Page 23 of Need You
Colt had seen Deb’s car and that wasn’t saying much. Like a lot of people in Glory Junction, she suffered from ski bumitis and had trouble holding down a steady job. Felix, hard up for good servers, let her play hooky so she could get time in on the slopes. In the summer, she spent as many hours on the lake and river as the Garner brothers.
“Thanks for wanting to have my back, Little Debbie.” He grinned because she hated when he called her that.
“Lord knows why I do. But she said you guys kissed and made up.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Although he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that he’d thought about kissing her in her kitchen the other day. She’d had on a long gauzy shirt, a pair of white stretchy pants, and high-heeled sandals. He knew nothing about fashion, but the outfit was incredibly sexy without showing a lot of skin. What red-blooded man wouldn’t have wanted to kiss her? “Let’s put it this way, we’re learning to share.”
“I bet you are.” She waggled her brows.
“Now, don’t go spreading rumors. She’s not my type.”
“Why’s that?”
Because the next time he fell for a woman, she wasn’t going to up and leave him for the bright lights of the big city. For fame and fortune and all the other clichés that made for a bad chick flick. This time he was sticking with his own kind: a small-town girl.
“I prefer blondes,” he said with a grin. “You think you could get my food? I’m a little hungry here.”
“Sure thing, Chief.” She saluted him, walked to the order window, and shouted, “Chicken in the hay and a side of Joan of Arc.”
After his late lunch, Colt went back to the office, where he spent the rest of the day returning calls, checking over reports, and listening to Carrie Jo espouse the benefits of a new cleanse diet Foster had told her about. Something about the healing qualities of lemon juice and cayenne pepper. It sounded like a load of crap to Colt, which he’d told her, and had tried to persuade her to go running with him again. She’d come up with a hundred and one excuses. “My knee hurts.” “It’s too hot.” And his personal favorite: “Running gives me diarrhea.” Colt didn’t want to push too hard and have Carrie Jo see him as a tyrant. Her ex had given her enough shit about her weight.
He got home to find Delaney’s Tesla on the easement pad and begrudgingly drove to the top of his drive and exercised the pain-in-his-ass three-point turn. Exhausted, he sincerely hoped the next twelve hours would be crime and accident free. Inside, he stripped out of his uniform, put on a pair of basketball shorts, and planted his ass in front of the flat screen with a beer and a bag of chips, otherwise known as dinner, and spent an hour channel surfing.
Colt fell asleep, woke up to the news, turned off the TV, and hauled himself upstairs to bed. As tired as he was, he couldn’t fall asleep again, not with the light from Delaney’s window shining through his curtains.What does she have, a freakin’ spotlight up there?He rolled over to the opposite side, away from the window, and pulled the covers over his head. But it was hot as hell. After a half hour of tossing and turning, he got up, put on clothes, and went over to Delaney’s. He didn’t care that it was close to midnight.
He banged on her door, ready to rip her a new one. But when she answered in skimpy pajama shorts and a thin tank top, his tongue went numb. Or maybe he had swallowed it.Don’t stare.
“Hi,” she said. “Everything okay?”
He pointed to the side of the house at the offending bedroom. “You left your light on.... It’s shining in my room.”
She walked out onto the deck, barefoot—and braless—and craned her neck to look at what he was talking about. “That’s my studio. I’m working.”
“At midnight?”
“Yes. When I’m designing I don’t pay attention to time.”
“Well, I’ve got to be up at the crack of dawn and I can’t sleep. Don’t you have shades or something you can pull closed?” Then she could work 24/7 for all he cared.
“Don’t you?”
“I have drapes, but the light shines right through. It’s like you’re making a motion picture up there.”
She rolled her eyes. “It is not. Maybe you’re just hypersensitive.” She said it like there was something wrong with him and he should get over it.
Under ordinary circumstances he would’ve found her challenge amusing, but he was sleep deprived. “Let me see.”
She opened the door and led him inside the house, which was hopped up on steroids. The other day, when they’d had a beer in her kitchen, he’d compared. He was pretty sure his entire house could fit in her pantry.
He followed her up the stairs.Don’t look at her ass. Instead, he kept his eyes pinned on the industrial-looking metal railing, which he actually liked. It reminded him of an auto body shop. At the landing, she took a right down the hallway to a large room that could’ve been the master suite but was set up as an office. It had a desk, a bank of file cabinets, a wall covered in cork with pictures and drawings of clothing stuck to it. By the window that faced his bedroom sat a huge drafting table and a lamp that shined as bright as a monster quasar. A person could light the entire earth with that much energy.
He walked over to the switch and turned it off.
“Hey!” She flicked it back on.
“You really need it to be this bright while you’re working?”
“No, I just keep it on to annoy you,” she said dryly.
