“I’m guessing this is how I felt when you saw me with Ralph and Winne.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. “Stripped raw? Vulnerable?”
I couldn’t look at him. My palms were sweating and my pulse was racing.
“I didn’t know why I wanted you there, then you were and I didn’t know what the fuck to do about it.”
Another harsh laugh fell from my lips. I swiped my mess of a hair off my neck, which burned under his seeking gaze.
I nodded once, understanding what he was saying in a way I didn’t think anyone else could.
He held himself away from people—whether from his past or maybe because of his notoriety, I didn’t know.
I just knew I did the same. I was Beaux Hale’s sister, and with that I was used to putting up walls, not allowing many people to get close to me for fear of being used. Patrick had broken through and then blown it to smithereens. Only Melissa had ever been someone I fully trusted.
Granted, I could walk through malls without recognition or being hounded for autographs, but there were plenty of times my name had been paired with Beaux when pictures of us out for dinner or at the ESPY awards surfaced.
“Okay.” The word was a whisper, pulled from my throat before I could choke it down.
He followed me through the rest of the store while I stalled and moved as slowly as I could. I realized halfway there that Oliver wasn’t following me. He was lingering, looking at every single piece of jewelry I’d made with softness in his eyes. He had an appreciation for what I poured my heart into.
Damn him and his hidden kindness.
I was trying to walk away from him, and he was pulling me closer to him without a word or a touch, just his respect.
My keys jangled in my hand, getting his attention from a selection of leather-wrapped cuffs with silver accents around the edges.
“I have a friend who would love these,” he said, pointing at a pair of braided leather cuffs, gold metal stamped along the border. They were edgy and country and I loved them. I’d made them the other day after walking past a bar where country music had filtered through the doors.
The music, the sudden realization I was in the South now and everyone loved their country down here, had inspired a whole new selection of designs. Those were the only two I’d completed.
“I just made those the other day,” I admitted, feeling something churn in my stomach at the mention of a friend. A female one.
He was allowed to have them, after all.
I turned away and unlocked the back office/workroom before he could see that it’d bothered me. I had no right.
“Holy fucking shit,” he whispered when he walked up behind me. He still wasn’t touching me. I suddenly wanted him to be. “Did someone break in?”
Chapter TWELVE
OLIVER
I didn’t know where to look first as I took in the crowded and destroyed space. Wherever I looked, it was a disaster. Buckets of metal, different sizes and different colors with smaller buckets and drawers pulled open, their contents scattered all over the place.
Tools and paper littered the tabletops. I spied a small area with a laptop, and remnants of takeout and bills and more paper and more tools covered what I assumed was a wood desk. It was hard to tell.
The room looked like it’d been invaded and trashed by someone desperate.
Her laughter pulled my eyes off the space and to her, where a furious red heat bloomed on her cheeks. “No. I’m just…really messy.” She waved her hand out, but she didn’t need to—it was obvious and I had never been so surprised by anything about this girl until this moment.
And why this was what shocked me, rocking and knocking something hardened loose inside my chest, I had no idea. “But you’re always so put together.”
I was baffled and I couldn’t hide it.
“Beaux’s made fun of me for it, for like ever, I think.” She shrugged and walked toward what I assumed was her desk. She picked up a pile of papers and set them down again. “I’ve never been good at cleaning, or picking up, and my mind works better in the chaos. Does it scare you?”
Strangely, my dick twitched and hardened beneath my shorts. I saw her guarded and careful, quiet and held back, almost too proper and perfect in the few times I’d seen her. This…this rattled me…made me see her in a different way. A woman who was frantic and hurried and creative, someone who lived inside her head more than out of it.
“No. It doesn’t scare me.”
She caught the gravelly tone in my voice and quickly glanced away. “So this is it. This is where the magic happens.”
She picked up a set of pliers and tossed them into the bucket. From the top of it, I saw handles to other tools. Behind it, some sort of table saw and a handheld circular saw.
I thought of her wielding it, slashing through metal, and my dick hardened further.
This wasn’t sexy. It was a disaster and messy, but I wanted to be making a different kind of magic.
Her jewelry was incredible. Beyond what I could have possibly imagined. I had pictured tiny jewels and flamboyant rings. Typical charms on silver and gold chains.
Nothing I thought of came close to the creative magnitude that had stolen my breath as soon as I saw it.
She was letting me see it, despite thinking we were moving too fast, despite wanting to run from me. A part of her, I knew, felt the same way about me that I did about her. There was a pull between us, magnetic and strong and fierce. Neither of us necessarily wanted it, but it also couldn’t be denied.
Running was futile.
Burning it out, impossible.
I memorized plays and studied my opponent for a living. I studied game films and had played football long enough to adjust my game plan in a split second on the field when I saw a defender barreling down on me.
For the last seven years, since I’d played the field since Serena walked away, her pockets lined with millions, no one had ever made me want to change my game plan.
This woman…this sexy as fuck, intelligent, beautiful, kind, guarded, and fucking messy as hell woman rocked everything beneath my feet.
I struggled with what was happening inside me before I realized she was watching me, waiting for my judgment.
“You’re talented,” I admitted. A strange buzzing whirred maniacally in my ears. “Incredibly talented. Everything I can see is absolutely stunning, and I’m not just saying that to get in your panties.”
I flashed her an awkward look, one I hoped like hell she let slide.
My chest burned. My shirt or my skin was too tight. I needed to get out of there and I suddenly understood her reaction that morning in the shower.
I was too much for her.
She was too much for me. She made me feel too much, think too much, question fucking everything.
“Thank you,” she muttered, the bright red on her cheeks fading to a dull pink.
I had the urge to reach out and smooth it away with my thumb. Tell her how much she impressed me. Spill my guts at her feet and hope like hell she didn’t stomp all over them.
I shoved my hands to my hips to stop myself. She had shown me her inner sanctum, and doing so had blown everything to smithereens.
“I should let you get to work,” I mumbled, looking around everywhere except at her.
“Okay.”
She didn’t stop me. Didn’t move or seem to notice the insanity burning deep inside me. And it was all her fucking fault.
“I need to go work out.”
“I’ll let you get to it then.” She set a stack of bills she’d been flipping through down on the desk and walked toward me. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Okay.” I stepped back and out of the room, hoping like hell the open warehouse feeling of the front area would fill my lungs with a cooling breath. Everything buzzed brighter and hotter as she walked me to the front door.
I could barely look at her when she pulled it open, stepping aside so I could walk through. What in the hell would she see on my damn face? The look of a man who had just realized that for the first time in over a decade he actually thought he was falling for some woman?
It was bullshit. I’d known her over a week, seen her a total of four times—five if you counted this morning. I didn’t believe in that “first sight” fantasy bullshit unless it was lust.
This was more, though—headier—and it made my head spin.
“I’ll see you later?” I asked, barely able to choke out the words. I was lost, free-falling.
“Bye, Oliver.”
I heard the hurt in her words, the total misunderstanding from everything that was slamming inside my brain, and I couldn’t articulate it.
I didn’t correct her, either. There was no fucking way this was goodbye.
I wouldn’t say goodbye to her. Not ever.
Where in the hell did that come from?
I jerked my head when I got to my car. She was still standing in the doorway, arms crossed protectively over her stomach like she was trying to shield herself from me again.
I didn’t think.
I hurried back to her, not caring that she jumped in surprise when I rushed her. I pressed my hands to her cheeks. My rough and callused palms scraped her soft and tender and fucking delicious skin.
I kissed her. I kissed her hard and long and shoved my tongue deep inside her mouth as she gasped in shock. Without words, using the only thing I could think of—my hands and my tongue and my sudden erection clamoring to get out of my shorts—I fucking showed her everything I was thinking and feeling.