Bounty(21)

It didn’t matter, none of it did.

I was a job to him, nothing else, he’d made that clear.

Whatever drew him to me seven years ago was long gone.

I had a feeling I knew what it was, no longer mini-skirted and nursing a drink at a biker bar.

He was of his people. I was not his people. Then, he didn’t know that. Now, it was clear he did.

So be it.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t been around hot guys I was attracted to who were either taken or weren’t taken with me.

I’d been wrong. He wasn’t the only man who mattered in my personal universe.

He was just Deke, the guy who was now going to make progress on my house so when the team could come and finish the job, they had less to finish.

That was it.

I walked to the door, opened it and moved through, these being my thoughts.

These and the fact I was doing my best to tamp down the feeling that, ridiculously and way-too-keenly to be comprehensible or even logical, those thoughts hurt.



* * * * *

Deke



Deke Hightower sat in the low, folding deck chair in the grass, his long legs stretched out, his hand wrapped around a bottle of beer, his eyes on the glassy surface of the small lake in front of him that looked now like a mirror but would soon color with oranges and yellows. Then pinks and purples. Then blues.

Until there was dark cut only by shards of silver.

And he sat there thinking that he had no idea how any woman who had a body like the woman who called herself Jus would wear bulky overalls, the only thing making them worthwhile being that tight tank and the glimpse of skin you could see inside at the hip, which also included a glimpse of her panties.

Right, so there was that, the glimpse of skin. Smooth. Tan. Nice.

“Fuck,” he muttered to the lake, lifting his beer and taking a sip.

Then again, down all hippie and messy and parts braided, or up in a jumble with bits of it hanging, the woman had a serious shit ton of hair and hair like that meant she could wear anything and a man’s thoughts still would be consumed with what he could do with that hair.

Deke took another sip, not letting those thoughts consume him, and repeated, “Fuck,” as he lowered his beer.

He had to work on her house. He just had to hope she had a lot more ridiculous clothes to put on that would put him off while he was doing it.

Didn’t matter. The bitch was loaded. Her bullshit beat-up truck that was sitting outside her fucked-up house—a truck she bought because it was cool and she thought it augmented her style, not because she couldn’t afford anything else—couldn’t hide the fact that she was rolling in it.

Her crazy-ass clothes didn’t hide it either.

He knew what a house like that cost, especially on the land it was on, even if it wasn’t finished.

He also saw the plans and knew how much more she was pouring in it.

After getting her furnace sorted and taking a look at the deck, deciding how to tackle it the next day, he’d left and she hadn’t given him a key or told him she’d be out to work the next day so they’d have to figure out how he could gain access to her place in the morning.

She’d just said, “See you tomorrow, Deke.”

He’d watched her say that as she was closing the door on him to close herself in the fucked-up house she’d bought, and not for the first time he’d been unable to shake the feeling he’d looked into those big brown eyes before.

That didn’t matter either.

Out of his league. Even if he wanted to go there (and being essentially his boss, he wasn’t going to go there, he’d learned that lesson all too well), he wouldn’t go there.

He didn’t need her shit. Didn’t need to feel less when it was obvious she could give herself more.

What he needed was a job. His resources were running low. It didn’t take him a lot to get by but it was coming time when weather could not be assured he could jump on his bike whenever he felt the need to take off. This meant it had come to the time where he settled in Carnal, got a job and made some cash so when the weather turned, he could jump on his bike whenever he felt the need to take off.

It would not suck, shoving his hand down those overalls to trace with his fingers the lace he saw of her panties. This being before he took those fucking ugly things off.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Deke knew her kind and he’d learned a long time ago not to go there.

He set her out of his thoughts and stared at the lake, thinking about her deck and the fire pit, which, once done, were going to be dead cool, just like the rest of the house.

A house Deke knew was not a place he’d ever belong.

And he watched the mirror of the lake turn yellow and orange, pink and purple and then blue.

When it was blue, he got up, walked to his Airstream, climbed in, closed the screen behind him and started dinner.