Pick Your Poison - Roxanne St. Claire Page 0,3
without looking up.
“Last I checked He wasn’t in there.” Wow, he was a big guy. Six two, and an easy hundred and ninety. She hovered in the doorway, ready to run, but oddly mesmerized by his audacity and size.
“These are the shittiest files I’ve ever seen.” He smashed a bunch of her handwritten receipts on the counter and dug for more. “It’s the twenty-first century. Who keeps records like this?” He finally lifted his head.
“I do.” It was a small miracle the words even came out at all because in the span of one second and one good look, every cell in her head darn near flatlined. Shock and dismay at the intrusion would have been enough to throw her, but… that… face. He was like no man she’d ever seen. Certainly not in the rural stretch of agricultural purgatory known as Madison County, Florida.
His hair, black as midnight, fell around his face like handfuls of sin. His eyes, blacker still and fringed with coal-colored lashes, bore a hole right through to her soul. Harsh, unforgiving, angular features were dusted with a day or two’s worth of whiskers and slashed by a mouth that surely wasn’t put on this earth to do anything but… some really bad things.
He drew thick, sinister brows together, his gaze dropping over her and lingering a moment too long on her threadbare cutoff overalls, the sweat-stained tank top, and, of course, manure-splattered boots.
“You own this farm?” Impatience tinged his question, which took some nerve from a man breaking and entering and rooting through receipts.
“Yes and do you mind telling me what on God’s green earth you think you’re doing?”
“I need information,” he said, shaking a lock of that hair back and giving a jolt to something low and warm and female in Callie’s body. “And don’t even think about not giving it to me.”
The threat was all she needed to lift her chin and flatten him with a threatening gaze. “If you don’t want me to get my .22 and shoot your face off, get your cotton-pickin’ hands out of my receipt can.”
He smiled, and, of course, the devil had dimples. “You’re cute, Daisy Duke. But, just for the record, you’re the one who stuffs ‘confidential information’ in a coffee can and leaves it on top of an unattended counter in an unlocked place of business with no proprietor in sight.”
“Still doesn’t make rifling through my stuff legal or right.” She crossed her arms as if that could offer some protection against him. “Who are you?”
He went back to the receipts. “Government.”
Government? A tax man? Shoot. Did she owe some stupid export duty on that batch of orchids she sent to that lady in Mexico? “Show me an ID badge.”
Without even glancing up, he flipped the hem of his black T-shirt, just enough to reveal a leather holster and something that made her rifle look like a BB gun. That would be… enough ID badge for her.
“What do you want?” she asked harshly, refusing to let him know how much he intimidated her.
For a second, he didn’t answer, riveted on a receipt. “Oh, yes. Now we’re talking.” He snapped the slip at her, rounding the counter to come closer. “Who bought two dozen Black Cherry roses?”
She looked at the paper, but all her still-stalled brain could process was Black Cherry roses. This couldn’t be a coincidence. Intimidation evaporated, replaced by that burn of injustice.
She glared at him and added a hostile pointed finger. “I swear on the Bible, if you had anything to do with my stolen roses, I don’t care if you have an AK-47 strapped around your chest, I will make your life a living—”
“What stolen roses?”
“The ones that were snipped and stripped right out of their beds sometime in the middle of the last night.”
“Last night?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Not interested. What about these?” He flicked the paper. “Who bought these roses? And when?” With each demand, he inched closer, the sheer power and size of his body was like Granny Belle’s big ol’ John Deere about to chew her into human mulch.
She should run. She should hide. She should pray for mercy. But all she could do was… look.
She tore her gaze from his chest and stared at the receipt, blinking to clear her head.
2 doz BC roses $200
Instantly, Callie remembered the sale because, well, who could forget that woman? Tall as an Amazon with eyes as green as spring willow leaves, but not nearly as welcoming. Everything about