“Okay, I won’t. But thanks. I’m taking everything you said as a compliment, so don’t ruin it for me with a joke.”
His grin did things to her insides. “Not planning to.”
The woman returned from the back room, smiling stupidly at Mal. “If you go around to the loading dock, they’ll have the couch waiting for you. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. The other woman didn’t see because she was too busy smiling at Mal. He was smiling back, and Scarlett could see that the brain light had gone off in the woman’s head. She was operating on hormones and desire at this point.
“I’m going to grab a couple of other things. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said to Mal. “You can stay here if you want.”
“Nope,” he said. “Going with you.”
They walked away from the counter, and Scarlett threw him a side-eye. “You turn them stupid. It’s amazing.”
“What?”
“That girl. She could be a PhD in nuclear physics and you’d still knock every thought out of her head simply by looking at her.”
Mal laughed. “You’re giving me too much credit. I’d say you’re pretty damned smart, and I don’t turn you stupid, do I?”
“Not possible,” she sniffed. “I’m immune.”
“I’m wounded.”
“I know. It’s how we met.”
He laughed again. “Jesus, Scar. You’re so full of sass. Sometimes I think…”
“Think what?” she asked when he didn’t continue the thought.
“Nothing important. What else are you getting in this place?”
She put her hand on the round end table, thankful it was still there. It’d been marked down, too. Only twenty-five-dollars today. “This, and maybe a couple of pictures. I still want to know what you were thinking, though.”
He sighed as he hefted the table in one arm. It was light or she would have yelled at him for it. He didn’t need to overtax his leg. He’d only been home for a few days, and it was just a month out from his surgery. Plenty of healing left to do.
“No, you really don’t,” he said.
She faced him, stubbornly unwilling to continue. She shouldn’t care what he’d been thinking, but she did. She couldn’t help it. “Maybe I do. I get to be the judge of what I want to know and what I don’t.”
“Yeah, but once you know, you can’t un-know.”
“Mal.”
“All right, Scar. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He leaned toward her just enough that his voice was only for her. Her skin tingled at his proximity, her breath feeling heavier in her chest.
Then he said the words. “Sometimes I think I want to kiss you.”
Chapter Eight
Wide blue eyes blinked up at him. Mal cursed himself for having told her. She looked like a rabbit caught in a bright light. Too scared to move but too afraid not to.
“I told you that you didn’t want to hear it,” he said softly, regretting that he’d ruined the easiness between them with that admittance. It didn’t change his feelings for Haylee, but lately Scarlett was taking up a lot of the real estate in his head. Probably because he saw her all the time. And he was about to see her even more now that she was moving into the apartment.
“It’s a surprise, I admit. I thought you were in love with someone.”
“It’s a surprise to me too. And I am. But that doesn’t mean I’m not human. I still want companionship.”
“Sex, you mean.”
Damn, he liked the way that word sounded on her lips. Yet he told himself this was dangerous territory. Scarlett trusted him and he didn’t want to break that trust. Still, he nodded. “Yeah. But don’t worry, I told you it was a fleeting thought. I’m not going to do anything to endanger our friendship.”
“Or your three-hundred bucks a month.”
And there it was, that shot of desire for her that stunned him every time. When she clapped back at him the way she did, he wanted to taste the sass on her tongue. It was uncanny.
“Right. Three-hundred bucks will buy me a lot of ammo.” He made an exaggerated face. “Wait, no it won’t. These days it’ll get me a couple of big boxes of rounds for my personal weapons. But not chasing you off when I’ve come to like having you around is good enough for me. Doesn’t mean the stray thought about kissing you won’t pass through my head though.”
More than a stray thought, he expected, since he was thinking about it right now. Maybe he should feel badly that he was thinking of her that way instead of Haylee, but damn, it was nice not to be tortured with thoughts of his buddy’s woman for a change. He actually went to sleep at night without Haylee being the last thing on his mind. He should thank Scarlett for that, not chase her off with his occasional fantasies about kissing her.
“So long as it’s just a thought,” she said. But her eyes were dilated and her breathing seemed a little quicker than before. Interesting.
He made an X over his heart. “Cross my heart, Scar. I’ll never kiss you unless you ask me to. Promise.”
“And I’m never asking, so that’s that. You better start thinking about something else.”
“Oh, I’m sure my mind will conjure up all kinds of thoughts if left to its own devices.” He didn’t intend to let his words sound full of innuendo, but there was no controlling what came out of his mouth apparently. Scarlett was fun, and he loved to tease her. It was one of the highlights of his days lately.
“I don’t want to know what you’re thinking. If I ask again, tell me to buzz off.”
“Buzz off,” he repeated with a laugh. “Okay, I will.”
“What’s wrong with buzz off?” She blinked adorably at him.
“It’s so polite. It sounds like something my grandma would say.”
“Then tell me to piss off. How’s that?”
He chuckled. “I would never be impolite to you, Scar.” He hefted the table. “What else you getting? I’m hungry.”
“I just need to look at the pictures.”
She led him over to a wall where several pictures were hanging. There were also stacks against the wall. It all looked pretty crappy to him, but then she started digging. When she pulled out two matted and framed prints of flowers in vases, she looked up happily. “See? You never know what you can find.”
“Looks like flowers to me.”
“Yes, but these are prints of paintings. I’ll just do a little update on the frames, and they’ll go nicely in my home.”
“What kind of update?”
“Paint, probably. Though you can get rub-on wax that changes the color too.”
She kept digging, selecting four more pictures of various sizes. All were of flowers.
“I’m sensing a theme here,” he said as she grabbed a nearby cart and stacked the frames in it.
“It’s easier to make a room look put together if you stick with a few basic ideas. Besides, the studio is too small to mix it up too much. Okay then, I think I’m good. Let me pay for this and we can go get the couch.”