Kristen Ashley - Raid

Grams was known for her cooking. She was from Louisiana. Full-on Cajun, full-on Southern, and she’d brought to Colorado all the knowledge she’d learned from home.

She was also generous with it.

I kept heading toward the door as I looked over my shoulder at Krista, smiled and called, “Absolutely!”

Her head jerked, her eyes went up and she cried, “Hanna!” two seconds before I hit wall.

This shocked me since I’d been in that pet store more than once in my life, a lot more, and I knew where the walls were, even if I wasn’t looking right at them.

And no walls were there.

Walls also didn’t have fingers that could curl around your upper arms, which, by the time I’d swung my head around, had happened.

I saw army green tee and I tipped my head back, back, back and stared straight into Raiden Ulysses Miller’s eyes.

Close up.

I’d seen them in his yearbook picture, of course, dozens (okay, maybe hundreds) of times.

He’d even run them through me when I’d been at Rachelle’s.

But I’d never seen them that close when he was right there, alive, breathing, with his fingers wrapped around my arms, so close I could feel his body heat.

“You okay?” His deep voice rumbled through me.

He had a phenomenal voice, but all I could do was stare in his eyes.

They were a weird light brown/green with a yellow tint at the pupil, but as it radiated out to the edge of the iris it went pure light green.

Startling.

Amazing.

Gorgeous.

I dropped my bag of kitty food.

The crash was loud. The tins overflowed and started rolling everywhere, and all this helped me jerk myself out of my stupor.

I also jerked myself out of his hold and immediately went into a crouch to rescue the cans.

Unfortunately, so did Raiden, and our heads smacked together with a painful thud that sent me falling back, right on my behind. It also sent my sunglasses, which were on top of my head, flying.

I slowly lifted my hand to my head where it slammed into his, thinking, Someone kill me. Please. Right now. Kill me.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. He was in a crouch, leaning toward me, his hand coming up, fingers wrapping around my wrist.

They burned the instant they touched skin.

I lifted my eyes to his.

Startling.

Amazing.

Gorgeous.

With effort, I found my voice, but when I did, it came out high.

“Are you… uh, okay?”

“Got a hard head,” he replied. “I’m good. You got knocked on your ass.”

That I did.

God!

“I’m good… fine, fine… just, uh, fine and, well… good,” I murmured.

And babbling! I thought, then realized there were cans everywhere, and I realized this mostly because a kid went running toward the door, kicking some and they went flying.

Not thinking and freaking way the heck out, I pulled my hand free from his, shifted to my hands and knees and started crawling around on the floor of the pet store (gah!), gathering up stupid cat food tins.

Seriously, Spot was lucky I loved him or I’d kill him.

I stopped doing this when I felt a tingle shift along the small of my back. I turned my head and saw Raiden had hold of my bag in one hand. He had four tins of cat food clamped in his other, but his body was still and his eyes were locked on my upturned booty.

Oh God.

I was a klutz and a dork.

I was a dorky klutz!

Quickly, I shifted to just my feet, still gathering tins, piling them in my arm, snatching up my glasses, shoving them on my head and not wanting to, but having to move toward Raiden, who had my bag.

“How ‘bout we take this in turns. You go up first,” Raiden suggested.

I forced myself to look at him and saw he was grinning at me.

I’d seen that grin. It was beautiful. I’d seen him smile. That was even more beautiful. Way back in the day, I’d heard his lush, rumbling laughter. Sublime.

But he’d obviously never grinned at me.

I was right. It was beautiful.

Beyond beautiful.

Life altering.

I froze.

Entirely.

Every inch of me.

And I stared.

“Everything okay here?” Krista asked, coming curiously late to this harrowing incident I knew I’d play over and over in my head, wanting to do every second differently and kicking myself that I didn’t.

I forced myself to speak, and this time it wasn’t high. It was squeaky.

“Me first?” I asked Raiden.

His grin got bigger. My insides melted and he jerked up his chin.

I straightened to standing.

“Here’s another can, Hanna,” Mrs. Bartholomew said as Raiden rose to his full height. In other words, towering over all of us.

I turned to her and took the can she was offering. “Thanks, Mrs. B.”

She gave me a smile then looked up at Raiden. “Raid, tell your Mom I said hi.”

“Will do,” he mumbled.

She grinned at him and took off.

Raiden opened the plastic bag, indicating to me I should divest myself of my pile of cat food tins, and I had to lean forward to dump in all the cans I had clutched to my chest. This I did, excruciatingly aware that he could see right down my shirt.

That was when I thanked God I’d tossed all my crappy underwear five months ago and loaded up on the good stuff during my now-not-infrequent trips to Denver.

“I think you got them all,” Krista shared, and I looked to her, lifting a hand, tucking my hair behind my ear and wishing I was anywhere but there.

And I meant anywhere.

A sweatshop in China. At a phone making marketing calls to people who hated marketing calls and thus would abuse me before they hung up on me.

Anywhere.

Krista was scanning the floor for cans then she looked between Raiden and me. “You guys conked noggins pretty hard. You good?”

“I am, but Hanna seems a bit dazed,” Raiden answered and I stopped breathing.

He said my name.

He said my name!

I looked up at him, my lips parted.

Then I realized he thought I’d been dazed by our head knock and that was not good.

I had to get myself together.

I pulled in a breath, and on the exhale I reached out and gently took the bag from him, then assured them both in my normal voice (thank God), “I’m fine. Just… I have a lot on my mind. But I’m okay.” I looked up at Raiden. “I’m also klutzy. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, honey. You didn’t run into me, I wouldn’t have a chance to smell your perfume. Made my day,” he replied, and I blinked.

Oh cripes. He called me honey in that rumbling voice.

And he was being (could it be?) kind of flirty.

God!

I had to keep it together.

I did this (just barely), then I ran through my morning again, seeing as I was a perfume whore. I had at least twenty bottles of it. It could be anything.

I settled on a morning memory, realizing it was Agent Provocateur, and deciding the minute I got home I was ordering another bottle (or seven).

“I best get back to work,” Krista mumbled.

I tore my eyes from Raiden to look at her and saw she was looking at the floor, grinning like an idiot.

She took off.

Raiden spoke again.

“You Miss Mildred’s grandkid?” he asked.

“Sorry?” I asked back.

“Krista said she was goin’ to Miss Mildred’s this weekend. Heard her grandkid was takin’ care of her. You her?”

He didn’t know who I was.

I’d lived for twenty-three years convinced I was in love with him, no matter how totally crazy that was, and he didn’t know who I was.

He heard Krista say my name.

He had no clue.

“Great-grandkid,” I told him.

“You lookin’ after her?” he asked.

I nodded, still coping with the devastation that we’d played tug of war together at Grams’s picnic and he’d been on my team three years running, and he didn’t know me.

“How’s she doin’?” Raiden went on.

“Great. Ninety-eight going on twenty,” I replied, and he awarded me another smile.

I must have been getting better with practice seeing as that one only made my scalp and kneecaps tingle.

“Least that doesn’t change,” he murmured.

He was right about that. Mildred Boudreaux never changed. Even acts of God couldn’t change her. I knew this because, when Grams was sixteen she got struck by lightning, wandered home, clothes still smoking (or that was how the story was told, incidentally, by Grams) and asked her mother what was for dinner.

“Listen, I need to go,” I stated and his head tipped slightly to the side, which I wished he hadn’t done. Because it was just a head tip, but being his handsome head, his fabulous hair, his amazing eyes, his attention on me, it seemed both cool and hot and I wanted to ask him to do it over and over again just so I could watch.

I pulled myself together (again) and kept talking.

“I’m really sorry about bumping into you and, well… then banging heads.”

“I’m good, long’s you’re okay,” he replied.

“Peachy,” I muttered then forced a smile. “Sorry again and… later.”

Then I took off, hoofing it by him and walking fast to my bike.

I dumped the cat food bag in my cutesie, girlie basket, mounted the saddle, put my feet to the pedals and took off, heading straight to Grams’s and not looking back at the pet store.

This was good, seeing as if I did I would have seen Raiden Miller, arms crossed on his chest, sexy smile playing at his mouth, watching me go.

One week, one day later…

I opened the door to Grams’s place and shouted, “Hey, Grams! I’m here!”

To this I got shouted back, “I’m on the back porch, precious. Soakin’ in sun and drinkin’ sweet tea. Bring the pitcher, I’m low!”

I grinned at the hardwood floors and lugged in the bags of groceries, stopping when Spot came into my vision.

He sat on his ample booty in the hall and stared up at me.

He was white with big splotches of gray. He was one of the prettiest cats I’d ever seen. He was also the orneriest. And the fattest.

He wasn’t just fat, he was solid. Twenty-two pounds of compacted cat held in by soft white and gray fur.

It was good he was beautiful because he was a pain in the patoot.

Like when he got in a lovable mood no matter how infrequent that was and you were lying on your back on the couch and he jumped up on you and settled in, there was a good possibility he could crush you.

You didn’t move him, though.

There were two reasons for this.

One, he could turn at any time. I’d had to have his front claws lasered since he kept clawing Grams and breaking skin.

Two, he was so pretty that when he was lovey you took advantage.

“Meow,” he said.

“Meow right back at ‘cha, buddy,” I replied.

Luckily, that worked for him, and instead of complaining, hissing and attacking my ankles, he turned and waddled toward the backdoor.

I went to the kitchen, dumped the groceries, grabbed the pitcher of sweet tea out of the fridge and headed out back.

Grams used to be my height, but she’d shrunk. And on top of that, she was stooped so now she seemed tiny. She was also wrinkles from head-to-toe. This was partly because she was old as dirt. This was mostly because she was a sun fiend. I’d had to buy her one of those outdoor heaters, because, even in the winter, if it was sunny she’d grab afghans, put on slippers, sit outside and stare at the sun glinting off the snow, wrapped up in wool.

Mildred Boudreaux loved everything, everyone and every moment of her life (except when her husband died, of course, and when her son, my Granddad, died, and when her three other children died, obviously).

She was just that kind of person.

But she loved some things and some moments better.

And any moment that included sun, she was all for.

I pushed open the back screen door and turned, mouth open to tell her I had more groceries in the car to bring in, when I stopped dead.

This was because Gram was sitting in her cute Grandma dress, her blue hair newly set, because Sharon from Betsy’s came out every Thursday morning to give her a wash and set, and it was Thursday. Her feet were up, red painted toenails wriggling in the afternoon sun that was peeking under the roof of the porch. And Raiden Ulysses Miller was sitting in the loveseat kitty-corner to her. His arm wide, resting on the back of the seat, long, strong, masculine fingers wrapped around a glass of sweet tea.