One week later, Saturday, December 23rd
“Where’s Donovan?” Brady asked when he strolledinto the small-town general store.
“Well, merry, happy Chrismukkah to you, too,” Reilly greeted, her tone chipper.
As adorable as he found this woman, he’d spent far too much time this past week thinking about her. The only way he was going to move past this absurd infatuation was to spend as little time alone in her company as he possibly could. Coming in here now was a risk, but Donovan had asked him to meet him here rather than drive into Austin so they could sign some papers for a project they were starting next week.
“Where is he, Reilly?”
She flashed a smile but paid him no attention otherwise. “Maybe you misplaced him. Did you look under the tree?”
It took tremendous effort … no, make thatastronomicaleffort not to throttle the woman standing across from him.
Not that he would actually throttle her. He wanted to. No, that wasn’t true. What he wanted to do was paddle her … Brady tilted his head to the side and admired her impressive ass as she bent over to put a new box of Kit Kats on one of the lower shelves.
Fuck.
He was pretty sure Reilly wore those ass-hugging jeans simply to drive him fucking crazy. Him and every other man she encountered. It fucking worked. Too damn well. The woman had a body made for sin, and although he would never cross that line, he wasn’t immune to her. He wished he was. Hell, if they offered a vaccine, he would gladly get it every year simply so he didn’t endure moments like this one.
“See somethin’ you like?” Reilly taunted, and he realized she’d caught him staring.
Standing tall, Brady exhaled heavily and focused on the reason he’d come in here in the first place.
Deep breath in.
Long breath out.
No sense getting all worked up this early in the day.
He glanced around, trying to find the source of the overwhelming cinnamon smell. He noticed a small box of pinecones in a box on the counter.
Brady managed another round of breathing in and out before he chanced another glance at Reilly.
“Can you at least tell me when he’ll be back?” he asked, proud of himself for keeping his tone civil.
It wasn’t easy. Not when the sexiest brunette in all of Coyote Ridge made it her mission to rile him whenever he saw her.
It’d been that way since… Shit, it was too many years to count. If he did the math, he figured it was going on a decade, at least. In the beginning, it had been harmless flirting. When Reilly was sixteen, he rarely saw her, so he didn’t have to worry about it much. Then she turned eighteen and graduated from high school, and he seemed to see her everywhere.
But this past week… Brady was pretty sure she was purposely turning up everywhere he was. Every time he turned around, there she was, tormenting him with something he couldn’t have.
It wasn’t illegal, and no, they weren’t related, but they might as well be since Reilly’s older brother, Donovan, just so happened to be Brady’s best friend. Since the third grade. And everyone knew that messing with your best friend’s little sister was a code you simply didn’t break.
Only Reilly didn’t seem to be aware of that code. She was set on turning his head, and when she wasn’t trying to do that, she was intent on giving him shit if he so much as looked at her.
Reilly stood up and turned toward him, placing her hands on her hips. “You know, they make this thing…” Her lips twisted, and she held up a finger. “Actually, hold on. I know how to fix this.”
She sauntered over to the register counter, her denim-clad ass swaying in a way no sane man could resist, still holding her finger up in that all too familiar gesture ofhold on a minute.
Brady knew he shouldn’t, but he waited. Whatever she was about to do was going to frustrate him to no end. Of that, he had no doubt.
He couldn’t see what she retrieved from under the counter, but when she came over to where he was standing, she was smiling, her light green eyes glittering with amusement.
“There’s this thing.” She opened her palm and revealed her cell phone. “It’s called a phone.” She waggled the phone. “This particular kind is one you can takewhereveryou go.” She tapped the screen and then held it up to his face. “You use it to—”
“Smartass,” Brady growled as he grabbed for her.
Reilly laughed, that husky voice of hers echoing off the ceiling tiles as she turned to run. She wasn’t fast enough, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, stopping her from getting away. Brady pulled her in tight and held her against him while she laughed and snorted, writhing in his arms in her attempt to break free.
