I stared at him blankly.
“The windows,” he prompted.
“Oh! I would like to save them. I love the wavy old glass…” I trailed off, feeling foolish. There was a big, gorgeous man staring at me, and I had literally nothing to say.
“Anything else? I’m happy to help with anything you need,” he said with a strange emphasis on the word ‘anything’. And then he said it one more time for good measure. “Anything.”
I frowned at him for a minute before his words sank in. He was… oh, Lord, he was offering to… service me.
Clean out the pipes, as it were.
My cheeks turned bright red. So he was attracted to me, after all. I realized I was glad. It made me feel pretty for a minute. Until I realized I probably wasn’t anything special. Maybe he just offered that to every unattached woman he met. He did look like a player with those incredibly sexy bedroom eyes of his, after all.
I cleared my throat and shook my head a little.
“I’m not really… looking for anything. I’m focused on my… my business. But thank you.”
I watched in fascination as a muscle ticked in his jaw. It was a strong, thick, extremely masculine jaw. I was already halfway to regretting my words. It would be so easy to let him do what he was offering, just run my hands over those bulging muscles, lie back, and let him have his way with me.
But I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready for a man like him. He was… overwhelmingly male, to say the least.
“You sure about that?”
“Yes,” I said, even though I was not at all sure.
He shook his head ruefully and grabbed his tools.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you’d be back again so soon.”
He ignored me, scooping up his tools and giving me one last extremely steamy look. One that would keep me wondering whether I had made a mistake for hours, if not days. Maybe longer, I realized.
I couldn’t help but sigh a little forlornly as he walked out the door.
He looked really good from the back. And the front. But I could stare at his back without his noticing, something I was way too nervous to do to his face. I ran to the window and watched him disappear into the woods, my eyes trained on that juicy butt of his.
The man could move, that was for sure. I still couldn’t believe his offer. He’d just stood there and offered me sex. He was direct, I had to give him that.
I wondered if he would offer again tomorrow.
Chapter 5
Mac
She’d turned me down. I stared into space as I sat at the bar and not behind it, for once.
The woman had turned me down.
No one ever turns me down.
And that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I couldn’t get her out of my head. I was obsessing about her. How she looked. What I wanted to do with her. What I would have to do to convince her to let me. I’d never reacted to a woman like this, even before she’d said no to my offer.
“How was she?” Drake asked as he slid a drink across the bar. Nick was helping out tonight so they didn’t need me. I just needed to drink.
I shook my head and Drake stared.
“That hot little pain in the ass said no?”
I glared at him. She was hot and she was a pain in the ass, even though she had good reason to be. But I didn’t like hearing him say it.
“Shit, man, I just lost twenty bucks.”
“What?”
“Kyle,” he called out. Kyle ambled down the bar, looking like the cowboy he was. “Here, you lucky fucker.”
Kyle pocketed the twenty and slapped my back. I glared at him some more.
“You struck out?” He shook his head. “Man, that’s rough. I thought you were in there for sure.”
“You guys are pigs.”
“You are a pig too, just a better-trained one,” Drake said with a smirk. Nick chewed a straw and smirked at me too.
“What did I miss?” Whiskey said, taking a seat nearby.
“Your brother tried to score with this lady at the job site,” Kyle offered. “And he failed.”
“A lady?”
“Neighbor,” I muttered.
“She must be something to get Mac to come out of his shell.”
“Oh, she is,” Nick said. “She was madder than a hornet at a barbecue.”
We all turned to look at him. He stared at us, completely unfazed.
“What?”
“A hornet at a barbecue?”
“That’s right,” he said in a slow drawl. “They want the sauce but they don’t like the smoke.”
I just cocked my eyebrow at him. Nick had a way with words, that was for damn sure. It was pretty accurate, truth be told.
“But was she hot?” Whiskey asked. I shook my head and ignored him. All my married brothers were worse than the women when it came to gossip. And now that they were all mostly settled down, they wanted the same for the rest of us. They were nosy as fuck. “A nice girl?”