Page 9 of The Love Dare
Tyler huffs under his breath. “I remember that.”
“Yes, well. You at least were a gentleman, eating my cabbage roll mush without complaint. Alex, on the other hand…”
“Launched one at you from across the dinner table?”
Winnie snorts and elbows him in the side. It’s like hitting a brick wall.
“Hey! I didn’t throw it.”
She tries not to swoon when he laughs quietly under his breath. Tyler’s laughs are so rare. They deserve to be treasured. And she remembers the one from the night in question with vivid detail, because it was the loudest, purest laugh she could ever remember him making.
“No, but I seem to remember you laughing like a freaking hyena when it hit me in the face.”
“It exploded against your forehead!”
Winnie sighs dramatically. It took two rounds of shampoo to get the tomato sauce, pork, and rice out of her hair. Her pale skin was stained just a little bit orange for an entire day.
“And I defended your honor,” he adds with a pointed glance that steals her breath. Because he did pick her side. Whether it was for her benefit or just for fun, she’ll never know, but while she was still in shock, the sauce dripping over her eyes, he launched one across the table at her brother. It hit Alex right in the nose with a loudwhack. After that, it was all-out war while her mother shrieked at them to stop. If her father had been home, things might have gone differently, but Yetta Rusu didn’t have the same scare factor. Oh, her dad scolded them later when he found out what happened, but by then the damage was done. Her knees still hurt from scrubbing tomato juice from the carpet whenever she thinks about it.
“Could you make me one?” Tyler asks suddenly, his gaze on the sketch.
“A bracelet?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “I think it’s cool how you’re always wearing them.”
“You don’t think the guys will make fun of you?”
“Fuck ’em.”
“Ty!” She gapes at him, scandalized but also unable to fight the giggle bubbling at the back of her throat.
“What? Who cares what they think?” He turns to her, mischief twinkling in those eyes. “Unless, of course, you’re the one who thinks I’m not man enough to pull it off.”
She swallows. He’s hot enough to pull off a miniskirt if he wants to, but there’s no way he’ll get that information out of her. “Hey, if you want to rock some Romanian jewelry, who am I to say no?”
“I’d be honored to wear a Winnie Rusu original.”
“I probably won’t do the flowers, though,” she murmurs as he hands back the sketchbook. She flips to a blank page, the inspiration hitting like a wave she can’t control. He watches quietly while she works, nothing but the scratch of pencil on paper to fill the silence. The weight of his gaze on her cheek is heavy, but art is probably the one thing she finds more all-consuming than Tyler Briggs.
“It’ll be something more like this,” she says a few minutes later, showing him a rough sketch. Instead of the traditional flower motifs, she used the more geometric zigzags and crosses commonly found in Romanian embroidery. It’s a little more masculine.
Tyler brushes his fingers over the design, tracing the lines with a reverence they don’t deserve. A dusting of silver graphite stains his skin. He’s so hard to read. She understands why—life has taught him to always keep his cards close. But she’s dying for one little hint of the assessment to come. Art is so subjective. And while she’s grown up surrounded by the patterns of her ancestors, she’s well aware not everyone in Dallas appreciates them. The girls at school make fun of her jewelry and her mother’s clothes enough to make that clear. The groove etched into the center of his focused brow could be saying anything. He hates it and doesn’t know what to say. He was only kidding butnow he doesn’t have an exit strategy. Because of course, a guy like Tyler would never want to wear some silly bracelet she?—
He looks up.
Winnie holds her breath, waiting for his assessment. Those crystal-blue eyes are a diamond reflecting with every facet.
“I love it.”
The words are barely a whisper, but they hold her captive. She can’t move. Tyler doesn’t either. They sit there for a moment, staring. No words pass between them, and yet, the air feels heavy with something she can’t explain. Invisible tension grabs her lungs, making her breath come short. For the first time in her life, those words she always keeps so tightly bound at the back of her mind threaten to work their way up her throat.
I love you.
Before she has a chance to make an absolute fool of herself, Tyler sucks in a sharp breath and hands the sketchbook back to her. He jumps to his feet with a sudden bout of energy and glances around her room. “Hey, you want to watch a movie or something?”
“Oh,” she says, still reeling, trying to hide it. “Sure. Yeah.”
They settle down on her bed—Tyler on his back with her computer resting on his flat stomach, his hands clasped behind his head, and Winnie snuggled up on her side, careful to keep a solid foot between them lest she self-combust. The movie is some action film she’s barely able to focus on, too enraptured by the way his chest moves every time he breathes and the subtle noises he makes, each laugh or snort or snicker like a peek into the inner workings of his mind.
