of dirt, but mostly all she dislodged was the shirt—over one shoulder, something it had a habit of doing thanks to its deeply scooped neckline. The spilled dirt was another by-product of thoughts about Sam, since being preoccupied was what Rosie had been doing when she pulled a big bag of potting soil off a shelf without realizing it was open—until she’d dumped a good bit of it down the front of her clothes. Pulling her shirttail from her jeans, she shook the rest of the dirt out, not bothering to tuck the garment in again when she was done.
Oh, hang it. She wouldn’t be opening for another two hours, so she had time to run to her apartment upstairs and change, once she had everything in the store set to go. All that was left to do—other than sweeping up what was left of the dirt—was to brew up and sample a new aphrodisiac tea she had blended for a client.
And, it went without saying, to think about Sam.
What was weird was that, as Rosie swept, she found herself thinking about him less in the hot, naked sex sense and more in the quiet, candlelit dinner sense. In fact, she found herself pondering the pros and cons of asking him out. Loaf of French bread aside, there had just been something about the way he’d looked at her in Alice’s studio yesterday that made her think maybe, possibly, he felt steam ballooning around them, too, but was just trying to pretend he didn’t.
Though why he would pretend something like that if he was feeling the steam was a mystery. Rosie thought she’d made clear her interest in him a long time ago. Why would a man deliberately avoid a woman who was interested in him and capable of putting a loaf of French bread in his pocket? That didn’t make any sense.
Okay, so that was one con about asking him out—even if he did like her, he still might turn her down on account of that mysterious pretending the steam didn’t exist thing. Pro, however, she was pretty sure he did like her. Con, on the other hand, if he turned her down, things between them might end up being even more awkward than they already were, and it might make for discomfort whenever their paths crossed again. And Northaven being a small town, their paths did cross fairly regularly.
Another con was that, since gossip was a popular pastime in Northaven, everyone in town would hear about the incident, and then everyone would know Rosie was jonesing for Sam. Not that she’d ever been bothered by gossip, but having it known publicly that she had tried unsuccessfully to enter the dating arena, everyone in town would suddenly want to fix her up with whatever single man they could find. Nephews. Cousins. Plumbers. Accountants. Plumbers’ cousins. Plumbers’ cousins’ nephews. Plumbers’ cousins’ nephews’ accountants.
In a word, oog.
Putting aside the cons, since they seemed to be piling up, Rosie considered the pros instead. Pro, if Sam agreed to go out with her, there might be some smokin’ sex at the end of the evening.
Well, there you go, she thought. Pros win, hands down. Next time she saw Sam, she’d figure out some way to work an invitation to dinner or a movie—or, you know, smokin’ sex—into the conversation.
When she finished sweeping, Rosie brewed up a batch of her new aphrodisiac tea. For convenience’s sake, she used the teapot in the front of the shop she always kept filled with regular herbal tea for her customers, so that they could help themselves as they browsed or placed their orders. As she waited for the tea to steep, she pushed all thoughts of Sam out of her brain. It was essential that she not be thinking about him when she drank the tea, to ensure it worked the way it was supposed to. Thinking about Sam just naturally turned her on. He was a walking, talking aphrodisiac unto himself.
After removing the muslin pouch full of herbs from the infusion, Rosie squeezed out the last few drops and set the bag aside. Then she filled one of an assortment of earthenware mugs on the shelf beside the teapot and lifted it to her nose, inhaling deeply and smiling at the hint of cinnamon she’d added this time to give the added benefit of freshening breath. After blowing gently on the concoction, she took an experimental sip.
The taste was better than the batch she’d mixed up yesterday, thanks to the cinnamon, and she couldn’t taste the kava kava now at all. But reducing the amount of kava kava might have also weakened the power of the recipe, so she’d doubled up on the damiana this time. Still, she knew she’d have to finish the entire cup and wait anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes before she could be certain of its full effect.
She was consuming the last swallow when the bell on the front door announced the arrival of a customer, even though the store’s Open-Closed sign was flipped over to the Closed position, and the hours clearly printed on the window indicated opening was nearly ninety minutes away. Stifling her irritation, Rosie turned around to politely tell the newcomer just that—
And saw Sam Maguire standing framed in the doorway, his hands hooked loosely on his hips.
The door swung closed behind him, but he took a step forward and landed in a pool of golden, early-morning sun that filtered through the window beside him. The light was almost otherworldly, lighting dark amber fires in his chocolate-brown hair and somehow softening his rugged features. Even the starkness of his white cop shirt seemed to fade to a softer cream, the sun reflecting off the gold badge pinned to his pocket and making it shine like a beacon of goodness and decency.
The look he was giving her, however, was anything but decent. His eyes were narrowed, and his lips were flattened into a tight line. But the scowl did nothing to detract from his extreme good looks, and in fact made Rosie feel kind of—
Well. There was no denying it. Either her new recipe was working way faster than she’d thought it would, or Sam Maguire’s simple nearness was about to bring her to a cataclysmic orgasm. And although Rosie knew her aphrodisiac teas were good, she was pragmatic enough to realize they weren’t that good. So she had no choice but to accept the fact that human flesh and blood would always be more powerful than plant life in bringing a woman to the brink of sexual fulfillment.
Damn, she thought. So much for not polluting the effects of the infusion with thoughts of Sam Maguire. He hadn’t even said hello to her, and already her skin was growing warm—which was always her first indication that a new tea was working. The next indication was always the dampening of her palms, which—
Yep. There they went, right on cue. Except way too early for the reaction to be a result of the tea. Rosie just hoped the other kind of dampness that came next, the dampness between her legs, held off for a little while long—
Uh-oh.
Great, she thought as she vaguely registered Sam’s nod and softly muttered hello. At this rate, her nipples would begin to tingle in no time fla—
Oh, yeah. There they went, too, way ahead of schedule. Maybe doubling up on the damiana hadn’t been such a good idea after all….
Because it couldn’t just be Sam’s simple presence making her want to wrestle him to the floor the way she did just then. Could it? She always at least indulged in a little small talk before it came to that, even in her fantasies. It had to be some faster-than-usual reaction to the tea. Maybe the cinnamon and damiana worked better together than she’d realized.
“Um, hi, Chief,” she said, gripping her mug tightly with both hands to keep herself from…oh, she didn’t know…grabbing the placket of his shirt and ripping it down the middle, buttons flying. The top two were already undone—something that would have made her job much easier—and dark hair sprang from the opening, making her fingers itch to investigate further.
Unbidden, an image erupted in her head of him naked and prone on her bed as she dragged her fingers through the dark hair on his chest before inching them slowly, slowly, oh-so-slowly down to his flat abdomen. Then lower still,
