Page 32 of Hard to Love
The look she gave his car wasn’t sexy and it wasn’t simple. This look was a scathing rake over the boxy piece of shit. The blue paint was scratched in a million places, and the front quarter panel sported a dent from the time one of his customers in Montana had mistaken her gas pedal for her brake.
At least it wasn’t the chop-top lowrider he and Javier had driven all over San Antonio as teenagers.
“I haven’t forgotten why you were late your first day in town.” She opened her car door and slid inside. “Besides, I like to be in the driver’s seat.”
Something Alex had zero experience with. The women in his life had all been willing to play by his rules. Early on, they’d simply been a dick-swinging brand of machismo. Later, they’d been a way to keep women at a distance. Keep them from expecting a relationship.
And why the hell was he even thinking about Greer Maddox in that way? She was a means to an end for him, nothing more. Especially since she’d pulled this trumped-up competition out of her ass.
As they rolled through Prophecy this time, Alex noticed how the Mayberry-ish town was growing on him. He’d found himself going out for a morning run just to see what Bostick’s had in the display window each day. “Can you swing down Guadalupe on our way out of town?” he asked.
“Need to stop by the shop?”
“No.” Through the window, he studied a gaggle of little girls in beige skirts, quasi-military sashes, and droopy socks. They waved and held up boxes of cookies. “Forget I said anything.”
She tugged on his sleeve until he gave her his attention. “What’s up?”
Jesus, now his face was warming. “Nothing.”
She narrowed her eyes in that way women had, the one that told a man she wouldn’t give up until she’d sifted through your skull. “You’ve gotten addicted, haven’t you?”
“I don’t do drugs—” at least not in almost a decade, “—and I don’t drink much.”
Her laugh was full-bodied. “I meant that you’re addicted to Bostick’s. I heard a rumor you run by there every day.”
“People should mind their own damn business.” And he’d been damn disappointed to find the window displays changed only every three or four days.
“Small town. Never gonna happen,” she said cheerfully.
“Doesn’t it drive you crazy?”
“Don’t you live in Whitefish, Montana? That place isn’t even the size of Prophecy.”
So she’d dug around in his past a little. Hopefully, she hadn’t felt the need to dig any further back. “That’s the whole point. I live outside town where gossip doesn’t travel.”
“You ever venture into town to grocery shop or hit thepost office?”
Even he couldn’t be that much of a hermit. The grocery stores there were about two centuries away from offering food delivery. “Yeah.”
“Then they gossip about you.”
“How the hell can you possibly know that?”
Her half-smile was smug, and her eyes flashed a sexy message. “A man who looks like you? Get real. You wouldn’t make it to your own mailbox without some woman wanting you and some man wanting to be you.”
They were idiots then. Idiots who didn’t know an emotionally dead guy when they spied one. He just grunted because there was nothing to say.
Greer hung a left onto Guadalupe and pulled into a parking spot in front of the general store. Today’s display was a freaking street party. Long-legged blond-haired girl dolls were dressed in skimpy outfits and holding what appeared to be miniature Solo cups. A gaggle of them ringed around a shirtless GI Joe with one arm flexed. Jesus, was the dude posing for them?
Someone had crafted a swimming pool from one of the plastic boxes people stored crap in. It was filled with water, and a few action figures floated on it in brightly colored inner tubes. Off to the side, Han Solo and Chewbacca watched the festivities, tiny beers in hand.
The other window held a silver plastic Corvette with half a dozen dolls—including an equally hammered-looking Luke Skywalker and Jack Sparrow—hanging out of it. The booze crew was obviously headed toward the dog bowl hot tub that held a single couple. Alex leaned forward in his seat to look closer. “Is…is her bikini top floating in the water?”
Greer winked and put the car in reverse. “ItisaJacuzzi.”
As if that explained any damn thing. “Who puts up those crazy displays?”
Her shoulder nearest him rose and fell. “No one knows for sure, but I suspect it’s Addie Bostick, the original owner’s daughter. She won’t confirm or deny.” She flashed him a quick grin that set off something warm inside him mid-chest. “Tell the truth, you run by here to see what she’s come up with.”
