Page 14 of Christmas at Hart's Ridge

A hot flush started at my breasts, then spread up my neck and scorched my cheeks. The embarrassment was all mine, judging from Luke’s expression. His gaze dragged over me with such intensity that I experienced it like a physical touch. My skin sparked into gooseflesh everywhere that blue fire in his eyes landed. His gaze lingered briefly where my hair swirled around the curve of my chest and his mouth flattened to a straight line. He didn’t look embarrassed at all. He looked grim.

It was so unlike the smiling, joking Luke I had always known that I shivered. Not with fear, exactly, although the moment felt dangerous. Deliciously so. More like…anticipation.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“My shift is over,” I said. Defensively, like I had been caught doing something naughty.

“So you’re going home.”

The words came out like an order, one I had no intention of obeying. I was used to taking orders from men. Half my dance instructors were men, not to mention the Company director. Everything from the width of my smile to the width of my hips was fair game. Usually I took those orders meekly. But something about Luke made me want to misbehave.

My spine snapped straight and I arched an eyebrow at him. “No.”

Something flared in his eyes—I would have called it hunger, but it was gone too quickly for me to be sure, replaced by the expression of a man resigned to only eating salads for the rest of his life.

“Ethan’s still on duty. You going to keep him company?” Luke asked, sounding bored.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I said. Though maybe I would give him five minutes, while I got the lay of the land. Let him replenish my self-esteem that his older brother had mercilessly crushed. Ethan was good at that. Mostly because he was fond of delivering the unvarnished truth, regardless of hurting my feelings. If he said I looked good, I believed him.

My words seemed to confuse Luke. He looked baffled and then his gaze raked over me again. He frowned, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “What are you doing, Bethany?” he asked roughly.

It was very hard not to show how much he was affecting me. All my life I had been obedient. Submissive, even. I had taken corrections and criticisms without ego. I never pushed back.

Luke made me want to push back. Just to see what he would do about it.

“I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder. “I’m going back into that bar. As a customer, not an employee. I’m going to buy myself a drink and have some fun. Maybe make a friend.”

“You have a friend. Ethan.”

I rolled my eyes. Luke couldn’t really be so dense as all that, could he? I didn’t mean an Ethan kind of friend. I meant a kissing kind of friend. I would have thought the difference was pretty obvious to a man of Luke’s experience, what with all the layers of mascara I was wearing.

“You can never have too many friends. So if you’ll excuse me—”

His arm shot out to the wall, blocking my path. My eyes trailed from his hand, flat against the wall with that very male muscle bulging between his thumb and index finger, to his forearm that made my belly quiver, to his elbow where he had pushed up the sleeve of his gray Henley, to the curve of his bicep and ridiculous shoulders that made me want to giggle, until at last I reached his scowling face.

I blinked. Why was he scowling?

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish, Bethany, but trying to make someone jealous isn’t a winning strategy. It’s childish. And it’s mean.”

I stared at him, puzzling through his words. He thought I was trying to make Ethan jealous? But no, that wouldn’t make any sense. And then the embarrassing truth hit me brutally in the face. He meant himself.Luke. He thought I was trying to makehimjealous, not his younger brother, which meant…Oh, God.

Which meant he knew about my crush on him. Whether Ethan had told him—in which case, I would kick his ass from here to California and back again—or he had divined it himself, reading the truth in every one of my blushes, it didn’t matter. Heknew.

And he thought I was playing games with him, trying to get his attention. Which was…laughable. I didn’t know how to play those games.

Childish, he had called me. My face felt hot. I knew I must be bright red now. But not from embarrassment this time. From outrage.

Theaudacityof this man! My hands went to my hips and I tilted my chin defiantly, never mind that my knees were still shaky on account of him looking far too good in that Henley. “I can’t imagine why you think my actions have anything to do with you.I’m going into that bar, getting a drink, and talking to a man. Or two. Whatever. It’smylife and I get to make the decisions about it. If someone feels some kind of way about it, that’s their problem. Adults are responsible for managing their own feelings. Only a child would push that responsibility onto someone else.”

I watched my words sink in. It was fascinating to see that arrested look in his blue eyes, his expression faintly stunned, like a cartoon character getting hit with an anvil. Maybe he was finally seeing me as something more thanlittle Bethany Albright. Maybe he was seeing me as someone a man might want to find himself under the mistletoe with.

But then his expression changed, dousing my fantasies with a cold bucket of ice water.

“Bethany,” he said kindly. Patronizingly. Like I was some naïve baby who needed the world explained to me by a big man. “Goat’s Tavern isn’t one of your fancy New York City bars. A man here isn’t going to buy you a drink because he’s a gentleman. He’s going to want something from you in return.”

I laughed. “Oh, god, I hope so.”

Because I could tell him something about why those men in New York had bought me drinks, and what they wanted from me in return. I hadn’t been a woman to them. I had been an object, something to revere and possess. I was hoping for better things from the men of Hart’s Ridge.

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