Excerpt of Crush On You by Christie Ridgway

"So what did you think of Penn Bennett?" Alessandra’s friend Clare asked, from her spot in the adjacent beautician’s chair.

"I don’t want to think about that man," she told Clare, "or ever see him again."

But life hadn’t been going her way the last five years, and as if she needed more proof of that, she noted a shiny truck pulling into a parking space in front of Oliver’s Ristorante across the street. "Though you can check him out yourself. Looks like he’s heading for Overpriced Ollie’s."

Clare wiggled on her seat. "That’s what I love about small towns and the beauty shop’s big picture windows. Sooner or later everybody passes by."

Crossing her arms over her chest, Alessandra wasn’t so pleased. She watched his long legs emerge from the truck’s cab. There was a kid with a table on the sidewalk outside Ollie’s, soliciting funds for some good cause, but it didn’t make her like the bastard any better when he drew out a couple of bills from his pocket.

We’ll have to see about a booking on Inside the Actors Studio, he’d said.

What the heck did he mean by that? And he’d uttered it with such a cynical smile on his handsome face, too.

While she watched him hand over the money, he smiled again. But then his head turned toward the street as a car came to a sudden stop behind his vehicle. The skinny passenger in the beat-up sedan shot his torso out the side window and stripped off his shirt.

"Build me up!" The guy yelled it so loud she could hear it through thick plate glass and whirring beauty appliances. "Penn Bennett, build me up!"

Smile growing to a grin, Penn reached into his truck and withdrew a T-shirt that he balled up and threw to the half-naked man. A fist- pump later, the car took off with a screech of tires.

"Okay, I know my experience with the male animal has been somewhat limited, but . . ." She glanced over at Clare, who was staring out the window, her jaw dangling.

Her friend transferred her gaze toward Alessandra, showing wide eyes. "The bastard is Penn Bennett? You didn’t tell me that! Penn Bennett of Build Me Up!"

Alessandra blinked. "Which would happen to be . . . ?"

"Just the hottest home renovation show on television. His team repairs and remodels homes of needy people. I almost cry every time he leads the grateful family into their now-beautiful house. He makes them feel so special."

"Really?" While Alessandra could believe the guy was on TV—he was Hollywood handsome—she couldn’t imagine him as an altruistic do- gooder.

That little break in your voice, the single tear— brilliant.

Remembering his words, she frowned and figured mean and spiteful was the guy’s true character. "The thing is, Clare, this Build Me Up show—it’s a job for him, right? He gets paid to make nicey-nice and appear all sympathetic."

Clare opened her mouth, but Alessandra kept on talking. "Don’t get taken in by what you think you know about Penn Bennett. If you ask me, he’s—"

"Waiting with bated breath to hear your assessment of his character."

Ah, damn, Alessandra thought, the skin at the back of her neck prickling in belated warning. Just another reason to dislike the guy. Real men didn’t enter beauty salons and catch disgruntled women discussing them over peroxide and bobby pins. Slowly, to give the embarrassed heat she was feeling a chance to fade from her cheeks, she shifted in her chair to face him.

His hazel eyes took a lazy pass over her lacy camisole, short watermelon-red cotton skirt, and bare legs. "Liam said that ‘Nun of Napa’ thing was just a nickname, and now I’m sure he’s right."

Clare snickered.

Alessandra decided not to dignify the remark with an explanation. It wasn’t her fault that the residents of Edenville and its environs had put that tag on her. But there were worse things someone could call someone else. Like arrogant. Like too good-looking for his own good. Over- confident, that was certain. She could imagine a bare-chested Penn Bennett flexing in front of a mirror, hear him singing to his amazing reflection. I’m too sexy for my shirt.

"I’m sure you need to go away now," she said.

He laughed. "No," he said, running a hand through his layered hair. "I’m here for a cut."

Men in Edenville went to Manuel’s Barber Shop, closer to the highway. It had the requisite barber pole outside and ESPN played on a TV in the corner. In Manuel’s back room it was said he pulled molars with rusty pliers and handed out herbal cures for the clap. "This is a beauty salon," she said, gesturing to encompass the lavender walls and framed headshots of female models.

"What?" he asked, all cheeky grin and sparkling eyes. "I’m not beautiful?"

The fact was, he was beautiful, in a wholly masculine way that involved long lean muscles and the grit of golden stubble on his chin. But Alessandra hated his studied, I-don’t-give-a-damn looks, and she hated that he wasn’t taking the hint and moving on. Worse, she hated his perfect knowledge of just what was going through her head, clear from the smirk on his lips and the laugh in his eyes.

"Why don’t you try squeezing out a tear or two, little nun," Penn said softly, that sly smile still on his face. He moved into her personal space, leaning close enough that she could smell his lime- and-sin aftershave, even over the combined scents of sweet shampoo and acrid hair color that permeated the salon’s air. "That usually gets you what you want, doesn’t it?"