Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (Cactus Creek #3)(4)

Ah yes, the universally sexy call sign of all modern single women.

Just drop it for now, Lia. Focus. She’d wrap her head around the stranger’s presence here of all places later.

Now what was the audience member in front of her asking? The genetic lineage of the Civil War rifles. Nice.

Her answer for him began overtaking her thoughts and soon her mind was lulled by the facts and stories she’d gathered over the years. This was her favorite part of her trade—watching folks get pulled into the tales each of these weapons had to offer. The discussions that would follow always contained the rewarding intellectual outlets her mind craved just like her body did martial arts.

A calm washed over her.

Her expertise with the war weapons she’d fixatedly gotten to know better than some of the best in her field were what she’d decided to devote her life to nearly a decade ago. It was the bread and butter of her little shop down in Cactus Creek, her own hard-earned pride and joy that was taking off quite nicely.

Unlike her colleagues, Lia didn’t have any official degrees backing her knowledge—a minor detail which always disqualified her from getting invited to speak at international symposiums about these very weapons in their homelands. Fortunately, none of that mattered to her. For Lia, the unique tools of her trade had ingrained themselves in her head in the vast pockets where adolescent memories should have resided. Where some people stored useless trivia or song lyrics embedded from their teen years, Lia held all the historical facts that made her one of the top-requested combat antique arms authenticators in the Western U.S.

That’s why she knew weaponry better than anything in her life. Well, next to martial arts, that is. Of course, the two didn’t ever get to mingle within the same context in her world, due solely to the pact she’d made with herself long ago to never allow any dangerous arm or firearm be just a weapon—the tool of hurt and destruction that she knew it could be.

That’s exactly the way she’d treated every artifact she’d devoted her life to since.

And how her presentation today unfolded.



*



SHE WAS SPELLBINDING.

Throughout her entire presentation, she’d moved from rifle to rifle with the skill of a soldier and the ardor of an artist, while making sure to lock her eyes on his for the briefest of moments whenever she’d address his side of the audience.

As if to boldly prove to him simply that she could.

Hudson had never experienced anything more ridiculously sexy in his entire life.

Or so he thought.

Now here he was, standing outside of the Phoenix Convention Center a good half-hour later, proceeding to have his brain get wiped completely clean. The reason?

His favorite little rifle expert was currently sliding into the pair of jeans she’d apparently had tucked away in the bag slung across her torso. Right there, not forty yards from him, out in the parking lot next to a sleek Kawasaki ninja bike, the woman was pulling the jeans up under the business skirt she’d clearly only worn for the conference...based on the way she rolled the garment up and shoved it into her bag without another thought.

This was yet another facet of the woman he was becoming increasingly enthralled by, yet another difference transforming that positively mythological hair of hers. On the night of the wedding, her silky midnight-black hair had been a seamless raven waterfall down her back that had inspired visions of wood nymphs in the moonlight. Earlier today in the exhibit hall, it had been twisted up in a professional bun that had been just as distracting in how it highlighted her delicate features and intelligent, catlike eyes. Now the chopsticks holding the bun in place were gone, and the soft obsidian waves framing the biker glasses she’d slipped onto her pert little nose was perhaps his favorite look yet.

Largely due to the content smile that filtered across her face as she shook her hair out.

Damn, she had a great smile.

Hudson had intended to go up and talk to her after her lecture, maybe ask her out for some drinks. Unfortunately, she’d gone from being bombarded by audience questions to following the two Spencer’s employees, who had loaded the dozen rifle cases into the Spencer’s van waiting for them out front.

He’d lost sight of her shortly after. Only to find her here in the motorcycle parking area doing her little jeans shimmy dance.

Precisely when his brain had stopped functioning.

And it was slow going starting it back up. The fact that she’d moved on to slowly peeling off her classy gray top wasn’t helping one bit. Jesus. The tantalizing sight of her athletically toned back, revealed slow inch by slow inch in plain sight of the entire neighborhood…

Had Hudson been able to uncement his feet from the ground, he would’ve rushed over to block her gorgeous body from any spying eyes.

Finally, with a shuddering sigh of relief, tinged with the tiniest bit of disappointment, he saw that she had on a thin tank top under the top she’d been wearing. Black, like the plain tee she dragged over her head next and the no longer business-like knee-high boots she yanked back on her feet. While it certainly wasn’t uncommon to see women clad in far skimpier tops, seeing this particular woman in a simple, sporty tank had been nothing short of mind-blisteringly hot.

Before he got a chance to reel his senses back in and reboot, she hopped on her bike and started across the lot. He headed straight for his jeep, and was in the middle of telling himself that going after her wasn’t at all stalkerish when he saw her stop at the parking exit and turn her head in his direction. A flick of her helmet shield and he saw her laughing almond eyes smiling right at him. Startled to a halt, he just stood there as she tilted her head and waved once, briefly, before slapping her helmet shield back down and zooming down the street.