Savage in a Stetson (Crossroads #4) - Em Petrova Page 0,14

too—he should be cursing him for teaching him to be a nice guy and not sleep with women right out of the gate.

Except he had, and Dom would never experience the heaven of slipping between Jada’s soft thighs and burrowing inside her while he kissed her dizzy.

His opening night seemed to offer no prediction of his business’s viability either. Savage’s Barbecue parking lot either resembled a party or ghost town. One time, a car parked, the passengers didn’t get out, and then they drove over to Mortimer’s.

He could almost hear her whoop of glee that she bested him.

He sighed. He hadn’t meant to make this into a competition, but both of them had a lot on the line and too much to lose, pride excluded.

When she exited her front doors with cloth and spray cleaner in hand again, he stood transfixed, watching her progress to every table. Lord have mercy. The way her little ass shook as she scrubbed in a circular motion just about made him lose it.

He forced himself into his own kitchen in order to close it down for the night, but he needed to stop thinking about Jada too. Did she know what she did to him? How hot and bothered she made him? Or that her beating him out of most of the business for a Friday night both turned him on and ticked him off?

He wanted to best her. He needed to prove to himself, Jackson’s wife—and his grandpa too—that he could win at this new venture.

While his employees cleaned up the kitchen and stowed away food into the brand-new walk in coolers, he directed their progress, but his mind was across the street.

As they put away unsold product, he wondered if Jada’s kitchen staff was celebrating having no leftovers. While he stood here burning for a woman he’d given up too soon, he questioned if he’d been a passing thought in her mind.

He counted his tills and declared they’d made just over five hundred dollars tonight.

“Is that good?” his kitchen manager asked.

Dom met his gaze. “To be honest, I didn’t have much idea what to expect.” Which was partly true. If he hadn’t given away a meal with every purchase, how much money would he have?

Closing the restaurant took a bit longer for a first night. But soon he saw the workers off with smiles and thank-yous. When he stood alone, he issued a sigh of relief. He expected to work hard and thought he’d be more exhausted than he was.

He also anticipated some of his desire for Jada to trickle away by now—it’d been hours since he’d set eyes on those tight denim-clad globes bent over a picnic table.

Before he knew his own intentions, he walked out, letting the door close behind him. His long strides carried him across the parking lot, to the edge of the road where he stopped to find no traffic. When he set foot on Jada’s property, his cock hardened more, the head pulsating behind his fly.

He opened the front door, passed through the empty, barbecue-scented dining area and swung into the kitchen. Everything looked clean but older than his equipment. But she wasn’t here.

He continued through the kitchen, following the yellow glow of a light. Through the cracked door, he spotted the front of a desk. Placing a hand on the door, he pushed it inward.

Jada gasped and jerked to her feet. “What are you doing here?”

“You should lock your front door after hours. I walked right in.”

She narrowed her eyes on him, dropped her gaze and then directed it to his eyes again. “An error I plan to remedy right after I throw you out.”

God, she drove him crazy. He stepped into the office consisting of a single desk, a chair on either side of it, a tall filing cabinet and a sexy-as-hell woman in cutoff shorts. Her chest heaved as she rounded on him.

“Get out, Dom.”

“I have something to say to you, Jada.” He leaned over her, causing her to crane her neck back to see him.

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“That your buy one get one free special is killing my business.”

Her cheeks bloomed with red splotches and she leaned closer to him as if her diminutive size could intimidate him. “Your two for one special is exactly the same deal!”

He locked his stare onto her mouth. Fuck, the bow of her lips could drive a man to coming up with even deeper discounts on his menu. What was he thinking? He was losing his