Chapter 2
Creek stood outside of the small, colorful store and cursed under his breath. Not for the first time did he wonder what the hell he was doing here. But since he was here, he might as well go inside.
There was absolutely no excuse for him to enter this store. So if she wasn’t interested, he was going to fall flat, just like the guys had said the other night. He’d gotten mixed signals from the timid beauty that night. One moment, he was sure that she was feeling the intense attraction that he was sensing, and the next, she looked confused, almost angry. And that last glance…she’d appeared almost sad. She’d been surrounded by friends who all looked like they were having a great time, but she’d appeared so out of place.
So what was he doing here? She’d walked out of The Rotten Apple three nights ago without a second glance in his direction. He’d tried to flirt with her, but she’d pulled away from him.
He’d seen something in her eyes, the way she held her breath whenever he was close. Had he only been imagining those reactions?
But hell, no guts, no glory. He wanted this woman and he suspected he was going to have to…he grimaced at the very thought…”date” her. He was used to women who knew the score, who wanted exactly what he wanted; a simple night of satisfying, no strings attached sex.
He suspected that Violet would be different. She seemed different. And as he stepped into the small shop, he was sort of anticipating the idea of an old-fashioned woman. His body was definitely anticipating seeing her again.
Unfortunately, his prey wasn’t behind the counter. The human being that stood behind the counter looked nothing like his shy, petite beauty from the night before. Definitely not! The person almost growling at him was not the slender beauty who had knocked him sideways the other night at The Rotten Apple. It was a barrel-chested man with a full beard and a somewhat messy flannel shirt that had definitely seen better days.
“Can I help you?” he asked, his voice brusque as he finished chomping on whatever he’d quickly hidden underneath the shop’s counter. The guilty way the man was looking across the store made Creek instantly assume that the man had been imbibing something illegal. But the fishy scent that Creek smelled a moment later made him think it was only a tuna fish sandwich. Nothing wrong with that, he supposed.
Creek felt the man sizing him up instantly. This man knew the score, Creek thought. He was a product of the street and recognized a kindred soul. Creek had grown up on the street, taught himself to read, and put himself through college. He’d built an enormous empire by applying his street knowledge to the wimps on Wall Street who considered themselves sharks. They grew up pampered, attending private schools, and having mommy and daddy rescue them from their problems.
Creek had bought a mountain in Alaska to get away from those types. His mountain allowed him to get away from all the crap that was flung around in the stuffy corporate offices but, with technology and his private plane, he maintained control of his global empire.
So what the hell was he doing standing here, looking for an innocent goddess who should stay as far away from men like him as possible?
He’d tried to stay away. Damn, he’d actually flown over to Paris to take care of some business at one of his companies, just to try and get her out of his mind. But when he’d visited his French lover and felt nothing for her, he knew that he had to get back here and find his goddess.
His plan was to find her, work her out of his system and get his life back under control. Simple plan, he told himself. He was good at plans. He never failed as soon as his agile mind had created a plan.
So where the hell was his woman? In order for his plan to work, she had to be here.
“I’m looking for Violet,” he announced to the man behind the counter. “I thought she owned this shop.” Creek knew that she owned it. He’d done his research. Never enter into a battle without information, he’d learned. Some people thought that money was what gave people power. They were wrong. Information was the key to success.
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly as Creek walked further into the brightly lit store. “She’s not here. What can I do for you?” he growled, leaning his hands on the counter as if challenging Creek to a battle if the next statement came out wrong.
Creek understood the body language. “You’re her stepfather?” Creek asked, guessing correctly. He’d discovered that Violet’s father had passed away when she was young and her mother had remarried several years before succumbing to cancer.
“What’s it to you?” the man challenged.
Creek wasn’t taking the bait. “I’m just here to…”
The door opening interrupted his words and a gust of cool wind hit him in the back. Spring had not yet come to the small towns of Alaska and wouldn’t for a while. There might be daffodils and tulips blooming in “the lower forty-eight”, but there was still snow on the ground here in the icy state.
“Goodness!” his goddess gushed, as she hauled in what looked to be a heavy box.
Creek immediately grabbed the box that was slipping out of her hands and easily lifted it into his arms.
“Oh!” she gasped and straightened. And then she said it again. “Oh!” when she realized who was standing in front of her.
It was him! The man from the bar! Oh my, she thought as she took in his amazing magnificence. She’d forgotten how tall and muscular the man was. That impact was magnified by his leather jacket that covered his broad shoulders, making them look even more dangerous than they had the other day. She hadn’t thought that this man could be more enticing, but she’d been wrong. Dead wrong!
Violet pulled her eyes away from his rough jaw that already was sporting a five o’clock shadow. She suspected that the effect wasn’t from those razors that didn’t cut too close but was because the man was just naturally…raw.
Every sense in her body was leaping with excitement as the man’s spicy scent filled her nose, wreaked havoc with her sense of right and wrong. Violet instinctively knew that the man was wrong, but he smelled so incredibly right.
Okay, so he didn’t look very “right” as he stood in her store, surrounded by delicate, handmade crafts. He reminded her of a giant grizzly bear walking through a field of flowers. The man was danger and raw sexuality while her store sported dream catchers, pretty hand carved items and artsy, hand-blown glass.
Three nights ago, she’d walked out of The Rotten Apple, determined to put him out of her mind. He wasn’t the man for her. The blond bombshell was the woman he wanted in his bed.
To further her campaign to forget this man, she’d told herself that he was wrong for her. She needed a man who was refined and intellectual. She’d tried hard to convince herself that she preferred the more refined gentlemen.
But when she was honest with herself, she knew that this man, with all of his rough edges and sexy charm, his biker-dude outfit and off-hand gallantry, were more enticing than the best chocolate. He was danger when she should want safety. He was power when she should be craving an equal partner for her life.
All of that was true, but she still couldn’t pull her eyes away from this man as he stared down at her, a silly, giddy feeling seeping into her mind.
And then she realized that he was holding the heavy box. “Oh! I’m sorry,” she gasped, and tried to take the box back. “I shouldn’t….”
“Where do you need this?” he asked, keeping it in his hands.
Violet bit her lip and looked around. Where did she need it? Box? Um… “Storage area!” she finally exclaimed, relieved when her mind started to function again. “Yes. The storage area!”
Violet smiled, excited that she’d remembered what was in the box and that it should go onto the shelves to be stored for the summer rush of tourists. She actually sighed in relief after figuring that out then continued to stare up at him.
After a long pause, Creek lifted his eyebrows. “And your storage area is where?” he prompted.
Violet closed her eyes, feeling like a fool. Again!
She spun around on her heel and, shaking her head, led the way behind the counter. “It’s here,” she told him and pulled the door open, showing him the empty space on the storage shelf she’d cleared out earlier this morning, knowing that she’d need more space for the box.
Creek looked around, realized that there was an entire area back here with three workers industriously wrapping boxes in brown wrapping paper, slapping mailing labels on each, and bringing them to an area where the mail carrier would obviously pick them up for shipment. “What’s all this?” he asked.
Violet looked around with pride. “This is where the online business works,” she told him. “I set up a website two years ago to try and move merchandise during the winter months.” She looked up at him. “It was a slow winter, and I had nothing to do, a website seemed like a good idea. The merchandise took off. I was able to hire a marketing firm last year and that really helped boost sales.”
“Where do you get all of your product?” he asked, his business mind kicking into overdrive. There wasn’t a great deal of industry in the smaller towns of Alaska besides the oil, tourist and salmon industries, but the last two were seasonal and generally not as profitable.
Creek was distracted when she stuffed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Was she trying to bring his attention to her adorable bottom? Looking into her eyes, he dismissed the idea as ridiculous. She was fresh and glorious, but not conniving. He also suspected that he was way too cynical for her, but he wasn’t leaving. He’d tried to stay away and failed. Now he had a plan.
“There are so many local craftspeople in the area. It was just a matter of convincing them to give me their products as consignment merchandise. It turned into a win-win proposition. They made more money than the other tourist traps were willing to pay them and I encouraged them to move away from the kitschy wooden salmon and bears. We now have a good selection of one-of-a-kind items that sell pretty well.”
Creek looked around again and nodded. Her merchandise was quirky and interesting, exactly the kind of thing all of the expensive decorators were looking for to fill the affluent homes across the country. “Looks like you’ve done a good job of building up your business while retaining the essence of Alaska. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, and there was that adorable blush again.
Turning away from the workers that seemed to be laughing and joking with each other while they wrapped box after box, he looked down into her pretty blue eyes. “Have dinner with me tonight,” he commanded, watching her carefully. If she wasn’t interested, he’d walk away and get her out of his mind. But if there was even the smallest possibility…
Her fingers moved from her back pockets to her front pockets, then back again nervously. “Dinner?”
Bingo, he thought. She felt it too. She wanted him, but was probably too nervous to admit it. He’d take it slowly, ease her into a relationship. He wasn’t here for the long haul, but there was no reason they couldn’t have a steamy affair, warm up the cold, winter months a bit, and enjoy each other’s company.
He smiled slightly when her fingers slipped into her belt loops. The pockets must not be working well enough for her, he thought with amusement. “It’s the last meal of the day,” he teased. “Usually has meat, a salad. A good bottle of wine.”
Violet laughed and looked down at her shoes again. “It sounds lovely,” she told him, then lifted her head, smiling up at him. “I’d love it.”
“Tonight? Seven o’clock?”
She nodded her head. “Where should I meet you?”
He tried to hide his surprise at that question. “I’ll pick you up,” he told her, angry for some reason that her previous dates obviously hadn’t treated her with the respect she deserved. A lady should be picked up at her door, damn it! No way was she going to drive to whatever restaurant and meet him there. Hell no!
“Seven o’clock,” she repeated, nodding her head.
“I’ll see you then,” he told her, and touched her arm lightly. He wanted to bend down and kiss her, feel her soft lips and taste her honey, but he suspected that would be moving too fast. But he had to touch her, even briefly. He needed some contact with this woman. The light touch on her arm, and then he pulled back, was all he would allow himself.
For now.
He walked out of the shop, picked up his motorcycle helmet and leather gloves, put both on and then threw his leg over the bike. With one last look inside the shop, he nodded to her before he flipped the visor down on his helmet. With a swift kick to the starter, he sped off down the street, eagerly anticipating a night with a beautiful woman.
Thirty minutes later, he walked into The Rotten Apple, unaware of the way the other two men were watching him curiously.
“What’s up with you?” Tucker asked as he leaned back in the wooden chair.
Saeger Rollins smirked. “He found a new woman.”
Tucker chuckled. “A woman isn’t cause for that kind of spring in his step.”
Saeger shrugged his shoulder. “He must have found his little butterfly from the other night.”
Knox would have added his two cents into the fray, but he was out of the country on business, checking out another company he might invest in.
Creek sat down across from his two friends, ignoring the ribbing and opened his computer. “You’re both idiots,” he told them, and started typing something into his laptop.
“So what’s her name?” Tucker asked, leaning forward with a wicked glint in his eye.
“None of your business,” he told them. “Isn’t your stock up? Shouldn’t you be worrying about why that’s happening and not focusing on my love life?”
“His stock is up because he released that new fertilizer,” Saeger interjected, then leaned forward. “So this is love?” he asked, ignoring his friend’s dangerous glare.
“Back off,” Creek growled.
Both men laughed even as Sarah placed a glass of iced tea in front of each of them. “I thought you boys were off to the slopes this morning,” she asked. Sarah was the afternoon waitress that pretended to be the town mother, especially to the four men who pretended they were above all of her mothering.
She saw through all the gruffness of these men and loved them anyway. They’d come into this town, one by one over the past five or six years and had brought jobs and wealth to the area. Just building each of their houses had employed every person in the town who wanted a job. The Rotten Apple employed several of the others and the food served in the place was excellent and could be purchased for crazy low prices. The liquor was top shelf even though most of the people who came in ordered the beer. Locals knew the prices while annoying tourists received a different rate for their requests. All because of these four men.
“Creek’s found himself a woman!” Saeger teased, earning him another dark look, which he continued to ignore.
“You talking about that young thing that came in here with the gaggle of women the other night?” she asked.
Creek growled and ignored her question. “Don’t you have customers that need something, Sarah?” he demanded.
Tucker and Saeger both smiled with interest. “We saw her briefly. We also saw her walk out, not giving our man Creek here the time of day.”
Sarah chuckled and crossed her arms under her ample bosom. “She was a doll. Prettiest little thing, and she blushed like a cutie whenever she looked over at our boy here. And yeah, he was looking all the time.”
“Sending out the silent messages?” Tucker asked, elbowing Saeger in the ribs.
“More like screaming, he was,” she laughed with a cackle. “This boy was hit hard by that lady.”
Saeger turned to look at his friend who was scowling like a panther. “A lady, eh? That’s different.”
“Back off,” Creek growled again. “Last warning.”
The men didn’t care. “So what did she look like?” They asked Sarah, knowing that Creek wouldn’t give them anything.
“Brown wavy hair, bluest eyes this side of the Pacific. Cute in a sexy kind of way.”
The men’s eyebrows went up with that description, and they both turned to look at their friend. “Cute?” Saeger asked.
“Brown hair? Blue eyes? I thought you were a blond man.”
“I have work to do,” Creek said and smacked his laptop closed. He walked out of the bar and moved back to his motorcycle, storing his computer in the storage compartment and speeding away from The Rotten Apple. Once he was back in his home office, he settled into his leather chair and looked out the windows.
The view from this room, or any room in his house on top of the mountain, never failed to soothe him. Down below was the tiny town of Winthrop, Alaska where small houses perched as close together as they possibly could. There were more mountains across the water in front of him but the town was in a valley fed by a deep ocean channel. It kept the town protected from some of the harsher winter storms but still allowed the fishermen and women to easily get in and out with their boats during fishing season. Fish were the primary source of income for the small town. And although the channel gave the fishermen easy access to the rich ocean waters, that didn’t mean it was easy to get supplies to the town.
Saeger had brought in several cows, which were protected year round by a large warehouse. The cows provided milk for the town’s residents while the enormous warehouse grew vegetables year round. Tucker had developed and constructed a sort of windmill that generated heat, keeping the plants warm and also generated a sun-like light that helped the plants grow. It had bothered both men that the parents had to pay ten dollars a gallon for milk and rarely had fresh fruit and vegetables for their kids, so the four of them had fixed that problem quickly. That effort had spawned other ideas, and the whole enterprise was now self-sustaining. The cows and greenhouse produced its own energy, and even earned a profit now, all of which was turned back over to the town to build additional infrastructure.
The wind turbines Tucker had invented were how all four of their mountain homes were heated as well. Creek had to give it to Tucker, he knew how to invent something for just about every environment. He found a problem and solved it with one of his inventions. Once that problem was solved, he marketed the solution and made crazy profits.
Creek pressed a few buttons on his keyboard and several large monitors flashed to life. He tried to focus on work issues, but in his mind, he was thinking about a lovely brunette with beautiful, blue eyes and soft, blushing cheeks.
Violet shivered as she thought of the night ahead of her. He’d really asked her out? She looked down at the box sitting on the shelf and smiled, wanting to jump up and down with her excitement. He really had! He’d driven all the way here, just to ask her out to dinner!
For a moment, she wondered what had happened to Boobie Barbie, but then banished the buxom blond from her mind. Violet refused to let her insecurities eat away at her excitement for the upcoming evening.
“How many orders came in today?” she asked her stepfather, George.
George tossed a well-used napkin into the trashcan and started to reach for the computer.
“That’s okay!” Violet called out, seeing his still-greasy fingers reach for the computer keyboard. “I’ll look it up.” She shifted the keyboard towards her since George, obviously wasn’t going to get his butt off of the stool he’d pulled behind the counter earlier today.
Why had she agreed to give her stepfather a part time job?
Oh yeah, because she’d felt sorry for him!
That pity was wearing thin. He was supposed to be dusting during the day and doing odd jobs around the store when she was gone. She’d never put him in charge of just sitting in the store. There was too much to do for a person to simply sit around. When she was here, she’d asked him several times to help the guys in the back with the packing but somehow, every time she turned around, he was still sitting on that stool.
“Could you dust the shelves over in the wood corner?” she asked as politely as possible. She didn’t want him anywhere near the glass items, knowing that he would more than likely break one or more of them.
George sighed heavily. “Violet, don’t you have a date tonight?” he asked as he lumbered off of the stool. She noticed that he didn’t head over to the closet with the cleaning supplies though.
She was wary of mentioning her date to anyone, much less to George. She didn’t know why, but she wanted to keep her date tonight a secret. “I am meeting someone for dinner, yes,” she replied evasively.
“Why don’t you get all prettied up for your ‘meeting’ and I’ll watch the shop? I’ll drop the keys off to you before I head home.” He glanced at his watch. “There’s only another thirty minutes until you close anyway, but you can go do whatever it is that women do to get dolled up for men.”
Violet’s shoulders drooped, and she instantly felt bad for all of her impatient thoughts about the man today. “That’s awfully sweet of you, George,” she said with a tentative smile.
“Eh, just go on,” he encouraged, and waved his pudgy hands in her direction, then headed over to the closet with all of the cleaning supplies. “I’ll lock up and make sure that everything is done here. I’ll drop off the keys before I head home.”
All of her excitement for the evening came rushing back to her with his words. “If you’re sure you don’t mind,” she said and looked around. Her wrapping crew was finished for today, and all she really needed to do was print out the list of orders for tomorrow. But she could do that first thing tomorrow morning.
And it would be nice to rush upstairs to her apartment and relax, take a long bath and try to get rid of some of this nervousness. “I’ll do it,” she said and grabbed the store keys out of her purse. “Here,” she tossed him a set of keys. “Lock up the front and back before you go and make sure that the cash register is emptied into the safe.”
With his reassurance that it would all be okay, she hurried out the back door and up the wooden stairs to her apartment. It was nice to be so close to her work, she thought. It wasn’t like there was a lot of commuter traffic here in Alaska. The small towns didn’t have any! But still, living over her shop helped her keep tabs on what was going on and she loved every minute she spent in her store. It was her baby and she worried about all of the details.
But tonight, there wouldn’t be any worrying, no accounting to go over, no sales to print out or orders to check. Tonight was all about going out on a date! With a handsome mountain man that looked like he could take on a pack of wolves and come out the winner!