Love, Diamonds, and Spades (Cactus Creek #2)(3)

…Making sure, of course, to sit right in the line of sight of the woman who’d switched to now pretending Rylan was made out of glass. A bug and crud covered—judging by the expressive silent assessment she was candidly projecting—but still largely invisible piece of glass that she could see right through.

Rylan barely held back the bark of laughter the woman kept unintentionally inspiring in him. When he managed to snag her gaze and keep it tangled up for a beat, he couldn’t help himself.

He winked.

And watched the sweetest, riled-up little blush he’d ever seen heat her cheeks.

Oh yeah, growling kitten cuteness was definitely his weakness.





CHAPTER TWO


QUINN CHRISTIANSEN restlessly tapped out a pen beat on her desk, drumming along to the chorus of a nameless song she hadn’t been able to get out of her head for the past few weeks. She’d heard it playing off the rooftop stage of Ocotillos a few times over the past couple weeks, and she’d been a fan ever since.

Figures it was a song by him.

The musician who’d had the audacity to wink at her from across the rooftop deck of Ocotillos an hour ago, knowing full well she’d been trying to pretend he didn’t exist.

But of course she knew he existed. She’d seen him around town exactly twice, and treated both events like a passing sunset—something breathtaking to look at for a short while, but nothing to write home about.

Alright, so maybe she finally understood why folks took photos of sunsets.

He was disturbingly attractive. Too tough-looking to be called handsome exactly, but all the more appealing for it. Gruffly sexy was a better description—damningly so—in the rawest, grittiest way possible. He had one of those bodies, the kind built like a tank with muscles for days that molded to tshirts, making plain old cotton look ridiculously good.

And don’t even get her started on his face.

He was…intense, to say the least. His rugged jawline inspired visions of him cracking walnuts with his molars for fun, and the entire distractingly male effect was roughened even more by not a beard per-se, more like a five o’clock shadow he’d clearly let grow for an extra day or two while he was out chopping wood and wrestling with bears.

The man was positively primal.

If not for his laughing golden eyes and soft brown rumpled-from-my-sleeping-bag hair, he’d look unapproachably intimidating. Not that she had any intention whatsoever of approaching him—

“So is the truce off?” Luke leaned against the doorway to their joint office, grinning. “Can I begin teasing you mercilessly again?”

She glowered at him. Luke catching her looking at the singing lumberjack earlier was now disrupting the balance of who got to tease who in their nearly decade-long friendship, and it was not sitting well with her. “If you do, I’ll make you deal with the vendors for all those precious ingredients you’re always wanting, AND make you do your own inventory for the next month.”

She didn’t dare threaten longer than a month; she didn’t want their entire business to go under just to return to their status quo.

He blanched. “Fine. I won’t reference the fact that you were eye-humping a perfect stranger today.”

Rylan. Dani had mentioned the guy’s name was Rylan, and Quinn was really hoping Luke wouldn’t remember it because for some reason, even his name was having a strange effect on her insides.

Luke quietly went to his desk to get some work done.

Yeah…that was probably going to only last 3, 2…

“So Rylan? Really?”

There were those name-induced flutters in her stomach.

Luke shook his head in amazement. “That guy is the polar opposite of the guys you usually date.”

Aw, that was sweet—him saying ‘usually’ like the small handful of times she’d dated in the last six years constituted anything short of spinsterhood. Avoiding Luke’s probing gaze, she shrugged carelessly. “So he’s easy on the eyes, what of it? He’s also a gigantic player, which by female law, makes it okay for me to ogle him and not feel bad about it in the least.”

And that’s all it had been. Ogling, not interest. God knows she’d exhausted her need of a guy like that long ago. Regardless of how every female cell in her body was arguing the point.

“How do you know he’s a player?”

She kept her tone light and uninterested. “I saw him through the shop window before our meeting, out in the front of the brewpub. One minute, he has what looked like a college girl in his arms, treating her like his princess, and maybe a half hour later, I see him over in the side alley, up against a wall making out with a waitress like she was being paid to excavate his mouth to prevent gingivitis.”

But of course it got worse. “Then, while we were downstairs in the brewpub waiting for them to find Dani, he was at the top of the stairwell flirting with all those band bunnies like a hound dog, even signing one of the girl’s hips like he was freaking branding her.” Gross. “And not even five minutes after that, he was up on stage getting handsy with Dani, just seconds after he’d been staring at me like…” She trailed off. It didn’t really matter how he’d been staring at her. “The guy is a walking cliché.”

Luke waited until she was done with her tirade to gently say, “Sweetie, just because he had women throwing themselves at him doesn’t mean he’s taking what they’re offering. He’s not your ex.”