Page 20 of Hard to Love
“Don’t try to put thoughts in my head.”
“You were scowling.”
“I was thinking. There’s a difference.”
Silly to be hurt by his reaction. After all, she couldn’t expect him to be excited or invested in a half-formed idea she’d only come up with today. She opened her car door. “Let’s go see the inside.”
The non-droopy barn door wouldn’t budge, so Greer attacked the wonky one. She was able to drag it open a couple of inches, but it stuck in the dirt.
Alex elbowed around her, grasped the door’s edge, and lifted. The muscles under his long-sleeved shirt bunched with the strain. Greer was so busy watching the flex and release that she didn’t realize he’d wrestled the door open until a wave of musty air billowed over her.You’re not here to check out Alex. You’re here to check out your future.
She strolled inside and grasped a pull string on one of the dozen bare bulbs that lit the place and gave it a good yank. Light flashed and exploded with a pop of glass. Fine shards rained down on her, and she instinctively wrapped her arms around her head to protect herself.
“Shit,” Alex said, low and rough. “Don’t move and close your eyes.”
“Got that covered.”
Footsteps stomped away from her. Seconds later, she heard the click from another fixture, and light seeped inside her closed lids. Then slow, gentle hands began picking at her hair, and Alex’s warm fingers grazed the back of her neck, forcing a shiver up from the depths of Greer’s body.
“I said don’t move.”
Like she had any control over the way her body reacted when this man was close. “Don’t worry about getting it all. Half of it’s probably lost in there, and it would take two lifetimes to find it.”
“You can’t walk around with sharp stuff stuck in your hair. Besides, I’ve almost got it.”
Greer’s instinct was the shake her head to try to dislodge the broken pieces, but she remained still. Or at least as still as she could under Alex’s handling. When he lifted the hair from the back of her neck, an image cruised through her brain, one of him pulling back her head so he could kiss her.
His lips would be rough on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth. Because that was the kind of man he was—demanding, delicious, dangerous.
This time her body didn’t settle for a shiver. It went for an all-out from-the-toes-up shudder.
“Are you cut?”
“I’m fine.” Her words were low and breathy. God, no, she wasn’t fine. She was sick. With Alex fever.You just met him today, and you’re thinking about kissing him. What is wrong with you, girl?
He sifted back through her hair another time. If he had even half this amount of patience in bed, he’d be lethal. “I think you’re good to go.”
Oh, yeah, she was totally primed. “Thanks.” She opened her eyes to find Alex still standing close. His chest seemed to be rising faster than normal and his pupils dilated wide.
He quickly looked away and stepped back to make a show of checking out the barn’s interior, mostly empty except for a few pieces of old farm equipment under tarps. “So you want to build a co-op and this is what you have to work with?”
She smiled up at him and pumped a little wicked into her expression. If he thought the barn was rough, he might be tempted to go back to Raylene’s after she showed himthe accommodations she was offering. “C’mon. I’ll show you the office and bathroom area before I explain more.” She led him up a set of wooden stairs.
What she was about to do was spur of the moment, not to mention risky. But somehow it felt absolutely right. With one shove, she opened the door to an efficiency apartment-size room and said, “Alex, welcome to your new home.”
Chapter Six
If a man’s home was his castle, the room Greer had just opened the door to was the friggin’ dungeon. It held a ratty cot and a decades-old refrigerator, the kind some governmental agency had banned because little kids could get stuck in them and suffocate. And the damn thing wasn’t even standing upright. It was lying on its side like a victim of refrigerator tipping.
The space included another door on the opposite side of the room next to an ancient window air conditioner unit. Alex wandered over and turned the AC knob to low. The thing rumbled, whined, and coughed up a cloud of brown dust, a June bug, and an army of dead flies. Just as he was about to turn away from the wheezing thing, something furry popped out of the vent and leapt in front of his face. It hit the floor and took off like its ass was on fire.
His back hit the door, and Greer doubled over with her arms wrapped around her middle. He was pretty sure she was laughing. When she came up for air, her face was a flushed pink. “Oh my God, you should’ve seen your face when that mouse jumped out. You flinched.”
Villanueva men didn’t flinch at a fucking rodent. Hell, they didn’t flinch at a .380 to the temple. “Did not.”
“Then what do you call that little shuffle-step you did, the electric slide?”
He pushed away from the door he assumed led outside. “Normal girls are afraid of mice.”
