Fools (Licking Thicket 3)

“I bet it all spun way outta hand,” he soothed. “You know how my mama gets excited and… Wait.” His green eyes got impossibly wider. “You said kinks. Do you have kinks?”

“What? I… no. Not… exactly. Irrelevant.” I felt my face flame. “Stick to the topic.”

But Dunn stared at me with a new sort of interest, like I’d just declared that I had gills or a magic wand.

“But I’m your best best friend.” His voice was a deep rumble in the quiet afternoon, and his gaze was weirdly intent, watchful. Totally unlike Dunn. For the first time ever in our friendship, it felt almost, sort of like… flirtation. “If anyone’s gonna know that kind of thing about you, shouldn’t it be me?”

I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry as a bone, and holding his gaze was a challenge. There was a kind of awareness ping-ponging back and forth between us—his newfound awareness of me, and my awareness of his awareness, and his awareness of my awareness of his awareness, which was honestly the point when I thought he’d look away… but he didn’t. Instead, he doubled down.

“I missed you this week, Tucker Wright,” he said softly. “And I get you were mad at me, and I get you needed space, but… I missed you. You’re like the other part of me. Being without you’s like walking around with only half of my body.”

I fought hard against the pull of that gaze and forced myself to roll my eyes. “You couldn’t walk around with only half your body.”

“Exactly.” Dunn’s cheeks twitched, more like a flinch than a smile. “It’s been a real shit week.”

I sighed, and Bernadette squealed in sympathy.

It really had been a shit week.

“And I learned my lesson,” Dunn swore, all innocence. “If you don’t want another date, then no more dates. Pinky promise, super swear. I’ll let you find your own dudes. A-and I’ll have a word with my mama too and tell her to cancel everything, effective immediately. Just say we can be friends again, Tuck. I’ve got whole seasons of that baking show I haven’t watched ’cause you haven’t been here, and Bernadette’s grown so much you probably don’t recognize her”—he thrust a hand out toward the pig, who looked exactly as rotund as the last time I saw her, but who nevertheless gave the pitiful whine of an abandoned orphan—“and last night I ordered a large pepper and onion with half black olives.”

My stomach clenched. “You hate black olives.”

“But I never order pizza for just me, do I?” He heaved a frustrated sigh. “I just don’t work without you. And I don’t want to.”

Ugh. It was a good thing Dunn had never turned his talents toward, say, a life of crime. He’d have made entire countries throw open their borders and lay down their weapons with the power of those big, green eyes. Bank managers would open their vaults and wave him out with a smile. Spies would type up all their secrets, with footnotes, and just fork them over.

So how the heck was I supposed to resist him?

“You’re impossible,” I groaned, rolling my eyes to the rafters.

He grinned like he was suddenly sure it was all going to be okay. “The kind of impossible you want to pick you up at six tomorrow morning for fishing and tie your clinch knots for ya?”

“Fine.” I sighed, which sounded a whole lot like letting out a breath I’d been holding for six and a half days. “Fine.”

Dunn whooped and wrapped those big arms around me again, pulling me into the overwhelming heat and scent of him so I could rest my cheek against his naked, sweaty pec. Exactly where I most wanted to be.

I pushed myself away. “I have to be back early tomorrow, though. I have a… a dinner tomorrow night.”

“Oh, right,” he agreed. “Your old colleague?”

I nodded slowly. “Carter. He made us a reservation at the Steak ’n Bait. He, ah… he’s new in the area.”

“So, you wanna stick around tonight? I can order some burgers and show you my swimbait and—?”

“No! I… I can’t. I have paperwork to catch up on, since I stormed over here today.” Not to mention the fact that I was more than a little hard, and I’d be damned if I’d let him see it.

Boundaries. Healthy, healthy boundaries.

“Ah, okay. Sucks, but you made the right choice, ’cause I was dyin’ over here.” He grinned broadly, and I had to laugh out loud. “So… tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

And I prayed that by then I’d figure out how to be just friends with Dunn Johnson, because not having him in my life wasn’t an option.

6

Dunn

12-Down: A person who says one thing and does another (9 letters)

It was a gorgeous morning on the lake. The kind of morning that reminded me of how Tucker and I had originally struck up our unlikely friendship.