Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1)(19)
“I know that too.” Unfortunately their bodies didn’t, because even as they dropped their hands, the rest of them swayed closer.
“Then I’ll just say my thanks so we can pretend the rest of this didn’t happen.”
He laughed low and husky. “If you say so, Trouble.”
Nope, but she was going to give it her best. “And I wanted to say thank you for fencing in Domino’s yard.” But giving him a beer for this one just didn’t seem right. Didn’t seem enough.
It was the deputy’s turn to blush, which meant that he’d had zero intention of telling her what a wonderful, sweet thing he’d done for her. Well, for Domino, but it felt good all the same. “It was no big deal.”
“To me it was. You promised you’d fix it and you did.”
He took a step back and looked at her as though she’d somehow offended his entire sex. “I gave you my word.”
He had given her so much more.
Few people in Shay’s life had come through for her, which was why she didn’t want to mess this up, or complicate things.
“Most people would have looked into it and maybe followed up, but you went to Mr. Barnwell’s on your day off, helped him build the fence, even bought some of the supplies.”
He shrugged off her words, and for the first time Shay saw a different side of the confident and together deputy. She saw that he didn’t do well with praise, and she wondered why.
“You’re a good man, Jonah,” she whispered, then walked away without another word. Across the street, up her front steps to the porch, and only when she was inside with the door securely closed did she allow herself to breathe. Because that kiss wasn’t a kiss. It was the start of something.
“Should I go with the crotchless or red lace?”
Under different circumstances, with a different woman, Jonah would have asked if she had a pair of crotchless red lace. But since he was on the job responding to a call, and Ms. Clovis Owens was the woman asking, he waved vaguely at the red pair. “I’d go with those.” He had tried several times in vain to direct Clovis to the point of her call, but she somehow kept distracting him.
“Hmmm,” Clovis chuckled, her stare unyielding. “I would have taken you for a crotchless kind of guy.”
Clovis dropped the red lace and picked up the crotchless, then relying heavily on her cane, waddled over to slip them on the half-dressed mannequin in the front window display.
With a round face, an even rounder body, and enough aged cleavage to have Jonah shuddering, Clovis looked more like a madam than a shop owner. Granted, she ran the Boulder Holder, a lingerie store on Main Street that specialized in the curvier woman. And this curvy woman, who’d been rumored to have roamed the earth with the dinosaurs, loved to flaunt her wares, which today included a teal-and-black corset—whose seams looked one chuckle away from snapping due to the extraordinary amount of weight—and a button that said LET’S GET INTIMATE.
“I’m spicing up the shop, trying to give customers a reason to wander this far down Main Street,” she explained. “Ever since I moved locations, I’ve had a hard time moving merchandise. I still have my regulars, but the lack of walk-ins is hurting business.”
Two years ago, Clovis had purchased one of the five renovated Victorian storefronts on the far end of Main Street with the hope that the luxury live-work-play community breaking ground across the street would bring in high-end customers and raise the price of real estate. The project was nixed by the planning commission before they even broke ground, and the store owners had been floundering ever since.
Satisfied with her display, Clovis walked back through the store, stopping midway to look at her hands, as though just realizing she no longer held her cane.
“Sorry to hear that.” Jonah walked over to the window and, eyes averted, carefully extracted it from underneath the mannequin and handed it to her.
“Aren’t you a gentleman,” she said, and when Clovis sat back behind her counter and thumbed through a box of glow-in-the-dark G-strings as though they were quilting squares, Jonah busied himself retrieving his notebook. “My granddaughter warned me against moving. Said I was counting my bills before they were in the strap.”
On that note, Jonah cleared his throat. “You called about a discrimination claim.”
That phrasing finally got her attention. “It isn’t a claim,” she said, her voice firm. “It was an act of discrimination pure and simple, and I want the culprit arrested.”
“Why don’t you explain what happened.”
“I was on that Pinterest, pinning me some pictures of those Cuties with Booties, when I saw that Giles Rousseau had opened him an account.” The older woman looked horrified. “The man makes me mail him a paper catalogue every season because he refuses to sign up for my e-mail mailing list, but he’s got a Pinterest account! And he pinned pictures from our swim class at the senior center on his Sexy and Single in St. Helena board.”
Ah, Christ. Jonah knew where this was going. Warren was supposed to handle Giles, get him to hand over the photos, or at least scare him into not making them public.
“I’m sorry about this, Ms. Owens. I will stop by his place on the way back and have him take your photos down immediately.” Then he was going to rip Warren a new one. Competitor or not, Jonah was tired of cleaning up his messes.