Plum.
She’d never had a nickname before Raz blurted the term of endearment in the heat of her cosmic vibrator-laden meltdown. But the audio on the viral video hadn’t picked up that exchange. There was no way anyone could know about the moniker. Should she have put a stop to the man calling her plum? Yes, of course! But something inside her liked it when he randomly dropped the sweetly satisfying syllable—like they had a secret connection that went beyond a forced partnership and great sex.
No, not great sex.
It was out-of-this-world sex.
No, that wasn’t right either.
It was more like toe-curling, eyes rolling back in your head, wondering if your soul will ever return to your-body while riding the orgasm-of-all-orgasms kind of sex.
Yep, that was it.
With that admission, a hot blush bloomed on her neck and chest. Dark clouds had rolled in along with a breeze, and the temperature seemed to have dropped, but was it getting hotter now? Was she in the path of a solar flare cutting through the clouds and heating her to a sex-obsessed boil?
Stop.
After Raz’s ten-day MIA-fest, she’d promised herself she’d keep up her guard when it came to the handsome beefcake with his magic mouth, perfect cock, and dexterous hands. She tensed, forcing herself to think of anything other than Erasmus Cress’s hard abs and muscled arms.
Buddha, give this woman strength.
Why had she pulled him into that bedroom? Why had she kissed him? Why had she moaned the dirtiest of sighs as he ran his tongue across her skin and tasted her neck? Did she enjoy receiving hickeys? Was she on team hickey now? Was there even a team for that?
No, no, no!
Forget the hickey master and focus.
There was a gruff cowboy not twenty feet away.
Who was he, and why was he here?
She needed answers, and she needed to get her mind off kissing the beefcake. So, answers it was.
Granted, the slightly wobbly-on-his-feet old cowboy pulling up with a trailer and using their secret-ish nicknames wasn’t the craziest thing that had happened to her since she’d become Raz’s nanny and spiritual advisor. Scratch that. She was a spiritual advisor in name only. She hadn’t done anything in the spiritual advisor department with the man.
No, that’s not entirely true.
When Raz started spiraling, she’d sensed it immediately. She’d watched him gasp for breath as he fell into the clutches of a panic attack. Unable to stop herself, she’d known exactly what to do. Like muscle memory, but the spiritual kind, when she rested her hand on his heart, it was as if a force had raised her arm and pressed her palm to his chest. And it had worked. For that brief slip of time, a steady thrum of energy bound them together, two halves coming together as one spiritual whole. The vibe was a combination of pure glowing kindness and a grounding, solid serenity with the gentle whisper of quiet consent. Warm and comforting, she’d never connected with a man in that way before. There was something else there, too. Something she couldn’t quite identify. Could it be the fresh energy of this town, the rush of adrenaline, or even a silent, knowing presence?
She couldn’t say—but it had been there, in them, and with them.
“Are you sure you don’t know this man, Libby? He’s looking at you like he knows you,” Briggs pressed, snapping her out of her daydream. “You are from Colorado,” the agent added, his voice rising an octave.
“That doesn’t mean I know everyone in the state,” she replied as she studied the bearded gentleman closely.
Did she know him?
No, she couldn’t. She’d never stepped foot in Rickety Rock, Colorado.
What still didn’t make a lick of sense was why he’d called them Beefcake and Plum.
One thing was for certain. She had to get it together. They were surrounded by the media, and the last thing they needed was another viral video. She wasn’t about to give those astronauts another clip to reenact in zero gravity.
“You don’t think Silas Scott’s people sent this guy as a stunt, do you?” Briggs whispered to Raz before turning to her. “You landed quite a blow to the bloke with the tiny chakra talk. Brilliant, by the way, using yoga verbiage to insinuate the chap wasn’t packing anything in his trousers. Bravo! After this nanny spiritual thing runs its course, you could work in PR. That little ditty is already making the rounds on social media.”
Okay, there was a lot to unpack in the agent’s statement. Was Raz’s team already planning for her exit? Was she okay with that? Was Raz? And holy karma pie! She’d dropped her whole love-and-light vibe to insult a man’s testicles for the world to see.
Was it kind to send out such negatively charged energy?
No.
Can chakras be teensy-tiny?
Not really.
They’re energy centers, but she couldn’t help herself from getting in a little dig. She still wasn’t a fan of fighting, but if there was ever a man who sounded like he deserved to be punched square in the jaw, it was that snake of a boxer.
And what should she do about Briggs’s comment—the after the nannying and spiritual advisor stint ends business? A lump formed in her throat, but she had to shelve her emotions. Could she imagine life without Sebastian? She glanced at her barefoot partner in crime. No, she couldn’t. Could she imagine life without her beefcake? She couldn’t go there either. On that sticky matter, her head and her heart weren’t in agreement.
“It can’t be Scott’s people,” Raz countered. “There’s no way they could have anticipated what Libby would say. And it’s too soon. He won’t want to take away from the weigh-in.”
“The weigh-in?” she repeated.
“It’s when the boxers meet in front of the media to juice up the publicity and weigh-in on the official scale to qualify for the fight,” Raz explained. “They’re choreographed events. The press wants to see the tension between the fighters. It’s too soon for that. Silas Scott is a snake, that’s for sure, but he knows how to use the media for maximum exposure.”
“All right, so he’s probably a curious local. I’ll take care of this. I thought of something brilliant,” Briggs said and cleared his throat. “Sir, you with the hat and the dirty truck, about the word beefcake.”
“Yeah?” the man shot back, eyeing the agent.
Briggs puffed up. “If that’s what you thought you heard on the viral video, which was a piece of the eclectic training regimen Mr. Cress is following, you’re mistaken. Libby didn’t say that. She was counseling Erasmus Cress not to eat cake. Beefcake. Eat cake,” the man continued enunciating each syllable, then scanned the swath of media, watching them gobble up his explanation like hungry vultures. “Do you see how they have a similar ring to them?” the agent finished.
“Eat cake?” she whispered as Raz cocked his head to the side and stared at the sports agent.
“Did you get hit on the head with a rock?” the old man asked Briggs. “You gotta watch out for those in these parts. Why do you think this town is called Rickety Rock?”
Briggs gasped and stared up into the cloudy sky as if he anticipated an onslaught of incoming boulders.
“I said rocks, not meteors,” the bearded man corrected.
Flustered, Briggs smoothed his sport coat as he studied the ground. “No, I haven’t been hit in the head with a rock.”