“Coffee,” she said.
“Nothing peppermint? ’Tis the season.”
“Keep your girly drinks,” she said.
“Now, Rose, we both know you don’t mean that, because you like your coffee with enough sugar to send a unicorn on a hallucinogenic bender.”
“Fine,” she said, scowling. “Peppermint mocha.”
“I’m buying.”
“Why?”
“To be nice.”
Her eyes glittered like beetles. “Why are you being nice?”
“Can’t I be nice?”
“No,” she said definitively. Certainly.
“Watch me.”
He turned to the counter and ordered from man-bun-not-a-man-bun again.
“Let’s have a seat,” he said.
“I was going to watch the parade,” she responded, the inherent stubbornness and her tone telling him that that was not in fact what she had been intending to do, but she had changed her mind upon seeing him there.
“Were you?”
“It’s cold,” she said, rubbing at the end of her nose.
And he found that kind of thing just so damned cute it made him question everything that he was. For as long as he could remember, he’d liked the look of women. He liked the look of most of them, but he had to admit a certain fondness for the kind of girl who put on a pair of tight jeans and lip gloss, her hair teased to make her a little closer to Jesus. He liked them cowgirl pretty, with rhinestones and a little bit of flash.
Rose was a cowgirl, it was true. The kind with dirt under her nails and holes in her jeans that had come with wear and tear, rather than purchased that way from the store. She was also cute. And he would have said that cute really wasn’t his thing. Shiny, flashy, curvy, sparkly. Not cute.
But with Rose, he appreciated the cuteness. Like when she tried to warm her own nose.
Though appreciating Rose’s cuteness was a lot like appreciating the cuteness of a badger. Sure, it was fuzzy. Relatively small. But if you got right up close to it, it might mess you up. And think nothing of it.
“I know,” he said. “You don’t like to be cold.”
Silence stretched between them, tense as anything. All he could think of was wrapping her up in his arms, opening up his jacket and letting her burrow against his chest.
Okay, that was some shit. It was one thing to have sexual fantasies about her. It was quite another to have some kind of domestic, cozy fantasy about giving her his body heat.
But the way that her cheeks turned pink he had to wonder if she was thinking the same thing.
This was a problem. Looking at her and knowing that her thoughts might mirror his own. Looking at her and being pretty damn sure she felt the same thing.
For a long while he’d been pretty damn sure she didn’t.
But then they had kissed.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t.”
“Peppermint mocha,” the guy called out Rose’s drink.
“So, I don’t actually believe you were going to go watch the parade,” he said, picking up the cup and handing it to her.
She took it from him, and their fingers brushed.
He felt the impact of the touch all the way down to his cock.
“Well, maybe I am now.”
“To avoid me?”
“You’re not supposed to say anything about that,” she said.
“I’m not?”
“No,” she said, taking a sip of her mocha. “We’re pretending it’s not happening.”
“It has to get talked about eventually.”
“Does it? You’re the man—aren’t you supposed to advocate for us never talking about feelings or anything of the kind?”
“We work together. We are about to do this blacksmithing demonstration together. How long do you suppose we can feasibly pretend that this isn’t happening? That we are not acting like we can’t be in the same room? I mean, that’s the whole point of never doing it again. Making sure we can be in the same room.”
Suddenly, a little sliver of suspicion lodged itself beneath his skin. “Are you doing this on purpose?”
“Am I doing what on purpose?”
“Are you trying to prove your point? Your whole...thing about how we could do it. By making it impossible now?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t have the ability to be that manipulative. Not when I’m in the middle of...intense confusion.”
“It doesn’t need to be like this,” he said, not having any idea if it actually did have to be like this or not. Because he sure as hell didn’t feel normal. He had slept with... He didn’t even know how many women. One kiss with one woman should not be messing with his head to this degree. Or to any degree.
He was tempted to apologize, but when he went to open his mouth, he was sure that it wasn’t an apology that was going to come out at all. But then the door opened, and in walked Pansy, hand in hand with her fiancé.
West Caldwell.
He didn’t put a lot of thought into West. At least, not beyond his relationship with Pansy. He liked the guy. And if he had some weird feelings of envy wrapped up in who he was, he just ignored those, too.
“Hi,” Pansy said, looking between the two of them.
There was something in that expression, pleasant though it was, that made his stomach twist into a knot.
Pansy knew.
He didn’t know how he was so certain, only that he was.
“Hi,” he returned.
West grinned, and Logan felt a shift inside of him.
“Howdy,” he said.
For some reason, he could feel a keenness to Rose’s gaze just then. He didn’t need that much study from the Daniels women. It was strange. Pansy was glaring at him to figure out what his intentions were toward her sister, and he didn’t know what the hell Rose was trying to see.
“Were you headed out to watch the parade?”
“No,” he said. “Rosie wanted to get warm before we had to go stand out and do the demonstration.”
“Before you went and stood by a forge,” Pansy said.
“Put the interrogation away, Officer,” Rose said. “We’re having coffee.”
“Police chief,” Pansy said.
