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She pressed the tissue back to his face, muffling his words.
Everything about the man was huge. His nose, his mouth. Those hands. She shivered at the thought of him touching her, and not because she’d made him angry.
“Birdie!” She blinked and refocused on Sawyer as he pulled her hand free again. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’m not telling you, Sawyer. Go away. I need to drive home now.”
“You should already be there!” he roared at her. “How often have you come here to gamble?”
“I’m going.” She turned and unlocked her car. But the large hand on the window stopped her from opening the door.
“You are never again coming here to gamble, Birdie. It’s too dangerous.”
“Fudge off.” Birdie didn’t enjoy swearing. Her brothers did constantly, but she tried not to unless necessary. If she was honest, now would be one of those times, but she kept the words inside.
“Promise me.”
“Look.” She spun back and was suddenly closer to the man. Her breasts brushed his chest and created a sensation that was entirely too uncomfortable. “I am not your problem. You’ve blackmailed me into going with you to a wedding, but you don’t get to order me about any other time.”
“I do, because I can tell your folks about this. I also know how to get hold of your siblings on Facebook. Happy to make contact and inform them exactly what you’re up to.”
Frustration made tears sting in her eyes. Birdie ignored them.
“What I do is none of your business. Back off,” she said in her best tough girl voice.
“No.”
His refusal had a flush of anger filling her body. She couldn’t move him, since he was too big, so Birdie did something she’d never done before. Grabbing his shoulders, she drew back her knee. He twisted so she missed his groin, but he retreated. Birdie opened her door and jumped in, slamming it behind her. She then stabbed the lock.
“Open this door!” Sawyer was shaking the handle with enough force to pull it free.
Birdie ignored him and managed, after a few shaky attempts, to get the key in the ignition. She lowered the window an inch after she’d started the car.
“I just want to say thank you for what you did for Bobby today. I know you were protecting me tonight, but you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
He pounded on her window as she raised it back up.
It was about now she sympathized with all those women in movies who were on the run while someone was attempting to stop them. Birdie backed out of the space, slowly, in case he followed. No way did she want to run over his foot after the injuries he’d already suffered tonight.
“I’m watching you,” he shouted. The finger he pointed at her was ominous, even in the dark and through her windshield.
Birdie drove around him and out of the parking lot. She wanted to put her foot down, but speeding wasn’t good on any level, and who knew what drunken idiot was about after the bar fight?
Pulling onto the road, she drove slowly through Sauce and toward Lyntacky. Five minutes later, she had a tail. The headlights of Sawyer’s Firebird shone into her car briefly, and then he backed away and followed her all the way home.
Turning into her driveway, she watched him pass by, and it was childish, and probably he wouldn’t see, but she raised both middle fingers at him.
Exhaling a deep breath, Birdie headed for her house and wondered what Sawyer Duke would do with this new information he now had on her. Life had suddenly become very complicated in the last week, and she wasn’t sure how to uncomplicate it.
Chapter11
The day after he’d found Birdie gambling in Sauce, Sawyer turned into the long driveway that led to his house.
He’d spent the morning at the timber yard working. Hard work that should have cleared his head. It hadn’t. His jaw ached from the fight last night. He’d also tried to keep away from his family and their questions about the bruises that he’d now have in the wedding photos. Only Brody had seen him, and Sawyer had told him he didn’t want to talk about it. His brother had shrugged, but Sawyer wasn’t fooled into believing that was the last he’d heard on the matter. Brody would bring reinforcements and the interrogation would really begin.
Life wasn’t complicated on Monday. Now it was Thursday, and it was complicated as shit, thanks to her. How was it possible that in just a few days everything he knew about Birdie McAllister was turned on its head?
He drove through the row of trees he and his brothers had planted with his dad years ago. Ignoring the small jab of pain thinking about his dad always gave him, he looked at the first house that came into view. Uncle Asher lived there. He’d stepped in to help raise his nephews after their father had died unexpectedly when they were young. The place was a narrow two-story made of board and batten. Sawyer had spent a lot of time with his family there since they’d built it years ago.
