“I’ll be needing the name of a good contractor.”
His eyes lit as he studied me and one side of his lips quirked.
“You’ll need to be looking at the outbuildings, gal,” he advised gently.
“Yes, you’re right,” I told him. “But I’ll also be needing the name of a good contractor.”
He continued to study me and he did this until I smiled at him.
And when I did, the half lip quirk disappeared and Robert Colley smiled back.
2
Goals
Eighteen years earlier . . .
I SAW HIM THE MINUTE he walked into the backyard.
He caught my eye because he was seriously good-looking.
But I kept watching, not only because of that, but because I liked the way he walked and I couldn’t say why.
He was tall, kinda big but not huge, though the way he moved was lumbering. Like he was at a crowded party or club or concert and he was shouldering through the bodies to make his way to where he was going, even though he wasn’t.
It was cool and it was strangely hot, like no one could get in his way no matter what way he was making.
And it communicated he was going to get there and nothing was going to stop him.
But where he was going right then was to Maria’s boyfriend, my good friend, Lonnie.
Maria and Lonnie had been dating since high school and she and I had been best friends since grade school, so we’d been a pack for a long time.
Partners in crime, mostly.
We’d been pretty much inseparable since meeting, that was before Lonnie . . . and recently. And that attachment was because, for Maria, her mom and dad didn’t give a crap, they were so busy fighting each other, they had no time for her.
For me, it was because my parents gave too much of a crap and had a lot of time to tell me what they thought of me, even though what they thought wasn’t much.
I liked the idea that tall, dark-haired guy with his cool way of moving was a friend of Lonnie’s.
That meant I might get an introduction.
I watched from where I sat in my folding lawn chair as Lonnie greeted him with an arm slap from one hand, a shake with the other and a huge smile, indicating he was happy to see him.
That was good.
Lonnie liked him.
Lonnie liked and was liked by just about everyone. This was because he was a great guy, up for anything, there when you needed him.
But the arm slap, hand shake and smile said he liked this guy more than most.
So I watched, thinking it was kinda weird that the guy somewhat smiled in return, but in a way it wasn’t exactly a smile, and shook back.
But there was definitely something not right in that smile.
Lonnie was happy to see him.
This guy, however . . .
“Total drool-worthy,” Maria muttered as she threw herself in a lawn chair next to mine, spilling some of the beer in her not-quite-as-full-now plastic cup.
It wasn’t easy, but I pulled my gaze from the guy knowing exactly what she was talking about even before I saw her attention trained on her guy and that guy.
She’d never say it around Lonnie. Hell, around Lonnie she took pains not to give any indication she knew the other sex existed outside Lonnie (and she’d learned to do this in an extreme way), but around me, she’d look.
Not touch. Not talk, unless it was approved by Lonnie.
But look.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“Yup,” she answered, moving her eyes from the guy, I knew just in case Lonnie looked over and caught her staring, even if it was in his direction too, he’d know.
And he wouldn’t like what he knew.
“Came over the other day. Name’s Tony. He’s buds with Lars,” she told me.
That sent a shiver trilling up my back.
Lonnie had introduced us to Lars a few months ago.
I didn’t like Lars.
Lars gave me the creeps.
I looked back at the guy with Lonnie thinking it was disappointing that he was buds with Lars.
“Girl, you need a refill,” Maria told me, and I looked away from him, not only thinking it was disappointing Tony was buds with Lars, but the fact this was more disappointing because I even liked the way he stood.
He was paying attention, and a lot of it, to whatever Lonnie was saying. His intensity, the alert way he carried himself was awesome.
Crazy awesome.
But maybe understandable since he was friends with Lars, and I was suspecting Lars wasn’t that good of a guy and the people he knew had to be alert for a variety of reasons.
I saw my plastic cup was mostly the dregs, backwash of beer not being my favorite thing.
Still.
“I drove here,” I told Maria.
“So?” she asked.
I lifted my gaze to her but then turned it almost immediately away.
I loved her. Loved her. She was fun and she was funny. She was loyal as all hell. She was crazy and wild and I felt free around her. Free to be who I was (not who my parents expected me to be). Free to act how I wanted (not how my parents demanded I act). Free to do whatever I damn well wanted to do (which was not what my parents wanted me to do).
We’d had a lot of good times. She’d taken my back in a lot of bad times.
But sometimes, little things like that, like her thinking it was totally okay to get a buzz on then drive yourself home, bugged me.
She’d do it without blinking.
Lonnie’d do it, and he’d be high too and not give a crap.
But I kinda wanted to get home in one piece and not take anyone out along the way.
Maria had a way with peer pressure though, even if we were now twenty-three, so I knew how to play the game.
That was get up, get a beer and then sip at it or ignore it altogether, “spill” some in the grass, nurse it for an hour, and that way do my own thing without having to put up with her pushing.
Which meant I hefted myself out of the chair to head to the keg.
“Grab a coupla Jell-O shots while you’re at it,” she called as I moved away.
The real reason she wanted me to go get a beer.
But shit.
Jell-O shots were harder to put off.
My only choice was to take half an hour (at least) to get back to her. Another skill I’d honed in over a decade of friendship with Maria.
I hit the keg, poured out the dregs of my cup in the grass beside it and grabbed the nozzle.
I was just finishing pumping some into my cup when I heard a deep voice say, “I’ll take that after you.”
I raised my eyes and looked into hazel ones that, since the second my eyes hit his I arrested, I realized were more of a light brown with some green to make them so interesting, I couldn’t move or speak.
“Hey,” he said.
I stared.
“Hey,” he said more urgently and leaned into me.
When he did, it felt like a spasm hit my body, originating somewhere very private and snaking up my spine, the back of my neck and all over my scalp.
I felt his fingers brush mine, vaguely felt the spigot pulled away and heard him murmur, “Wastin’ beer.”
I jerked my head down, saw my over-full cup, beer having flooded over my fingers that I didn’t even feel, then I jerked my head up to see him examining me.
He didn’t do it long before he turned to the table next to the keg that had a variety of detritus—spent cups, spent bottles, spent cans, an overflowing ashtray, a huge red bong—and he nabbed a cup from an upside down stack of fresh ones.
I didn’t have it in me to say anything before my beer sloshed all over my fingers again. This time because, all of a sudden, Lonnie had an arm tight around my neck and he was yanking me forcefully into his body, back (mine) to front (his).
“See you met my girl,” he declared.
I wanted to scream.
I hated when Lonnie did this. It totally meant I never got asked out.
But this time?
I hated it.
“Or, my other girl,” Lonnie clarified as the guy named Tony gave us his attention.
One of his brows went up in a way that was a shade too fascinating.
Then he asked, “You a threesome?” And I suddenly found nothing fascinating and further could think of nothing but the flames that I felt hit my cheeks.
Tony looked at them, and the instant he did, miraculously I wasn’t thinking about the fact I had to be very obviously blushing and how completely embarrassing that was.