“Talk it out,” Wes said, sounding almost bored, but when she glanced up, he was watching her intently.
Bethany swallowed hard and turned in a circle, her sandals making a sifting sound on the dirty floor. “We need it fully gutted, obviously. The kitchen needs to be twice as large, which will mean sacrificing the tiny dining room for a cozy breakfast nook.” She wet her lips. “This is a starter house for sure. Which means kids. Parents needing to watch them from the kitchen at all times. They’ll need extra dining space, so we can put in a chest-high dividing wall to double as a breakfast bar. Can we make the whole front of the house visible from the kitchen?”
“Is that what you want?”
What she wanted was a Yes, that’s a great idea. Apparently she wasn’t getting it, though. “Yes,” she forced herself to say. An answer that required relying totally on her own instincts. “That’s what I want.”
He made some notes on his pad, looking much older with his furrowed brow. “You brave enough to tour the rest of the house?”
She gave him an eye roll. “I think I can handle it,” she muttered, already stepping over some broken glass and picking her way down the hallway.
A rat came careening out of the first doorway and trucked a path right across Bethany’s foot. “Oh! Rat rat rat. No. Noooo!” With her screech echoing off the hallway walls, and potentially putting them in danger of the house collapsing, Bethany turned and scaled Wes’s body like a hysterical rock climber.
He dropped his pad and pencil just in time to accommodate her, his only reaction to raise an eyebrow. Getting her feet off the floor required locking her ankles at the small of his back and if she hadn’t been so squicked-out over her brush with rodentia, she would have noticed he didn’t so much as flinch or strain under her weight. She would think of it later, though. A lot. “First, we exterminate,” she heaved breathily beside his ear, patting him twice on the shoulder. “Can you take me outside, please?”
“Uh-huh.” In the slowest turn ever executed by man or animal, Wes started a sloth-like trek back the way they’d come.
“Can’t you go any faster?”
She ignored the shiver that traveled down her spine when his laugh tickled her neck. “Wouldn’t want to drop you, darlin’.”
“Your arms aren’t even around me. It’s all cling.”
“I just don’t want to lead you on. Sex is off the table, remember?”
“Move! My legs are starting to shake.”
He groaned and wrapped her in his arms, one beneath her butt, the other locking around the center of her back. “Bethany, I’m starting to think you say this shit on purpose to torture me.”
She struggled to formulate a response but couldn’t locate one. Not when synapses were firing in her brain, like coffee had been poured on a circuit board. She’d be lying if she claimed she’d never once wondered how Wes’s body would meld with hers. She’d also be lying if she claimed the reality wasn’t unnervingly better. His shoulders were the kind a woman could press her face into and laugh. They were . . . inviting. Warm. Strong. And they connected to a tan throat with lots of interesting stubble. Too interesting.
“You want me to disrobe for this exam?”
“What?” She jolted and slipped slightly lower in his hold and felt it. Felt his erection through the film of her skirt. Wes hissed, his gait slowing to a stop, and they just kind of hovered there in the entryway, gravity pressing her softness down on his thick sex, his breath rasping in her ear, Bethany’s trapped in her lungs. “Labor,” she forced out. “We need to hire labor. Let’s talk about that.”
The forearm resting on the small of her back flexed—and was it her imagination or did his lips brush her hair? “Labor. Right.”
A tremor meandered through her limbs. “We’ll have to look outside Port Jeff.”
She felt Wes’s internal vibration. One of his hands fisted in her skirt. “Bethany, if you expect me to focus on a goddamn word you’re saying, we can’t be one lowered zipper away from f—”
“Whoa. Don’t finish that sentence.” Wes acknowledging their compromising position out loud had the effect of a paintball to the face. What was she doing? She didn’t even like this man. She couldn’t nail him down as a type—and she never had that problem with men. They were self-involved pretending not to be self-involved, lazy, overly ambitious, or downright liars. Wes? He was just messy. That was the only category he fit into. No, wait, he was also too young. How could she forget that little piece of the pie? With a stern directive to stop being an idiot, Bethany unhooked her ankles, let her legs drop, and pushed away from his tense body. “There was a rat,” she said to defend herself. “He had bloodstains on his teeth and a definite air of menace.”
With a humorless laugh, Wes turned and stamped out of the house, leaving his back muscles rippling in his wake.
He started talking as soon as Bethany exited the still-open door behind him. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll round up some men to put on the payroll.” As he said it, he settled his thumbs in the loops of his jeans, like he was going out to wrangle some cattle in a few minutes. “I can’t be here every minute of the day. I’ll have to leave to collect Laura from school and I won’t feel comfortable leaving you with just anyone.”
Her right eye twitched at his high-handed tone. “You’ll be leaving me with myself, cowboy. A responsible human woman.”
“Bethany, you can make the rules about everything else. But you’re going to learn real quick that I won’t compromise your safety.”
“My God.” She slapped her hands over her face. “This is a scene straight out of a Western. Next you’re going to call me little lady and hock a loogie into a spittoon.”
Wes tossed back his head and laughed.
“I’ll be in charge of hiring,” she said with a tight smile, gliding to her car.
The infuriating man stepped into her path, the humor bleeding quickly from his face. “I’m taking care of it. No compromises.”
She poked him in the right pec. “This feels suspiciously like a macho male ritual where you insinuate yourself as leader of the pack, then make the rules of engagement regarding the available female.”
“Allow me to clear up your suspicions. That’s exactly what this is.”
Bethany blinked at least seventeen times. “We agreed sex was off the table! Even though it was never even remotely on the table!”
Wes crossed his arms. “Doesn’t mean I want it on the table for anyone else.”
A look of wonder wafted across her face. Why was she even surprised by this behavior? One evening several weeks back, while Rosie and Dominic had been smack in the middle of splitsville, the girls had embarked upon a night out in the city that was promptly crashed by the men. Wes included.
A very nice downtown-finance-style gentleman had just purchased her a cocktail and was complimenting her dress when Wes plucked the drink out of her hand and slid the guy a twenty to cover it, his gaze telling him pointedly to Beat it, bitch.
“This chauvinism is unacceptable in the golden age of female superheroes and pegging, Wes.”