Page 24 of Hard to Love
“She’s giving me a ride back to town. Nothing more involved.” He nodded toward Greer, his small smile full of something so not simple. “I’ll wait in the car.”
Cal didn’t speak again until Alex was around the house and out of sight. “He thinks he’ll get into your pants with his charm.”
Charm and Alex. Those were two words she hadn’t put together. But yeah, that flash of a smile proved he had charm. He just didn’t unleash it very often. There had to be a reason for that. “And if he does it’ll be because I allowed myself to be charmed. Now that we have all that squared away, I want to start something called Wild Card Artisan Village.”
“You already have a co-op.”
“With four artists including you and me.” She snagged Cal’s sandwich straight from his hand and took a nervous bite. One taste, and she tossed it back at him. “When will you learn mustard doesn’t belong on ham?”
“When will you learn not to snatch other people’s food?” He settled back into his chair. “So about this co-op?”
“I want room for the artisans to be able to do demonstrations and sell their pieces. Maybe even teachclasses.”
“Have you looked at that old barn lately? Would take an assload of money and work to get that place in any kind of shape.”
“We just came from there.”
His gaze sharpened. “We? What does this tooler guy have to do with an idea you suddenly came up with today?”
“Nothing.” Yet. But she felt from the top of her head to her toes that he wasn’t just in town to work with PBC. He would impact her new co-op. She knew it with more certainty than she’d ever known anything in her life. She stuck out one foot. “These are telling me it’s time to take a chance.” A big one.
“Why do I have a feeling one of those chances has something to do with a guy we know nothing about?”
“He does beautiful work. That’s all I need to know for now. But the village will need a resident artist or two.”
“The barn’s yours to do whatever you want, but you ask me, with that guy, you’d be getting more than a handful.”
Chapter Seven
When Greer finally came around her brother’s house into the front yard, Alex had already been sitting in the passenger seat of her car for fifteen minutes. Cal Maddox had probably been giving his sister an earful about how she shouldn’t mess around with a guy like Alex.
Couldn’t really blame him.
If Alex had a sister who looked like Greer and some guy who looked like him came sniffing around, he’d kick the son-of-a-bitch to the gutter. Stomp him in the face a couple times for good measure.
Which meant Alex had probably just kissed his chances at PBC’s tooling workadios.Hell, he’d have to make a new plan to get the last of the money he needed. Since he was already in Texas, he might as well quietly make the rounds to the other custom bootmakers. Few were in the same league with Prophecy Boot Company, but he couldn’t be choosy now.
But as he watched Greer stride across the yard in that flirty shirt, those tight jeans, and a pair of boots most people would kill for, all that worry simply disappeared from his brain. She was a compact fireball of perfection. Perfection he wanted to have wrapped around him.
Keep dreaming.
She yanked open the driver’s side door, and herbeeswax scent blew in as she flung herself into her seat. “Sorry about my brother. He’s protective.”
“It’s not wrong for a man to care about what’s his.”
Greer turned to consider him, her head angled so a tendril of her wild hair skimmed her cheek and hung down to touch the tip of her breast. Everything inside Alex clenched with want. Want for her naked and all that dark hair playing hide and seek with her skin. Want for not only her body, but also the light and life inside her.
He leaned toward her, actually reached out to twirl a finger around that strand of hair.
She glanced down, and her eyes popped wide. Before he could retreat, she grabbed his wrist, pulled it closer to inspect it.Motherfucker, he’d forgotten that he’d flicked open the buttons on his shirt cuffs, leaving his skin visible. She shoved at the fabric, but the other button held, allowing her to expose only a few inches of his forearm.
“This is incredible,” she breathed. With her fingertips, she traced the inked design on his arm, smoothing over the stylized head of a feathered serpent. Her touch was like being jabbed with a match and then having the spot soothed with cool, clean water. “Does it wind up your arm? Can I see?” She eyed the buttons bisecting his chest.
Oh, no way in hell. If she unbuttoned his shirt, she’d get a quick eyeful before he yanked off her clothes and fucked her right here in her brother’s front yard.
Classy, Villanueva. Haven’t you learned a damn thing in the past ten years?
He shoved down his cuff and fumbled with the button. Why in the hell were his hands shaking? He couldn’t seem to get his fingers to manipulate the tiny piece of plastic.
