Trouble When You Walked In (Contemporary Romance) (20 page)

Anne stood a little taller. “You both look surprised. But our program prides itself on getting to the heart of a setting. Don’t you remember the time we interviewed the modern-day gold prospector near the rattlesnake nest in Nevada? And how about that wonderful woman in Ohio who built her own hot air balloon? We interviewed her at one thousand feet.”

As a matter of fact, Boone did remember. “That was years ago.”

Anne smiled. “We’re trying to bring back some of the adventure aspect. We’ve gotten lame, according to focus groups. So we did our research.” She looked at her cameraman. “What else does the typical resident do around here, José?”

“Trout fishing, kayaking, hunting, making granola, crafting, quilting, zip-lining…”

Were these people for real?

Boone cleared his throat. “I fish. I kayak. I’ve hunted quail a couple times, and I go four-wheeling regularly. I’ve even done my share of zip-lining. Heck, I support quilt artisans and crafters, and I regularly go to local places with really excellent live bluegrass. But I have
never
made granola. I don’t know about Ms. Rogers.” He looked at Cissie.

“Of course I do.” She tossed him a cool glance. “I thought everyone made their own granola around here.”

Wow. She was being flippant and standoffish, and he liked it. He wanted to pick her up, sling her over his shoulder, and take her back to his cave.

“Cool,” said Anne. “How about the other activities, Cissie?”

“Absolutely. Except for the hunting, I do them all.” She was lying through her teeth, but she shot him a brazen look of challenge.

He didn’t blink.

Oh, it was on.

“Great.” Anne clapped her hands. “You two are
so
North Carolina!”

“I’ve got to be honest.” Cissie had her best prim-librarian face on when she nudged up her glasses. “I have serious doubts about this rafting idea. I don’t see why we need to go that far, or do all those other things. It smacks of a ratings grab. And it feels condescending.”

She was brave to talk back to the big New York reporter. Boone had to admire her for that. And here he was sitting like a country bumpkin waiting for directions, mainly because Cissie distracted him. She was sitting too close.

Anne Silver was like her name—elegant and polished as a silver tray in his mother’s dining room. Cissie was more your morning mug of coffee. Beneath that stylish outfit and hair, she was still someone who felt necessary and comforting. Someone who jolted you out of your rut.

And it pissed him off. He barely knew this girl. How could she be making such a big impression on him already?

You do, too, know her. You liked her in fourth grade … not just her shiny spectacles but her lack of interest in being anything other than herself.

Anne’s reply was immediate. “I assure you, we’re not trying to be condescending, Cissie, although I appreciate your candor. Isn’t that what mayors have to do every day, handle multiple tasks, sometimes at once, often thrown at them unexpectedly?” She looked between them both, an assessing gleam in her eye.

“I have no doubt.” Cissie’s tone was firm. “But it’s an odd way to test our political mettle.”

“Ditto what Cissie said,” Boone said. They were rivals, but they kept landing on the same page. “I’ll be frank, too. I agreed to do
Morning Coffee
to give the country a solid look at Kettle Knob. Your producer told me the segment won’t be all about the mayor’s race.”

“We’re doing an excellent overview of your town,” Anne said. “We’ll talk a little bit about its history, and we’ve already got some shots of the diner, the town square—with a super shot of the gazebo—a residential street with some charming cottages on it, and of course Town Hall and the library. We’re also sending a crew up to get outside shots of your houses while you’re on your adventures. Boone, I hear you live in a spectacular home.”

“Heard?” he asked skeptically.

“Okay, we looked it up on Google Maps,” Anne admitted. “As for Cissie, the story of the big tree that’s fallen through your roof will provide a lot of drama.”

“That tree is the only reason Nana and I are at Boone’s,” Cissie said.

Oh, nice. He felt real special now.

“Of course, we appreciate his hospitality,” Cissie added.

Too late.

He moved a few inches away from her just to make her feel bad.

But she didn’t. She was smiling. He looked where she was looking. At the foot of the gazebo steps, Sally and Hank Davis held a big sign that said “Cissie for Mayor.” The letters were painted like stained glass and in a strange, almost primitive font that was actually quite cool. Hot-pink ribbons hung through holes reinforced with Hello Kitty duct tape at all four corners.

“What’s that about?” Anne asked Cissie.

“We don’t have a budget for signage.” Cissie sounded happy as could be. “So Sally is making mine out of butcher paper and cardboard and hanging them wherever she can.”

Which was strictly against code, but Boone would whisper in Scotty’s ear not to bother enforcing it.

“What will happen to your signs if it rains?” Anne asked.

“My team and I will try to rescue them,” Cissie said, “but if we can’t get to them fast enough, I guess they’ll get mushy and fall apart.”

She was running a crude grassroots campaign. There was something very appealing about that. She was smart and capable, yet how would that hold up against a guy who had all the experience and very few complaints from his constituents about his time in office?

Anne turned to him. “What about you? I saw one sign for you in the window at the diner. That’s a rather measly amount of publicity. Do you advertise another way?”

“No.” He felt a twinge of embarrassment, which was a new thing for him. “I’ve done very little up till now”—he looked at Cissie, who arched a brow at him—“but I’m ramping up.”

Now
he
was fibbing. He hadn’t made a single plan.

“You have a little over two weeks to the election,” Anne reminded them both.

Sally got busy hanging Cissie’s sign on the back of a bench. If Scotty complained, Boone would insist that hot-pink bows were much better fasteners than tape.

“Do you wish you had longer to campaign?” Anne asked Cissie.

“Not really.” Cissie pulled a strand of that newly golden-brown hair behind her ear. “I can get everything I need to say out in a little over two weeks.”

No way would her house be ready to move into in by Election Day. In fact, by Boone’s estimate, it would be at least four weeks. So when she lost the election, she’d be looking for a new place to stay, he had no doubt.

He wasn’t looking forward to that. In fact, in light of the short time frame he had left to hang out with her, he’d tell Nana tonight—politely, respectfully—that it was time to relax her over-the-top, crazy rules about where they all stayed in the house, which she’d extended just this morning. He was on to her. Nana obviously wanted him to crave what he couldn’t have, and it was working. He couldn’t take another minute of knowing Cissie was there walking around above his bedroom ceiling, and he couldn’t get to her. At least to
talk
.

He wasn’t a sex pervert. She was cute as a button, and entertaining as hell, and she didn’t put up with anything she didn’t like from him, which he found refreshing.

Plus, yeah, he kinda sorta did want to make out with her and then get her naked—in the worst way, actually—somewhere preferably soft and cushiony, like his bed.

“How about you, Boone?” Anne asked him. “Your opponent didn’t surface until now. So is the election coming up too soon for your taste?”

“It actually is,” he said. “I wish I had longer. A lot longer.”

Anne’s phone rang. “Excuse me a minute.” She took the call and walked down the gazebo steps to a nearby tree. The cameraman trailed after her and lit up a cigarette.

“Why would you want longer to campaign?” Cissie’s glasses glinted in the sun.

He couldn’t tell her the truth: he wanted longer with her in the house. Longer with her talking back to him, and just being there.

“A politician never reveals his campaign strategies,” he said instead. “Especially to his rival.”

They were foes, all right. He loved their more intimate battles. She slayed him with her sexiness, set fire to his blood. He wished he could lay her down on the gazebo floor and have his way with her.

She blushed, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she wasn’t thinking about the mayor’s race. She was either reading his mind or remembering their kissing session in his pickup truck. Her mouth was set just so.…

He now recognized that as her hot-and-ready expression. But he had to steel himself against her charm. It wouldn’t pay to embarrass himself with a public display of how much he wanted her, especially with a film crew and a nosy reporter hoping for any sign of attraction between them.

But the devil was sitting on his shoulder again. “Maybe Nana has the right of it, after all.” He could never be like Richard. He liked blackberry pie too much.

And other things.

Cissie’s pupils darkened. “What are you talking about? What did Nana say?”

“You know. About us staying apart. Look what happens when we get together.”

“We can handle it.” She sounded like she didn’t believe it herself.

The devil in him kept talking. “You look incredibly beautiful in those new clothes.”

“How do you know they’re new?”

“Well, they’re different from what you usually wear. I wonder why the change in your look? Your hair, too?”

“Maybe I did all this to impress the
Morning Coffee
people. And to look like a legitimate mayoral candidate.”

“I like it.”

“Thank you, but you had nothing to do with any of it.”

“Are you sure about that?” he said low.

“Yeah.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“And you’re just plain bad.”

“I guess I am. Right now, I’m not thinking of impressing any national TV audience or even of winning the election.”

“You should be.” She sounded flustered. “Because I am.”

“Are you?” He moved an inch closer.

“No,” she said. “But what I’m thinking is none of your business.”

“Does it have to do with me?”

She hesitated. “Yes. But that’s all I’ll say.”

“Can we play Twenty Questions?” No one could resist Twenty Questions.

“Okay, three questions, and I quit.”

“Am I clothed in this thought of yours?”

She bit her thumb, then released it. “No.”

He chuckled. “Am I with you?”

“Yes.” She crossed her arms and frowned.

“Are you naked, too?”

“Yes,” she said, then glared at him. “Now step off, Boone Braddock.”

“Just give me three more questions.”

“No.”

“Come on. This is fun.”

“Why does this remind me of being back in grade school?” She tapped her foot. “Get on with it.”

“Are Anne and her cameraman still by the tree?”

She looked over his shoulder. “Yes.”

“Looking our way?”

“No.”

“Anyone in the shop windows? Any pedestrians nearby?”

She shook her head. “That’s way over three questions.”

“All I want to do is tell you something. I have to, as a matter of fact.”

“Have to?”

“Yes. Have to.”

“Okay. It had better be important, and—and decent.”

“Oh, it’s important, all right.”

“Is it decent?”

“Hush,” he said.

She bit the edge of her lower lip, and he whispered something in her ear.

CHAPTER TWENTY

All day Cissie had been thinking about what Boone had suggested to her in the gazebo
sotto voce
, and it was driving her crazy. It was a good thing she’d had tons of opportunity to distract herself. She’d kept them from smashing their raft into a boulder while white-water rafting. And she’d run an ATV pell-mell through a grassy field filled with boggy places and probably snakes.

Not only that, she’d told a national TV reporter that Kettle Knob needed an indoor swimming pool facility, not another shooting range, and if the town council didn’t get the message from Boone that the health of all its citizens mattered, she’d be sure to tell them herself as mayor when she got in office.

She was on a roll.

No doubt she could tell a man she’d already fooled around with once that she wanted to do it again.

She stole a glance at his profile. They were in his boring truck (not the pretty blue one), going home to clean up before they had to meet the TV crew at The Log Cabin that night. Boone looked straight ahead, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. He’d seen her looking.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, playing dumb.

“You’re staring at me.”

“I’m only checking to see how muddy you are.”

“Uh-huh.” His grin broadened.

“You are so conceited. I’m not checking you out like that.”

“Like what?”

She crossed her arms and sighed. How was she ever going to get around to propositioning him—preferably in a subtle, come-hither way—when she kept pretending she wasn’t interested?

It was embarrassing, that was why.

What if he didn’t want her back? What if the hot tub and the make-out session in the shed had only been flukes? He might have already made the decision that they didn’t suit.

But then she remembered what he’d said in the gazebo.

“Hmmph,” she said.

“What?” He shifted to low gear to go up the steep incline leading to his house.

“What you said in the gazebo. That was so wrong—right when I was trying to be dignified and act like a possible mayor. I think your comment proves you’re not taking your job seriously.”

There she went again, shooting herself in the foot! But she was right. How could she be right and still want to sleep with him?

“What I told you has nothing to do with my job as mayor. Should public servants not be allowed to have personal lives?”

He sounded so serious, which made her feel weird. It wasn’t like she wanted to get into a
relationship
with him. The man was a football coach who didn’t like libraries. How could she ever discuss books with him?