“That’s the sex hangover talking,” she assured him.
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s you.”
“Me?” she squeaked. Her stupid hope butterflies landed on her stomach lining, waiting to be crushed by the fly swatter of reality.
“What do you regret?” she asked, hating herself for needing the answer.
“That I wasted a whole night here without you.”
Hot. Damn. It was the most perfect sentence ever uttered to her before seven a.m. in her entire life.
Before she could form a sexy, flirtatious sentence, he was taking her mug, setting it on the table with a definitive click and kissing the hell out of her.
The kiss didn’t taste like a goodbye. It tasted like a good morning.
Touching was good. Definitely not weird, she decided as his tongue drove her just a little wild. Somehow she found herself on top of him, straddling him on the couch while the cat shot judgmental gazes in their direction.
The denim of his jeans felt rough against the inside of her thighs. But there was a prize beneath it. A long, rigid prize.
“Mmm. Wait,” Ryan said, pulling back. “We have things.”
“Lots of things,” she agreed, rolling her hips in a quest for the friction she was suddenly desperate for.
“Plans. To-do lists. Action items,” he murmured, sinking his teeth into her neck.
“We should definitely stop.”
“Definitely.”
Half an hour later, Sammy found herself on her back, partially under the coffee table. Her sweatshirt was stuck around her neck. She was missing a slipper.
Her legs were tangled up with one of Ryan’s limbs, where he sprawled on the floor next to her. His jeans hung over the back of the couch. His shirt was unaccounted for.
“If I’d have known that this would be the upside of some crooked small-town bank trying to screw over my uncle, I wouldn’t have complained so much about coming out here,” Ryan murmured into the fuzzy area rug.
She blinked. “Wait. What?”
“Rainbow Berkowicz.” He yawned. “She’s trying to collect on a loan that doesn’t exist by threatening Carson with foreclosure if he doesn’t make some kind of phony balloon payment.”
Forgetting where she was, Sammy sat up swiftly. Well, she tried. She smacked her forehead on the underside of the coffee table.
“Ow! Run that by me again?”
25
“Where are we going?” Ryan demanded, jumping into the passenger seat of Sammy’s SUV when she revved the engine. “I told you, I have Rainbow right where I want her.”
“You’d like to think that,” she said tersely. “But you don’t. Buckle up.”
She was mad. So mad she could feel her face heating up to 9,000 degrees. The diabolical underhandedness was unfathomable. “What exactly did Carson tell you when he called?” she asked, throwing the vehicle into reverse.
Ryan ran through it again as she sped toward town. “What’s this all about?” he asked.
“You’re being set up,” she snapped. “We’re being set up.”
He looked confused in the early morning sun. Confused and disheveled and sexy as hell. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let them do this to you.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and pretended it was Bruce Oakleigh’s neck.
“Who?”
“The Beautification Committee.”
“You’ve lost me,” Ryan admitted.
“It’s only funny when they do this to other people,” she muttered grimly.
He was pinching the bridge of his nose now. “Do what, Sam? You’ve got to stop speaking in code,” he insisted.
But she was too angry to explain. The Beautification Committee had toyed with them, manipulated them. There was zero chance Ryan was going to find it “charming” that a band of vigilantes had marked them for love.
She found the enemy in One Love Park where setup for the Solstice Celebration was beginning in earnest. Vendors lugged tables and goods to their designated spots. Pop-up tents in a rainbow of colors dotted the landscape. Food trucks parked and rolled out their canopies. It looked like any other normal town function. Except for the web of lies originating from the small clump of people huddled under a bright yellow tent.
In their little bubble of matchmaking machinations, several Beautification Committee members buzzed about unpacking and arranging a display of their nude fundraising calendar.
“Rainbow Berkowicz, you manipulative puppeteer,” Sammy bellowed, as she marched up to the bank manager and her husband, Gordon. Rainbow looked sedate in a black wool coat and ski hat. Gordon shunned the cold with purple corduroy bell-bottoms and a hooded knit poncho.
The couple glanced at each other then back at her. And Sammy saw the unspoken “uh-oh” that passed between them.
“What can I do for you, Sammy?” Rainbow asked.
“What are you two doing here together?” Gordon asked. “You weren’t supposed to see each other until tonight.” His wife elbowed him in the ribs.
“Did you get Ryan fired just so you could play matchmaker?” Sammy demanded.
“What?” Ryan’s question cracked like a whip on the cold morning air.
“Don’t be silly!” Bruce Oakleigh bustled up in the bottom half of a Santa costume. The beard and belly were real. “That would be overstepping our bounds just a touch. Don’t you think? Although, with all the money we’ve made on our tasteful nude calendar, we probably could have afforded to orchestrate a firing.” He stroked his fluffy silver beard as if he were considering the strategy.
“You’re absolutely ridiculous!” Sammy’s anger was entering the stratosphere. They’d ruined Ryan’s life just to lure him there under false circumstances, dangled him in front of her, and she’d walked into the snare without a backward glance.
“Oh, no, dear. He’s quite serious,” Willa, proprietor of Blue Moon Boots and known for her matchmaking sneakiness, insisted. “We’ve made $700,000 so far.”
“Seven hundred thousand dollars? You know what? Never mind.” Sammy shook her head, unwilling to get derailed. “Did you create a fake bank foreclosure just to get Carson’s nephew into town?”
“Oh, that,” Rainbow said. “Yes. We did do that.”
“Are you saying she tried to collect on a bogus loan to get me here?” Ryan asked. “That’s illegal. It makes no sense.”
“Nothing they do makes sense,” Sammy snarled.
“Everything we do makes sense,” Bruce countered.
“It’s all for your own good,” Gordon promised. “But you two shouldn’t see each other before tonight. We have it all planned out.”
Ellery, in black lipstick, Princess Leia buns, and an ebony cape, hustled over on four-inch platform boots. “Sammy! So good to—”
“Can it, Ellery,” Sammy snapped. “Are you or are you not trying to match Ryan and me up?”
“Match us up to do what?” Ryan asked, firmly dragging Sammy out of Ellery’s face.
“Get married,” Sammy said.