The Virgin Bet (2 page)

Then she remained quiet, her heaving chest pushing her breasts against the cotton jacket she wore. He licked his lips. He quite liked having her handcuffed in the backseat.

Basically nothing had survived. The place wreaked of smoke and ash, and what the fire hadn’t eaten, water had drowned. Her books. Her beautiful, beloved books. Tippy stood in the middle of the ruin, tears blurring her vision. The insurance adjuster had just left, and so had Nick. Poor Nick, he had a baby on the way, and now he was unemployed.

Tippy swiped the tears out of her eyes, and sniffed. Crying wouldn’t help.

What should she do now?

She shuffled around, at a loss. So much of her life had been devoted to the bookstore that, without it, she had no idea what to do with her life. It’d take time to get the insurance money and rebuild everything. And she needed to decide if she
wanted
to rebuild. Online bookstores had sucked away the business of small storefronts, and the idea of reentering the battle lines of a struggling business didn’t have much appeal. But what else could she do to survive financially?

Tippy tiptoed through the remains of her store, stopping long enough to pick up one of the books. The outside jacket was charred, but inside she discovered it had been the last book she’d read. One of her secretly beloved romance novels, a story about an alpha male who’d won his heroine despite her best efforts to hate him. She hugged it to her chest, sadness tugging at her soul. In real life alpha males didn’t work for her. She liked control too much to give it to someone else, but inside the pages of a good romance she could pretend, at least for a little while, that she was a swooning woman needing a big hunky man.

She dropped the ruined book and trod back to her car. The cloudy afternoon promised another night of rain—appropriate for her mood. On the drive back to her house, she replayed her meeting with Brent the cop.
Brent the hot cop.
Tippy didn’t quite know how to handle what had happened between them. Well, nothing had actually happened between them, but she’d felt a whole lot of awkward one-sided chemistry. She’d been attracted to Brent. Hell, she had even been kind of turned on while handcuffed in the backseat of his police cruiser, despite facing jail time.
It’s the uniform, has to be the uniform.
He was still cocky, but he’d lost that high school jock immaturity. Brent Kingston had grown up into a delectable specimen of manhood.

“God, get over it, Tippy,” she chided herself. “You read too many romances. He’s still an ass.”

She pushed her car past the speed limit, scanning the side streets, daring Brent to catch her. Just to defy him, and not to have an excuse to see him again of course. No luck, not a cop in sight. Once home, she grabbed a glass of wine, then the wine bottle, and carried it to the couch, ready to have a massive pity party for one. Just as she sat down, the doorbell chimed.

“Of course,” she said, frowning. “I hope it’s a kid selling cookies.” A carb binge would make her evening alone perfect. She tugged the front door open, and found herself eye level with a broad chest covered by a blue uniform. Tippy blinked, and looked up, meeting a pair of blue eyes.

“Brent?”

He flashed her a crooked grin. That magical grin she remembered from high school. Her heart rate soared.

“Sorry to drop by like this,” he began, “but I needed to see you.”

The statement made her knees knock. She swallowed hard.

“W-what for?” she asked, cringing at the high octave of her voice. She cleared her throat as he placed his hand on the doorframe above her head. He smelled of aftershave, and a hard day’s work. A very intoxicating, and
very
male aroma with more punch than her waiting bottle of wine. The world tipped beneath her feet. “Am I in trouble?”

He drew his bottom lip between his teeth, and she wanted nothing more than to draw that same lip between her own teeth.
Oh god, and I’m not even drunk yet. Jesus, get it together, Tippy.

“In trouble? Have you done anything you need to confess to?” he asked in a low baritone purr. His gaze cast down to her toes and back up. A reasonable mind would see it as the pure cursory curiosity of a police officer, but her hormones gobbled it up like a lover’s caress. She broke out in goosebumps.

She forced her feet to move backward to put some space between her and Brent, resisting the urge to chug the wine from the glass she still held to settle her nerves. Her hormones were on a rollercoaster ride. A quick innocent glance down to escape the intensity of his eyes, and her gaze settled on his utility belt. The memory of him putting her in handcuffs tickled her thoughts as well as another part of her that didn’t need to be tickled by Brent Kingston.

“Not a thing to confess to, so why are you here?” She squared her shoulders, and lifted her chin to feign the confidence she didn’t have.

He extended his hand, and it took her a moment to realize what he held, being distracted by his long, strong-looking fingers. “Sorry, I didn’t give it back to you the other day,” he said.

She took her driver’s license from his hand, noticing how her own shook. He seemed to notice it, too. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, and blew out a breath. “Long day, I was at the shop earlier. It’s a total loss.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?”

An empty offer, what could he possibly do for her? That ticklish feeling returned, and she shifted foot to foot. There was something he
could
do for her, and it had nothing to do with her lost bookstore. She bit the inside of her cheek, annoyed at her tumbling imagination. “I appreciate that, but no. I’m on my own with this,” she said.

They stared at one another. She noted how his face had taken on sharper angles since their youth, giving him the features any male model would covet. A light dusting of dark blond whiskers shadowed his jawline. In high school she’d secretly thought he was cute, but now…now a full on crush hit her like a Mack truck.

He seemed hesitant to leave, and she hesitated at ushering him away so she could return to her lonely and lackluster existence. The busy shop had driven away the few friends Tippy did have. It was hard to keep up with others when you worked all day every day.

“Well,” Brent dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card, “if you think of anything I can help with, give me a call.”

She accepted the business card with the same hand that still held her driver’s license. When her fingers closed on the slip of paper stock, she fumbled, dropping both it and the license. She bent down to snatch them up at the same time as Brent did, and a small catastrophe occurred. She dumped her full glass of red wine down the front of his uniform shirt. They both stood up, and stared at the wet stain.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry Brent.” She patted at the stain with her hand—the most useless stain remover on the planet. “Um, okay, come inside, let me get….” What got rid of red wine? Club soda? Like she had any club soda on hand, but she
did
have liquid laundry detergent. “I have something for this.” She grabbed his arm, tugging him forward before he could respond, and shut the door behind them.

“It’s no big deal, Tippy,” Brent said as she strode toward the laundry room, ditching her empty wine glass on the way. “I’m off duty. My uniforms are professionally cleaned,” he called after her. But Tippy was on a mission to fix her foul up. She grabbed the jug of laundry detergent, and returned to the living room.

“Take off your shirt,” she said impatiently. She needed to act fast before the stain set, she knew that much.

“Not that I don’t love to hear that from a beautiful woman, but really—”

“You think I’m beautiful?” she interrupted, his words jerking her attention away from the wet spot, and back to his face.

His charming lopsided grin returned, and his eyes crinkled at their corners in an equally charming way. Why he just had charming written on him from head to toe. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, shaking her head, sure she’d lost her mind. Lusting over her high school’s
it
guy, really? Had things gotten so desperate for her?

“I’ve always thought you were beautiful,” he said, sounding entirely sincere. “Why do you think I asked you to prom?”

The bitter memory popped to mind, quelling her hormonal rush. She opened her eyes, but couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “I’m not stupid, I know you and the guys had that stupid virgin bet going on.”

From the corner of her eye she watched his smile slip. “I was never part of that, Tippy. I had stupid friends who had stupid ideas.”

She wouldn’t believe him. She couldn’t believe him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you want to save that shirt you need to take it off so I can pour some of this on it.” She lifted the jug, needing to turn the conversation back around to the safest topic in the room.

He let out a breath, and pulled the hem of his shirt out of his waistband. As his deft fingers began underdoing the buttons, starting from the top and working their way down, she realized her mistake. Oh god, she’d made a mistake. As each of the buttons gave way they revealed a bit more, and a bit more, and a bit more. He wore a black tank beneath his uniform shirt that hugged his pectorals in a completely inappropriate way. And once the shirt finally gave way, gaping completely open, he paused. Teasing, yes, he was teasing her, and her face had grown so hot it might melt off of her skull. She couldn’t quite catch her breath.

“Tippy.” Her name slipped past his lips in little more than a growl, and he stepped toward her. His hand rested on her shoulder, before sliding to the side of her neck, his thumb forcing her chin up. He stared her straight in the eyes.

“Kiss me,” she said with a stranger’s voice, the two words sealing her coming fate.

His head dipped down, and his mouth met hers. His warm lips tested, tasted, asking her how far she wanted to go. And she wanted it all, every bit of him. The laundry detergent dropped from her hand, and she reached up, running her fingers through his sensibly cropped hair. He’d cut it short since graduation, and she missed its wilder look from her youth.

She pressed into him, not quite sure how to lead this dance. He reached down, and grabbed her hips, yanking her close, and she felt the ridged length of his erection against her lower belly. He was hard, and she inexperienced. About as inexperienced as they came. She found his shoulders, and pushed, trying to break the kiss, but he growled low in his throat, and cupped the back of her head, forcing her mouth open with his tongue.

The struggle died, and she melded into him, their tongues mating. She pulled on his uniform shirt, and it fell to the floor, before she yanked at the hem of his tank top. They parted long enough so that she could rid him of it, and her gaze feasted on his exposed chest. A glorious sight; broad, toned with just the right amount of hair to run her fingers through. She groped it, her hands shaking, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with the prize she’d just been gifted.

He took one of her hands, and guided it down, down, down. Her eyes popped wide as he settled it over the bulge beneath his fly. She sucked a hard breath through her teeth, this was new territory she’d never explored. And what did she know about this? What did she know about gloriously half-naked men in her living room who were ready, willing, and waiting?

Not a damned thing.

She pulled away from him and staggered backward, trying to catch her breath, and right the spinning world. “I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, embarrassed.

She couldn’t look at him, so she stared at her bare toes.

“What for?” he asked, sounding confused.

“I, uh, can’t do this.” Her hands flapped around as if possessed by a mad woman, and she forced them down to her sides. The truth hovered at the tip of her tongue, and her embarrassment flared into humiliation. Surely he’d read it all over her face.

“I think you were doing
this
quite well, actually,” he said with a smile in his voice. He reached for her, but she stepped away. “Tippy, what’s wrong?”

Then she was thinking of high school, of him asking her to prom, of his smirky asshole friends leering in the background. Of the rumors of the virgin bet, and how the only way on the planet that Mr. Hotstuff Himself would ask her to prom was to add his notch to their collective bedpost of shame.

“It’s nothing,” she said weakly.

“I don’t believe that. I did something to upset you,” he pressed, sounding genuinely concerned now. “I’m not leaving, until I know what I did.”

She dragged her eyes from her uninteresting toes, and managed to maneuver her gaze to his face. A muscle in his jaw ticked as he stared down at her, awaiting her explanation. Tippy wanted to swoon, like women were expected to do in difficult times way back when. She wanted to pass out dead cold so she could avoid explaining herself. Reasonably she didn’t
need
to explain anything to him, but he held an air of demanding authority, and she found she couldn’t deny his request.

“Because, Brent,” she said, gathering together all of the bravery she had left, and cramming it into her sentence, “you see, I’m, uh, er, new to this sort of thing.”

His head cocked to the side. He didn’t understand.
Damn it!
Did she have to spell it out?

“Bloody hell,” she mumbled. “Okay,” she said louder, “I’ll spell it out for you, I am a twenty-eight-year-old virgin.”