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“I make it a point to know as much as possible,” he said, tone sober.
“Ass,” she muttered, tossing a pen at him.
He laughed and stuck the pen in the breast pocket of his denim work shirt. A work shirt he’d just rolled up even farther, revealing his sinewy forearms and dusting of light brown hair. Not that she’d noticed. “I’ll be out of your place by the time you get home.”
“Do you know what time that is too?”
His lips quirked. “The sign says you close at five. I took an educated guess.”
“Hmph.” She fiddled with her three-part forms. “You said bathroom work, which sounds like more than fixing the sink. What else do you need to do?”
“Just some patch-up plaster work. I apologize for the state of the apartment. I should’ve been more thorough before it was rented out.”
“Well, it’s not like you own the place.” She laughed off his concern. “You just do what you’re told, right?”
“Most of the time.” He reached out and danced his fingertips over the back of her hand so fast that she didn’t have time to prepare for the move. As if she could. Heat slammed into her and she opened her mouth to draw in air. Or gasp. “I wouldn’t mind taking orders from you,” he added in a placid tone that warred with the suggestiveness of his molten gaze.
“Which roses did you want?” she asked a little breathlessly.
He pursed his bitable mouth while he considered. “Think we’ll go with red.”
Frowning
, she noted the appropriate box. Red. Of course. “A dozen?”
“Let’s go with two. Hell, make it three, with lots of the green stuff.” He jerked his chin at the arrangement of stuffed bears climbing up the potted vine behind her. “Stick in a few balloons and one of those teddy bears, would you?”
Chapter Five
Alexa’s surprised expression clued him in to his mistake.
Shit. Three dozen roses wouldn’t be cheap. It hadn’t occurred to him to worry about price. Why should he? He could’ve bought out the whole shop—hell, bought the store itself—though that would’ve been a little ridiculous considering he already owned half of the building. Technically.
Dillon glanced around the store. A place that meant so much to her belonged partially to him. He couldn’t decide if that made him feel good. Right now it was just weird.
“Three? Are you sure? And the bears are thirty dollars.”
“Maybe we’ll skip the bear,” he said in an undertone, feeling foolish.
Dammit, he’d wanted the bear. His gram would’ve loved it. But a thirty-dollar bear and three dozen roses would be a prime invitation for Alexa to indulge her suspicious nature. Life had gotten so much harder since the invention of the internet.
It was probably a miracle she hadn’t done some checking up on him already, in light of her stalking concerns. Though those probably weren’t too serious if she’d reacted to him the way she had when he’d stroked her hand. The jolt that went through her still thrummed through him, as well.
Touching Alexa was way too enticing. Because if he wasn’t careful, touching would lead to holding, and holding would lead to kissing, then he’d be pulling her back in his arms again. Maybe bending her over this counter and—
“Okay. No bear. Would you like to select a card?” She spun the card carousel. “They’re free,” she added.
“Oh, what a relief.”
Jeez, even pretending to have a strict budget was depressing. His mood had plummeted in the last two minutes and all he’d lost was a bit more of his integrity.
Yet more proof he needed to come clean.
Great sex or not, bottom line, he never should’ve slept with her. Even if she’d said she didn’t care who he was, she hadn’t realized what she was saying. It wasn’t right to not come clean, and he’d also likely screwed up whatever slim chance existed that she might want to see him outside of bed. Or hell, even inside of bed again.
He wasn’t his brother, dammit. The idea of evicting a longtime small-business owner to take an offer from someone who wanted to put in a fro-yo place didn’t get him all atwitter. At least he’d discovered that Cory wasn’t completely a heartless ass when it came to Alexa’s situation. But the conversation with his sibling hadn’t given him a solution, assuming he considered Alexa’s financial difficulties his dilemma to solve.
Did he?
