She hesitated again. “No.”
Her voice sounded small over the pounding of her heart in her ears.
He was just a few questions away from cornering the truth about her, the one that no one in Hellcat Canyon knew.
“Because here’s the thing, Britt. You weren’t pissed off when he grabbed your wrist.” He pointed this out, gently but relentlessly. As if he somehow knew she didn’t want to hear it. “Or just annoyed. Or amused. You were terrified. I saw it in your eyes. You were scared to death.”
She was speechless. Her mind blanked.
He held her gaze with a sort of sympathetic remorselessness. He would have made a good actual cop, she thought, because she doubted he’d miss an eyelash twitch.
And she simply couldn’t deny it, because it was true.
She suspected she’d told him quite a bit with her silence.
And he seemed to take it as confirmation.
“I just couldn’t let that stand,” he said gently. “Is that all right?”
Her throat was so tight the words couldn’t emerge. Her mind couldn’t seem to line them up in any proper order anyway.
“I’m sorry you had to... but... thank you. Yes. That’s all right. ”
He exhaled, as if he’d been waiting for just those words.
“Good,” he said softly.
And suddenly they were quiet. J. T. sought out the moon, a sliver of light over the mountains.
The silence thrummed with intensity. She was grateful he didn’t ask any more questions. Though she had a hunch his thoughts were full of them.
“Just so you know, J. T., Icanactually take care of myself.”
He turned very, very slowly toward her. He stared at her with unflattering incredulity. “Do you reallybelievethat?”
She was shocked. “I’m—”
“Or is it just something you say, a formality, like offering to pick up a check when you know someone else is going to pay for it anyway?” he demanded.
She was speechless. “Maybe,” she admitted faintly, after a moment. “But you sure use a lot of food analogies when you want to make a point.”
He blinked.
And then the tension visibly went out of him. He smiled faintly. “Something new I’m trying.”
“I’m not saying you’re helpless, Britt. I don’t thinkthatfor a minute. It’s just thatno onecan completely take care of themselves. Not even me, and I have a freaking black belt in karate. It’s not a man versus woman thing. It’s a ‘let somebody care about you thing.’ And sometimesthattakes more guts and sense than taking on the whole damn world by yourself.”
She was awfully tempted to argue just for the sake of arguing, but it would get her nowhere. He was every bit as stubborn as she was.
And the thing was, he was exactly right. With this little lecture he’d just chipped off another layer of her crusty old defenses. Trust and vulnerability had once led her into danger. Add that to her own native stubbornness, and you had a recipe for a wall.
“Got it,” she said finally, tersely. A concession on her part.
And the perverse man smiled slowly at her. He seemed to actually relish her stubbornness.
She sighed. “It’s funny,” she mused. “You’d be surprised, but plenty of women are into Truck. Kayla Benoit and Casey Carson once got into a fight right there outside the Truth and Beauty over him. It started when Kayla told Truck she could tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue, and I’m not quite sure what happened after that, but everyone was torn between selling tickets or getting the fire hose. Even the sheriff hesitated to wade on in there. They both had fresh manicures and those nails can do some damage.”
Bemusement bloomed into unadulterated wicked delight on J. T.’s face. “Who won?”
