You Dropped a Blonde on Me by Dakota Cassidy

tell you they’d be old chicks with lumpy asses and thickening waists? If I were you, I’d ask for my money back. You were raped.” She reached for the only towel in the bathroom—a hand towel, holding it up in front of her while she slid her skirt back upward with her free hand.
    Campbell stepped into the bathroom, laying his lean fingers on her waist to help her zip up her skirt. His deep chestnut brown hair, thick and tucked behind his ears, was shiny and silken under the light in her mother’s bathroom. “Who says you’re old? Have you looked in the mirror, Max Henderson? You look just as good as you did in high school.”
    Her eyes met his in the big mirror over the sink, her heart skittered with his broad hands at her waist. Not for over twenty years had she thought another man would ever touch her, and now here she was, in her mother’s bathroom, being touched in a way so personal she was uncomfortable and excited and . . . uncomfortably excited. Simultaneously. She couldn’t meet her own eyes, let alone his, in the mirror. Though she had just enough time to note that she was no longer a Vanilla Pudding blonde. The stripe of medium brown hair along her scalp, her natural color, said so. The corners of her fading green eyes with the beginnings of crow’s-feet said it, too, and the small but rapidly growing lines around her mouth—lines that sure as shit weren’t from busting a gut laughing.
    “So who says you’re old, Max?”
    Everyone who owns a Ferrari and has a personal trainer.
    The close quarters, the scent of Campbell’s clean shirt, and his hard good looks flushed her with sudden irritation. “No one has to say it. Where I’ve been you don’t say it. You just know it. I know it. And stop calling me Max. It’s Maxine .” Neener, neener, neener. Like high-handedly reminding him her name wasn’t shortened anymore was going to help her retain some of her wayward pride.
    “Were all the people blind where you’ve been?”
    No. They were young, tight of skin, free of cellulite, with 20/20 vision. “Where I’ve been doesn’t matter. I’m here now.” Here. Here. Here. In her mother’s throwback-to-the-seventies bathroom with the brown swirly wallpaper and yellow vanity top.
    “Yep. You sure are. And I’m here, too. I wouldn’t call you unlucky today, Max .”
    Her knees went watery and soft when he said her name, and she couldn’t think. “I have to change.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of stopping you.”
    “Alone.”
    “Damn. Maybe you’re not as much fun as Christmas after all.”
    Slipping from his light but mind-bending grasp, Maxine snorted. “I’m nowhere near as fun as Christmas. I’m not even bordering the excitement of Groundhog Day. And now I have to go walk a dog. Really, Campbell, it was nice seeing you again. In my underwear.”
    He laughed, backing away. “It won’t be the last time I see you.”
    “In my underwear?”
    “Not that a guy can’t hope, but I meant around. You know, the village. Because I work here now.”
    No. It would be the last time he saw her if she had anything to say about it. The fluttery belly dances and weak knees were something she was never going to fall for again. They led to clenches of your intestines and irritable bowel syndrome. Add in the not-so-sweet fist up your ass, and she was so out.
    Gliding past him, Maxine ignored the tingle the contact of their arms brought, hers smooth, his rough with dark hair.
    Dog shit. That’s where her focus had to be. Scooping Jake’s shit. And money. Not Campbell Barker. “Yeah. Around. I’ll see you.” Maxine hurried down the hall to head to her mother’s room to change, closing the door and turning the lock.
    Sitting on the edge of her mother’s green and burgundy floral bedspread, she gripped her knees to stop them from shaking before she changed.
    Campbell Barker had scared the bejesus out of her. He looked at her in a way that was as distinctly unfamiliar to her as Hanes underwear. Like