“God, you make me crazy for you,” he groaned, his lips moving over her jaw to her neck. “I forget where the hell I’m at and don’t give a damn who’s watching.”

And he didn’t. The employees’ parking lot was fairly sheltered, but it was in no possible way private. Dawg was a desperate man, though. The emotions welled inside him, the hunger for Crista that he knew would never be sated, and his hands couldn’t touch her enough.

His head lifted, his gaze lowering as he pushed his hand beneath the hem of yet another of those damned snug tank top things she wore. The ones that smoothed over her breasts and skimmed over her belly just a little too snug to make grown men comfortable.

He watched as the rough, dark flesh of his hand touched her smooth, creamy belly above the low-rise jeans she wore. Crista wasn’t bone skinny, rather nicely rounded, and those curves made him crazy.

His hand moved up her belly, pushing her shirt farther up until he could cup one lace-covered mound of her breast.

“Cameras,” she suddenly moaned, shuddering as his fingers gripped a hard nipple and tugged at it slowly.

“Huh?” His attention was riveted on that hard little nipple, his mouth watering to taste it.

“Dawg!” Laughter and arousal filled her voice. “You parked under the security camera.”

His eyes jerked up, moved to the window, and up to the camera’s eye pointing down on the truck.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Laughter bubbled from her lips as she pulled her shirt down, hiding the succulent, tempting little berries he was dying for.

“You’re a bad boy,” she accused, scrambling from his lap and trying to straighten her clothes and her hair. Laughter gleamed in her eyes and curved her luscious lips.

“Hell, you sound surprised.” Dawg sighed as he shifted in his seat and tried to relieve the pressure of his jeans against his cock. That portion of his body was so engorged now it was painful.

“Never surprised.” She shook her head with a soft laugh as she flipped down the visor, smoothed her makeup beneath her eyes, and fluffed the silk of her hair before checking her shirt.

After adjusting the neckline, she flashed him a teasing glance, then pushed her door open and jumped from the truck. Damn her. She knew what she was doing to him, Dawg thought, and he couldn’t help but grin as he forced himself from the vehicle and hit the automatic lock on his key chain. The truck lights flashed as the small beep assured him it had locked.

“Come on, you little tease.” Moving around the truck, his arm slid around her waist as they headed for the employees’ entrance. “I’ll lock us in the office and have my wicked way with you there.

“I don’t think so. You have orders to finish, and you still haven’t made up the list for the winter inventory yet. You need to get a jump on the larger stores and plan your displays.”

He scowled down at her as they moved for the office steps.

“I don’t do winter displays. They cost too much, and they’re not effective.”

“Only because you’re the one doing them,” she stated. “I’ve been watching your displays, Dawg.

They aren’t effective because you have no idea what women are looking for.”

“I know what women want.” He frowned down at her, wondering then if somehow he had been ineffective with those explosive orgasms he’d been giving her.

“What women want in a bed and what they’re willing to buy in public are two different things.”

The laughter in her voice warmed him, made him grin. “Trust me. I’ve got you covered on this. We’re going to have incredible winter displays. Just wait until you see the Santa Claus I’m thinking of bringing in.

And I found some incredible wrought-iron arches at a steal. Very classy, and for the most part unavailable in this area. I want to buy the distributor’s stock in whole, to make certain the larger stores don’t get one up on us.”

As he listened to her, he was tempted to shake his head. She had plans, and he’d be damned if he disagreed with her. At the rate she was going, she would end up making his father roll in his grave at the success of it.

“I need you to check with Jim Bedsford and see what happened to the Connelly order, now that I think about it.” She frowned as they entered the office and she moved to the desk. “I nearly forgot, with everything that’s been going on. Layla had to reimburse him for a fourth of his order when it didn’t arrive on the site. He’s pretty upset over it.”

Dawg took the inventory order and frowned down at it. He had worked damned hard to get Connelly to let Mackay’s handle the supplies for the apartment complex he was building.

“Damn,” he growled. “I’m going to have to work today.”

Soft laughter and feminine warmth whispered around him then.

“You and me both. Now go take care of Bedsford. And if I were you, I’d seriously consider replacing him.”

“With who?” Dawg grunted.

His gaze met hers. She was confident, certain.

“Layla’s husband, Jamie. He has experience, and he spends half his time here with Layla anyway.

Might as well put him to work.”

And she was right, damn her.

He grunted noncommittally, knowing damned good and well he’d end up doing it.

“Stay out of trouble,” he warned her before pressing a hard kiss to her lips and heading for the door. “And don’t leave the store with anyone but me. You’re not safe until Cranston has Johnny picked up. Promise me, Crista.”

“Yes sir,” she snapped teasingly. “Any other orders, sir?”

He turned at the door and lifted his brows. “Be naked when I return?”

“Only in your dreams.” She rolled her eyes and waved one hand back at him. “Bye-bye, Dawg.

Catch you at lunch.”

He chuckled as he left the office, amazed now at the feelings running through him. He was still so damned hard his jeans were uncomfortable, but that knot of discontent, which had followed him all his life, was easing. Because of her.

Shaking his head, he moved quickly down the stairs, threw Layla a wave, and made a mental note to talk to her about her husband before heading to the back of the store. Bedsford was obviously going to have to go; Dawg just wanted to find out first why he was sabotaging the supplies Mackay’s Lumber was in charge of.

TWENTY-TWO

Summer displays were as important as winter and Christmas displays, but a hell of a lot harder without the time it took for preparation.

Crista spent the first several hours staring out the tinted windows that overlooked the floor of the store, her gaze narrowed as Layla worked at the desk behind her to get a count on the proper items they were going to need to create the design Crista wanted.

The front of the store was important. At the moment, it was all parking lot. There were no fenced areas for the summer displays and landscaping. Nothing for shoppers to get curious about as they drove in front of Mackay’s to reach the large grocery store and outdoor strip mall housed farther up the road.

“Do we have the gazebo plans at least?” Crista asked Layla.

Dawg had ordered only a small amount of the gazebos, which were steady sellers through the past few years.

“We have several plans.” Layla moved to the lateral files on the other side of the office. “I put them in here after the last gazebos shipped in. The supplier sends the plans or they’ll build them for you.

It would be incredibly cheaper if Dawg would pay a few of the younger workers to put in some extra hours to put them together.”

She pulled a file free and laid the first plan out on the coffee table. “These are the ones that are selling best at the moment.”

The smaller gazebos had a two-seat swing with a bench on the other side. Crista stared down at the design, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “We have the swings?”

“Plenty of those.” Layla nodded. “And we could get the flowers you were talking about within three days. There’s a local greenhouse owner I know who would make certain Mackay’s has only the freshest blooms. They’ll train the employees to care for them and check them every few days. What we don’t sell, we don’t pay for. Especially the perennials, flowering bushes, and trees, because they can be planted in the fall and sold to landscapers the next spring.”

Crista made a few quick notes on the clipboard she carried, around the sketch she was making of the outdoor display she wanted.

“Are your boys working this summer?” she asked Layla.

Layla shook her head quickly. “They haven’t applied for anything yet. They have summer classes at the college, so it would be hard for them to work most places right now.”

“Could Mackay’s hire them for evening work and weekends?” she asked. “We’ll need someone to build the gazebos and to put the displays together. There’re a few of the girls working the floor right now that I have in mind for the gardening section, but I’d like to get this taken care of first.”

“That would work perfectly for them, Crista.” Layla nodded.

“Let me find Dawg.” Crista turned and looked out over the floor once again. “He was supposed to be talking to Bedsford about the Connelly order.”

“I saw him in the lumberyard before you called me up here. They were loading the items missing on the inventory sheet. He called Connelly and got an agreement to hold off on buying the items elsewhere if Dawg would take care of the orders personally. I heard him arguing with Connelly on his cell phone,” Layla admitted with a shy grin. “Dawg can be persuasive. I’d guess he’ll go after Jim around closing instead. The lumberyard is pretty busy right now.”

How many orders was Bedsford messing up in the meantime, Crista wondered, a frown working at her brow at the thought of the other man.

She knew Jim Bedsford, not well, but she knew him.

Her heart jumped in her chest then, an odd memory flashing in her head. She had seen Johnny and Jim one night. It had been late, after she got off at the diner. Jim had been getting into Johnny’s car, but she hadn’t seen Johnny. Oh Lord, she had seen a woman. A woman with long hair and shadowed features. It had been too dark to see much, but it had felt odd, out of place, because she knew Johnny was gay. She thought he had loaned his car to a friend; he did that sometimes. She had borrowed it herself once.

It had been Johnny, dressed as her, and Bedsford had known it.

Jim was a bit taller than Johnny, broad, with a barrel chest and a perpetual scowl on his pitted face. He had been discharged from the service for medical reasons, she had heard, though there had been no specifics.

“I have to find Dawg,” she whispered, her heart in her throat.

Layla looked back at her in surprise. “He should be finished in the lumberyard by now. He’s probably on the floor. Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to him about the outside display so we can get started on it,” she said. She also needed to talk to him about Bedsford and Johnny. “Could you stay up here and watch the phones while I

’m gone?”

Layla nodded. “I have Crystal watching the floor right now. That won’t be a problem.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Crista left the office quickly and moved down the metal steps. Her gaze scanned the rows and aisles as she headed across the floor toward the end of the building where the lumber and building displays were arranged. Some of the stock was kept inside for small purchases, while the majority of it was kept in a covered hangar behind the store.

As she entered the lumber section, she paused, frowning when she didn’t see Dawg. Turning up one of the narrow aisles, she walked quickly toward the back of the store, then headed toward the other side when one of the stock boys mentioned seeing him in appliances.

Damn it, they needed a few walkie-talkies. She didn’t have her cell phone on her, and right now she could have used a clue as to where the hell he was. She made a quick note on her clipboard to have him set up a system for the employees. It would also make helping customers much easier.