Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Summer
Hatch and I turned, both of us still holding the panties like some weird twist on The Lady and the Tramp. Think knickers instead of spaghetti.
A woman stood before us in a lovely halter-top and a pencil skirt that emphasized curves I hadn’t possessed since before I became engaged a year ago. Dark-haired, blue-eyed, and storybook pretty, she projected Hampton Beach vibes to the max. But she also seemed a touch … thirsty.
Like she wanted to drink a tall glass of Hatch.
“Ava? You work here?” His voice sounded rusty.
“I own this place. I opened it a couple of months ago.” She smiled. A touch forced, for sure. “I heard you were back in town.”
He frowned. “I thought you were in New York with your fiancé.”
“Oh, I was. He’s still there. I came down to get the shop up and running. I’m training a manager.” Her gaze dipped to the panties we were both still mauling, then back up at me. “Hi, I’m Ava. Ava Grayson.”
She seemed older than Hatch, maybe closer to thirty-five.
“I’m Shelby Mae.” I hated having to use that name. It felt like a betrayal of how far I’d come, but I had no choice. I had to protect Hatch, who was helping me out in keeping my secret identity.
“Shelby Mae? Can’t say I’ve heard a name like that around here.”
There was that smirk, an expression I remembered well. I’d seen it a million times every time someone heard my name for the first time.
Feeling a little bitchy at her superior attitude, I asked, “So were you Hatch’s babysitter?”
Her brow wrinkled. “No! I’m an old friend of the family.”
Old is right. Though that was uncharitable. The greedy way she was looking at Hatch had my claws out.
She shifted her attention to Hatch, who looked uncomfortable. Was that because of me or her? “Is the family coming down?”
“In a couple of weeks.”
“And you and …” She gestured toward me and left the query hanging.
“Shelby Mae’s a friend of Adeline’s. She’s here to get some work done.”
Either no one in Saugatuck followed the Rebel WAGs unless they were intimately connected to a Kershaw, or my disguise of undereye circles, waif-chic, and a Motors cap was working like gangbusters.
“What kind of work?”
“I write romance novels. Under a pseudonym, of course. Very erotic.” I thumbed over my shoulder.
“Just doing a little research. There’s always a scene where the hero buys the heroine fancy underwear and ‘instructs’ her to give him a naughty show in the dressing room.
” At Ava’s horrified expression, I went on.
“Oh, I’m not that method! I just wanted to get a feel for it before I sit down and write.
This place is so cute, by the way! I love that ruffle-collared blouse at the front. ”
I took a few steps forward, banking on Ava’s business sense taking precedence over her cougar one. My hunch was rewarded when she followed me to the front of the shop. I held the top over my body and faced a mirror. I was a mess, but this blouse was fire.
“That would be so pretty on you. The cornsilk blue flowers would pick up the blue of your eyes. Such an unusual shade.”
“Summer night storms my momma used to say.” That hussy Shelby Mae had to have her way sometimes. And as she was on a roll … I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Do you think Hatch would like it? On me?”
Ava looked at my reflection. “I think any man would.”
I gave an aw-shucks shrug. “But he’s the only one who matters right now.” I turned and handed the hanger off to her. “I’ll need to think about it. Hey, Hatch, let’s go to dinner. I like the look of that Italian place on the waterfront.”
“Sure, just want to pay for this first.” He held up the underwear, the fiend.
“Oh, there’s no need.” It was forty bucks!
“I think there is. Gotta give you inspiration for the book.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, wondering what his game was. I’d pulled Ava away from his orbit because he didn’t seem to enjoy being in her presence. Had I got it wrong? Was he trying to make her jealous?
A minute later, we were outside, walking toward his car. He opened the passenger door for me before I even realized what he was doing. Dash never did that. Once, he wouldn’t even let me get into his car because he worried my rain-drenched clothes would damage the buttery leather interior.
“Why were you pretending we were a couple?” he asked as soon as he got in behind the wheel.
So he had heard me talking to Ava. “Because she wants you and I didn’t think the feeling was mutual. I was trying to help you out.”
“Maybe you should write a romance novel.” He pulled out of the parking space.
“So what’s the deal with you two?”
“Let’s eat, Shelby Mae.”
By the time we got to Bellagio’s on the Water, my spirits had picked up because (a) new underwear and (b) I could now use my limited funds for a cocktail.
Our server practically had an orgasm on seeing Hatch.
“Hatch Kershaw, it’s been what? A year?”
“Just about, Millie. How’s Rich? Still working at the scrapyard?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s always finding the best stuff. You wouldn’t believe what people throw away. Who’s your guest?”
“This is a friend of my sister’s.”
“Shelby Mae,” I offered with my best Mississippi twang. “Charmed.”
“Awesome.” She turned back to Hatch. “What are your dad’s plans for next year?”
“Like he’d tell me,” Hatch joked, but I could hear a thread of strained patience in there.
“I’m sure you’d love him to stick around,” Millie said. “He’s such an inspiration.”
Once she was out of earshot, he said, “That Shelby Mae thing is getting a lot of mileage.”
“No one would think that gold-diggin’ Shelby Mae had just given up her big payday. The disguise is doing its job.”
“You can probably take off the Motors hat, you traitor.”
When Millie returned, I ordered a lemon drop martini while Hatch ordered a beer. I put my ball cap down on the seat beside me and looked out over the Kalamazoo River. The sun was low in the sky and the shimmer it cast over the water instilled in me a sense of calm I hadn’t felt for ages.
When I turned back, Hatch was staring at me.
“What? Should I put the hat back on?”
“You’re unrecognizable.” He seemed to shake himself out of some trance and returned to the menu. “What are you going to have? Steak looks good.”
It better had at a whopping forty-two dollars. Last week, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye at these prices.
“Caesar salad for me.”
“You ordered a fifteen-dollar cocktail and now, the cheapest item on the menu.” Said like I’d drowned a bag of kittens in the river out front.
“I had a snack earlier. Sub sandwich.”
“Liar. The lobster roll here is excellent. Drawn butter, touch of paprika, perfectly toasted bun.”
My mouth watered, my drooling obvious.
Millie returned with our drinks. “You ready to order?”
Hatch spoke first. “We’ll each have a lobster roll, Millie. And a side of the Mac ’n’ Cheese to share. Thanks.”
“No problem, Hatch.” She smiled at him, barely looked at me, and took both our menus.
“Very high-handed, ordering for me.”
“Sorry, does it remind you of your former fiancé?”
“He wouldn’t dare.” When we went out to dinner, Dash reserved his lord-and-master shtick for the staff. It was nice to dine with a man who didn’t feel threatened by the people who made and delivered his food.
Hatch raised his beer bottle. “To one day at a time.”
I blinked, surprised at his words. That was another of my mantras—or at least since yesterday.
Things were looking up. I had exercised, been gifted a pair of forty-dollar panties, and most importantly, had a cocktail in my hand.
(I had also lost my ATM card, hurt my fiancé dreadfully, and could feel my myriad mistakes closing in on me like a dark winter’s night.)
I clinked his bottle with my glass and took a sip. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“It’s the little things.”
“It sure is.” I gazed out the window again because lately, Hatch had a habit of staring at me. It was strange—he never used to look at me at all. Often it felt like he was looking straight through me.
But since yesterday at the church, I occasionally found him studying me so intensely it set my body aflame. It was as if he had decided to give himself permission to do so.
Which meant that all these years I’d crossed his path, he had been working overtime not to look at me properly.
I turned back from the window. Still looking.
“What’s wrong? Bad case of hat head?”
He grunted.
Okay, be like that. I decided to steer the conversation to more productive avenues. “Tell me about Ava.”
“Not much to say.”
I scoffed. “You two obviously have history. What’s the deal? Romance gone bad? You get into it with this fiancé of hers?”
“I haven’t seen her since last summer. And the engagement is relatively new.”
But he knew about it. He had expected her to be out of town, and he clearly wasn’t enjoying this complication.
“She hurt you.”
“Just a summer fling.”
Oh, it was more. I just couldn’t get a read on what exactly had happened. Cheated? Swindled? Insulted his ancestors? Somehow this woman had done him wrong.
“She’s older than you. By a lot.” Hatch was twenty-five, a year younger than me.
He eyed me critically.
“Just saying.”
“She’s thirty-two.”
I shrugged. “Looks older. And now she’s engaged to someone else. And you wish she wasn’t.”
He looked at me sharply. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Millie appeared with our lobster rolls, putting the Ava conversation at an end.
“Can we go for a walk along the harbor?”
We had just left Bellagio’s. I tried to pay, at least for my cocktail, but Hatch had already handled it on the return from the bathroom. I promised to get him back the next time, to which he offered his typical grunted response.
I wasn’t ready to go back to the house yet. I liked the town, which was still lively with tourists taking a stroll either before or after dinner. Hatch touched my back, a light brush against my spine to guide me in the right direction. Every hormone in my body spiked.
Something was buzzing between us, an electricity that felt dangerous.
Desperate to not think about where danger like that might lead, I searched for something to say. “So, this isn’t one of the Great Lakes?”
“No, it’s a tiny one, Kalamazoo Lake. The river connects it to Lake Michigan.”
“And you guys really own a boat?”
He slid a look. “Are you interested in me for my boat, Shelby Mae?”
“You bet I am, Boat Boy! Are you serious about taking me out?”
“Any time.”
I didn’t have a swimsuit, but I could probably scrounge up shorts and a tee from Aurora’s closet.
“So what’s so special about Saugatuck? I get that it’s scenic and all, but it’s got a different vibe to other small towns.”
“It’s a former artists’ colony. Back in the 1910s, artists would come here and paint as part of the Ox-Bow school. They set up artists’ and writers’ residencies, and now it’s what the town’s known for.”
“And for producing the legendary Theo Kershaw.”
“That, too.”
He spent a few minutes talking about summers in Saugatuck, which made it sound idyllic and a million miles from the summers of my childhood. We had circled the harbor and were back at the Bellagio, heading to the car when a familiar figure emerged from the restaurant, carrying a takeout bag.
The Panty-Purveying Cougar herself.
She was coming our way but hadn’t spotted us yet. I wasn’t sure what possessed me, but I hadn’t liked that melancholy in Hatch’s expression when he talked about her earlier. Something had happened between them, and whatever it was, it left him sad and her wanting more.
Hatch went to open the passenger door for me again, ever the gentleman.
So I decided to do a most unladylike thing and take advantage.
Placing both hands on his chest, I pushed up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his.
I wasn’t expecting him to respond. In fact, I didn’t need him to respond.
I just wanted Ava to know she couldn’t have him.
She blew her shot with whatever she’d done and now, as far as she was concerned, this man was mine.
His lips were warm, his body hard and unyielding. I had kept my eyes open because this was a fake kiss, a gesture to prove something.
It was also a mistake.
Because Hatch’s eyes smoked over with, first, surprise, then a recognition that something significant was happening here. And it wasn’t silly Summer’s attempts to pay it forward.
No, this was another of Shelby Mae’s poor decisions.
He didn’t ask what I was doing. He just went with it, like the great adapter he was.
I had pulled back, assuming that was enough to get the point across.
But it wasn’t enough for Hatch. His hands slipped around my back.
One fixed above my butt, the other dipped—and dipped—to below it. As in cupping one butt cheek.
I gasped, and he dove right into a kiss so startling I had no choice but to part my lips and take him in. He devoured me, thoroughly, letting me know who was in charge. A couple of seconds later he slowed to sips and soft licks.
But now that wasn’t enough for me. I angled my mouth for more and moved my hands up around his neck, seeking purchase. His hand tightened around my butt cheek and squeezed, then levered me up so I was inches off the ground.
I found myself spinning, spinning, and landing in the passenger seat of the SUV. Instinctively my legs parted and wrapped around his waist. The kiss continued, then abruptly stopped.
He blinked, retreated, stared, then touched his mouth. His expression was just this side of astonishment.
“Plenty of material for your book, Shelby Mae,” Ava called out.
Hatch turned to Ava, who stood there with her takeout bag and a smarmy grin.
“Ava,” he said quietly.
“Have a good night, you two.” She made it sound indulgent, like she was blessing us. I didn’t care. I saw how annoyed she was, and that was all that mattered.
Or, at least, I thought it was before Hatch upped the ante on that kiss. At which point I had tried to pretzel myself around his body.
You naughty girl, Shelby Mae.
I gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Mission accomplished.”
He whipped back to me. “What?”
“I saw her coming out of the restaurant, so I improvised.” And so did you. Did you ever.
“That was for Ava’s benefit?”
“Of course it was. I’m not in the habit of accosting men I hardly know in the street.” Only I didn’t think he knew Ava was there. In fact, I was certain he didn’t. Which meant the moment overcame him—and then it grabbed me by the lady balls as well.
His expression turned stormy. “Get in the car.”
“Are you annoyed?” I knew he was, but I wanted him to admit it. He was such a hard ass when it came to fessing up. He couldn’t even come clean about why he hated me.
“Me? Nah. I’m just peachy.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“You want to walk home or are you getting in the damn car?”