Under Her Skin. Сьюзен Мэллери

stepped into the open space and had a brief impression of pale colors and plenty of light. But most of his attention was on Lexi herself.

      She wore jeans and a T-shirt. Her feet were bare, as was her face, but considering it was early on a Saturday morning, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Still, there was something compelling about her. She looked scrubbed clean and impossibly sexy.

      She eyed the coffee. “Is that for me?”

      “A skinny latte,” he said. “I didn’t know what you liked.”

      “Close enough.” She took it from him and sipped, then sighed. “Oh, yeah. Now I’m functional. You’re up early.”

      “So are you.”

      “But I live here, so it was less effort. Come on in.”

      She led the way into a large living room. There were a couple of paintings on the wall, a few pieces of art glass, magazines on the coffee table and a to-do list scrawled on a pad left on the floor.

      Lexi was everywhere. In the subtle print on the sofa to the abandoned high-heels by a club chair. Two Thomas McKnight watercolors flanked the small fireplace.

      “No ruffles?” he asked.

      She laughed. “I’m not that girly. At least not in public. You should see the bedroom. Plenty of lace and satin there.”

      The words seemed to hang in the air. He thought about her bedroom, or more specifically, her bed. What it looked like, what it would feel like. Who else had been there with her and had he been able to please her? Which made Cruz think of the night he and Lexi had been together. Everything had been perfect—better than perfect—until he’d found out she was a virgin. Why had she wanted him to be her first time?

      The question had always bothered him, but it was nothing compared with the heat of need that flared up inside of him.

      “Did you, ah, bring any packing tape for those boxes?” she asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

      “It’s in the car.”

      “Good. Good.” She looked at him, then away. “Did I thank you for the coffee?”

      She must feel the tension, too. Sexual awareness sparked whenever they were in the same room. Lurking…taunting…promising. He only knew one way to make it go away.

      He moved toward her. She took a step back. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed. He could see how quickly she was breathing. Then she was standing still and he was next to her. He reached for her.

      She ducked and spun away. “Are you hungry? I’m starving. Have you had breakfast? There are a couple of great places in town. Come on. I’ll show you. We don’t even have to take the car. That’s one of the nice things about living in Titanville. It’s like a little village. Everything is so close together.”

      She hurried past him.

      He could have caught her and drawn her to him. He could have held her and kissed her and made her want to surrender. But he didn’t. There would be plenty of time for that when she moved in to his place. Plenty of time to take her slowly, patiently, easing her over the edge so that she had no choice but to fall. In six months he would let Lexi go, but until then he would own every part of her.

      She paused to slip on shoes, grab her purse, then they were out in the cool morning and walking the two blocks to the main part of town.

      “My great-great-grandfather was a known gambler and womanizer,” she said, speaking quickly and keeping at least a foot between them. “He was good at both, constantly winning at cards and bedding any lady he chose, including the mayor’s wife and the preacher’s sister. More than one school teacher left in disgrace, pregnant and unmarried. Shifty gamblers came in from all over to challenge him to a game or two of poker. When he won again and again, they accused him of cheating. Fights broke out. It was a disaster for everyone who wasn’t him. The townspeople couldn’t tell him to leave. He owned more land than anyone around, but his way of life was ruining theirs. So they had a meeting and asked him what it would take to get him to settle down. To give up the cards and limit his womanizing ways to trips out of town.”

      Cruz looked at the sign on the side of the road. It read, Welcome to Titanville—the best little town in the whole damn country.

      “He wanted the town?”

      “He wanted it named after him. There were a few other things. That he still got to sleep with the school teachers, as long as he found them a good husband when he was done, and something with water rights. They struck a deal. Titanville was born and my great-great-grandfather settled down. The shifty drifters went away and the town prospered. A triumph of government over the Wild West.”

      She pointed out the various businesses. “We used to stop for candy there, on the way home from school,” she said. “That restaurant has the best Chinese food. Skye got her first kiss under that awning, in the rain.”

      He glanced around at the quiet, clean streets, the perfectly maintained storefronts. It was like something on Nick at Nite. Not real. The world of his youth was a tiny house at the end of a narrow street. Abandoned cars filled front yards and the sound of gunfire meant Julio was out on parole again.

      “It’s a mixed blessing,” she said. “Having everyone know who you are. I could never know if people were being nice because that’s how they were or if it was about my father. A lot of times it was about my father.”

      She waved as a sheriff’s car drove by. “That’s my friend, Dana. She’s a deputy in town. Like I said, I have access to the law.”

      He grinned. “If you’re trying to threaten me, you’re going to have to do a better job than that.”

      She led them into a diner. “I’m working with what I have. You should respect that.”

      “I respect everything about you.”

      “If only that were true.”

      They stepped into a small restaurant that looked as if it had lost a fight with a calico delivery truck. Every surface was covered with the tiny floral print, including the tables, the walls and the cushions on the wooden chairs.

      Cruz immediately felt trapped.

      “We can’t eat here,” he said.

      “You’ll get used to it,” Lexi told him.

      “No one could get used to this.”

      “They serve the best breakfasts in three counties. It’s a thing in Titanville. Most of the restaurants have a theme. This one is calico.”

      It was the most feminine business he’d ever been in and he didn’t mean that in a good way. He expected some large woman to burst out from the back and attack him with a rolling pin.

      A teenager showed them to a table, then handed them each a menu, the front of which read, Breakfast Served All Day. If You Want Something Else, Go Away.

      “The food is great,” Lexi told him. “They have everything. The specials are to die for. You’re going to love it.”

      Lexi knew it was probably petty and small of her, but she enjoyed watching Cruz squirm. She’d never seen him out of his element before. He was always supremely in control, no matter what. But not here. She thought about teasing him that there was so much calico, he was at risk of transforming into a pioneer woman, but didn’t think he would find that funny.

      He kept darting glances around the room, then shuddering as he took in the calico curtains, the display of calico porcelain cats on a top shelf and calico jar cozies covering all the jams and jellies.

      “Open the menu,” she said. “Trust me. It’ll be worth it.”

      He muttered something she couldn’t hear and read the selections. Their waitress arrived, dropped off coffee, took their order and left.

      Cruz leaned back in the booth. She liked