He cleared his throat, hard. His hands dropped, and he tore his fingers though his messy hair, averting his gaze as she pulled her legs away. He helped her drape down her skirt, smoothing it onto her thighs and making her skin jump with anticipation. He cleared his throat again, taking her wrist coiled in leather bands so that she held his wrist, too, and hauled her up to sitting.
“Now that’s a question I oughta be asking you,” he replied.
What was the question?
He schooled his face back to the chiseled granite that seemed to be his default. Chewed his cheek in that same way he had when he’d refused to look at her as he’d collected his hat and wallet from the bathroom floor.
“That’s easy enough to answer.” She shrugged as she raked her fingers into her hair and shook it vigorously to shake the dust and dirt out. His gaze dipped to a strand of hair clinging to her lip. “I’m Heather, but you can call me Heart, and I’m here for work.”
Were those birds chirping? God, her heart was still pounding like a drum. She willed it to calm the hell down and grabbed her backpack, climbing on her hands and knees toward the other opening. The debris blocking it turned out to be a tree. And after a push, she realized, it wasn’t budging.
*
Naw, Tyler didn’tdo personal nicknames as he took in her back and hair so messy, it evoked pleasantly rumpled bedhead. Just like you don’t kiss, man. And look how well that was working, he scowled, because he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that his lips had brushed across hers a moment ago while they’d held onto each other to ride out the storm, after a night of sucking face with her like she was his last meal.
Heather…Tie-Dye was just fine to call her to keep things from feeling personal—wait, she was here for work? As in, in East Texas for work, or at his farm for work?
Dammit, now he knew her name in addition to her body and her kiss. Already it felt like he’d crossed that personal boundary. He watched her contemplate the tree blocking their exit, knowing the other exit was blacked out by her truck. She pushed on the trunk. Pushed again.
“Ugh, it’s stuck.”
“Cute,” he smirked, shaking his head as she glanced back at him and cocked a brow.
He swiped up his hat, crawling forward. She was still trying to push the tree.
“Seriously, we’re trapped,” she huffed as he crowded the space beside her.
“Not trapped. Watch and learn,” he drawled, mouth quirking at the corner as he stretched his arms out in front of her and braced the rim of the culvert on either side. “Move back.”
She shifted aside. Sitting back on his left boot, he braced his right boot on the tree.
With a stiff, firm thrust of the shitkicker and grunt for leverage, the tree scraped outward, leaving enough room to finally stand.
“Well done, Hercules,” she teased, eyes widening, patting his shoulder.
He chuckled. Shook his head. “Hercules?” He knew he was stacked. His muscles drew the occasional eye. But stupid male pride still inflated in his chest at her declaration. Was she flirting with him again? Time to deal with this pretty stranger’s truck. One and done aside, she was stuck here for a while, and he’d never left a girl in a lurch.
He pushed out of the culvert, jamming his Stetson back on his head and shielding his eyes from the stabbing light. He offered his sun-bronzed hand to her. Her palm slid onto his. Just touching her again sent ridiculous zinging rippling through his arm. She glanced up his long legs from her knees, and fuck, if he hadn’t been envisioning that all night long. What the hell was wrong with him? This has to be aftershocks from last night. He’d known last night would have to tide him over for a while, so maybe he was still riding the high…right?
He hoisted her up as she stumbled against him, palming his abs and pushing away, but not before his muscles jumped reflexively. Sunlight seemed to burn her eyes, too, as they began to water, and she averted them, blinking hard, cheating him of a full taste of her soft, sparkly irises.
She shielded them. “Oh man, like Plato emerging from the cave…” she grumbled.
Tyler chuckled again, then killed the stupid laugh and pulled out his cell. “You study philosophy?”
Was he making meaningless chitchat? But he’d studied the hell out of it. His minor was in philosophy, a complement to his law degrees that he’d found so cerebral and a subject he’d loved.
Her mouth twisted in a grin as she looked around, noticing his classic blue pickup truck, door open, engine idling on the other side of a pasture fence where he’d ditched it to help her. Now wasn’t that unfair. His truck was untouched when her truck was… His eyes darted to her dark green Sierra. The grin twisting his mouth fell. Oh man, he hoped she didn’t turn to look just yet.
“Nope, but I did take a seminar on Greek mythology and loved it. I would have gotten, like, 200 different degrees if I could have cloned myself. That, and I love astronomy and the Greek mythology behind the constellations and how they were so wrong about earth being the center of the universe but kind of right because they’d figured out the earth was round. And when I was a kid, I was sure I was going to be the next Galileo…” Unexpected redness stained her cheeks and she smiled, biting her lip, but this time, not that coy little smirk that made him want to eat it off her mouth. “I digress, I ramble,” she added with mock flourish and amusement dancing in the most amber-brown eyes glowing in the warm afternoon sun.
His brow furrowed, and a curious smile threatened to tug up his mouth again. “Party girl has a nerd streak?” he murmured.
She laughed a lyrical laugh, her mouth twisting in that flirty smile that dammit was so kissable as she fished a hair band out of her backpack and scooped her hair into a messy, poufy bun at the base of her head, a little off-center, those endearing curls popping out of the knot and a few loose wisps falling whimsically around her face. Somehow she’d made the messy, fresh-from-the-beach do look elegant, and his eyes trailed over the slope of her bare neck and earrings where a blemish—dammit, a hickey, sat on her collarbone. It looked fresh. Had he done that last night?
Jeezus, I’m an ass.
“Shhh, I try to hide it,” she winked.