“What do you mean?”
She pointed back and forth between them. “You and me. This. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s wild. What is this?”
He eyed her. Eyed the stack of papers on the edge of the kitchen table, fifty years of bank statements he’d had to go through the courts to get access to, that had been found in a warehouse and mailed to him from his grandparents’ defunct bank because Tyler had never once heard of them being paid for the mineral rights Fossyl had acquired.
Thiswasn’t anything. Even if this made two days in a row with the same woman, which means something and you know it. Shook his head. “No clue, but I like it.”
“So do I.” She held his gaze, her own softening into a deeper, contemplative look, and he loved her confidence. Her forthrightness. This was no meek woman. She said what she liked, and it was damned refreshing. “But I don’t date.”
“Neither do I. One of my rules.”
She exhaled, an air of bravado causing a cocky shimmy to her head. “I’m not looking for anyone right now.”
He folded his arms. “Me neither.”
Heat flared in his eyes, as he waited to see if she’d stand off with him further, as if they played tennis and the ball had just landed in her court. “I leave in a week.” She lobbed back.
Good.“I didn’t ask you to stay,” he added, brushing aside a strand from her face. His voice sounded hoarser as he stood tall and looked down his chest at her.
She toyed with his shirt. A nervous habit of hers, he was beginning to gather. Nervousness from this confident woman?
“I don’t want any attachments,” she whispered, and shook her head, looking down, picking nonexistent lint off him.
He pulled her hips flush with his like he owned her anyway, sex to sex, not letting chests touch heart to heart. Why didn’t she want any attachments? “Trust me, you don’t want ’em before you’re ready. I’ll do my thing, you do yours, and we can…” He shrugged. How did he proposition a woman to no-strings-attached cathartic sex?
“We can do our thing, you know, together,” she finished for him, flashing those eyes. “Like dating, but without the, you know…”
“Attachment.” He released her hips and feathered his fingers down her arms to her hands, finally letting them drop. It wasn’t breaking rule number two if it wasn’t really dating. “Call who you need to call. Use whatever you need. Eat what you want. I’ll get your truck flipped and salvage your things—”
“I can get a hotel, Ty, or stay with Charlie in town. I don’t want to put you out…”
He laid his finger across her lips and refolded his arms. Who the fuck was Charlie? Tyler wasn’t a sharer if they were going for round two and more.
But dammit, now he was committing a cardinal sin. He was about to break rule number one, for real, written at the bar with Toby all those years ago, in order to keep her here. A hotel would be logical. Rational. But he wasn’t feeling logical or rational today. If he was going to break the rules, he was going to do it in style.
“You’re my responsibility for the week.” His gaze bounced back and forth between hers. “I’ll be late tonight.”
“Where am I going to sleep?”
He shrugged. Didn’t unfold his arms. “You can sleep in my bed.”
He relished the way her cheeks sweetly reddened like an innocent angel and her lips parted. There was nothing innocent about this party girl.
“Where will you sleep?”
His mouth quirked up. “I ain’t sleepin’ on the floor. We’ll figure it out.”
Then he dusted a kiss to her mouth and strode to the front door—snatching up his keys, phone, and boots—opening it…
He turned back around and straightened her maddening sandals with an annoyed shake of the head, then pulled the door open. He’d just brought a woman home and kissed her goodbye. What the hell had he done?