“Caleb,” she greeted, her smile a little shaky at the corners. She wiped her hands on the heavy velvet of her skirt and gave her voile blouse a quick tug to make sure the lace was straight at the bodice.

Should she ask him in? Or ask him to leave? Her stomach churned as she tried to decide. Did she go with her instincts and intuition, which said that despite the town’s opinion, he was a good man? Or did she accept that her intuition sucked and listen to public opinion?

Thankfully, Caleb took the decision out of her hands by walking right in.

“Hey,” he greeted. He didn’t kiss her, though. Instead, he gave her a long, searching look, then, hands still shoved in his pockets instead of groping her the way they should be, he stepped into the store.

“What’s up?” she asked. She bit her lip. Had he heard the rumors about the two of them? Was he regretting it now, too? “You look a little stressed.”

“Nah. I just had a full day, that’s all.”

Full of what? He wasn’t working, was avoiding his family as if they were carriers of the seventh plague and didn’t seem like a holiday-partying kind of guy.

Maybe he’d been looking for a job. Or a place to live. Something that’d keep him in Black Oak past the first of the year? Maybe he’d spent the day in bed, recovering in exhaustion from his wild night with her.

And maybe she’d been inhaling too many oyster fumes. Pandora gave herself a quick mental forehead smack, followed by an even quicker get-a-freaking-clue-he’s-not-for-you lecture.

“I’m replenishing stock,” she told him, returning to unpacking the statue so she could resist the desperate urge to squeeze his ass. Keep it light, keep it polite. Ass grabbing was definitely off-limits. “It was a busy day. The busiest this year, actually.”

“That’s great that you’re rocking the sales,” he said. “Have you pinpointed what’s making the big difference? Besides your charming personality, of course.”

The last was said with a wicked smile and a wink.

“I’m guessing it’s either that, or the aphrodisiacs,” Pandora said with a smile, unable to maintain her distance when he gave her that look. “I’m not actually sure. I haven’t quite figured out how to run the bookkeeping program yet, but I think there’s some kind of income-comparison report I can run. As soon as I do, I’ll know what to focus more time on.”

His eyes narrowed, an odd look crossing his face before he stepped farther into the room. “I’m handy with computers. How about I run the report for you while you unpack?”

“You don’t have to do that,” she protested, her words a little breathless. “I’m sure you have other things to do.”

“Just the party at the motorcycle shop,” he dismissed. “And I was hoping you’d go with me, so I’m just chilling until you’re through here anyway.”

Pandora pressed her lips together. Wasn’t that tantamount to publicly stating her intention to take the bad-boy path?

“The party?” she hedged. “I didn’t think you were going.”

In that second, Pandora wished like never before that her mom were here. As conflicted as she felt, she needed Cassiopeia’s clear-sighted vision and maybe a session with the tarot cards to sort through all of this.

Instead, she was stuck with herself. And her own lousy intuition. Tiny pinpricks of panic shivered up and down Pandora’s spine as she tried to decide what to do. Her intuition was telling her to go for it with Caleb. Of course, her body’s desperate need to taste him at least one more time was probably overriding any teensy bit of actual gift she had.

Obviously catching a whiff of her internal struggle, Caleb waved one hand as if brushing away the invitation.

“Look, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to go. It’s not my idea of a good time,” Caleb said with a shrug, moving behind the counter to where she’d left the laptop open. “What program do you use for bookkeeping?”

If they stayed here, she could enjoy his company and not have to face crowds. Or decisions. Oh, God, Pandora thought with a mental eye roll. She was such a wimp.

“You really don’t have to do that,” she said, feeling guilty over the relief. “I can come in early tomorrow and finish up the stock. We can go to the party now. Or, you know, go do something else.”

Subtle, Pandora, she told herself with a mental snicker. Why didn’t she ask him to drop his pants and do her instead?

“Nah,” he said. “This won’t take long and I’d like to help.”

Her heart melted a little. So did her knees, so Pandora leaned against the dolly and cleared her throat, not wanting to sound all choked up when she said, “I appreciate it. I feel like I’m…”

She trailed off, scrunching her nose and scraping at the chipped paint on the dolly. “Feel like…?”

Flustered and wishing she’d kept her mouth shut, Pandora met his gaze with a shrug.

“Pandora?”

“I feel like I’ve finally found my thing, you know? My niche. I’m having fun getting to know the customers and matching them to the right motivation.” She blushed again, giving him an abashed look. “That’s how I think of it. Motivation. What products will get them excited, give them the boost or direction they need. Even the aphrodisiacs in the café are all about motivation.”

Pushing the dolly toward the back room, Pandora caught his doubtful look.

“They are,” she insisted. “The aphrodisiacs aren’t like popping a little blue sex pill and getting it up for anyone or anything. They’re about amplifying a connection that’s already there. About giving a couple the impetus, the energy, to lose their inhibitions and explore everything that’s between them.”

Caleb leaned against the counter, his fingers tapping the edge of the laptop as he smiled.

“You love it.”

Centering her statue, Pandora rubbed Eros’s bare shoulder and nodded. “I really do.”

“Then let me help you out. I’ll just take a peek at your program, see what info I can pull together for you.”

Could anyone be sweeter? To hell with the town and the gossip. She was going to listen to her heart. It might not be a special gift like intuition or a honed skill like reading body language. But it was hers and she was going to trust it.


“I APPRECIATE YOU LOOKING at my books,” Pandora said, her smile both sweet and sexy at the same time. She crossed the floor, pausing to pet one of the cats, who was sprawled inside a large copper bowl. “I figure I’ll take a business class or something after the first of the year. But in the meantime, I really am grateful for the reassurance that the store is really doing well.”

Caleb felt like the world’s biggest dick. And not in a good way. He spent most of his life lying to people. Using them for information. He’d learned the art of taking advantage of people at his father’s knee.

And now?

Now he was standing in front of a woman who made him feel things, believe in things that he’d always scoffed at as feel-good lies before. And he was bullshitting her, poking into her business while pretending to help her out. He was digging into her books trying to find the dirt to convict her of an ugly crime.

No, he corrected himself. He was assuring himself that there was no dirt, so she didn’t get unfairly accused.

Big difference, he thought with a mental eye roll.

She reached the counter and hesitated, her smile dimming as she studied his face. A tiny crease marred her forehead and she took a little step back, as if to get a better view of him.

“Seriously. What’s the matter? You’re really tense and, well, off feeling,” she said, studying him through suddenly narrowed eyes.

Caleb was impressed. He’d spent the past eight years working with career cops whose lives depended on their ability to read people. And most of them didn’t come close to her aptitude.

“What’s wrong?” she asked again, her voice rising to a squeak as she wrung her fingers together. “Is the store losing money and I didn’t realize it?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know, I haven’t started poking into your books yet,” he told her. Giving a quick flick of the mouse pad, he gestured. “I need your password to get into the program.”

“Ooooh.” She reached around, angling the laptop and tapping a few keys, then trailed her hand over the back of his. He felt tingles, freaking tingles, from his fingers to the tip of his dick. It was as if she had some special power or something.

“Have at it,” she told him, offering another warm smile before turning back to her naked-angel statue and boxes of stuff. “There are cookies there in that box, too. Help yourself.”

He glanced at the box of Decadently Orgasmic Double-Chocolate Delights. Homemade horny treats. Curious, he flipped the lid and tasted one.

Delicious.

As Pandora restocked, tidied and replenished the bookcases and swept the floor, she kept up a steady stream of chatter. Caleb was alternately intrigued, amused and filled with an alien sense of comfort.

All the while, he invaded her privacy in horrible and disgusting ways, poking into all her files, opening her emails and reading her OneNote journal of store plans. He scrolled through the photo album, he checked her recycle bin and he surreptitiously jotted down names and numbers. He also ate her entire box of cookies.

The only loose end he was seeing was Fifi, though. But as far as he knew, she’d been employed at Moonspun off and on for years. He’d dig deeper into her history later, but from what he’d seen in the reports Hunter sent, she had a few financial issues and had been caught with the wrong crowd from time to time. However, she had no record and no real criminal ties.

Done with the laptop, he closed the lid. And gave thanks that Pandora was one of those organized, ethical people who kept their work and private computers completely separate. Because her work computer was clean, and he hadn’t had the opportunity-ie: had to force himself-to look through her private files. Poking into her private emails and photos would feel really grimy. As opposed to just slightly nauseating.

“So how’s it looking?” she asked as she came out of the storeroom.

It?

His conscience? That was looking like shit.

But he figured she wasn’t interested in that. And if he played his cards right, she never had to know that he was so far beneath her in terms of moral values that he should be eating worms.

“The store’s doing great. I’m impressed at how low you keep your overhead,” he commented, bringing up the only area left that might offer an opening for drug sales through her store. Unrealistic, of course, but once he’d crossed it off the list, he could tell Hunter this was definitely a closed door.

“Overhead?”

“Yeah. You don’t have a big employee list. Just you and Fifi, right?”

“Well, yeah. Until tomorrow.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Fifi thought we were going a little crazy with how busy it’s been. Without knowing exactly how solid we were financially, I wasn’t sure about hiring, but she convinced me that her friend Russ would be willing to work just the lunch shift while the café is open, and that he was cool with the fact that the job will end after Christmas.” She gave a little shoulder wiggle and added, “Isn’t that lucky?”

Caleb sighed. Of course she’d hired someone. She, and Fifi, who had a maxed-out VISA card and rent issues.

“Yep. That’s lucky, all right.” Bad luck, though. While he hadn’t found anything to point fingers, he couldn’t in good conscience cross the store off, either. Not until he’d checked out everyone.

“I guess I need to figure out how to add him to the payroll program, don’t I?” she asked, biting her lip and giving Caleb the cutest eyelash-batting look that just screamed pretty please.

“I can do that,” he offered, feeling like ten times the jerk because she looked so grateful.

“His application is back in the storeroom,” she said, hurrying around the counter and stepping over the blanket of black furry cat lying in the doorway.

Since he couldn’t have manufactured a better excuse to poke around in her storeroom, no pun intended, Caleb sighed and followed her. The cat lifted his fluffy black head and gave Caleb a long, narrowed look that made him want to hunch his shoulders and apologize.

God, it was time to get out of this business. Now a cat was calling him out on his bullshit.

“This is a storeroom?” Caleb asked, his eyes wide as he stepped into the tiny room. It was maybe eight-by-eight, with shelves lining three walls, boxes stacked in what he assumed were organized piles and a desk shoved in the back.

With a little squeak, Pandora turned to face him. Hand pressed to her chest, she laughed at herself. “I didn’t realize you’d followed me.”

He knew he shouldn’t be here. He knew it was every kind of wrong to pursue her when she was under investigation. But, dammit, he’d already had a taste and now he was addicted. She was delicious. And he wanted more.