Shimmy Bang Sparkle(2)

Christ, she was gorgeous. I was gonna swoop in there, be her hero, and make my exit. That was it. One and done. I reached out to push open the door and . . .

. . . fucking coldcocked myself. My cheek mashed against the glass, my hips banged against the door handle, my boot whacked the bottom. For one god-awful second, I was a fly on a windshield, and she was in the driver’s seat. Her eyes got wide, and she did something between a laugh and a grimace, immediately looking away.

I ricocheted back off the door and saw the sign—not at eye level, but inexplicably at knuckle level—that said PLEASE PULL!

So fucking smooth. But I’d never been a guy to back out of a plan, no matter what. So I regrouped, pulled on the handle this time, and stepped inside.

I was met with a wave of cool AC, a chilly burst against the fall desert warmth, better than walking into a beer cooler at a liquor store. The place smelled clean and new, and the mirrors on all the walls sparkled like a showroom at a Windex factory. From every direction, from every surface, glimmered the goods, reflected back at me from the mirrors in the cases, like I was inside a kaleidoscope. Diamonds. Emeralds. Garnets. Peridots. Sapphires. Pearls. Rubies.

Yet for the first time in my life, the cleavage and sparkle I really wanted had nothing at all to do with jewels.

The electric eye dinged as I came through the door, but she didn’t turn toward me. Instead, she pressed her knuckle to her mouth and furrowed her eyebrows, like she was trying to stop herself from bursting out laughing. Within a few steps, I was right next to her. I knew I could play this one of two ways: pretend I hadn’t just slammed into the door, or fucking roll with it. “Bad signage,” I said.

An adorable nostril flare accompanied her nod. “Just awful.” Her eyes were a crazy, mind-bending blue. The sapphires in the case had nothing on those eyes. They were blue like a lagoon I once saw down in Mexico, so deep and so dark, all you wanted to do was dive in. Her beautiful eyes moved off me, though, and zeroed in on the door. Again she tried to push down the laugh. I turned over my shoulder and noticed what she was looking at. A smudgy circle in the shape of my face. “I have an Advil if you need one,” she said.

It was damned tempting, and I had the very real urge to double-check to make sure I wasn’t bleeding from my nose. But I hadn’t come in here for first aid. I’d come in here for her, and she was even prettier up close than I’d ever imagined she would be. Plus, she smelled damned good. Some perfume that hit the spot between dark and sweet. “That ring looks just right on you.”

She took a big breath and considered it. As I’d suspected, she was wearing it engagement-style, fourth finger on her left hand. If you want it, put a ring on it. No shit. The guy in the Beemer was surely on his goddamned way. “You think?” she asked.

“So where’s the guy who’s buying that for you?” I asked her, and took a step closer. Closer than was polite. She was a magnet, and I couldn’t help myself at all.

She lifted one shoulder and arched her eyebrow. “Nobody buys me diamonds. Nobody.”

Well, now we’re talking. Odds on a douchebag fiancé showing up were now zero, and even better, she didn’t say it like she was bummed out about it; she said it like she was proud, like no dude on the planet was good enough to put a ring on her finger. As if her bar was set so high, legions of guys had split their poles trying to spring for it.

She had that thing that women have, when they get to their midthirties and give no fucks. When they are the perfect object of desire and own it, when they’re halfway between woman and goddess and swing their hips to say, My milkshake is the best there is. She had that confidence, that indefinable thing that makes a guy think, Fuuuuuuuck. And Christ almighty, I was thinking it. I was thinking it so hard, I damn near said it out loud.

Admittedly, my game wasn’t as strong as it used to be. I’d spent the last seven months in a place where the closest I’d gotten to a pair of breasts was a two-pack of pink coconut cupcakes in the vending machine. It was the kind of joint where guys took art classes and did yoga and talked about shit like self-betterment and finding your bliss.

So now here I was. I’d been out for barely a month, and now I was inside a jewelry store, staring at a woman who was a whole hell of a lot more alluring than the gems. Find your bliss indeed. “Nobody?” I asked her. “Doubtful.”

She gave me this sassy slow shake of her head. One curl tickled her bare arm, and her T-shirt slid off her shoulder to reveal a pink bra strap. She covered it up, but I’d seen it and wanted to see a whole lot more of it. “Nope. I’ve picked them all off. Like dating Pac-Man.”

Chemistry isn’t all that complicated, and it was this simple: I wanted her. The attitude. The hair. The eyes. The off-the-cuff Pac-Man reference. The polite way she’d deflected the fact that I’d walked into a stationary object when I saw her. Even the jeans. I was such a sucker for a woman in skintight jeans. Hers were well worn, stonewashed, high cut, and retro, with one hole over her left knee. Those weren’t some predistressed bullshit from the mall. Those were the real deal; her body had worn them out. Her hips swaying had made them fit her like that. Her delicate hands had frayed the edges of her fly. Fuck. “Maybe you haven’t met your match.”

She didn’t even answer me with a word. Or a laugh. Instead, she gave me a single goddamned wink.

Boom. I didn’t just see it; I felt it. The wink was a BB fired from a slingshot that hit me square between my eyes. Hit me harder than the plate glass door, no question. But Christ, I was forty years old, I was covered in tattoos, and I drove a goddamned Ducati. I wasn’t gonna let some woman’s wink flatten me down like a cannonball. Not even hers. Not yet.