“Yes, ma’am, but I’m wonderin’ how we’re going to manage it when I pick up a bar bunny for the night. Do I hang a towel on the knob or what?” His grin was enough to cause a sworn Sister of Mercy to hyperventilate.
Her hands began to sweat, and heat crawled up her neck all the way to her cheeks at the vision that popped into her head—he was naked and tangled up in the sheets on his twin bed. She dropped the fork, tried to catch it before it hit his foot but failed.
“Good thing I didn’t kick my boots off before we came in here.” He bent over to retrieve the fork, and she got a full view of his butt in tight jeans. She was way too young for menopausal hot flashes, but right then, she sure could have used one of those church fans with Jesus on one side and that psalm about lying down in green pastures on the other.
When she thought of that, another picture of Cameron wiggled its way into her mind. He was lying beside her on a quilt with pretty green grass all around them. She could hear the quiet sound of a bubbling brook nearby.
That’s close to sacrilege, a niggling little voice in her head said loudly. She shook the image from her mind and concentrated on finishing her breakfast.
When everything was done to her satisfaction, she put it all on a platter and set it on the bar. Careful not to brush against Cameron on her way around to the other side, she gave the swinging gate a shove and thought she was doing well until it stuck. She lost momentum and started to fall, then two strong arms caught her and set her upright.
“Now we’re even,” Cameron said.
With both hands on the edge of the bar and adrenaline still rushing through her veins, she shot him a look of appreciation. “Thank you, but how come you think we’re even?”
He shrugged. “You cleaned our apartment. I saved your life.”
“I almost fell, but I didn’t almost die,” she smarted off.
“If you’d have hit your head on this hard floor, you might have died,” he answered. “Or worse yet, had brain damage and couldn’t help me run this place. Cleaning the apartment is a small price to pay for your life, darlin’… I mean Miz Jorja.”
“Just Jorja,” she said through clenched teeth as she kicked the gate open. “Tomorrow, we’ll have to put some WD-40 on that thing.” She continued around the end of the bar and sat down on the barstool in front of her food. “And speaking of tomorrow, I found all kinds of Christmas decorations in the utility room, so I thought we’d make this place look a little more festive.”
“Mistletoe?” he asked.
“What about it?” She picked up a piece of bacon with her fingers and bit off the end.
“Maybe we’ll hang two or three pieces so the poor old cowboys will have an excuse to kiss the pretty ladies.” He went back to the grill and finished making his omelet.
“Cowboys don’t need excuses for that,” she told him.
“Some of them might be shy, like me,” he teased.
She almost choked on a bite of omelet. “Honey, I’ve known you less than an hour, and I already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s not a shy bone in your body.”
“No endearments, remember?” He shook an egg turner at her. “We are just roommates and business partners.”
She gave him a curt nod and went back to eating.
You’d do well to remember that, the voice in her head reminded her.
* * *
Cameron had lived alone for the past ten years, and he’d slept in the nude every single night of that time. Even when he was in one of the two relationships he’d had over that decade, he had not worn anything to bed at night. He had a pair of running shorts among his clothing that he could wear, but as he got out of the shower he groaned at the thought of elastic binding his waist. Add that to the idea of decorating the bar with someone as obviously OCD as Jorja was—doilies, for Pete’s sake, and a fancy shower curtain—and he was tempted to make a run for it. If the roads hadn’t been so damn slick and Florida hadn’t been so far away, he might have gotten into his truck and headed back south.
But that would mean admitting that Jorja had gotten under his skin, and he’d already let a couple of lovely ladies do that job in the past. Now his policy was to love them for a night or a weekend at the most and leave them with a smile on their face and some happy memories. No more commitments for him. He had been burned badly the last time around, and now he steered clear of the fire.
When he left the bathroom and padded barefoot across the cold wooden floor, he noticed that she was already in bed and facing the wall. Her red hair was splayed out on the pillow. Thick red lashes that he had seen earlier proved that her flame-colored hair didn’t come from a bottle. Like stars in the sky, freckles were scattered across her nose, reminding him of what his grandmother had told him about the freckles on his sister’s face.
“That’s where the angels kissed her before she was born,” Nana said.
Evidently, the angels didn’t think a tough old cowboy who’d grow up to be a bartender needed any kisses. He stared his fill of Jorja and then crawled into his own bed. He’d driven long, long hours that day, and it was almost two o’clock in the morning, but tired as he was, he couldn’t fall right asleep. He laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the dark ceiling for a long time before his eyes finally got heavy enough, and he drifted off. When he awoke, the clock on her chest of drawers across the room clicked over nine thirty, but the window above his bed was foggy gray. For a few seconds, he was disoriented and unsure where he was. Had he spent the night in some woman’s house?
Then everything came back to him in a flash. He cut his eyes across the room. Janie’s bed was made and the red and green pillows—no, that wasn’t right—it was Jorja, not Janie. Jorja Jenks, hence the JJ that he’d thought would be a guy. He heard a noise, and then cussing loud enough to blister the paint right off the walls filtered across the room. The door to the utility room opened and Jorja dragged out a box with a picture of a Christmas tree on the front of it. His eyes left the box and focused on the fuzzy black spider crawling toward her arm. He started to yell, but words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. The critter hopped from the box to her arm, and she simply slapped it away.
Cameron could tolerate snakes, wild bulls, mice, rats, and even redheaded women, but spiders gave him hives. When the black, furry thing flew through the air and landed on his leg, he came up out of the bed with a yelp and began dancing around the room.
“Good God! What’s the matter with you?” Jorja stomped the spider, gasped, and spun around.
He felt a cold breeze on his naked body and scrambled for his sleeping shorts that were lying on the floor. “Sorry about that. I must’ve kicked these off in the night,” he muttered as he pulled them on.