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Cole’s mouth flattened, but he leaned closer after shooting a look at Shane. Shane cleared his throat and turned away.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m just enjoying the evening.”
“What happened this morning?”
“I left.”
“In a huff.”
“It wasn’t a huff. I was genuinely pissed. I didn’t mean to spend the night.”
“Why not?”
She took a sip of beer and let her gaze wander around the room. “Regardless of what you might think, I don’t need your help.”
He leaned closer and spoke through clenched teeth. “What the hell did that have to do with help? We had sex. You spent the night. That’s what people do.”
“Oh, yeah? Do you spend the whole night with a lot of girls you pick up at bars? Make them breakfast? Ask them to stay with you?”
“First of all,” he growled, “I didn’t pick you up at a bar. Second, that very obviously wasn’t a one-night stand, since it’s happened for two nights now. Third, I asked you to stay because I like you in my bed. And you seemed to like it, too, considering the way you were snuggled up against me this morning.”
“You were warm,” she snapped, as if she remembered anything about it.
“I was warm?”
Shane darted a look over his shoulder at Cole’s raised voice, but his face was carefully blank.
Grace was starting to feel a little guilty, and she didn’t like that. Maybe she had been curled up to him because he was warm, but that wasn’t the half of it, and she knew it. She liked touching him. She liked his skin and his hands and his scent. Just the thought of it opened up an ache in her body. It felt like a flower blooming, spreading red-hot petals through her insides. It was need, but not just that. It was want, too. And yearning. And she hated it so much. It felt like weakness.
She lifted her face and looked into his eyes. “I don’t need help.”
“If you think that’s true, maybe you should look around. You don’t even have a bed. You don’t have a place to eat your dinner. A place to sleep. You came here for help!”
Good. He’d pissed her off now, and that thing spreading inside her closed up again, squeezing itself small and invisible and meaningless. “Not from you. I don’t need or want help from you. Got it? Your dick isn’t some rescue line I need to hold on to. It was just sex. Deal with it.”
She stalked away, but not toward the door. She wouldn’t retreat, as if he bothered her so much she couldn’t be in his presence. He didn’t. He was nothing to her. But she was still aware of his eyes on her as she stopped in front of the jukebox and flipped through the selections.
Considering it a good bargain, she spent two dollars for three songs and nearly five minutes worth of time choosing them. Almost all of her anger had sunk back to its normal place by then, below the surface, accessible but not out of control. And her neck no longer burned with awareness. She discovered why when she turned around.
Cole was no longer watching her. Instead, he was watching Rayleen’s table. An
d no wonder. Seated with Rayleen was Cole’s boss, Easy. Cole didn’t look happy to see him. Rayleen, on the other hand…
Oh, the woman wasn’t doing anything so obvious as smiling at Easy, but her eyes were bright and her back straight and she looked ready to fight. It was the same way she looked when she was flirting with her young studs.
Interesting. Had they dated sometime back in the 1900s?
Grace worked her way back to the bar to ask Jenny.
“Oh, Easy comes in here a couple times a month on pitcher night. They play gin rummy for cash.”
“Is that all they do?”
“As far as I know,” Jenny answered. “And that’s all I ever need to know about it.”
Grace wanted to stay there with Jenny, talking and hiding, but pitcher night was busy, and Jenny was too slammed to hang out. “Sunday!” she promised as she rushed away.
