“You don’t want to get involved with him anyway,” she muttered to herself.
The reminder helped, but only a little. Yeah, she wasn’t interested in dating an officer again, but…but damn it, she really wished John Garrett would have sex with her.
“Another shot for our lovely hostess?”
She looked up and found Paul, the married lieutenant, by the counter, yet again holding the tequila bottle and a shot glass in his hands. The guy was obviously trying to get her drunk, and she wondered if she ought to tell him that no amount of tequila would convince her to sleep with a married man. Nah. He’d find out soon enough, especially if he did something stupid, like grope her. If he did that, then he’d also find out she was pretty damn good at kicking him in the balls.
“I’m already feeling tipsy,” she admitted, eyeing the bottle warily.
“Tipsy, shmipsy! It’s the first heat wave of the summer! It’s a special occasion.”
Had he just said tipsy shmipsy?
Trying not to laugh, Shelby tucked her hair behind her ears. “No thanks, I’ll pass.”
She couldn’t go upstairs until the Padres game ended, but drinking herself stupid was no
9
Elle Kennedy
way to pass the time until everyone left. And it wasn’t like another drink would help her forget that John Garrett, her long-time fantasy, was in the other room, not wanting to sleep with her.
No amount of tequila could make her forget that.
“Face it, she’s just not into you,” Carson Scott said with a shrug.
Garrett forced his gaze to stay glued on the television and not drift in the direction of the doorway separating the café from the bakery. His peripheral vision caught a flash of movement—Shelby rounding the counter to chat with Lieutenant Paul Aston and his tequila bottle. Oh shit. Did Lieutenant Asshole actually think he had a flying fuck of a chance of getting Shelby Harper into bed? Dream on, brother.
Shelby would never mess around with a married man. Or at least that’s what Garrett kept telling himself.
Because in all honesty, the thought of his sweet, sexy Shelby burning up the sheets with Lieutenant Asshole, or any man for that matter, caused jealousy to spiral down his chest and seize his intestines like a death vise.
“You might as well quit pining over the girl,” Carson added, lifting his beer bottle to his mouth and taking a long swig.
“I’m not pining,” Garrett said defensively. “I’m just…” His voice drifted, his brain unable to come up with an alternative description for the way he felt about Shelby.
Fuck. Fine. Maybe he was pining, just a little. But who could blame him? Shelby was pretty fricking amazing. Look up the definition of sexy California girl in the dictionary and Shelby Harper’s picture would be there, complete with her wavy, sun-streaked blonde hair, her big blue eyes with those incredibly long eyelashes, and that slender athletic body she kept in shape by surfing out at Coronado Beach every morning.
Most of the officers who met her thought she was the typical West Coast blonde, complete with the dumb part, but Garrett had only needed five minutes with the woman to know she was the furthest thing from dumb and typical.
10
Heat of the Moment
Shelby Harper was smart as hell. Funny as hell. Nice as hell.
And there wasn’t a chance in hell that she’d ever get naked with a guy like him.
“Look,” Carson said after Garrett’s silence had lasted a bit too long. “You’ve spent the last year acting like a choirboy, coming in here whenever you’re on leave and buying those fancy-pants mocha latte Frappuccinos without ever telling Shelby that what you really want is to get inside her pants.”
“You can’t tell a woman like Shelby Harper you want inside her pants,” Garrett replied with a frown, reaching for his own beer. He took a slow sip, but the liquid was already room temperature, and room temperature meant about ninety degrees. He forced himself to swallow the tepid beer, then pushed the bottle away.
“Why the hell not? She fills out a pair of pants pretty fucking nicely.”
She sure did…
He forcibly shoved all thoughts of Shelby’s tight ass out of his head and said, “I can’t treat Shel the way I treated all the SEAL groupies I hooked up with. She’s…classy and… nice. She deserves more than a couple sleazy come-ons.”
“Well, since you’ve been striking out since day one, maybe a couple sleazy come-ons are what you need.”
“I, uh, kinda tried that,” he admitted. “Just now.” A groan rose in his throat. “I offered to fondle her tits and she—”
Carson hooted. “You did what?”
“—pretty much ordered me to get out of her sight,” he finished.