Love, Diamonds, and Spades (Cactus Creek #2)(10)

“Quinn Christiansen?” called out a loud voice from the door. “Delivery!”

What happened to ‘a few’ minutes?

She went up front to sign for the delivery and stopped in her tracks when she saw it.

It was a ginormous gift basket of beer.

She burst out laughing. The ass.

No guy would have dared to give her this kind of gift before.

She liked it.

And in defiance of all that was sane and smart, she was starting to like him, too.





CHAPTER FIVE


THE MAN WAS driving her crazy.

Mainly because he wasn’t actually driving her crazy.

Quinn had to concede the fact that Rylan was actually a nice guy. A real-deal good guy, judging by all she’d been hearing about him lately…and it did sound like, weirdly, she was hearing his name a lot. At first, she thought it was one of those things like where you don’t notice any ugly Christmas sweaters during the holidays until you actually receive an ugly Christmas sweater—then you suddenly can’t un-see them all over the place.

Then, she realized that Dani had somehow activated some sort of covert government-level matchmaking mission, and all her little sleeper agents around town were now on full deployment.

The CIA had nothing on her and her meddling.

At least a half dozen band flyers with Rylan looking crazy hot had been mysteriously slipped under the Desert Confections door the past few days. And well more than a dozen folks had casually found a way to bring him up in conversation yesterday alone…which had been a particularly impressive feat to see in action when she’d stood in line at the bank next to the Carradine sisters, two sweet old biddies from the town center who had somehow transitioned from talking about their menopause symptoms to Rylan in two seconds flat.

She would’ve sworn Rylan were behind it all if not for the one final damning clue.

Dani calling her up and just plain asking her why she wouldn’t date Rylan.

After muttering through a few standard single mom excuses that didn’t come off as convincing as she’d hoped—Dani was beyond direct—Quinn finally found herself blurting out the one biggest reason.

“He hasn’t asked me out.”

Did she mention the man was driving her crazy?

In the last two and a half weeks, he’d shown up every single day to chat with her and not once did he ask her out.

It’s not that she was arrogant enough to believe he should ask her out or anything of the sort, but if those heated glances he’d sometimes let her see, or even more dangerous, the affectionate ones, were any indication, he seemed interested in her. And most impressive of all, he didn’t seem the least bit scared of her.

Instead of turning tail and running far and fast away from her like most smart men, or hitting on her simply for the challenge she seemed to present to the stupid ones, he just came by every day to spend a few minutes with her, by all evidence happy just to talk…and listen.

He never asked her any of the standard questions that guys usually did. He never asked her what she liked to do for fun, or what her favorite food was. He asked about her day, he asked why she looked a little more stressed than the day prior.

And he took special pleasure in being charmingly aggravating, teasing, exasperating, and an overall goofball when and where he could.

It was all unnerving.

But rather great at the same time.

A few weeks ago, he’d begun buying a single piece of chocolate from the shop and handing it to her when he’d drop in each day, simply because she’d made the mistake of telling him on day one of his friendship crusade that she never indulged in any of the shop products. So ever since, he’d come in and talk while he selected a chocolate. Then he’d push it in front of her, and then be on his merry way, utterly shameless about riling her up before he left.

“You okay there, beautiful?” came the deep timber of Rylan’s voice, rough with concern. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it when a gorgeous woman is so blinded by my good looks that she can’t help staring but—”

Quinn blinked herself out of her thoughts and narrowed her eyes, doing her best to keep her smile hidden. How the man could get her to smile so easily was a complete mystery to her. “I wasn’t staring at you or your enormously big head.” Her eyes shot wide. “Ego! I meant enormously big ego.”

His grin turned almost wicked. “I don’t mind you talking about my big head at all. In fact, I like that you think about me and my big head.”

Don’t you dare blush, Quinn Christiansen!

“I don’t think about you or your big anything,” she lied shamelessly.

He shrugged. “That’s okay. I think about you enough to make up the difference.” Sliding a chocolate forward in her flummoxed silence, he gave her an atrociously sexy wink. “See you tomorrow, sunshine.”

She started to say something to stop him from leaving, for some reason not wanting him to go just yet.

Suddenly, he stopped. “Sweetheart, those eyes of yours are lethal weapons,” he said as if reading her thoughts. “I have a feeling I could get addicted to having your eyes on me like that.” His gaze brushed over her lips and then rose back to her eyes. “Hell, I’d be like a slot machine junkie looking for another adrenaline-pumping jackpot every minute of the day.”