“You know what you need?” he said.
“A building inspector I can bribe and a plumber that I can afford?”
“Better than that.” He grinned. “You need someone who can fix things. Someone with nothing better to do with their Friday nights.”
I looked across the room. Colt’s jaw had gone tight.
“One game,” Sutton said, nodding toward the pool table. “You and Colt. Winner takes all.”
“All of what?” I asked, frowning.
Sutton’s smile was pure mischief. “That’s between you two.”
The bar had gone quiet. Just the cooler humming and the drip-drip-drip of my financial situation landing in the bucket. Everyone was watching, waiting to see what I’d do.
What he’d do.
I looked at Colt. Colt looked at me.
The bet I wanted to make — the one my brain was absolutely not going to say out loud in a bar full of regulars — involved me, Colt. Alone. Preferably in a bedroom with no clothes on.
To say I’d been fantasizing about the lumberjack…
What I could say, what I needed to say, was exactly what Sutton had suggested. Someone to help me. But that was harder to ask for than what I really wanted.
“Fine.” I heard myself. “One game. If I win, Colt helps me fix this place up before it falls down around all our sorry asses. The leak, the lights, whatever else is broken.”
Sutton looked delighted. I stood there, already writing it off. There was nothing in this for Colt. I had little to offer him except one untouched beer a week and some over fried food. I fully expected him to stay in his booth.
He stood up and crossed the room in long, measured strides until he was standing in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
Up close, he was devastating. The kind of big that made me feel delicate for the first time in my life.
“I can fix things,” he said, voice low like a secret. “I’m good with my hands.”
I just bet you are.I gripped the edge of the pool table to keep my legs from sliding out from under me. “And if you win? What would you want? A month of free drinks?”
He stepped closer. I caught the scent of him — soap, sawdust, pine. He was a lumberjack after all and that’s exactly how he should smell. His eyes dropped to my mouth, then came back up slowly.
“That’s what you think I want from you?”
The question hung between us.
“What do you want?”
Colt’s mouth curved — a wicked grin that I was sure had made women swoon at his feet once he unleashed it. He leaned down so only I could hear. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
That sent goosebumps rippling over my skin and I knew exactly what kind of decision I was about to make. A terrifying, thrilling and completely irresponsible one.
“Rack ‘em up,” I said.
***
The pool game was a disaster, and not because I couldn’t play.
I’d hustled enough college boys in dive bars to know my way around a table. The problem was that every time I bent over to line up a shot, I could feel Colt’s gaze like a brand on the back of my neck. When I stretched across the felt to reach the cue ball, his eyes dropped to the curve of my ass — not leering, not crude, but focused. Appreciative.
Other men glanced and looked away. Colt just — watched. Like my body was something worth his full attention and he saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
