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CHAPTER ONE
“Well, hell.”
Luke Warner leaned back and squinted up at the hole in the ceiling, certain he could see the blue sky beyond. He sure had his work cut out for him, but that was what he’d wanted, right? Something to do with his hands, something to connect him to his past. He grimaced as his gaze swept the broken countertops and shelves, the holes in the floor, the leaking pipes.
The old Warner family drugstore on the corner of Keystone and Main in Gulch Town, California had definitely seen better days. For some reason, he’d decided it was his job to put it right. It smelled of dirt and mildew now, but once, the store had its own distinct odor of popcorn, coffee, and candy. Luke remembered sitting on a high stool watching his grandpa weigh a handful of pills on the old scales, the way he’d wrapped them in brown paper and the clunking ring of the manual cash register.
His father hadn’t wanted to run the shop, and it had been left to rot until Luke had shown up and demanded the key from his perplexed Aunt Josie. With a sigh, he picked up his sleeping bag and rucksack and walked to the back of the store. There was one room with a door that still locked and an outside toilet with running water and a sink. That would have to do until he got himself fixed up.
He laid out his sleeping bag, stretched out on it, and kicked off his dusty boots. It was a small town. It wouldn’t take long for folks to hear he was back. He smiled into the gathering shadows. What would Paul and Julia do then?
* * *
Paul lethimself in through the back door of Julia’s small condo and found her in the kitchen stirring something on the stove that smelled like chicken. He came up behind her and planted a kiss on the back of her neck. She squeaked, and he wrapped his arms around her hips and nuzzled her throat. Strands of her silky brown hair tickled his face. She dropped the spoon into the pan and swung around to face him.
“Don’t you ever knock?”
He touched the brim of his Stetson. “No, ma’am, I was brought up in a barn, remember?”
She leaned back against the countertop, her gray eyes serious, her normally laughing mouth a worried line. “That joke is getting old.”
“Yeah, I reckon I’ve been making that one since kindergarten.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “So, what’s up? You seemed kind of jittery when you called.”
“I just spoke to Roxanne. She says Luke is back in town.”
Paul blinked at her. “Our Luke?”
“Well, he’s scarcely ‘ours’ anymore, is he? We haven’t seen or heard from him in ten years. But Luke Warner is definitely here.”
Paul studied Julia’s flushed face. “And?”
“And what?”
“What do you want to do about it?”
“About Luke?” She shrugged, and one of the thin straps of her blue camisole fell down from her shoulder. He noticed she had no bra underneath. “I don’t know.”
Paul stepped closer until his large body was only inches away from Julia’s. Her nipples tightened through the thin cotton of her cami, and her breathing hitched. He put his hands on her waist and set her on the tiled countertop, reaching over to turn off whatever was cooking on the stove.
“You want to see him, don’t you?”
She looked up at him, and he bent his head and licked a slow, lascivious line along the seam of her lips.
“He’ll be hard to miss in a town as small as this.”
“That’s not an answer.” Paul slid a hand under her camisole and cupped her right breast, used his finger and thumb to twist her nipple to a hard, needy point. She sighed and shoved her hand into his hair, wiggled closer to the edge of the counter, until her sex rode the thick ridge of his cock in his jeans.
“You want to see him up close and personal, right?” he murmured between kisses and nips. He went still when she caged his face in her hands.
“Don’t you want to know why he left?”
“Of course I do, but . . .”
She smiled at him and unbuckled his belt and straining fly. “But, you’re worried I’ll run off with him?” She wrapped her hand around his cock and squeezed hard, just the way he liked.
“Yeah,” he admitted, as she pulled down her shorts with one hand and let them fall to the floor. “You always liked him best.”
His fingers plucked at her clit and then slid into the thick wetness of her pussy. He took her hand away from his cock and shoved himself deep into her slick heat, held still as she shuddered around him. Sometimes he liked it like this, hard and fast, Julia having to catch up, giving him every orgasm right around his thrusting shaft rather than against his fingers or mouth.
