Page 17 of Dahlia Made A List

He jumped out of the truck and circled around to open my door. The truck was high. Not Big Boy Toy overcompensating high, but high enough that I had to use the running board to climb in and out. Huge tires and whatever else made some pick-up trucks ride higher than average, but Wyatt squared up in the opening of the passenger side and leveled a hard look at me.

“I’m not going to sleep with you either.” He motioned to the drive-in. “This was my granddad’s place. I’m buying it off my grandmother, if she’d ever sign the papers. She was supposed to sign them the night you and her crew had your little drunk fest out at her farm, which is why I was out at her place to begin with. But she sent you home with me, instead. So until I figure out what she’s up to, and why she’s involving you in our family business, you’re stuck with me.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was a lot of words.”

He grunted and I grinned up at his severe face. “And back to grunts. That’s okay. I’m interpreting that one as agreement.”

He motioned for me to get out, but I hesitated. “Feels like she’s tossing us together.”

A careless shrug of one heavy shoulder.

I tightened my hand around the strap of my bag and stared at the top button he had fastened on his flannel. A white shirt underneath covered him up to the dip between his collarbones. I bet Wyatt Weston had great chest hair. Dark like his beard. And not a smattering strung between his nipples, either, but a great pelt of it covering his bulky chest and trailing down to his belly button and lower.

I was a hugely tactile person. I could spend hours petting a soft fake fur pillow while binging K-dramas. Imagining the feel of his chest hair against my body crashed through me, the sensations piling one atop the other, from his beard at my throat to the hair of his chest rasping across my breasts . . . I sucked in a deep breath, wincing as my nipples pushed against my bra and stared at the seam of his flannel where it met the sleeve. He shifted, not much, just enough to move the seam and make me blink.

Goose pimples rippled up the backs of my arms, and a million thoughts and images flashed through my mind. I grasped one with a sharper edge. “Ms. Minerva must have decided to test my resolve. She wants to make sure I stick to my list and resist temptation.”

Because Wyatt Weston served up serious temptation despite his grumpy arrogance, and the alternative was to wonder if she didn’t think I would succeed, and I didn’t want to think that about the older woman. I wanted her to have faith in me. I adored Minerva. I wanted to be Minerva when I grew up.

“We learnin’ to drive or what?”

I grinned. “Not the truck?”

“Not the truck.” He motioned over his shoulder at the garage door.

“You have the Batmobile hidden away in there or something?”

“Better.”

I gave an exaggerated gasp, hand over my heart. When his eyes dipped to my boobs again, I resisted the urge to grin.No sex, Dahlia. “No way.”

But his gaze dropped further down my body as I shoved my feet out the door between us.

“Any chance you have real shoes in that bag of yours?”

I wiggled my feet and the burnt orange heeled sandals that wrapped around my ankles and tied with a bow halfway up my calf. Pretty and impractical. Story of my life. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

He wedged his arm through the open window of the truck. I tugged at the ties wrapped around my leg, all thumbs under Wyatt’s steady scrutiny. I tucked the sandals beneath the dash, then pulled a pair Converse from my bag. My fingers trembled, acutely aware that his sharp brown gaze tracked my every movement. I dropped my shoe right out the door.

Wyatt ducked down and rose with my shoe, his big hands tugging the laces loose as he held the beat-up Converse out to me. I looked down at his hands, the ropey veins I itched to trace, the little whitened, sickle-shaped scar on his thumb. I swallowed hard. He’d catch the bob in my throat with those eyes that never missed a single detail.

I pressed my thighs together. Temptation. Attraction. Not unexpected. Wyatt was a fine specimen of a man. And no matter what list I created, I was still a woman who appreciated a fine specimen of a man.

Heat flushed my cheeks. I kept my face pointed down and wished I’d worn my hair loose around my shoulders instead of up in a fun ponytail so I could hide behind a fall of hair just then. He’d just said we wouldn’t be sleeping together. I really didn’t need him reading the attraction burning through me.

“What else is on your list?”

His rumbly voice startled me. I dropped the shoelace but grabbed it up again. “Um,” I muttered, fumbling the lace into a serviceable bow. “I want a signature dish. And to make the Richland roller derby team—”

“What’s a signature dish?”

After a few calming breaths, I deemed it safe to look up again. He motioned me out of the truck, and I slid until my feet touched the running board and then on down to the cracked pavement. He moved toward the garage door and I trailed close behind. “You know how people get known for some dish? Like Miss Gracie brings the best brownies to the church social. Or Tiffany makes the best chicken marsala.”

“Never been to a church social.”

“Me neither, but you know what I mean.”

He tapped something on his phone and the garage door slid up with a rattling vibration. Lights flickered on inside to reveal a sparkling black and gold car. Wyatt pulled his keys from his front jeans pocket.

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