Not when the worries kept piling up.
The phone stopped ringing before her machine picked up.
Blowing out a relieved sigh, shaking off her sense of impending doom, Harley looked down at her coveralls. It was a good day, relatively speaking, as she had only one grease stain streaked down a thigh and another on her bare arm. Not bad. She could probably get it off with fingernail polish remover. Lifting her spoon, she used it as a mirror. She wasn’t vain. She knew she had an okay shape thanks to a decent metabolism, but seeing as she wasn’t all that into makeup or fashion, she rarely did anything to accent her attributes. She took a quick inventory of her face and realized she’d spoken too soon about not being all that filthy, since she had another grease streak over her forehead.
Good thing she didn’t have a date tonight.
Hey, look at that. Another silver lining to the crap that was her life.
The sorry truth was, she’d had only two dates in recent memory. Both with Nolan, her friend and boss. True, one of those dates had been more of an accident than anything else when she’d had to change out his alternator and drive him into South Shore for a meeting. But still, it was two dates more than she’d had in at least six months.
Tonight would have been their third night out, which would have been great because it was his turn to buy dinner, except he’d gotten stuck in Placerville and wouldn’t be home until too late.
But if things were as really, really hot between them as she’d claimed to TJ, “too late” wouldn’t have been a problem, a little voice inside her said.
There are so many sparks between me and Nolan, our clothes catch fire every time we’re near each other.
God. She’d actually said those words out loud to TJ, who’d smiled that smile, the one that gave her goose bumps, as he’d whispered “liar.”
Arrogant, cocky ass.
But he was one gorgeous arrogant, cocky ass.
She let out a shuddery sigh, the kind only good chocolate or a good-looking guy could cause and continued to eat her ice cream. When the knock came, she stared at her door, then slowly moved to look through the peephole.
Damn.
It was the gorgeous ass in person, looking a little hot and tired, as if, like her, he’d just come in from a long day. She remained still in indecision, blowing out a sigh when he merely arched a brow at her.
She said nothing when she opened the door, which wasn’t polite, but she wasn’t feeling polite. She was feeling out of control, unnerved, and off balance-three things that TJ Wilder probably never felt.
Something else he apparently didn’t feel-the need to fill a silence. Instead he stood there, well over six feet of hard muscle and testosterone, doing what he’d been doing all her life without even trying-affecting her brain cells, turning them to mush.
Yes, just looking at him turned her from an educated biologist into a drooling imbecile. It wasn’t her fault he’d been blessed by the gene gods. He had a lot of sun-kissed brown hair, wavy and unruly, falling over his forehead, and deep-set, assessing, sharp green eyes that missed exactly nothing. He was tanned from long days in the high-altitude sun spent trekking and guiding across trails that would make a city guy’s bowels go weak. And then there was his body, honed to solid, ungiving sinew wrapped in a healthy dose of male.
“Why are you here?” she asked. Not exactly as friendly a greeting as Nolan would have received, but her reasons for not being comfortable with TJ were as complicated as everything else in her life at the moment.
His eyes said he’d registered her tone and was thinking about smiling. “You going to invite me in?”
Ah, he speaks. But no. Hell, no. That would be like inviting in the big bad wolf. She shook her head and simultaneously swallowed another bite of ice cream, which naturally went down the wrong pipe, and as the cold ache exploded behind her eyeballs, she choked.
Stepping in close, way too close for comfort, TJ ran a hand up her back, patting her between the shoulder blades as she coughed and gasped.
“Brain freeze?” he murmured, his hands still on her, which was disconcerting enough, but added to that, he brushed against her with all those tough muscles, the ones that could make a nun ache to touch him, and in spite of her current and regrettable lack of a sexual life, she was certainly no nun. If she were, she’d be excommunicated for the thoughts she was having.
Yeah, she had brain freeze, and not just from the ice cream. “Back up,” she wheezed. “Give me space.”
He obligingly took a step clear of her, managing to get inside her apartment as he did, because after all, he was a slippery, wily-as-a-fox Wilder. Their ancestors had created the wild, wild west, emphasis on the wild, wild. In fact, it was rumored that the Wilders were responsible for the addition of the second “wild.” That tendency had carried down through the generations, each subsequent Wilder doing his best to live up to the name, most ending up in jail or six feet under. Somehow though, the current generation had escaped the worst of the bad genes, or at least outgrown them.
For the most part.
Didn’t mean he wasn’t up for taking advantage of a situation. “I didn’t invite you in, TJ.”
He just smiled.
He was built as solid as the mountains that had shaped his life, and frankly had the attitude to go with them-the one that said he could take on whoever and whatever and you could kiss his perfect ass while he did so. She’d seen him do it, back in his hell-raising, misspent youth.
Not that she was going there, to the time when he could have given her a single look and she’d have melted into a puddle at his feet.