jackson had whipped off his tank top, she’d stared and blinked like a kid. Oh, what gorgeous abs you have. He was so big and so male. Almost scary. He could crush her in an instant, except for the gentleness in him. She trusted him implicitly.

      She scrubbed ketchup off a plate—the man put the red stuff on everything, it seemed—then rinsed it, fighting off what was going on in her mind…the desire to have sex with Jackson McCall.

      She grabbed another plate and scrubbed it hard, pushing down the thought. It bobbed back up. No wonder. Her secret personal goal was to have wild sex with a wild man. And Jackson would be perfect.

      She grabbed a really dirty plate and dug at it with the Brillo pad. Sex so far had been fast and fumbling and not all that satisfying. Jackson would be slow and skilled, she’d bet.

      Scrub, scrub, scrub. He had hot, knowing eyes and a smart-ass grin that made her go tight in private places. Plus, he looked a little dangerous, so big and rugged, his jaw bristling with whiskers and masculinity. She could see him as a hardboiled detective in an old movie, unfiltered cigarette dangling from a lip, shoving up the edge of his fedora with a thumb to get a load of her.

      So, why not have sex with him? Talk about making lemonade from the lemons of this catastrophe. She’d been hyperaware of him sitting beside her on the floor, feeding her a jelly. How about some candy, little lady? Actually, it had made her tooth zing. Getting that molar looked at had been one errand she’d neglected before she left Copper Corners. After the zing passed, though, the tart taste and sweet scent had added pleasurably to the spark and sizzle of being that close to Jackson.

      And then she’d wrecked it. Blurted stuff about hot oil, dry hair and shiny engines.

      And Jackson had treated it like a joke. As though she was just goofing around.