When he didn’t move, I shoved past him, slamming my shoulder into his side on my way with extra oomph.
He snagged my coat sleeve. “I’m not done with you.”
I whirled, tugging my arm free. “Keep your hands off me, dickweed. I don’t like being manhandled.”
He scowled. “I wasn’t manhandling you.”
Maybe not yet, but I wasn’t going to let recent history repeat itself. “What do you want, Rex? If you came to talk about finding a place to rent, you need to see Mona.”
My coworker and mentor at work, Mona Hollister, had convinced our boss to let her work with Rex after he showed up months ago at Calamity Jane Realty and started pestering me to help him find a rental house. If Mona hadn’t stepped between us, I might have killed the slick jerk by now and landed behind bars for a long time, fulfilling Detective Hawke’s fantasies about me in orange jumpsuits and bondage.
Rex straightened his coat front, looking haughty. “I don’t need a place to live anymore.”
“So you’re leaving town?” My heart grabbed its tap shoes, ready to mimic Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers inside my chest.
“No, and it’s your fault.”
So much for my good-bye dance. “My fault?”
“I didn’t get the damned promotion.”
Ahhh, now I understood why Rex was pestering me on this toe-freezing winter afternoon in January. “You mean the job promotion that required you to lie about having a loving wife and kids?”
His eyes narrowed.
So did mine. “The one you tried to blackmail me into helping you land a couple of months ago?”
His nostrils flared, his lips pinching tight.
“The same one that spurred you to attempt to use brute force in my office back in November to get your way, only to end up pinned against the wall by my pissed-off boyfriend?”
“Yes, damn it!”
That day, I’d threatened to cut out and sell Rex’s kidneys and then leave him in a bathtub full of ice water if he didn’t stay away from me and my kids. Back-alley kidney extraction wasn’t something I’d tried before, but the bastard had threatened to tell my kids he was their real father when I refused to bend to his will. That key piece of information was a right from which he’d signed off legally after leaving me pregnant and alone without a penny of child support.
After that showdown in my office, Rex had backed off … some. He’d returned periodically to either blame me for taking parts off his car or accuse me of sending him dirty underwear at work. “Dirty” as in post-orgasm castoffs.
But neither crime was my doing, especially the used underwear bit. I’d never sent anyone my underwear in the mail. Although I had given a clean pair to Doc in a paper lunch sack once, and then showed him the matching bra soon after he opened the bag. We’d made a lovely mess of his desk that afternoon. I smiled, remembering the way Doc had …
“Violet!” Rex waved his hand in front of my face. “Did you hear what I just said?”
“Nope, and I don’t plan to hear what you say next, either.” I turned and walked toward Calamity Jane’s back door, my purple snow boots surefooted on the slush and patches of ice in the lot.
Unfortunately, Rex followed me. “Since you’re the reason I’m stuck in this small-town shithole, I’m going to make you pay for ruining my career.”
I snorted and kept walking. “Oh dear, how will I ever live with my evil self now?”
“I’ll make our kids pay, too.”
And there was the line in the sand.
I turned on him, grabbing him by the collar of his fancy tan wool coat, and yanked him down to my level. He smelled like a blend of cedar and cardamom, his favorite cologne. Why on earth had I ever found that scent sexy? Right now, a whiff of it made me want to take a baseball bat to his car windows. “Don’t come near my children.”
His gaze held mine, matching me glare for glare. “What are you going to do, baby? Call in one of your bodyguards to threaten me again?”
Not this time. “I will personally tear you apart, piece by piece.” Just as Natalie had been doing to his stupid Jaguar for months.
A door shut somewhere, the sound echoing off the nearby hillside.
Rex smirked. “You don’t scare me. I’ve always liked a woman with a bite, which your sister learned the first time we fucked in your bed.”
Once upon a time, that sucker punch would have knocked the wind out of me, but not anymore. “I swear to you, Rex, if I catch you anywhere near my children, I’ll—”
“Violet?” A familiar voice called from behind me. “Everything okay here?”
Ben Underhill, my other coworker besides Mona, joined us in the middle of the parking lot. He had his keys in one hand and a listing sheet in the other. His brown eyebrows were wrinkled as he glanced between Rex and me.
Ben had walked in on Doc and Rex and me that day months ago right after I’d issued my kidney-removal threat. He knew enough about Rex and me to see through the fake smile the slick prick had donned for Ben’s benefit.
“Everything is fine,” I said, letting go of Rex’s collar.
The searching look Ben gave me made it clear he wasn’t buying my lie, but he turned to Rex with a smooth grin that I’d seen him greet clients with time and again over the last few months. “Mr. Conner, I haven’t seen you around for some time now. Did you ever find a place to live?”
Rex continued watching me with that stupid smarmy smile in place. “I did,” he said, his tone dismissive.
“That’s good to hear. Is it in Lead or Deadwood?”
“Lead.”
Well, at least that put him a few miles away from me and mine instead of across the street in Aunt Zoe’s neighbor’s bed, where he’d been sleeping off and on since slithering into town. His
