Smittened (12 page)
Authors: Jamie Farrell
He stopped.
“You scare me because you make me feel good about being me. Even the sucker parts. And I’m so afraid that if I let myself love you, that you’ll take something more than my money or my good intentions. That you might honestly take my heart. And that can’t be replaced.”
“If it helps,” he said, “I can give you a backup. Thought I was missing mine, but it just walked in the door with you.”
She shuffled closer to him, inhaled his fresh, clean, male scent. “And you’re leaving next month,” she said.
He looked back toward the sound of the guitar. “Always loved life on the road,” he said quietly. “Felt more like home than home did. But home—been a long time since I’ve been this kind of home. Been where I belong.”
Her heart was stuttering out a hopeful rhythm. “Where do you belong?”
“Right here, sweet pea.” He brushed a hand over her hair, slid her glasses back up her nose. “With the only woman in the world better than all the rest put together.”
“I’m not—”
“Was talking about Parrot,” he said.
Dahlia’s head jerked all the way up, and Mikey lowered his smiling mouth to hers. “Thinking I’d be getting the better end of the deal here,” he said against her lips.
“You definitely would,” she agreed.
But she had her arms around him, and he was doing things to her lips that were probably illegal back in Pickleberry Springs. And what he was doing with his hands
definitely
was—she’d looked up a few laws last week—and she couldn’t ever remember laughing while she kissed a man before, but she couldn’t ever imagine kissing anyone else, ever again.
She pulled back from his kiss. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
“I earned that one,” he said. He kissed the tip of her nose and smudged her glasses. “And I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making sure you know
you
are the only woman I will ever love. And on my honor, I ain’t ever tasting another woman’s sexual favors. Even if the bakery offers ’em up in a cupcake wrapper and calls ’em whipped dreams.”
Dahlia giggled again. “I love you, Mikey Diamond.”
“I love you too, my Dahlia. Even if you got here too soon for my big ol’ plan to play in Bliss’s Battle of the Boyfriends to win your heart here in a couple weeks.”
Now
that
was too much. Because Dahlia had never been the kind of girl a guy would’ve publicly declared for.
Thank the holy ducks for Bliss and its fun traditions, or she still might not be. “I can pretend this didn’t happen,” she offered.
“Suppose I can too, so long as I get to move back in with you and have me some of your Cherry Popper every night.”
“And Chocolate Orgasms?”
“And then some.”
“Some…?”
Mikey laughed. “Oh yeah.
Some
.”
She pushed up on her tiptoes to taste his lips again.
Because being smittened with Mikey Diamond was way better than any ice cream.
- THE END -
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The Misfit Brides Series
Blissed
(CJ & Natalie)
Matched
(Will & Lindsey)
Smittened
(Mikey & Dahlia)
Sugared
(Kimmie & Josh, release date to be announced)
The Officers’ Ex-Wives Club Series
Southern Fried Blues
(Jackson & Anna Grace)
Moonshine & Magnolias
(Zack & Shelby)
~ ~ ~
Like Southern gentlemen and military heroes? Meet Jackson Davis, hero of SOUTHERN FRIED BLUES (Officers’ Ex-Wives Club #1)…
Anna braced herself, scooted into the car, and cranked the engine. Steam flowed out of the air vents. She tilted them away while the AC system caught up. After buckling in, she gave her rearview mirrors a quick check. The gearshift seared her palm, but she gritted her teeth and put the car in reverse anyway.
Something tickled her finger. She absently scratched it and gave the car a little gas. Something else tickled the back of her hand.
She frowned.
Sweat didn’t usually tickle. Not like that.
She moved to shift the car into drive and something dark scurried over her windshield. “What the—”
A line of fire ants marched across her steering wheel.
Anna shrieked. She threw the car into park and tumbled out of it. “Get off!
Get off!
” She raked her hands over her arms and hopped on her clogs to shake the little buggers off. The prickles moved to her back, up her neck, into her hair. She knew the ants couldn’t be up there, there’d only been one or two, but she scrubbed at her scalp anyway.
“Ma’am? You okay?” A guy leaned out the side of a red car behind her. She was blocking one of the exits.
“Oh, yeah, sure, you betcha.” She wiggled her itching toes. “Sorry. It’ll just take me a minute to get out of your way.”
Her car’s engine whined. Heat radiated off the hood and wrinkled the air. The backs of her knees tingled as if a hundred ants had gathered there for an impromptu Riverdance.
A car door shut behind her. “Need a hand?” he drawled in a local-boy kind of way.
“Everything’s fine. Thanks.” Because she carried insect-killer in her car all the time in case her car came down with a case of the ants.
It took some effort to not reach for her phone. This was the kind of thing Neil would’ve taken care of for her. And it pissed her off that she wanted to let the man approaching solve her problem.
She was an independent woman, dammit. She’d fix this herself. She squared her shoulders, marched to the edge of her door, and hit her trunk release. She scooted around the car to survey the potential ant weapons in her trunk. She had to have
something
useful. Maybe she could club them one by one with her jumper cables. Shoot her emergency flares at them. Drop the box of Neil’s junk on them. Label them to death with the label maker.
It’d worked on her marriage.
And there was that stingy feeling behind her eyeballs again.
Long runner’s legs ending in flip-flop–clad feet entered her blurred vision. “You got some friends there.”
If Neil had to leave her, he should’ve done it somewhere else. Somewhere without fire ants, somewhere more hospitable to her Norwegian coloring, somewhere with halfway intelligent locals. She shot her audience a look she should’ve tried on the ants. “Where I come from, they’re called a nuisance.”
Instead of shriveling up and dying, he flashed her a goofy grin. His dark-lashed eyes creased in the corners.
Those lashes and the mass of just-long-enough-to-be-curly hair on his head were proof positive a man could have brains or looks, but not both.
And that tingly sensation along her breastbone was proof positive she had no business being single. First she agreed to a date with Rodney, now she was getting hot over a redneck.
She was supposed to be worrying about the ants. Class. Her
life
.
He scratched his curly hair and surveyed her neatly organized trunk.
As if he could wield her jumper cables better than she could against an army of fire ants.
Instead, he swung her Windex out of the trunk like a gunslinger preparing for a showdown, then tucked her paper towels under his arm.
“My car is very—” she started, but then it hit her.
He wasn’t going to clean it.
Carbon-based ants, meet ammonia.
Forgetting simple chemistry principles was not a good omen for her degree.
Wanting to watch her unexpected helper go to battle against the ants wasn’t a good omen for her sanity.
Her skin flushed as if she were standing inside Hell’s boiler room. She reached for the Windex, but something stopped her before she could get close enough to grab it.
Something that tasted suspiciously like fear.
Not of him.
Of herself.
“I’ll do it,” she bit out. She flicked her fingers up, gesturing for him to hand over the Windex.
“Ain’t no trouble.” His gaze wandered down her body, and she felt a whomp in her chest beneath the tingles spreading to her rib cage.
“Be a shame to mess up them pretty clothes,” he said.
“I can handle this,” she said firmly. She gestured to his car. “There’s another exit two rows down. I’ve taken enough of your time.”
His eyes were big and blue as her wounded heart, but when he squinted at her like that, they went a shade darker to cobalt. “Now I’m sure it don’t matter none to you, but my momma’d have my hide if she heard I abandoned a lady with critters in her car.”
Anna stifled a whimper of frustration. She swiped at her forehead. She’d probably drown in her own sweat before she managed to wrestle the Windex out of his hands.
If she could get brave enough to get within touching distance of him. “I don’t know your momma, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”
He scratched his hair again, and she felt an intense desire to claw out that part of her that wanted to know how it would feel between her fingers.
Rebound
, her brain yelled.
Something more primitive was still clamoring about his hair.
…Excerpt from SOUTHERN FRIED BLUES by Jamie Farrell ©2013
COMPLETE JAMIE FARRELL BOOKLIST
The Misfit Brides Series
Blissed
(CJ & Natalie)
Matched
(Will & Lindsey)
Smittened
(Mikey & Dahlia)
Sugared
(Kimmie & Josh, release date to be announced)
The Officers’ Ex-Wives Club Series
Southern Fried Blues
(Jackson & Anna Grace)
Moonshine & Magnolias
(Zack & Shelby)
Standalone Books
Mr. Good Enough
(Trent & Maddie)
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to my husband for pushing me to be my best, and to my kids for putting up with the off-in-LaLaLand stares. Words can’t express how much I love Kelsey Browning and Maria Geraci, both for being the best kind of friends, and for their mad critique partner skills.
All my love and appreciation to my family, friends and fans who have been so supportive of my books from the beginning. Special shout-out to Amber, Angela, Cyn, Deanna, Sacha, Shari, Angie, Dawn, Marti, Melissa, Gail, Jane, Laurie, Ashley, Marie, Marcy, and all my Feisty Belles. And huge hugs to Sharla Lovelace, Selena Laurence, and Shauna Allen, my fellow Diva Mamas! I love y’all!
And last, but certainly not least, thanks to Penny Andler at Penny’s Copy Sense for her fabulous work. Penny, you make my books sparkle. Thank you!
About the Author
Jamie Farrell is a bestselling author of feel-good contemporary romances. She believes love, laughter, and bacon are the most powerful forces in the universe.Her debut novel,
Southern Fried Blues
, was a finalist in the 2013 National Readers’ Choice Awards and the 2014 National Excellence in Romance Fiction Awards.
Blissed
, the first book in her Misfit Brides series, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly Magazine.
A native Midwesterner, Jamie has lived in the South the majority of her adult life. When she’s not writing, she and her military hero husband are busy raising three hilariously unpredictable children.
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SMITTENED
Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Farrell
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.