Trouble on Tap (10 page)

Faking it like the cameras were just around the corner, Olivia turned and gave him her best America’s-sexy-sweetheart grin. “Nothing like helping people understand that their help is needed.”

It only took three steps inside the center to discover just how much help was needed. Two years of only a poorly secured tarp between the building’s interior and Mother Nature hadn’t been pretty ones. The hardwood floor was warped from rain that had gotten through the loose tarp and broken windows. Dirt and leaves covered nearly every square inch of the mangled floorboards. Then, there was the stench. Cats, vermin, and God knew what else had used the veterans’ center as home base at one time or another, leaving behind now-rotted food scraps and worse.

Olivia squirmed as the urge to get the hell out of there clawed its way up the back of her neck. She may have grown up in the sticks but that didn’t mean she’d ever been a fun-loving outdoorsy girl. Dried leaves crunched behind her. Her shoulders jerked up to her earlobes.
Don’t let it be a rat. Please don’t let it be a rat.

“You seem a little tense.” Mateo was a big guy but if it wasn’t for the leaves, she never would have realized he’d left his post by the front door. “More work than you expected?”

A giant “hell yes” to that one. “Not really.” He already thought she was in over her head. She wasn’t about to confirm it.

She took out her phone and started snapping pictures of the mess while mentally working on the marketing plan. Fliers. Social media. She’d get together with the other craft brewers in the area for the beer crawl, where they’d bring the beer to the customers instead of having people travel from brewery to brewery to sample the latest beers. She could raise money, but could she raise enough to gut the place and start over? Because that’s what it was going to take.

Watching her phone screen, she took a step back to get a better shot of the splintered floorboards. Her heel popped through a weak spot in the floor and she stumbled backwards. She flung her arms outward but it was too late. Gravity wasn’t about to let her go.

Mateo’s strong hands gripped her waist, pulling her back from the brink and up against his hard chest with enough force to nearly knock the breath out of her. At least that was the excuse she was using to explain why she let her cheek rest against his soft cotton shirt for a few beats longer than needed and took an extra-deep inhale of his spicy cologne. It was all medically necessary.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” He set her back on her feet but his fingers lingered on her hips.

Not that he had to hold her there. The force keeping her glued to the spot didn’t have a damn thing to do with physical touch. It was all about him. He dipped his head lower, his eyes unfocused and hungry. She licked her lips, needing the sensation and anticipating more.

His grip tightened and he froze, inches away from his intended target. “I don’t need a model’s pity kiss for saving a damsel in distress.” His hands dropped back to his side and he took several steps away.

The words, said so low she barely heard him over the blood rushing in her ears, didn’t process at first. Then her brain made all the right connections.

“You are such a jackass.” Her cheeks pulsed and her heart knocked against her ribs like a felon with a tin cup in a black-and-white jailhouse movie. “I don’t pity you. No one needs to pity you because
you’ve
got that down to a science already.”

“If it wasn’t pity, then what was it?” He snarled the question.

“Temporary insanity.” That still had her in its razor-sharp talons. “You are the last man in the world I’d ever want to kiss.”

He strutted over, his boots sending up small clouds of dust as he crossed the center’s littered and cracked hardwood floor, stopping half a foot from her. Predatory. Dangerous. Confident. God, the man was her crack and her kryptonite wrapped up together in one muscular package. Her body practically vibrated with need and she parted her tingling lips without meaning to. It just happened.

No. That was a lie. Her right-thinking brain just couldn’t keep up with her bad-behaving body.

“The last man you ever want to kiss, huh? Oh honey, we’ve done a lot more than that.” He framed her cheeks with his strong hands and tilted her face up toward him. His hazel eyes darkened to the color of shaded moss as his gaze traveled to her trembling mouth. “Anyway, you’re a shitty liar.”

God help her, she was, because when he leaned down and kissed her, the last thought she had before her brain turned to mush was: Hell,
yes
.

She fell into the kiss, embracing it with the pent-up need of a woman who’d been denied for an eternity and finally had a peek at heaven. His strong lips teased her, tormented her, tantalized her as desire turned her languid. She wasn’t in a hurry to explore this man. She wanted to take her time to rediscover every hard line and rigid plane.

He groaned against her before taking the kiss deeper, seeking out her tongue with his own. It was as if he’d poured gas on a bonfire as her body turned molten. Forget going slow. The all too familiar desire pulsing between her legs gave her other ideas. Needing to touch him, she reached out and glided her palms up his shirt, her fingers finding the buttons and releasing the top two.

Mateo’s strong fingers wrapped around her wrist like a vise and he broke the kiss. An air of right-on-the-edge-of-out-of-control wildness surrounded him. His gaze dropped to her kiss-swollen lips and her eyes began to flutter closed.

He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip. “You are nothing but trouble.”

If he’d meant it to censure her, then he had the wrong girl. Trouble wasn’t a dirty word when you were a Sweet.

“Maybe you need some of that in your life.” She drew his thumb into her mouth, swirling her tongue around its tip.

His body went rigid and his eyes darkened with desire but instead of kissing her again, he mumbled something in Spanish under his breath, spun on his heel and strode out of the veterans’ center.

Olivia didn’t try to stop him. She’d let him think he’d won this skirmish, or at least that it was a draw. Truth be told, she’d gotten under his skin. Tracing her fingertips across her still-tingling lips, she had to admit, he’d gotten under hers as well. And that hadn’t been the plan at all. He’d already broken her heart once. She wasn’t about to let him stomp it to smithereens again.

Silence wasn’t just golden, it was all Mateo wanted in the world—especially after he’d spent the past few days ducking Olivia, her tempting-as-hell lips, her flowery-smelling shampoo in his bathroom and her fundraiser plans. She’d left at first light with Luciana. Not that he was keeping track of her movements, it just made sense for him to stay in the know—not because of what that jackass Hawson, but because it made it easier to keep himself on guard.

Now he finally had all the silence he could want, but not for much longer. The soft breeze carried the sound of gravel being crunched under tires in through the open kitchen window. Steaming cup of coffee in one hand and
conches blancas
pastry in the other, he padded across the varnished oak floors to the large bay window overlooking his half-mile-long driveway.

The cabin sat at the peak of a long gravel drive and tall pine trees stood guard on the other three sides. Thanks to Mother Nature and the way sound carried up the hill, no one could get within two miles without him knowing.

The list of people he never wanted darkening his doorstep was a long one, but the man heading his way was near the very top. The mayor’s Cadillac barreled toward the house, spitting out gravel from beneath its tires and coming to a stop at the bend in the circular paved parking area big enough for six cars. Mateo finished off the pastry as he watched Hawson, jaw set in a determined line, hustle up to his door. The mayor was a man on a mission.

The pounding on the thick oak front door boomed through the cavernous foyer, echoing through the blessedly empty cabin. Mateo took a sip of coffee and waited. The mayor hammered on the door some more. Someone wasn’t going to be avoided today. Wasn’t that just his luck? Trouble dogged his feet more than that mangy mutt Luciana had taken off his hands this morning for some adoption event. He set his mug down on the granite kitchen counter. It could be worse. It could be Olivia.

He crossed the foyer in time with a third set of heavy-fisted raps from Salvation’s insistent mayor and jerked open the door. Hawson had one hand raised as if about to knock again and a blue piece of paper crumpled in the other.

“Have you seen this?” Hawson shoved the mangled paper in Mateo’s direction. “You were supposed to be keeping me updated.”

Mateo didn’t bother to answer as he took the paper from the mayor’s ham-fisted grip. Creased and beat up as it was, there was still no missing the message.

HELP RAISE A GLASS FOR THE SALVATION VETERANS’ CENTER AT THE SWEET SALVATION BREWERY — ALL PROCEEDS GO TOWARD REBUILDING THE CENTER. VOLUNTEERS, EXHIBITORS AND DONATIONS NEEDED! SIGN UP TODAY.

Part of him couldn’t help but be impressed. While he’d been doing everything he could to dodge her, she’d been working her hot little ass off. There just might be more to Olivia Sweet than what looked good on a magazine cover.

He neatly folded the fundraiser flyer in half and handed it back to the mayor. “I told you I’d keep an eye on her. I did. She’s not doing anything crazy.”

Hawson sputtered for a minute before any actual words came out. “She will. Believe you me, before this is over, the whole thing will be about her.” He balled up the flyer in his hand and winged it across the porch. The blue paper rolled to a stop in the corner, the only touch of bright color in the otherwise pristine gray stone porch. “She’ll use this as a springboard for her sorry-ass excuse of a career as a D-list celebrity. I thought you were on Salvation’s side. You have to stop it.”

Only years of Marine-conditioned discipline kept Mateo from scooping up the mayor and tossing him off the porch. The smart thing was to go along with the mayor’s scheme. What did he care about Olivia’s plans as long as the veterans’ center was rebuilt like Hawson had promised? She was a thorn he’d shoved into his side to remind him of everything he couldn’t have anymore.

“And how do you propose I stop her?”

“Any means necessary,” the mayor said.

He glanced over at the bright-blue paper ball sitting in the corner and then back at the Napoleon wannabe plotting his little sabotage on Mateo’s front porch. He’d always hated bullies. He’d agreed to keep an eye on Olivia’s activities, not sabotage the fundraiser.

“No.”

Hawson’s eyebrows shot up and the vein in his temple puffed out. “What do you mean, no?”

“Do I need to go grab a dictionary?”

“I thought you were a man,
a Marine
, that I could depend on.” Hawson delivered the insult with the flair of a carnival sideshow barker.

It had about the same effect on Mateo as the last time someone tried to get him to play one of those crooked games at the county fair. “Seems you were wrong.”

“From the stories I’ve heard about your last deployment, I’m not the only one. Thought you would have learned the danger of disregarding an order.”

Fire of shame and guilt ate its way up from his gut as fast and hot as the roadside explosion that had killed the rest of his four-Marine fire team in Afghanistan. “Get off my property before I dropkick your ass to the highway.”

Hawson puffed up like a posturing goose. “Don’t you threaten me, boy, unless you want to be out of a job.”

Mateo laughed and leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t make threats, just deliver on promises.”

The mayor’s round cheeks went crimson and his eyes bulged. If he didn’t calm the fuck down, he was going to have a heart attack on the front porch, and there was no way Mateo would be giving the asshole mouth to mouth.

Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any worse, Olivia’s ridiculous yellow Fiat sped up the driveway, kicking out gravel, followed by Luciana’s minivan. Some pop diva blared from the Fiat’s speakers and out of the open windows just barely louder than Olivia’s off-tune singing and the happy yaps of that damned mutt, both of whom were about as welcome during his breakfast as a cardboard-tasting veggie omelet in an MRE. He didn’t know when his place had turned into grand fucking central but it had.

Luciana and Olivia got out of their cars and that ugly excuse for a dog sprinted past them both, bounded up the stairs and sat down on Mateo’s right shoe.

“I see how it is.” The mayor’s beady eyes narrowed and he zeroed in on Olivia as she began to saunter toward them. “Good to know what kind of foxhole you’re really interested in.”

Even though his muscles twitched with the need to smack the smug look off the mayor’s face, Mateo took a deliberate step back so he wouldn’t be in striking distance. “You have five seconds.”

Hawson opened his mouth, but clamped it right back shut before any more bile could come out. He spun on his heel and clomped down the front steps, giving Olivia and Luciana a wide berth on the stairs before getting into his Cadillac and hightailing it off Burnett’s Hill.

In a perfect world, the dictatorial mayor would never darken his doorstep again, but Mateo had seen too much of the imperfect to ever believe that would happen—especially not when the personification of trouble stood not three feet away in a short skirt and sky-high heels.