Free Million Dollar Road by Amy Connor Page A

girl hadn’t said anything more. Con opened the passenger door with a courtly suggestion of a bow and she arched a scarred, disbelieving eyebrow, as though he’d summarily dropped his pants and was hanging around in the middle of the road wearing only his boxers.
    â€œI mean, you can trust me. I’m no ax murderer,” Con volunteered, belatedly regretting the bow.
    Saying this only seemed to make matters worse, though: gauging from the look on her face, he was positive she found him even more ridiculous now. “I work in the front office at the farm,” he added.
    The girl dropped her Dollar General bags on the floor of the front seat in a yellow heap. “I know who you are,” she said shortly. “No offense—you might still be an ax murderer, but you said it. It’s hot.” And she got in, drawing her long, long legs into the car.
    At once Con found himself undone by lust, imagining those legs wrapped around him. This wasn’t going by the rules. For God’s sake, he was teetering on the brink of an embarrassing tumescence, beginning to be hard as a zit-ridden kid holed up in the bathroom with a Victoria’s Secret catalog.
    Goddammit, Con thought. He shut the passenger door in a hurry. “Get a grip, guy,” Con muttered under his breath as he hurried to the other side of the Lexus. She’s just a pretty girl, not some, some goddess .
    But easing himself into the driver’s seat, Con discovered he couldn’t take his eyes off the vision sitting next to him, so close he breathed in the sweet mingled scents of girl-sweat and some subtle perfume, fresh as the memory of long-ago rain. He tightened his hands on the wheel, shocked by the overpowering urge to press his lips to the tender skin behind her exquisite knee.
    The girl shifted the plastic bags under her flip-flops as the car slowly accelerated in a smooth meshing of gears.
    â€œSo, what’s your name, and uh, how do you know who I am?” Con asked, trying to make conversation.
    â€œLireinne Hooten.” She adjusted the air-conditioner vent, her profile pure as a marble water nymph’s in a Roman fountain. “I work at the alligator farm, too.”
    She lifted her long, silky hair off the back of her neck, un-self-consciously fanning the chilled air toward her chest. Con wrenched his gaze away from those beautifully proportioned breasts, a pair of ripe peaches hammocked in the tight-fitting tank top. Trying to feign a coolness he didn’t feel for an instant, he forced his eyes to stay on the road.
    â€œReally! You work at SGE?” Con cursed himself for sounding so fatuous, so ham-handed. Where was his goddamned charm when he needed it most? And if she was a farm employee, why hadn’t he noticed her before now?
    â€œThat’s quite a coincidence,” he said. He was struggling to think of where she could be hidden on a four-hundred-acre alligator farm with fewer than twenty employees and coming up with nothing. “Let me guess, you’re a . . .”
    â€œHoser.”
    A hoser. Con quit wondering because that explained everything. He had no idea who hosed. He didn’t even sign hosers’ checks—Jackie handled the casual labor out of petty cash. And of course their paths had never crossed. He rarely went down to the barns. The smell in there was so awful that one minute spent in the stench insured you would reek until you could shower it off. Liz even had to wash the clothes he wore in there by themselves, separated from the rest of the laundry.
    â€œSo you’re the hoser?” Con said. “Wow.”
    Wow? Oh, that’s good, jerk. She might think I’m making fun of her, he thought. Being a hoser was such a crappy gig that the farm gobbled them up like hot wings. He’d been given to understand that nobody lasted in that job for long, especially since the pay was so lousy.
    So turn up the Obi-Wan Factor, Con thought with renewed