Dangerous Tease (The Layton Family 3)

“Are you okay? How about the hand?”

“The doctors want me to stay another night, but after that, they said I'll be tired but recover completely. I'll be like my old self in a few days.” She lifted her bandaged hand off the bed, staring at it as if it were an alien. “As to the hand, I have to wait and see, but I'll be painting again. The only way I'll give it up is if I lose all my fingers on both hands, and then I'll figure out how to paint with my toes.”

“And is that what you plan to do? Go back to Vegas and paint?”

The plan gelled together in her head in an instant. It was perfect. She wanted him. He wanted her. Time to break out her kickass princess attitude and slay a dragon. “Hell no. I know exactly what I'm going to do.” And it wasn’t going to happen in Vegas.

Chapter Twenty

The end of the lunch crowd filled The Harvest Bistro to capacity and Josie weaved her way between the tables with a nine-ounce steak and rosemary potato wedges drizzled with olive oil in one hand and pan-seared salmon with mixed greens in the other.

When the doctors told her she’d be right as rain within a month after leaving the hospital, she figured they were full of shit. But true to their word, she felt fine. Her right hand got tired easy, but Dr. Coll said that would go away in time too. It had been four weeks since she'd last seen Sam Layton in her hospital room.

Four very long weeks.

Not that she'd been sitting around waiting for his call or chasing after him. No. Her plan involved doing the one thing she was sure he never expected. Ignoring him. Eventually, he'd break, she was sure of it, but she didn't know how much longer she'd be able to hold out. Odds were she'd be knocking on his door in less than forty-eight hours.

In the meantime, she'd sweet-talked Celestine into renting out the studio cabin to her for the foreseeable future and had spent the majority of her time painting. The thought of going back to Vegas after all that had happened make her sick to her stomach. She liked the pace and friendliness of small town America. Of course, now she needed a job and she figured waiting tables in Dry Creek couldn't be that different than in Vegas. She'd been filling out an application to work at Harvest when the lunch crowd had swarmed the place, so she'd offered to help out until it slowed a bit.

“So has that son of mine shown his face yet?” Glenda Layton spread her napkin on her lap and glanced approvingly at her salmon.

“I haven't seen him.” Josie put the steak in front of Bob Layton.

“No one has. I swear that boy has burrowed underground.” She eyeballed her husband of forty years. “I thought you were going to have a talk with him.”

“I did.”

She tossed up her hands in frustration. “And?”

“We talked.” He shrugged and concentrated on his lunch.

Glenda huffed. “Bob, getting information out of you is like pulling t

he teeth of a pissed-off bull.”

“You always were full of piss and vinegar, Glenda. One of my favorite things about you.” He started cutting his steak. “Well, that and your legs.”

A shadow fell over the table.

Josie looked over her shoulder to see Sam wearing a bright-red sweater and jeans with worn cuffs. Bits of blue paint had dried in his hair.

God, he smelled delicious, like hot, sexy man. All she wanted to do was slide her hands underneath the cherry wool and touch his hard chest or, maybe, her hands would travel downward to the button on his jeans. She clenched her thighs together at the mental image.

He smirked at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and completely approved.

In a heartbeat, she decided to bolt before she lost her battle with self-control. “Okay then, I'm gonna run and see if the waitresses need any more help.”

She spun on her heel to flee. Warm, strong fingers wrapped around hers. “How are you?”

Nervous. Excited. Horny. “I'm okay, how about you?”

“I meant, how are you feeling since you left the hospital?”

Except for missing you? Perfect. “I didn't believe the doctors when they said I'd be right as rain in a few weeks, but they were right. I couldn't take sitting around the cabin anymore and had to break out.”

“I heard you're staying in Dry Creek.”

“Yeah, despite everything, I like it here.”