Hot in Hellcat Canyon (7 page)

Suddenly she realized her hand was on the screen.

As if she could push those paparazzi parasites away from him.

She pulled it away gently. Feeling faintly foolish.

She decided that she wasn’t going to Google him again.

CHAPTER 4

B
ritt’s eyes flew open when her phone erupted into deafening bar chords.

“Mother fu . . .” She clapped a hand over her thundering heart.

Why, why, why had she thought it was funny to make AC/DC Gary’s ringtone? She liked “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” but she was a grown woman. She’d nearly just wet herself.

She squinted at her phone. Gary was her boss at Gold Nugget Property Management. The quality of light squeezing in through her blinds in the room told her it was a lot earlier than he normally called, and a lot earlier than she wanted to be awake, given that she’d been Googling John Tennessee McCord instead of sleeping last night.

She fumbled for her phone. “G’morning, Gary.”

“That’s your morning voice, Britt? Jesus, you sound like Bob Dylan after he’s smoked six packs. Hey, I’m calling because some guy wants to see the Michaelson place.”

She was more alert now, thanks to astonishment.

She cleared her throat noisily. “Really?”

Gary was almost like Charlie from
Charlie’s Angels
, in that she hardly ever saw him and he did most of his business on the phone, usually from his car or the golf course, or even, she suspected a little worriedly, from his toilet in the morning. He was a retired investor in his sixties who had a roster of houses and cabins that he managed or owned and rented out in the Hellcat Canyon area, most of them pretty modest, some appalling, a few palatial, and Britt showed them to prospective tenants and did follow-up maintenance inspections and the like for him. It wasn’t a hard job, it didn’t pay all that well, and it was pretty flexible.

But the Michaelson place was quite the white elephant of a summer home. The Michaelsons had inherited it a long time ago and tried to sell it several times and failed, so they made do with renting it out when they could. Which was rarely.

“Yeah, I know,” Gary marveled in agreement. “But it’s the only one we’ve got open today, and this guy says he wanted to see it, because he—and I quote—‘can’t spend another minute being stared at by cherubs.’ So go sell it for all you’re worth. But bring your pepper spray, because you never know. That cherub remark is a little worrisome.”

“Aww. I’m touched by your concern.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a saint. The only other option is the Greenleaf place, and it’s currently a dump. At least the Michaelson place doesn’t have a hole in the roof. Someone from Ernie’s Garage is dropping our guy off there at eight a.m., so you’ve got twenty minutes to get up there.”

He hung up without saying good-bye.

“Have fun on the golf course, Gary,” she said. Mostly without rancor. A job was a job, and it wasn’t like jobs were thick on the ground here in Hellcat Canyon.

She lay flat for a moment, truly uncertain she could manage to get out of bed. Then she resignedly slid one foot out. Phillip resentfully shifted his fluffy bulk off her thighs. It was a little earlier than they normally rose and he had a powerfully ingrained sense of schedule.

She let momentum carry her forward. She reheated yesterday’s coffee in the microwave and slurped it down, wincing, threw on her second best shorts, which were denim and at least clean, yanked on a red-striped tank top from her vast tank top collection, added a necklace with a little star dangling from it to make it fancy, then rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and did a rapid-fire brush of her teeth. She chucked her pepper spray into her purse.

Her car started, thankfully; there was always a moment of suspense when she turned that key.

She brushed her hair at the first stop sign on the way up to the Michaelson place, which was a bit of a twisty drive, then roped it up in a barrette in her usual patented summertime hairdo. At the second stop sign, she changed Gary’s ringtone to Mozart. At the third, she added some lip gloss, just because.

She saw the man long before she reached the house. He was slim and stark, a compass needle against the white cement of the big circular drive.

Her impulse was to perform a single smooth U-turn and head right back down the mountain, because she knew exactly who that was, and driving up to him suddenly felt akin to driving right into the deep blue sea. Very compelling. Very, very foolish.

Her ramping anticipation made her approach feel almost cinematic. It would have been even more dramatic if her car didn’t make coughing noises and give a great shuddering asthmatic lurch when she cut the engine.

She stayed in the car a moment. She could see the color of his eyes even from where she sat. They were, and she could say this truthfully, bluer than the sky, which surely proved he did indeed have superpowers.

And then she got out, and shut the door with some effort, because it liked to stick. And then she actually had to throw her hip into it. Which really spoiled her entrance.

She hovered by her car as if it were a guard dog.

She saw him straighten, and register who she was with distinct pleasure.

“Well,” was all he said, finally.

“Good morning,” was what she said.

And then that was all either of them said for a long, ridiculous moment.

He said thoughtfully, “Forgive me, but I was just thinking that the only thing better than one of you is two of you. You’d make my day if you told me you had a twin.”

Olympic-caliber flirt, indeed.

“There are actually five of us. So if you see one of us around town and we don’t say hi, that’s the reason.”

That had come out more tersely than she’d intended.

But he didn’t even flinch. He was studying her with an expression akin to a YouTube video she’d seen of a Doberman attempting to befriend a cat who was having none of it. Mildly puzzled but absolutely confident his charm would win the day if he could just figure out where to poke his nose.

It made her feel churlish.

Her churlishness was in direct proportion to how alarmingly, circuits-floodingly attractive he was. She could easily get caught in an undertow of testosterone if she wasn’t careful. And these days she was always careful.

He was wearing snug jeans and a black T-shirt, and his biceps, like everything else about him, were works of art: brown, hard, and big, and an intriguing tattoo vanished up into one of the sleeves. The shirt clung to his shoulders and was just a little loose at that narrow waist, which, she thought, left a girl plenty of room to get her hands up in there.

“We haven’t formally met. I’m John Tennessee McCord,” he said, as if there were a possibility she didn’t actually know.

Given that all of her senses rioted merely by virtue of proximity, his presence was paradoxically calming. He was probably accustomed to mute and staring women. Possibly even accustomed to snappish little women. Once again, she got the sense that nothing could surprise this guy, because he’d seen everything, and he could handle all of it.

He held out his hand.

“You’re the talk of the town, Mr. McCord. I’m Britt Langley.” She didn’t take his hand. Yet.

“Ah, the ‘enigmatic’ Britt Langley. A pleasure to meet you officially. Call me J. T.”

And then she finally put her hand in his, because she could hardly avoid it. She was a grown woman, after all.

He held on to it briefly, just a little longer than necessary. As if he knew exactly how squirrelly she was, or how electric he was.

His hand was warm and a little rough and it engulfed hers. Absurdly, it felt both reassuring and terrifying. As if he were pulling her up a cliff she was about to tumble off.

One that he’d pushed her over.

He let it go.

But not before every cell in her body had risen from some sort of slumber and was zinging like a limb shaken awake after she’d slept all night on it.

He studied her a moment.

Oddly, she could have sworn he wasn’t entirely unmoved, either.

There was a refreshing honesty in this quiet, unabashed appraisal. It was very clear he found her attractive and wasn’t the least bit worried about disguising it. And he knew damn well she found him attractive. He clearly assumed she could cope.

And then the bastard smiled. Slowly. As if two of them had spoken all of those thoughts aloud.

BAM, just like that, her breath was gone.

“So you work for the property management company and at the Misty Cat?” he wondered.

“Yeah.” That word emerged as a squeak. She cleared her throat. “Yeah. You’re looking for a place in Hellcat Canyon?”

“Yep. I’ll be here off and on to film on location, and I have a little downtime before my schedule really picks up again. I stayed at the Angel’s Nest last night. A little surprised I wasn’t spontaneously ejected from the place, like Lucifer from heaven.”

Every surface of Angel’s Nest that could be was scented, frilled, fringed, or embroidered. If it wasn’t purple, it was floral. Cherubs and angels gazed sympathetically from frames and pillows.

And she realized she was smiling, imagining him irritably ensconced amid all of that.

“A little hard to picture you there.”

He did, on closer inspection, have faint shadows under his eyes. As though he hadn’t slept well, or much.

“Yeah? Where do you picture me, Britt?”

Underneath me. Over me. Behind me. In me.

Those dirty little prepositional thoughts surprised her. Maybe it was just his drawl that turned everything into innuendo.

With some difficulty she reassembled her thoughts. She actually had a job to do. “I can picture you right here in the Michaelson place!” she said brightly.

Truthfully, she couldn’t picture anyone in the Michaelson place.

“Is that so?” His expression told her that he knew she was lying through her teeth, but he was prepared to be entertained. “When does the tour start?”

“How about now?” She literally threw her shoulders back, the way heroines in novels did, an attempt to bolster her nerve, and strode past him to open the door.

But she betrayed her lack of aplomb by fumbling an inordinate amount of time with the key, as if her hands were newly installed and she was just learning how to use them.

She finally got it in there and cranked it.

Stale air whooshed out when she pushed open the door. They both stepped back as if dodging an escaping entity.

“The owner hasn’t used this place in some time,” she apologized.

He peered in. He didn’t say a word for a moment.

“Since . . . 1972?” he hazarded. Sounding bemused, and as hushed as Indiana Jones entering a tomb.

The carpet was forest green shag, about four inches deep, or so it seemed, and it was everywhere. Like a living thing. It met them at the front door. She wouldn’t be surprised if the carpet one day made it all the way into the bathroom and escaped out into the woods to join the wild foliage outside.

She led him inside.

The house comprised two main rooms and two bedrooms. The main room was vast and open with soaring beamed ceilings, bisected only by the long oval Formica counter of the open kitchen. But the whole place was dark, because brown wood paneling covered every inch of the walls, and the single wall of windows was covered in blinds, and the blinds were covered in dust.

“I feel like I ought to be stalking an antelope.” He said it on a wondering hush, as he tread over the carpet. “I can’t hear my feet.”

“This kind of carpet keeps the place warm in winter,” she asserted, mindful that her goal was to get the property rented. “It does get cold up here in winter, and we even get snow on occasion, so if you intend to stay that long, it’ll cut down on your heating bills.”

“Ah, so that’s the purpose of shag carpet,” he said somberly, like an attentive pupil. “I always wondered.”

“And it might seem dark now, but wait until you see the view,” she gushed, though her voice was still a little shaky. “Those blinds . . . um . . . apparently we need to use a remote to open them. Let’s see . . . it must be around here somewhere . . .”

“It’s probably in the rug.” He was nudging at the carpet in an exploratory fashion with the toe of his boot, as if hoping to find treasures in it. Or worried something might be lurking.

In any other circumstance she might have found this hilarious.

But she was appalled she had to try to rent this place to John Tennessee McCord, of all people. His own home was probably so huge and spotless that every word and footstep echoed.

As she rummaged through the kitchen drawers for the remote he was watching her as avidly as if he’d bought a ticket to see her.

“Plenty of spatulas already here,” she said brightly, “so you don’t need to bring your own.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I hate when I burn my pancakes.”

He was both enjoying her show and taking the piss out of her.

“I bet there’s a deck of only about forty-three cards in there, too,” he added encouragingly. “And maybe one beater from a hand mixer, and one corn on the cob holder.”

Like he was prompting a comedian who’d forgotten her next line.

He wasn’t far wrong about the cards, but she didn’t tell him that.

She pulled open another drawer and found it empty. And then another drawer, and saw that sad, depleted deck of cards and a bottle opener. And then another drawer.

He finally turned away and tipped his head back and studied the walls. “Just think . . . someone must have said, ‘I know what will make this place even better—dark paneling everywhere.”

“It acts as an extra layer of insulation in the summer and winter.”

She had completely made that up.

He slowly lowered his head and studied her for a beat of silence.

“Does it?” He sounded almost intolerably amused and completely disbelieving.

She cleared her throat.

“Er, as you can see, um, J. T.,” she narrated like a spokesmodel, as if he hadn’t said anything at all, as she yanked another drawer open, “there’s plenty of storage for utensils and groceries and—AHA!”