Authors: Carolyn Brown
She forgot about Marlin and threw the top sheet out over the bed, letting it come to a rest and then adjusting the sides to a uniform distance. She placed the ecru-colored blanket on the bed and made hospital corners on the end of the mattress. She finished up by putting on the light brown comforter that matched the Western motif in the wallpaper border around the top of the room. Pistols, longhorn cattle, horseshoes, and mesquite: Pearlita had found the border on sale about thirty years before and bought up enough to last until eternity dawned. Pearl couldn’t remember a time when the border hadn’t been in the rooms and she’d been coming to Henrietta since she was five. But come spring when she decided on what she wanted to change to, it was all going out the door. She could see soft shades of blue with Amish quilts instead of bedspreads, or maybe vintage chenille if she went with the quaint and romantic theme.
She scanned the room: vacuum marks on the floor attesting to the fact that it had been cleaned; towels and toiletries in the right places; a tiny note pad and a pen with the Longhorn Inn logo on each nightstand; remote on top of the television. Everything looked good so it was on to the next room. Maybe she’d build onto the back of the lobby and put in a cozy little dining room and make a modified bed and breakfast place. But first things first, and she had to get the rooms cleaned.
If only one word could be engraved under Pearl’s name on her tombstone it would be organized. Despite the chaos that so often ruled in her life, she could organize and compartmentalize. In a week’s time she’d found a dozen ways to cut corners while cleaning rooms.
The next thing on her super-duper organized list was to remove all the sheets and towels from the next three rooms, take the dirty linens down to the laundry room, and reload the cart. While that washed she’d clean those three rooms, redo them, and then strip down the next three rooms. The washers would be finished so she’d move laundry to the dryer, start three more loads, reload her cart, and start all over. She opened the door to room eleven and rounded up the towels from the bathroom floor.
“Why do they always pitch them on the floor? There’s a rack, the top of the shower rod, and even the edge of the tub. Why the floor?”
“Who knows?” a deep voice said from the doorway.
She jumped and spun around in one fluid movement to find Wil leaning against the jamb. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it might crack a rib. Flight or fight had taken hold and she wanted to do both: fly into his arms for protection and then beat him senseless for scaring the bejesus out of her.
Second thought: fly into him and push him back on one of the freshly made beds.
“Are your tires fixed?” she asked breathlessly.
“Didn’t come to fix tires but I did check them. Someone just let the air out of them. They’re not ruined. The towels and sheets from the rest of the rooms are in the laundry room in piles ready to be washed. I took out what was in the dryers, folded it, and stacked it up on the racks; put what was in the washers over in the dryers; and started another load. Now what do you want me to do? Start vacuuming from the other end or scrubbing bathrooms?”
She was totally and utterly speechless. Surely he was teasing.
Wil grinned. She was pretty damn cute standing there in tight-fitting jeans, no makeup, and sweat beading up below her nose. He stood to one side and she brushed against him as she closed the door. It stretched his supply of willpower almighty thin to keep from planting a kiss on those soft-looking lips right then. The heat from her breasts ever so slightly touching his abs was enough to start a wildfire right there in gravel parking lot.
“You clean?” she asked.
Dammit! I didn’t realize how tall he is. What would it be like to… whoa, hoss! Yes, he’s hot. Yes, he turns me on. No, I will not think about it.
“I have a house. Cleaning rooms couldn’t be that much different. You scrub the bathroom, vacuum the floor, and do some dusting.”
“Why?”
“Because my house gets dirty.”
“No, why are you here?”
“I don’t like to owe people. You won’t let me take you to dinner so I’m here to help clean rooms.”
She blinked three times and he didn’t disappear, but surely she’d heard him wrong. Men did not offer to clean. In her experience it took an act of God to get them to pick up their dirty socks and actually put them inside the hamper instead of tossing them at it. And forget about them ever offering to scrub a bathroom. There was no way Wil had just offered to scrub bathrooms. Not with his looks and sex appeal. It wasn’t possible.
“So?” he asked impatiently.
“I’m thinking. Don’t rush me.”
“You really ought to hire some help. If you had a cleaning lady you could be catching a nap after that horrible night you just had.”
“I don’t need your advice but I will take your help.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. What next?”
Did those cute freckles taste sweet? Would she claw him like a cat if he bent down and kissed those sexy full lips?
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Vacuum and dust. Start the next room and work your way around to the end. I’ll come in behind you, clean the bathrooms, make the beds, and put out fresh towels. I’ll check the laundry each time I go back to reload the cart and keep that going.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. When I get done with the vacuuming, I’ll fold laundry. When we get finished Rye says for us to come on over to his momma’s place for supper. They put out a big spread at dinner and then eat on it all day. We can get in on the leftovers.”
She was shocked all over again. Sexy as hell; cleaned and scrubbed bathrooms; and was comfortable enough in his own skin to tell his buddy! “Rye knows you are here?”
“Yep, I called him to thank him for taking care of Digger. It would have cost me a wad of money to spring Digger from the dog pound. He asked me to come on to Christmas dinner, but I told him I’d just downed a dozen donuts and was coming over here to repay you for all the time you lost. Then he asked us both to drop by for supper. I saw the vacuum in the laundry room. I’ll get busy so we don’t miss Christmas dinner. Rye’s momma is a great cook and I can already taste her pecan pie.”
He said the last few words as he was walking away and she barely caught them. Suddenly, the day didn’t look so long with the promise of more than a glorified TV dinner for supper. Maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea to spend those two hours getting Wil out of jail after all. And on one hand it wouldn’t count as a date, so her mother wouldn’t have to pitch a southern hissy at her going out with a sexy cowboy that made James Dean look as tame as a kitten. On the other, she could feel like she was finally back in the dating game if she went with him. And what would one little date hurt?
***
Wil hated to dust but he made sure every surface was cleaned of fingerprints, spilled milk and soda pop, potato chip grease, and all the other things that motel renters leave behind in their wake. Then he sprayed the mirrors in both the bedroom and bathroom with cleaner and wiped them streak free. After that he vacuumed and finished scrubbing out the bathroom. She’d said she would do that but it was already two in the afternoon. He really did look forward to supper with Rye and Ace. Both had been his friends since they were kids as well as Dewar and Raylen, Rye’s younger brothers.
He picked up a plastic tote of cleansers and started out of the room at the same time Pearl grabbed the door and plowed into it behind a stack of towels. She ran into him and they both grabbed for the falling towels at the same time.
When they untangled their tingling arms and started to straighten up, with the towels on the sidewalk between them, his eyes locked with hers. He leaned in and she rolled up on her tiptoes. She knew she was playing with bad boy fire, but when the tip of his tongue moistened his lips, she couldn’t stop.
He shut his eyes and leaned in for the kiss, barely connecting to her lips and sending a heat wave over the whole state when her damn cell phone caused her to jump backwards. She blushed and fished it out of her hip pocket, touched a button that quieted the country music ringtone, and said, “Hello!”
“Merry Christmas!” A deep voice made at least a dozen syllables out of each word.
“Hello, Matt,” she said. Weeks and weeks she’d gone without a call and the holiday season brought them out of the woodwork like scorpions in the wintertime.
She looked at Wil, who was busy picking up the towels and taking them to the laundry. The way he swaggered made her wish she’d left her phone in the lobby. That was a fine beginning of a kiss. She felt cheated that it hadn’t gone on to the full power, but it would have been pure danger if it had.
“There’s a New Year’s party we’re cookin’ up at our house. Jasmine said you needed to get out or you were going to stagnate?” Matt said.
“I’m sorry. I’m going to have to pass. Tell everyone hello for me.”
“Will do, but if you change your mind, get in touch with Jasmine and she’ll tell you a time and who all is going to be here. And we miss you over in our part of the world. Holiday parties aren’t the same without you.” The line went dead and Pearl went to the next room.
She sniffed the air. “Is that window cleaner I smell?”
Wil was close enough behind her that his breath was warm on her neck. “And bathroom cleanser.”
“Well, hot damn!” she said.
They passed again in the doorway and even though she wanted to look up at his eyes and lips she was careful not to do so as she hurried on outside.
Holy shit! I can’t be kissing this man. Just because he knows his way around a bathroom and knows how to operate a vacuum doesn’t mean jack shit. What is the matter with me? I’m jittery as a damn teenager and my palms are sweating in freezing weather. I haven’t felt like this since Vince.
She let her mind wander back to her first love. The boy on the ranch next to theirs who had stolen her heart that summer before they started their senior year of high school. Vince Knightly. Her knightly-in-shining-armor, as she’d said. It sounded corny now but when she was seventeen just saying the words almost put her in a swoon. That and the fact that he was just the baddest boy in the whole state that summer.
Thinking about the way she felt back then just brought back the heartache that had almost killed her when Vince was gone. At least she’d figured out early in life that no one was ever going to hurt her like that again.
***
Wil really felt cheated. He’d wanted to devour those lips, not just nibble at the edge.
Hell’s bells! I don’t need a spitfire like her in my life. After I get through helping her out today I’m going to keep a mile between us. I’m going to pretend there is a restraining order that says I can’t get within a thousand feet of her.
She could hear him vacuuming in the next unit when she finished the beds and towels, amazed the whole time at the immaculate job he did. “Wonder if he’d be available on a stand-by notice?” she mused aloud as she braced against the cold when she opened the door and moved her cart down the sidewalk.
She carried towels into the next unit, straight to the bathroom, and racked them up, set out complimentary toiletries, and went back for bed linens. He moved on without passing her in the doorway, vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, and was pushing the vacuum down the sidewalk when she went in to put the room back together. They fell into the routine and at exactly five o’clock they finished the last room. He wound the cord around the vacuum, picked it up with one hand and the cleaning caddy with the other, and carried both back to the laundry room where he’d found them. She pushed her maid’s cart behind him and enjoyed the view of those tight-fitting jeans.
Stop it!
she commanded, but her eyes wouldn’t listen. She looked at the only two trucks in the parking lot, at the white winter clouds dotting a blue sky, at the windows as she passed one room after another, but it didn’t work. She still kept sneaking peeks at the way he filled out those Wranglers.
“How long will it take you to get ready to go to Rye’s momma’s place?” he yelled over his shoulder.
“I didn’t say I was going.”
He set the caddy down and opened the door, held it for her, and then followed her into the steamy hot laundry room. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s Christmas. Austin was your friend. Rye is my friend.”
“I’m tired. I’m cranky. I thawed out my own Christmas supper.”
“That isn’t a decent excuse.”
He was right. It wasn’t even a bad excuse, and the only reason she didn’t want to go was she didn’t want Austin, who was still in the first bloom of marriage, to get any wrong ideas. Austin was already on the verge of driving Pearl to alcoholism with her sly attempts at matchmaking. Bless her heart, she was happy as a toad on a lily pad and wanted all women in the world to find a sexy Texan, especially Pearl.
“Come on, you’ve worked like a slave all afternoon. You deserve a good dinner, and Rye’s momma is the best cook in the county. Don’t tell my momma I said that.” He grinned.
“I’m tired.”
“So am I but I’m going. You don’t have to get all dressed up. It’s just leftovers, even if they are better than a five-star restaurant’s food.” He threw an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her up next to his side. “They’ll think I did something wrong and hang me from an old pecan tree with a nasty rope if you don’t go with me.”