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His eyes narrowed. “Which one?”
“I don’t know his name.” I shrugged, like I didn’t care. “He had gauges and tattoos.”
Dean was so close to me, I could feel the heat radiating off him, note the individual flecks of gray and blue in his eyes. Hear his low exhale. “What’s with you and tattoos?”
I pretended my skin didn’t feel tight. Pretended I didn’t relish his sudden interest in what I supposedly wanted. “I like them.”
The space between his brows crimped. “Why?”
I tipped my head to the side, pretty positive Dean Hargrove had exactly zero tattoos. “I like a certain type of guy, and that certain type of guy usually has tattoos.”
“A certain type of guy?” he repeated.
My neck and cheeks heated, and I took sudden interest in the scuffs on the linoleum floor.
“Certain type of guy in bed?” he asked after a moment, his voice a shadow of its normal self.
I nodded.
“Taylor.”
I automatically raised my gaze to his, powerless when he rasped my name like that.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I licked my dry lips, and his eyes zeroed in on the motion. “I can’t talk about this with you.”
“Why not?”
I darted my gaze to the door, where no one was coming to my rescue. No one to interrupt us. I met his eyes once again and cleared my throat. “Because we’re friends.”
He hummed curiously. “I thought we were frenemies. I’m moving up the ladder.”
“And we’re going to stop the escalation right there.”
With a shake of his head, he pressed in closer to me, the corner of the counter biting into my lower back. Both of his hands were on either side of me now, caging me in. “You have to tell me.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” I said, though my voice wavered.
He bent his head, his voice becoming so low it wound under my clothes and brushed along my skin. “I won’t be able to work. I won’t be able to concentrate. So, unless you want me imagining the worst, you better tell me now.”
I closed the distance between us and rested my forehead on his, our breaths mingling for a brief moment while I gathered up my wits, rememberedthiswasn’t what we were.
“No,” I told him, pushing my hands against his chest. “You couldn’t handle it.” I grabbed my coffee and shouldered past him. “Might expire on the spot.”
“I could handle it,” he said to my back.
“Well, you won’t ever find out. So, I guess you won’t have to worry about it, Hargrove.”
* * *
It was Satan. That’s the only logical explanation for why I found myself at Walt’s later that night.
Dean often joked that I was from hell, but that couldn’t have been true, because I wouldn’t have fallen prey to whatever evil tricks got me here. So, it must have been Satan. Obviously.
I entered the bar behind a couple holding hands and shivered. Though it was the third week in February and we’d had almost no snow this winter, the wind had been crazy lately. I combed my freezing fingers through my hair before blowing into my cupped hands.
“Taylor?”
