Playing With Fire (Tangled in Texas, #2)(25)

My eyes narrowed at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Darlin’, just because I make a flirty pass and ask you to dinner doesn’t mean I expect to bend you over the nearest flat surface. That’s your hang-up, not mine.”

Oh God. He was right! He hadn’t actually asked me for sex…yet. Great. So now I was the sexual deviant. How the hell had that happened?

“You would’ve eventually—”

“Not done,” he said, pulling a page from my own book. “Let me tell you what else I know.” He shifted his weight, as if he planned for us to be here a while. “Something about you is off. Last night you reacted to that fire the same as you do to me—you panicked. I don’t know what it is or why, but there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. But lucky for you, I can help with both of those things. And that is not by any means me asking you for sex.” Cowboy displayed a smug grin. “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m a catch.”

I rolled my eyes. “And modest, too.”

“Anna, all I’m asking for is dinner. What we do—or don’t do—afterward is completely up to you.”

“Give me one good reason why I should.”

“Huh?”

I crossed my arms and huffed. “Go on, tell me. Why me?”

He squinted at me. “Is this a trick question?”

“No. I really want to know. Why are you so insistent when I have repeatedly refused you?”

“You intrigue me.”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know enough about me to be intrigued.”

He sighed. “See? No matter what I say, you’re not going to believe me, anyway,” he said, waving me off.

“That’s because you’re only saying what you think I want to hear. Why don’t you try it again, but this time, throw in a little truth?”

Cowboy stood a little straighter as he glared at me. “Fine,” he snarled. “You want to know why I asked you out? It’s because…” He hesitated, then shrugged and turned away from me. “Never mind. This is stupid.”

I stepped around him and faced him. “Why? Are you afraid to give me an honest answer? Or maybe it’s because you can’t?”

He threw his hands in the air. “Because I knew you’d say no, okay?”

I blinked, not expecting him to be so forthcoming.

“That is what you wanted me to admit, right? That I’m intrigued by you because you don’t want anything to do with me.” He hooked his thumbs into the loopholes on his jeans and ground out, “Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

Yes. Unfortunately. But it didn’t change a thing.

Obviously, brushing off his advances hadn’t worked. In fact, the whole thing had backfired. Even worse, his little speech had nearly coaxed a yes from me. But self-preservation demanded I end this once and for all. That left me with no choice but to bruise that precious male ego of his, which would require something drastic, since he had an ego the size of Texas.

“Come with me,” I told him, turning to walk up the aisle.

He followed behind me silently, but I felt his eyes burning into my back, the question looming in the air, as we neared the circulation desk. I veered around the counter and pulled my purse from the bottom cabinet. I took out my wallet, searching through it until I found my library card.

I scanned it, then picked up the book Cowboy had left on the counter and did the same with it. Only then did I shove the book into his hand. “There. I’ve checked the book out for you. It’s due back in two weeks. There’s a drive-up book return drop outside under the portico.”

He glanced to the book, then back to me. “What’s the catch?”

I sighed heavily, letting out the irritated breath I had been holding in my lungs. “In return, I ask that you don’t come back into the library again.”





Chapter Six


Cowboy had probably expected me to turn him down, not banish him from the library altogether. But the day before, I’d done just that. Lucky for him, today was Sunday, which meant the library was closed. Unlucky for me, I forgot to also ban him from my home.

It was almost dark outside when he pulled up, and I was stretching a garden hose across my front lawn. Fresh from the shower, I’d put on a white terrycloth robe and left my wet red hair hanging loosely around my shoulders. Both were decisions I immediately regretted, but I didn’t detour from my mission.

By the time he joined me on the side of my little white cottage, I was doing something he undoubtedly found rather strange: watering my house. He stepped up beside me and glanced at the wet rooftop and dripping eaves. “Think it’ll be ready to harvest by the end of the season?”

“What are you doing here?” I frowned, my face already heated and my body vibrating with anger. “I thought I told you I wasn’t interested.”

Cowboy held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa. No need to get pissy. I just came by to talk.”

“We did enough talking yesterday. Good-bye.”

But he ignored me. “Where are your glasses?”