Page 31 of Hard to Love
“It’s just an expression.” He smoothed a thumb over her inner wrist, tickling the sensitive skin until her grip loosened. “But yeah, Iama dick when it comes to relationships. I don’t do Texas. I don’t do long-term. And I don’t do emotions.”
What he meant was he didn’t do love.
“But professionally, I always do what I say I will.”
“Oh, I think you make yourself pretty clear when it comes to the personal stuff too.” That was why he seemed to have a brick wall cemented around him. Because he told you from the first time you met him that you wouldn’t getto him. Wouldn’t get to the real Alex Villanueva. Not unless he wanted you to, and he didn’t.
“Greer, I—”
She held up a hand and stepped back. “Save it. I didn’t come here to talk about going to bed with you, much less starting a relationship. I came to take you back out to the barn.”
“Why? This have something to do with yourcompetition?”
The sound that came from her throat was feral-hog. No other way to describe her gut-deep aggravation with this man. “If you don’t get your ass down those stairs, I will kick you in the knees.”
He dropped his head to look at her boots. “Those are snip-toes.”
“Yup, and I’ll use one to each leg.”
His smile started on one side of his face and slowly encompassed the entire landscape. Damn the man—kick him or kiss him? It was a toss-up. “I need to put on a shirt first.”
“That’s a shame,” she said. “Why do you cover them up?”
He paused with a shirt sleeve halfway up his tattooed arm, highlighting the serpent’s forked tongue. “Sometimes people have misconceptions about tats.”
“Yours, at least the one I’ve seen, is beautiful. The artist who did them is obviously very talented.” With a fingertip, she skimmed that tongue and imagined she could feel the sharp pain of poison being injected into her bloodstream.
“Was.” He flinched from her touch and turned away to shrug the long-sleeved shirt onto his shoulders, covering his body art. But Greer had a feeling he was closing her out of something much more important.
“Was what?”
“Nothing.”
Slammed door there. One she wouldn’t knock on right now. But if Alex stayed, she wanted to know him. Know him in a way she doubted many people did.
Alex tookhis time fastening his shirt, trying to give his stomach time to stop jumping from Greer’s casual touch. His tats were off-limits as a topic of conversation. Greer was the first person—correction, the only person—in this town who’d seen a portion of what covered his body, and even that had been a mistake.
But his brain seemed to hand over power to his dick every time this woman was around.
“I’d like you to keep this to yourself,” he said, his back still to her.
“This is a small town, but we’re pretty open-minded. After all, the whole economy has long relied on prophecy—or, as you like to call them,magic—boots. So do you really think people will throw a fit over some gorgeous tattoos?”
“They’re personal.” He looked over his shoulder to catch her giving his ass the melon-squeeze-test look. She wanted to know exactly where his ink ended. All women did.
Her gaze lifted, and rather than the sexy look he expected her to flash him, she simply smiled and held up her hands. “Okay, I get it. Let’s go.”
I get it.What the hell did that mean? By this time, most women were grabbing for his zipper.
But not Greer. She just pulled him out of the room and down the stairs. “Give me a second to snag something from Raylene. If you move a muscle, I’ll make good on myknee-kicking threat.” And then she scooted down the hallway toward the kitchen.
One minute, she was making sexy comments. The next, she was threatening him with bodily harm. Then she was throwing him off balance by accepting his boundaries. When would he get a handle on this woman?
He wouldn’t have time to, which was a damn shame, because apparently being thrown off balance turned him on.
A couple minutes later, she was back with a paper bag. “All set.”
Outside, she beelined for her car, but Alex said, “We could take mine.”
