Introducing a Southern belle with sass, danger, and a sizzling love life… Toni McGee Causey’s wise-cracking, gun-toting, take-no-prisoners heroine Bobbie Faye Sumrall is on the loose in Cajun country in a wild, rollicking, and romantic trilogy.
Click on the link below to check out this original Bobbie Faye short story!
It must be nearly eleventy-freaking-billion degrees out here, and Bobbie Faye felt slick with sweat and need. She peeled off her clingy t-shirt so that her bikini was the only thing left between her and God. And Cam, who glared at her as he carried out the burner he would be using for the big crawfish boil later. Cam, who paraded around without a shirt all the damned time, all six-foot-four of muscles and sinew and, dear Lord, thighs that would make a Roman gladiator weep with envy. The same guy who was, right at this moment, stripped down to a ratty pair of threadbare “lucky” khaki shorts, probably the same pair he’d had since quarterbacking at LSU. (She still teased him about the stuffed tiger he kept on his bed, the one she’d saved up to give him nine years ago when he was eighteen and she was sixteen and he was going off to college, leaving her behind in their sleepy industrial town of Lake Charles, Louisiana.)
He’d snapped at her all morning and now he was glaring at her for no apparent reason. Because that was Cam. Constantly annoyed with her. She couldn’t remember a single day in the last year that he hadn’t seemed aggravated and critical. She’d hoped he would respond positively to the bikini. She wished Cam would at least see her. But no, he simply glared and then ignored her.
She glared right back at him, the damned man. How in the hell had she agreed to this? How had she found herself standing out on Cam’s deck at the lake? Working out here in the middle of the day in temperatures hot enough to make Satan want to rest in the shade? She was cleaning ears of corn for Cam’s crawfish boil; she was covered in the stupid little strands of corn silk she’d been vainly trying to remove from the corn and her hands were scratched and aching from trying to get the husks off and for what? So she could be tormented with how close he was? Great. Perfect. Have a happy fucking day.
She tossed that completed ear of corn on a pile in a big gleaming stainless steel bowl—Cam would add these to the pot of crawfish and spices, where the corn would boil and absorb the flavors and would be (in her mind) the best part of the meal.
She didn’t come here to be snarled at, snapped at, glared at and then ignored.
Fine. Fine fine fine. She’d agreed to help because Cam needed her. He’d already promised his family a crawfish boil this week and yesterday, instead of doing all of this prep work, he’d helped her pack all of her stuff and move it out of Alex’s place, though she and Alex had actually broken up two months earlier. (Alex was still griping about her demolishing his car. Sledgehammers and Corvettes do not make good acquaintances. He should have thought of that before he was screwing one of her “friends” in Bobbie Faye’s own car, because his “wasn’t roomy enough.” She helpfully made his roomier.)
Alex had kept all of her things out of retaliation and when Cam learned about that two days ago, he was livid. “I cannot freaking believe you put up with this. That’s not like you. You don’t kowtow to anyone! You deserve better! What the hell were you thinking, dating him in the first place?”
She couldn’t answer him. She wasn’t about to tell the truth: you weren’t interested.
Cam had been determined to help her move out, right then, in spite of how much work he had to do. He’d been on night shift (he was a state police detective now) and she worried that he was exhausted. When she’d protested—because she knew he had plans—he’d shut her up with, “We’re best friends. That’s what we do.”
He was right: he helped her; she helped him. They listened to each other. Talked easy. (Well, they used to.) Never mind that he didn’t see her as a woman, dammit. Never mind that he still thought of her as that scrawny teenager he bossed around all of the time.
She grabbed the next ear of corn and yanked the husks off. Never freaking mind that he was just standing over there without a shirt, hosing out the big buckets that he would later put the crawfish in. Standing there, short dark cropped hair, brown eyes, and lean, strong muscles. Miles and miles and miles of muscles. Wet. Sensuous. Body. Five. Feet. Away.
Which might as well be on the other side of the stupid planet.
She slammed that ear of corn onto the growing pile and grabbed for another, wielding the big knife he’d given her, lopping off the ends to make the shucking easier. She could have chopped clean through the deck with the aggravation she felt.
The back-spray from the hose coated him and rivulets of water ran down his tanned body. He’d stood where she couldn’t help but see. He was so freaking unaware of how she felt. So totally uninterested in her.
They were best friends.
She could strangle him right now with a happy heart.
“If you don’t want to be here,” he snapped, his temper leaking out all over the place as she slapped another ear of corn on the pile, “just go home. Nobody’s making you stay. You don’t have to help.”
“Shut up. I told I’d help, and I’m helping.”
She grabbed the next damned stupid annoying fucking ear of corn and slammed it on the worktable.
How could he not know she’d wanted him since she was fourteen and he was sixteen? Maybe even before that. Maybe since she was ten and he was twelve, and they used to slip out of their respective houses at night and meet up in the middle of the high-school football field and spin dreams, lying on their backs, staring up at the moon. He was going to go off and be a big star football player. (He’d done that. LSU quarterback for the SEC and then the National Championship. If he hadn’t been injured in that last game, he’d have gone pro.) She was going to travel the world. (She had, thus far, not managed to travel outside of Louisiana.) But when he’d turned sixteen, he’d shot up and gone all lean and muscle-y, and even then, she’d seen him as a man, not just the boy. The man he was going to be. And she’d wanted him.
Now he was standing there, a man with kind of abs that made women double-take and then find any excuse to wander nearby or introduce themselves. All Bobbie Faye wanted to do was run her hands over those abs, sliding her fingertips down and then back up again, up over his chest and then across his shoulders and down his biceps. She wanted to trace back the way she came with her tongue while he tensed beneath her, his body going hard. She’d seen those powerful thighs at work on the football field and she wanted to feel them at work on her, pumping into her, pushing and ohdeargod it was hot out here. Her body clenched and the air went white and she grasped the worktable to steady herself.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping a little closer.
“Nothing. I’m fine. It’s just hot.”
He blasted her with the hose, the icy spray a shock against the heat, the mouthful of water as she gasped just the last damned straw. “There. That should help.”
It was going to be a miracle if she didn’t kill him before the day was over. “You ass.”
“Are you always this bitchy?”
“You should know.”
“Yeah.” He was quiet a moment and he looked away from her. “I should know.”
Fine. Fine. She grabbed up the big knife again to chop the last of the corn. Fine. He didn’t want her. He’d never wanted her. And she wasn’t going to throw herself at him like dozens of women had done. No, she wasn’t going to be that stupid. He didn’t want her. Fine. The few times she thought that maybe he was interested, maybe there was something more between them—a touch, a caress—she froze, hoping he’d keep going, hoping it was intentional. But apparently it wasn’t, since he stopped abruptly each time and the space between them would grow awkward and odd.
She would get through this. She would get through the day without aching for him to touch her and slide his hands into her heat. She’d survive the deep, hard grief in the pit of her stomach. She’d never get to know what it felt like to have her legs wrapped around him, her body sliding over his, heat building between them. She’d get through the day and then find herself something else to do, besides being his best friend. She didn’t think she could survive many more days of being his best friend.
She slammed the big knife through the ear of corn and neatly sliced into her thumb. She yelped, and jumped back, the knife clattering to the worktable, bright splashes of red dotting the last of the corn, blood running down her hand.
“For crying out loud,” he snapped from a foot away and closing in, “be careful! How many times do I have to tell you to be careful?” He grabbed a dishtowel and used it to apply pressure to the cut. Her hand throbbed in his.
She couldn’t look up, to see his anger. She couldn’t deal with his anger right now. She couldn’t look straight ahead because, damn, wall of muscles, inches away. Slick. Wet. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to show how glad she was that he was standing so close that she could almost taste him, willing him not to know how the heat had electrified her as soon as he’d touched her.
#
She’d scared the hell out of him, when he’d seen the blood. And now she was shutting down on him. Again. Great. Just fucking great. She was standing there in that tiny bikini, her long brunette hair curling from the humidity, brushing the tops of her gorgeous breasts, and those long long legs that he wanted wrapped around him in the worst way, and all she could do was either glare at him with those sea-glass green eyes, or shut him out. And yeah, the water had been mean, but necessary to cool her off—heat exhaustion was a very real danger. Who the hell was he kidding? As soon as she’d taken off that shirt, it had been torture—he’d wanted to see her wet, he wanted to see her drenched, her nipples hardening in the sudden icy shock, and he wanted his mouth on her, warming her.
He held the pressure on her thumb with one hand and had to clench his fist to keep from sliding his other hand into her hair and pulling her against him. Feeling her body pressed to him, feeling the heat of her. He’d hugged her enough times to know how she’d smell—that stupid fruity shampoo she used invaded his dreams. Every single night.
She’d always been it for him. Since the first time he’d seen her, chasing a squirrel (who’d gotten into her mama’s garden) with a rake. She’d come around the corner of their little house, all elbows and angles, hair flying, grass stuck to her face where she’d clearly fallen but hadn’t let it slow her down and that had been it—he knew he wanted to be in her life.
And then he went and became her best damned friend. He didn’t want to be just her best friend, but she froze up if anything slightly more intimate seemed about to happen. If he brushed her hand, she’d go stiff. If he’d run his hand across her shoulder, she’d go so still, like an animal caught in a trap. He quit trying, quit pushing his luck, because he wanted her in his life. Whatever crumbs he had to take, he wanted her.
He couldn’t stand wanting her this much, and not reaching for her. But reaching for her would ruin everything. Hell, he’d finally gotten her away from Alex. Sure, it had been him-as-her-best-friend who’d argued that she was clearly unhappy, that she’d never be able to be content with someone who treated her so badly. It hadn’t been the real him in those arguments, because the real him was the man who wanted to lie her down on this deck and feel the length of her. He didn’t dare let that man out. Couldn’t. She’d run away from him.
He yanked her toward the hose.
“I don’t know why in the hell I let you have a knife in the first damned place. I should’ve known you’d cut yourself.”
Idiot, he chided himself. He was a fucking moron. She was actually a knife throwing champion and he knew it. He was being an ass. He just wanted her so much, it hurt, and he couldn’t manage to be tender. He didn’t know how to be tender without giving away what was in his heart. What if he lost her?
“If you had bought the regular corn like I told you instead of this stupid stuff from the farmer’s market, it would already be clean and we’d be done right now.”
“That cellophane-wrapped grocery-store crap’s not fresh. This is. And it tastes better,” he said, turning the hose to a trickle so he could rinse out the cut and get a better look at it, “when you have to work for it a little.”
He rinsed off her thumb while she just stood there, all heat and sex and friendship, and his body ached. He wanted to slide his hands down her body, feel the weight of her breasts against his palms. He wanted to taste her, really taste her. He took his time, rinsing her thumb and then inspecting it, getting to stand close to her, feel her hand in his, feel the heat of her, the silk of her skin against his own. He’d gone completely, painfully, hard for her, and he wanted her to know. Some part of him knew that she had to know, even though her eyes were still closed, her body unmoving. She had to understand how much he wanted her. Didn’t she?
She had not pulled her hand away, hadn’t stepped back. She could have… the cut rinsed clean and was fine. She could have pulled away and gone to get a bandage. But she stood there, perfectly still. Almost… poised. Waiting. What if she’d been waiting on him? She stepped forward—just a tiny step, almost a fraction. As she leaned in toward him, the heat between them flared, and he felt as if they were two stars, circling, about to collide, about to go supernova. She stood there, eyes closed, biting her bottom lip.
He wanted to bite it for her. Run his tongue over the fullness of it, tasting the corners, and then down, kissing the pulse in her throat. He didn’t let go of her hand. Couldn’t have let go, if his life depended on it. He focused, instead, on the thumb, on the small cut there, and when he spoke, his voice sounded husky even to his own ears.
“I don’t think this is bad. Do you?”
And he wasn’t asking about the damned cut. Without giving himself time to think, he pressed a kiss into the center of her palm, and she gasped. Her eyes flew open as he held the kiss there, slowly, lightly, brushing his lips back and forth and she gasped again, closing her eyes, her body so immobile, he couldn’t see if she were breathing.
“If this is going to ruin our—”
“Cam?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” Her eyes flew open and he felt pinned in that sea of green. “And do it again.”