He exhaled. Eyed her. Pinched the bridge of his nose. The Mayhem commercial dude couldn’t have planned something like this better himself, and mayhem wasn’t Tyler’s default. It was his brothers’. He was the one who got them out of their legal messes.
“Look, I didn’t mean for last night to happen. I don’t think you did, either. One thing led to another and it just, sort of, felt right. But we did it.” She exhaled, softening, and looked a little sad. “And I’m sorry if it’s upsetting you. You seem like a straight-up guy.”
She was apologizing to him, like he was some delicate flower?
“Got no problem with the sex. Just the conflict.”
“It doesn’t have to be a conflict. We’re both adults here.”
He gazed at her, rolling her words around his thoughts.
“So are you not going to help me now?” she asked.
Despite her confident posture, Tyler spied vulnerability in her voice and in her wide amber eyes. And shit, as his gaze roved over her from head to toe, fluttery skirt that lapped upon those thighs he’d gripped like he’d owned—Negative. No one owns this woman—his gaze trailed down her legs to a trickle of blood on her shin.
His brow furrowed. She’d been injured, too.
Hell, if she was the land surveyor, then she’d rented his guest cabin. He didn’t need T.R. and his other farmhands checking her out every time she stepped onto her cabin porch, because their cabins were all in a row, like barracks, and Thaddeus was the definition of player. He and Toby had run together as teens whenever the cousins had visited, and everyone had thought they were twins, in looks and behavior.
He raked his hand through his hair. Their sex hadn’t upset him. He was more upset with himself for…liking it so much that he’d overlook this conflict of interest. For missing that freedom she embraces.
“Look, I can tell you don’t want me here,” she said, more sympathetically now. “I know you tried to fight back against this survey, judging by your legal action, even though I don’t know why. I guess I can see how this would make you uncomfortable—”
“Of course I’m gonna help you,” he bit out on a dark laugh. Like I’m driving a nail into my own coffin. Pops was right. This farm was a mistake.
He scoured his jaw. He liked her. She seemed to knock down his guard in a way no one else had in a long time. His lips turned up despite his best efforts. He rolled out his shoulders and popped his knuckles. He could let this go. “Hot cowboy, huh?”
She smacked his arm and grinned. “That’s the spirit. If you can’t fight ’em, join ’em. But don’t let it go to your head, Hercules.”
He shook his head. This was reckless, but this woman seemed to thrive on recklessness. There was nothing he could do about it. He wouldn’t not help her. Whether he’d slept with her or not, she was stranded. He had no idea how she was going to remain impartial, but right now figuring that out wasn’t his top priority.
Besides, she was just doing a job. She didn’t work for Fossyl. She was contracted by the state. He already had a mountain of petty evidence stacking up against the oil company who’d taken advantage of his grandpa’s diminished capacity late in life to renew a fifty-year oil lease right before the old man had died.
She walked to the fence, bent to try and figure out how to slip between the strings of barbwire without ripping herself or her clothes.
“Hang on. I’ll help you,” he said, striding toward her.
She stretched a wire upward and dipped her toes between them.
“You got a death wish? Sandals, bare legs, and barbed wire?”
She shot a glance back at him. “Have you been thinking about my legs, Tyler Dixon?”
He jutted his chin and smirked. “Kinda hard not to when they’ve been wrapped around my ass.”
Still, he shook his head, taking her arm to pull her back while she laughed. “You don’t listen well.”
“True, and I definitely don’t listen well to men who tell me I don’t listen well,” she retorted. “How else can I get through it? You gonna go all Hercules on me and carry me?”
Was that an invitation? Was he game to touch her again? Yes he was, and as he scooped her up, relishing the squeak that puffed from her lips and the way her arms flew up to cinch around his neck as he hoisted her over the top, he felt those sparks again. Dangling live wires zapping, waiting to be connected to his live wire.
“Sorry.” His cheek creased, her face mere inches away from his, he could see the honey striations like threads of gold in her amber irises. “Didn’t mean to sweep you off her feet.” Someone stick a gag in his mouth to shut him the hell up from spewing any more dumb crap.
She laughed and God, it was pretty. He couldn’t look away from the infectious expression. “You’re secretly a flirt, aren’t you? Hmm, well I didn’t mean to take a cowboy by storm,” she retorted and dusted a peck to his cheek.
His blood froze. What in the hell were the odds she’d say something like that? She slipped out of his grip in his moment of surprise and stuck the landing, even in those adorable, worthless sandals. “Girl, you don’t know the truth of it.”
He eyed her. So hard. Her comment bounced around his mind like pebbles in a tin can, and his cheek burned where her lips just touched it, as he remembered that day so long ago when his momma had delivered those words, begging him not to close himself off.
“Hope you got some better shoes,” he drawled, stepping back, and taking a jogging jump, swinging his legs over as he braced the post.
She grinned and winked like he was a kid who didn’t know anything. “I’m a Texan. I got me some boots.”