Page 33 of Heart of Dixie
Molly lifted her case to her shoulder. “I was hoping you were coming over here to take my place on the team, but I’ll walk you out instead.”
“I’m sorry, Dixie. There’s no need for you to leave because some idiot butts into my dancing time. Stay. Absolutely. We’ll get you a ride home and I’ll catch up with you later.” She turned her calculating gaze on me and something heavy and unexpectedlanded in my chest. I glanced around, but my wingman was shooting the shit a few tables over. No help there.
“So, Deke.”Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it!Who was I kidding? After the show Dixie just put on, there would be no steering clear. Every nerve in my body was on high alert. There was no way I’d survive being left alone with her. “You think you can help a girl out, maybe play a game with Dixie, take her home when you’re done?”
Dixie had been quiet the whole time, not voicing an opinion one way or the other, but the flush in her face had spread to her neck and inside her collar. Just how much further did it go? I nodded to Beth, but my eyes were locked on Dixie, whose eyes were lowered, whose lip was caught in her teeth. The vision of whose ass waving in the air had me going hard. “Sure, Beth. No sweat. We’ll play a game or two and I’ll get her home for you.” But I’d already quit playing around.
And if this was a game, my johnson was rooting for Dixie’s team.
19
Dixie
“Don’t look so scared, princess. I think we’ve already established that nothing will happen unless you want it to.”
True enough. But Deke pressed forward even as I backed against the pool table, the edge of it sharp against my hips. There was nothing dangerous in his words, and the gleam in his eyes was more amused than intense. Perhaps I was only worried what would happen if I showed any sort of encouragement.
Come on Dixie.Were you really worrying?
Orwishing?
The quivering in my belly felt more like anticipation than the nervous butterflies I was oh, so familiar with, and gave me my answer.
Deke’s eyes traveled my body. His gaze glowed as it dragged from mine to brush downward and left a heated path clear to the toes of my favorite Ferragamos. I lifted a hand to his chest, to the powerful beating of it against my palm, and backed him up with only a little pressure. “Tell me about your afternoon.” Thetopic seemed safe, and boring. And if we didn’t introduce the mundane soon, my clothes would start falling off. On purpose.
He took my hand, led me to a table near the dance floor. “You mean after I woke you?”
I should have known he couldn’t resist the reminder that I’d woken sprawled atop him, still naked, probably drooling—ass fried by the late day sun.
He leaned into my ear as I took my seat. “Or after I fucked you in the shower?”
Oh, God, his hands. The soapsuds. My breath caught in my chest. “You’re no gentleman.”
He grinned and stepped between my widened knees. “You’re right. But your mama liked me.”
“You were eight.”
A shiver slid up my spine, even as a warning buzzed in my brain and red lights flashed behind my eyes.Danger ahead!
I unwound my arms from around his neck—no idea whenthathappened—and pulled away. The heat in his deep, dark eyes nearly had me yanking him back. And then he laughed. Yeah, he was no gentleman at all.
He drew one long finger down my cheek, ended the movement by pointing it toward my glass. “Do you need a fresh drink?”
I’d brought mine with me, the tonic and lime I switched to following the sweetness of that first tutti-frutti cocktail. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“So, you want to know how I spent my afternoon after you left.” I nodded and took a sip. Absolutely. It was so much safer than remembering how he spent it before.
Using the back of a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, he attempted to explain the system he was developing, and the gist of the address he was delivering in a few weeks . . . somewhere. “Don’t you think you should find out where it is, and when? Doyou know how much plane fare costs when you have to book at the last minute?” He laughed when my face heated yet again.
“I don’t usually bother with those details. Someone from the company will make my travel arrangements and send an email a few days before I leave.
So, it was something he didn’t concern himself with, the petty nuisance of planning ahead. I was plenty used to that. Along with the snap of commands and a cavalier disregard for money. I lowered the glass I’d just picked up to drink from, gave him a long stare. “You sounded shockingly like so many of my clients just then. Except I would be the one responsible for making those arrangements, sending the email.” I lifted my glass to take a drink after all. “And then I adjust everything at the very last minute when the custom-made pumps you just picked up in Rome didn’t have their own seat on the plane home to New York, or—”
“Or the overpriced Peter Pan who can’t keep it in his shorts has to be whisked off in the middle of the night to some obscure location till the heat dies down.”
I canted my head and slowly, oh, so slowly, lowered my glass to the table. “You saw the article about Drew.”
He nodded and bumped fists with Billy Timmons as he passed.
