Seducing The Proper Miss Miller

The guy behind him honked his horn impatiently, and at the sound of the horn blaring, Chloe glanced up from what she was doing at the desk that looked out toward the street.

Quickly he slouched down in the rental truck, turning his face away. He hoped she hadn’t seen him. She was liable to think he was watching her or something. It wasn’t his fault that he’d had to make four trips to the hardware store this morning. And it sure wasn’t his fault that the hardware store was two doors down from where she was working.

No, he didn’t want her to get the wrong impression. He found her attractive, but she wasn’t his type. No, his type wasn’t afraid to show off feminine charms. He liked women with bold eyes and tight clothes, women who knew the score and the rules of the game. Jean had been the only exception to that, and she’d fooled him when he’d first met her...a nice girl posing as a party babe.

Still, he’d been interested when he first laid eyes on Chloe through that window at the old church. Very interested. She’d been watching him, and when she’d seen him looking back, she’d become all flustered and turned five shades of pretty pink.

Pretty. It was a good word for her. Chloe was pretty in an old-fashioned, quietly elegant, peaches-and-cream way that was rarely seen anymore, a ladylike prettiness that was distinctly less than fashionable in today’s world of carefully rumpled, clumpy-shoes-and-shapeless-clothes glamour. If there was one thing Thad knew about, it was women. Courtesy of his mother, he’d been raised around women who spent big bucks and long hours trying to achieve beauty.

He could spot mascara at fifty yards and knew exactly how much time and mousse it took to create a headful of tousled curls that invited a man to dream about what they’d look like spilled across a pillow while he ravished their owner. He knew what a petite size in women’s clothing was and if a perfume was musk or floral based, whether nail polish was frosted or crème and when a woman was wearing a push-up bra to help enhance what Mother Nature had skimped on.

Mother Nature hadn’t skimped on Chloe, he remembered. Beneath those modestly buttoned blouses she wore with her prim suits was the figure of a goddess. The day she’d come to see him, she’d left her suit jacket in the car. He’d been so distracted by the firm mounds beneath the ivory silk of her short-sleeved blouse, he’d barely heard half of what she’d said.

For a few insane moments, he’d actually contemplated asking her out. But a few minutes into that fantasy, he’d come to his senses. Chloe was a sweet, sheltered, minister’s daughter. And not just any minister, either, but the one who had conducted his wife’s funeral service. She also was modest and courteous and kind to everybody—kind enough to make a big deal out of him saving her life, when she had to know her father would have thanked him already.

He, on the other hand, had never been sweet or sheltered, and he seriously doubted any woman anywhere would consider him modest, courteous or kind. A sudden vision of Chloe’s face when he’d kissed her palm sailed into his head and with no more encouragement than that, his body began to respond as strongly as it had when she’d been standing right in front of him, confusion and arousal clouding her wide eyes. He’d wanted to pull up her modest skirts right there and bare every long, silky inch of her to his seeking hands—and the knowledge that he couldn’t had frustrated him in a way he hadn’t experienced in years. It had been rude and cruel to tease her like he had, but he’d wanted to shock her into leaving before he gave in to the inner voice shouting at him to haul her out of her car and into the trailer.

He could still see the way her pupils had dilated in shock as she’d realized she was looking at a fully aroused man. And she had been shocked, no question about it. It was just one more difference between them. Most of the women he knew would have laughed and snuggled right up.

Hell, he’d been raised watching his mother do exactly that. Chloe was the antithesis of his mother, genteel rather than coarse. He sensed that beneath her sedate surface there might be a smouldering ember waiting to burst into flame, but unlike his mother, she wouldn’t allow the nearest man to feed her fire. No, Little Miss Miller would undoubtedly wait for Mr. Deadly Dull But Approved by Daddy and get a ring on her finger before she let anyone close enough to get warm. She and his mother couldn’t be less alike.

But as he circled around through the high school parking lot and turned the rental truck back down Main Street one more time, he had to admit that in one way, Chloe and his mother did share something in common. Chloe was kind to everyone. That had been one of the first things he’d noticed about her. Just like his mother. She might have been easy with her favors before she’d gotten old and ill, but she’d always had a big heart.

She’d do anything for a friend who needed her, anything for him. He might have had a mother who liked the male of the species a mite too much, but he’d been loved.

As he drove past the temporary church office yet again, a car swung out of a parking space just ahead of him.

Fate.

He’d always been one to step right up when Lady Luck called. That empty parking space was a clear directive. He was supposed to stop and talk to Chloe. In fact, maybe he was even supposed to ask her out.

He considered the idea for a moment, pretending it was the first time it had occurred to him. Maybe she wasn’t normally his type nor he hers, but what the heck.

Why else would that parking spot have opened up at that exact moment in time?

He sensed the exact moment she saw him. He didn’t know why, but as he stepped out of the truck and popped a quarter into the meter, he knew she was watching him. He felt her... awareness of him as clearly as if she’d made eye contact.