“The strong drip roast.” He knew she didn’t do frou-frou coffee, so why was he even asking? “Oh, hey, get us an apple cake doughnut to share. I’ll grab us a table.”
The cool look he slanted at her said she could act normal all she wanted – he was still peeved.
Well, he’d get over it.
He stalked to the counter, and she cast a quick eye over the available seating. Hmm, yes, the curved booth in the corner,away from the small group gathered around a young man playing guitar and the two other couples celebrating date night.
She slipped onto the padded bench and studied him while he ordered. One corner of his mouth hitched in a polite smile at something the teenager working the register said while he reached back for his wallet. The girl turned away to pour coffee and gather their doughnut, and Colt propped his elbow on the tall shelf next to the counter, hip cocked to the side.
Holly smiled. The way he stood and moved? That might be poetry in motion.
With a nod, he accepted their tray and turned, sweeping a glance over the room until his dark gaze landed on her. Her breath caught in her throat at the intensity in those eyes. Even angry, he looked at her like she was a particularly beautiful poem, like he sought out the rhythm and rhyme and sound of her.
So different from how Scott had looked at her as time passed, like a bad habit he wanted to excise as much as he wanted to indulge, the way Tick looked whenever someone lit up a cigarette near him, mingled disgust and longing. She wanted to be wanted, but not like that, not anymore.
Covering the distance between them with long, purposeful strides – my Lord, the man’s thighs in snug denim – he set the tray on the table and grabbed a chair from a nearby table, placing himself opposite her instead of beside her on the bench.
Well, he was going to be difficult then. What had she expected, a speedy capitulation? The man had no quit in him, so no, she hadn’t expected him to make it easy.
With a winning smile, she reached for a cup. “Thank you.”
“I reacted badly.” Mouth grim, he peeled the plastic top off his own coffee. “I apologize.”
“I acted without forethought.” That wasn’t strictly true . . . she’d spent much of the evening watching his mouth, wondering what kissing him would be like. The brief taste and feel of him only left her wanting more. She dared a cheeky grin. “And without seeking your consent.”
He didn’t give, expression hewn from stone, fingers a tight curve around his cup. “We’re not that kind of friends.”
She lifted both shoulders in an inquisitive shrug. “Why not?”
His body stilled, pupils dilating before he blinked. “Holly.”
Sensing his momentary short circuit, Holly jumped in for the advantage. “My name isn’t a solid thesis or reasoning, Colton. If you’re averse to us being more than friends, you have to put an argument out there.”
Tilting his head slightly away from her, he narrowed his eyes, a familiar figuring-this-out expression, and she bit back a smile. He was adorable when he was seriously stumped, always had been. And since he wasn’t stumped all that often, she had to enjoy it when she could.
“Reason one.” She leaned forward on her elbows, counting on her fingers. “We’re both single. Reason two, we have a lot in common, including our values. Reason three, I’m pretty sure we’re mutually attracted–”
“Holly.” This time, her name emerged as a pair of strangled syllables. Oh, he was struggling for real. Giddy triumph swept through her. He had no counterargument.
For a long moment, he continued to stare at her, his dark gaze closed and impassive, and her sense of wellbeing cooled somewhat. Maybe she was wrong, and he didn’t want her. Maybe the ideas she’d been harboring for two weeks, the liberating options she’d lain awake thinking about while staring into the dark of her bedroom since he’d brought Ralph in and she’d looked at him with fresh eyes, free of the constraints risingfrom her futile longing for Scott because she’d decided to finally let him, let the idea of them, go . . . maybe those ideas and options didn’t exist except in her own imagination.
The heavy, dark slashes of his brows drew into a tight vee. “You don’t really mean this.”
“I do.” Needing something to do with her hands, she lifted the doughnut and broke it in half, arranged her piece neatly on a napkin before her. “I’ve been thinking about it – about us – a lot lately.”
That frown cleared, slashes winging up a moment before he expelled a breath, a huff of a laugh dripping with cynicism and insult, old hurts and memories.
Realizing where his thoughts had gone, she drew herself up, vibrating. How dare he think that? “Don’t youeven.”
“Been used as a substitute for him before.” He lifted his cardboard cup in mocking salute.
“No, you were used as a weapon to hurt him.” If Allison had wanted to bring Tick to heel, her plan had backfired spectacularly. Whatever her intent, she’d done spectacular damage to both of them. Chasing any of that wouldn’t help Holly now, though. She leaned forward again. “For me to use you as a substitute for him, I’d have towanthim, and I don’t. I never have.”
“Right.” He stretched the word into two disbelieving syllables. Slumping into the chair, he extended his legs and crossed his arms over his chest, elbow on his wrist while he sipped. “You two were all up in each other whenever he was home, right up until he went to Texas.”
The familiar refrain irritated her, especially coming from him. He was supposed to be more insightful than Scott or Tick’s mama or her own mama. “We are friends.”
“Like you weren’t going to eventually tie the knot like your mamas wanted you to.”
