Damn straight. The ink on his divorce papers had only been dry for eight months. Relationships were not on his radar right now, which meant Beth inhabited a no-fucking zone.
An awkward silence descended while he tried to figure out how to disengage his foot from his big mouth. Luckily, the arrival of their waiter with the chips and salsa released the tension.
“So are you ready to order?” The waiter held his pen at the ready.
“Yeah, we’ll have the Double Date. I have a Dos Equis. Do you want a beer?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not really a drinker. I’ll take a Pepsi.”
The waiter scribbled down their order and hustled back to the kitchen. Hank went back to wondering how to fill the silence.
He didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just the way he is. Hank Layton flirts the way normal human beings breathe.
Beth had been there. Almost done that. Wasn’t going back for more.
Okay. That helped to bring her heart rate back to normal, if you considered cheetah-speed normal. Of course, after the day she’d had, it was no wonder her reactions were out of whack. She took a drink of ice-cold water, watching Hank over the top of her glass, and almost dropped it. He was staring right at her. Her stomach fluttered—which was better than the twisted anxiety tying her guts up in knots since this morning because of the latest in a string of threatening calls.
This feeling was all about Hank, all six feet, three inches of him. She’d memorized that stat his first year of playing quarterback for the University of Nebraska. She’d tacked the page with his picture and stats from a football program to the back of her closet in high school. She would have taped it to the ceiling above her bed, but couldn’t begin to think of a way to explain that one to her abuelita. Or Claire, who would have reminded her that Hank was her bossy oldest brother with the world’s meanest girlfriend. The one who had become his wife and, now, his ex-wife.
A pair of dark jeans encased his long legs, loose enough to be casual and tight enough to cling to the ass she lusted after despite knowing she shouldn’t. An untucked Nebraska football T-shirt covered his wide shoulders and hid the washboard abs that haunted the restless nights she spent alone in bed, unable to sleep.
“So,” Hank drawled. “How’s the world treating you today?”
Honestly? Like a redheaded stepchild. “I’ll live.”
“That’s always good news.” He
smirked. “Rough day?”
“No doubt about it. You?”
“Every day since mom roped me into that Founder’s Day fiasco is a mess. It’s her second favorite topic since she and dad moved back permanently to Dry Creek.”
The waiter delivered their drinks.
Hank took a long pull from the beer bottle. “I have a proposition to make. Let’s not talk about our day, the crazy people around us or any other general bitching.”
“I’m game.”
“What should we talk about?”
“The weather?”
He rolled his eyes. “Lame.”
“Politics?”
“Hell no. I’m trying to eat here.” He popped a chip heavy with salsa into his mouth.
“Okay, so you pick.”
“Sex.” The word came out in a single-syllable dare.
The frisson of attraction that normally buzzed in the background whenever she was near Hank moved front and center. It reached out, making her nipples tingle. “I don’t—”
“No specifics,” he interrupted. “Just general factoids. I’ll start. Women who work out have more orgasms than those who don’t.”
“How do you know that?”