My name in her mouth should not have done anything to me.
It did.
I straightened, wiping grease off my fingers with a rag. “You want me to lie?”
“I want you to remember you don’t know me well enough to diagnose my choices.”
“I know a bad risk when I see one.”
Her smile came quick and bitter. “Of course you do. You’ve been calling me one since last night.”
That landed where I deserved it.
I looked away first.
Mistake.
Her gaze dropped to my hands, then my arms, then the tattoos disappearing under the sleeves of my Henley. Not shy. Not coy. Clinical, almost. Like she could pretend she was observing instead of looking.
I knew the difference.
So did she.
The corner of her mouth lifted.
“Something funny?” I asked.
“No.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
“My face is processing data.”
“Data.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She leaned one hip against the truck, folding her arms. That made the T-shirt pull tighter. She noticed menotice, because of course she did, and her smirk deepened by half a degree. “You seem tense.”
I stepped closer before I thought better of it. Not touching. Close enough to make her tilt her head back a little to keep my eyes. “You keep pushing.”
“You keep reacting.”
“I’m fixing your truck.”
“You’re trying to.”
“You wanna do it?”
“I’m a scientist, not a mechanic.”
“Then stop poking the mechanic.”
Her gaze flicked down my chest, slow enough to be deliberate, then back up. “Maybe the mechanic is easy to poke.”
Heat moved under my skin.
Not gentle heat. Not soft. The kind that hit behind the ribs and headed straight down. I looked at her mouth for one second too long, and she saw that too.
Damn woman saw everything.
