CHAPTER SIX
LUKE WASN’T SURE what to expect when he went to pick Olivia up that evening after work. He had spent a good portion of the day imagining what Olivia Logan considered to be make-your-ex-jealous clothes.
He was slightly disappointed by the answer to the question.
It was a floral dress and a pair of leggings, accompanied by a tall pair of boots. Fair enough, he supposed, since it was cold as hell frozen over out there. But as far as he was concerned a little bit of skin wouldn’t have gone amiss. Of course, he had never actually seen Olivia showing any skin, and he imagined it had been a little optimistic to expect she would start now.
Not that he needed her to expose any skin for him.
But he was a man, same as any other. Which meant that whatever type of creature he found sexually appealing he enjoyed seeing more of when at all possible.
He put the truck in Park and got out as Olivia whipped down the front steps of her little cottage, her brown hair a tangle around her face, her skirt blowing up around the top of her legging-clad thighs. All right, even though her legs were covered by that textured, gray wool, he could see the shape of them, and he definitely liked what he saw.
“You didn’t have to get out of the truck,” she said, clutching her purse and a cranberry-colored sweater to her chest, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear as the wind blew around them, sharp like a knife’s edge.
“Sure I did, ma’am,” he said, sweeping his black hat off his head and treating her to his most charming smile. “We are on a date, after all, and a gentleman always comes to the door to pick up his date, same as he walks to the door to drop her off.”
“But this isn’t a real date,” she said, treating him to a very suspicious glare.
“I have to get into character, kiddo. If you’re going to use me, you need to allow me to be used on my terms. That’s the only way this works.”
“You’re using me, too,” she pointed out. “So that you can offer on that land. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten.”
“I like it when you play ruthless, Liv.”
She sniffed. “Nobody calls me that.”
“Good. Then it will be my pet name for you. I bet it will drive Bennett crazy.” He grinned, and he couldn’t help but notice that he was driving Olivia a little bit crazy, too. At the moment, she had the appearance of a ruffled wren. If she’d had feathers they most certainly would have been standing on end.
“Let’s just go,” she said. “I bet everybody’s at the bar already.”
“Now, here’s a chance for you to learn a little something. Sometimes it’s better to show up late.”
She blinked, her brown eyes almost comically bland. “Why?”
He chuckled. “Because it gives space for the imagination. For Bennett’s imagination. For him to imagine all the things we might have been doing in that time we weren’t in the saloon.”
Her eyes remained blank for a split second, and then suddenly her face turned scarlet. “Oh.”
“Sometimes taking it slow is the best way to take it.”
She swallowed visibly, her fingers curling more tightly around her purse. “Right.” She lifted her chin, attempting to look imperious now, which was especially funny with that blush still lingering on her cheeks. “Oh, I suppose we’ve taken it slow enough. And if not, you can drive slow.”
“No one tells me how to drive my truck,” he said.
“You’re exasperating,” she said.
“Sure. But, if I didn’t exasperate you, who would?” He moved along beside her and pressed his palm against her lower back. She stiffened beneath his touch, her shoulders going rigid. “Relax,” he said, leaning in, ignoring the sparks beneath his fingertips. “You have to look like you like it, remember?”
She nodded wordlessly, and he guided her to the passenger side of his truck, opening the door for her.
“Another thing a gentleman does,” he said, keeping his voice low.
He offered her his arm, but she braced herself on the rest inside the passenger door, hauling herself up into the large vehicle and settling into the seat. Primly. As she had done the first time. If someone had told him a couple of days ago that he would have Olivia Logan sitting in his truck two times in one week he would have said they were crazy. But, here she was. Looking no more comfortable today than she had the other day.
He shook his head and put his hat back on as he took his position in the driver seat, slamming the door hard behind him.
“Bennett always opens the door for me,” she said as he pulled the truck out onto the main highway.
“Well, good for him. I would expect nothing different. In fact, if he didn’t I’d have to have a serious talking-to with him. You know, kind of like an older brother thing.”
“You’re not his brother,” she pointed out.
“No,” Luke said. “But I’m older. Full of wisdom.”
“Ancient,” she said drily.
He took his eyes off the road for a moment, to look at that imperious little profile of hers. Her cheeks were still pink.
He heard a phone notification, and saw Olivia lift her phone up and text quickly.
“Who’s that?”
“Do I owe you an explanation for all of my actions now?” she asked, her tone snippy.
“I’m making conversation, Liv,” he said. “You know, since you’re in my truck and making conversation with someone else instead of with me.”
“It’s my mother,” she said.
“Checking in on you?”
“Yes. She does that. She just wants to know what I’m up to.”
“And what did you tell her?” He was genuinely curious how she was going to spin this story to her parents. He was also fascinated by the fact that her mother checked in.
He’d been an orphan for all intents and purposes by the time he was sixteen, and before that, he had done a lot of the caregiving in his household. His only other real experience with a parent-type relationship was with Quinn Dodge, and while Quinn was definitely an involved father, he didn’t hover.
“I told her I was going out with a friend,” she said.
“That feels like an upgrade,” he said. “Though, you might have told her you had a date.”
“No,” she said, “I mightn’t have. Because then she would want details, and she would want to know what time I was coming home, and she would want to make sure that I didn’t have anything put in my drink.”
He laughed. “A little overprotective?”
“Maybe. But we are close. She just wants to know what’s going on in my life.” He could tell that wasn’t the whole story, but he could also tell that she wasn’t going to give him much more right now. If she’d wanted to, she would have just come out and told him.
And he didn’t do female excavation. He liked easy conversation; he didn’t like to dig. Because that meant getting down to the bits of people they didn’t want to share, which meant that they might want him to do the same in turn. He preferred stripping off layers of clothes to any other kind of stripping off of layers, thank you very much.
And since Olivia wasn’t going to be stripping off any clothes for him—and he wouldn’t ask her to anyway—there wasn’t any point in courting any other type of stripping.
“Well, that’s nice.” Except to him it sounded stifling more than it sounded nice.
“It is. I have great parents. I’m lucky.” Her tone sounded distracted. Distant.
“Sure,” he said.
“You’re very difficult,” she said.
“Yes,” he remarked, making his tone as contrite as possible. “It’s been said. Frequently. Mostly by you.”
She sniffed loudly, and he imagined that there was a very haughty face accompanying that sniff. “It’s just... As far as I can tell you aren’t accountable to anyone or anything. I don’t understand that. I have my parents... I have goals... I have... Bennett.”
“Technically,” Luke pointed out, feeling like an ass even as he said it, “you don’t have Bennett at the moment.”
“You’re mean,” she said.
“Am I wrong?”
“No. But... I feel like a gentleman wouldn’t say that. And you’re so into pointing out what a gentleman does.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “I’m playing the part of a gentleman. But don’t for one second confuse me with an actual gentleman.”
At that exact moment, they drove down onto the town’s main street, and Luke spotted an open parking space against the curb across from the Gold Valley Saloon.
He put the truck in Park, then looked at Olivia’s resolute profile. “Ready?”
“Now who’s impatient,” she said, hands pinned firmly to the center of her lap, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Not impatient,” he said. Except he felt something. A kind of restlessness rolling through him that left him feeling edgy. And he didn’t do edgy.
He liked irritating Olivia—it was one of his great joys in life. He didn’t so much like it when she managed to poke her own little stick back at him and make contact.
He got out of the truck, and he noticed that she stayed put. Waiting for him to open the door. In spite of himself, his lips curved up into a smile.
He opened it for her, then offered her his hand, which this time she took. The skin-to-skin contact hit him like a knockout punch. She was soft. So damn soft. That didn’t shock him; he had expected her to be soft. What shocked him was the fact that such innocuous contact had him hot and hard in seconds. And maybe that was the reason, in and of itself. The fact that he hadn’t been expecting the impact. Maybe that was why it landed with such accuracy, with such force.
Whatever it was, he’d felt less pleasure from a hand wrapped around more intimate parts of him than from her delicate fingers wrapped around his own.
“Let’s go,” he said, his voice gruffer than he intended. But dammit, he was affected. He wasn’t used to being affected. He was used to doing the affecting. He was used to being the one causing a reaction, not contending with one. Particularly one he didn’t want.
He didn’t have a lot of practice in restraint. Life was pretty easy for him. Everything he had he’d worked for honestly. Everything except that money in the bank from the insurance settlement. And that was why it still sat there, because it occupied a place that was uncomfortable for him. A place he didn’t know what to do with.
He didn’t like things like that. He liked his life simple.
He wanted something, he worked for it. He wanted a woman, he slept with her. He wanted to be done with a woman, he cut things off.
He didn’t do longing. He didn’t do unrequited lust and unquenched desire. He didn’t want things he couldn’t have. Hell, usually he didn’t even want things he had to wait for.
But there was money he’d received from a loss, from a moment in time he resented, and if he did nothing with it, it would be worse than benefiting from it.
And there was Olivia Logan. About to make him lose his mind because her hand had touched his. Like he was a green horse that had never been ridden.
In rebellion to those feelings, he held on to her more tightly, shifted so that his fingers were laced through hers as the two of them walked across the street and toward the saloon. When he looked down at her, he almost laughed. Except that his throat was too tight, and his chest felt like there was a ten-ton weight on it.
Yeah, except for those things, he was tempted to laugh at Olivia, who looked like she was carved out of a particularly lifeless bar of Ivory soap. She’d gone waxen and pale, her expression frozen, her petite little shoulders stiff as they made their way to the front door of the bar.
“You’re going to have to look a little bit less like you want to throw up on my boots, kiddo,” he said.
“I don’t... I don’t know if I can do this,” she said, extricating herself from his hold.
“It’s too late, honey,” he said. “We’re already doing this. People have already seen us out the window. And they’re wondering what the hell you’re doing with the likes of me. But you know who’s going to wonder that most of all? Bennett. Bennett Dodge is going to wonder what the hell you’re doing with me.”
“Is it going to cause trouble?” she asked, her dark brows knitting together, a little crease appearing between them. “Is it going to cause trouble between you and the Dodge family, because I know you’re close...”
“You don’t care,” he said.
“Will you stop telling me I don’t care about things?” she said, frowning deeply.
“When you stop lying about it, sure. You’re worried about what people will think. Because you’re worried that they’ll think you’re slumming it with a guy like me, right? Because I’m a no-account from nowhere and you’re Olivia Logan. But that’s the point, isn’t it?”
“My mother is going to get phone calls.” She scrubbed her hand over her forehead, as if that could remove the worry lines that had appeared there at the mention of her mother.
He shrugged. “So what? Let her get phone calls. There are worse things. You can explain it to her. You can tell her the truth, or you can tell her our lie. Either way. But you’re a grown-up, Olivia. And nobody gets to tell you what to do.”
“Right.” She sighed. “That’s not how life works when you care about people, Luke. You don’t just...do whatever you want and leave someone to worry.”
“Why not?” he asked. “You can’t control what someone else feels.”
She made a frustrated noise. “That’s not...you’re missing the point. And I don’t care if you miss the point. You and I just don’t see eye to eye.”
“We don’t need to see eye to eye. We just need to work together for a bit. Now, do you trust me, or not?”
Her brown eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. “Not as far as I could throw you.”
“Good. You shouldn’t trust me. I’m not a gentleman.” Right now he felt like a particularly hungry fox sniffing around the henhouse. “But, I do have the best idea running for how you can get Bennett’s attention.”
Olivia took a deep breath, shaking those stiff shoulders out, then looking up at him. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He took a step ahead of her and grabbed the handle on the door, pulling it open. “After you.”
She walked in ahead of him, and he was struck by just how small and delicate she was. The top of her head wouldn’t graze the underside of his chin if she walked under it. It made him want to pick her up, carry her over a threshold or some shit. And that was a weird impulse. Except, he supposed not really all that weird. Since what he really wanted was to throw her down on a big bed and spend the rest of the night exploring every inch of her.
Damn. Things were escalating. She had always been an itch to him. From the minute that girl had turned eighteen she’d been a problem.
Pretty. Remote. She’d been far too young. So far off-limits that he’d never allowed his fantasies to get this graphic.
But he’d touched her now. Untouchable Olivia Logan. He’d felt her skin beneath his fingertips and it was like those chains he’d put around himself had dissolved. Now all that resolute control was getting strained.
Which wasn’t a difficult thing to do considering he didn’t have a whole lot of practice with control. Except for with her. With her, he had certainly tried over the years.
This was making it damn difficult.
He walked in behind her, pressing his fingertips against her lower back, again in defiance of that need rocketing through him. He clenched his teeth, wondering silently if he was a masochist and didn’t know it.
“Why don’t you go get us a table?” he asked, scanning the room to see if Bennett, Wyatt and Grant were already in residence.
Bennett and Wyatt were. Grant was unsurprisingly absent.
He wished the guy would get his ass in gear and get out more, he really did. But Grant was like a difficult burrowing animal. Certain times of the year, particularly in the winter, it was tough to get him out to do anything. He seemed to do better later in the year. Some people might attribute that to seasons on sunshine and whatever. Luke figured it had to do with the fact that his wife had died in February. The lead-up to the month was always tough.
He wasn’t the most emotionally enlightened guy, that much was for sure, but he knew a little bit about loss.
About the way dates burned themselves into your brain. The way they seemed to exist in the back of your mind, eternally in your consciousness even when you weren’t trying to be aware of them.
“Hey.” Luke sidled up to the bar and signaled Laz as Olivia looked around the room, bewildered, clearly trying to decide which table to select. She was not good at subterfuge, that much was certain. It was kind of charming to watch her try. “I need a couple shots of whiskey.”
“Olivia doesn’t drink whiskey,” Laz said, picking up a shot glass.
“All right. What does she drink?”
“Diet Coke.”
“I’ll still take the extra shot of whiskey. But, add the Diet Coke to it. In case she wants to mix the two.”
“She won’t,” Laz said.
“She might before the evening is up,” Luke said, confident. “You can just put that on my tab.”
Olivia had finally made a decision, and was sitting at a table near the dartboard, looking lost. Luke acquired their drinks and went to join her. He slid the Diet Coke in front of her as he took his seat, then placed both shots of whiskey in front of him.
“Am I that trying to hang out with?” she asked, looking pointedly at the two glasses of alcohol. There was a hint of humor in her eyes and he found that more surprising than anything.
“The other shot is for you. In case you’re feeling crazy.”
“No. On a very rare day sometimes I feel regular soda crazy, but not so much hard liquor crazy.”
“Do you not drink at all?”
“No, I do. I mean, I have. I just don’t usually.”
“Any particular reason?” he asked.
“I like control,” she said simply.
“Well,” he said, lifting the shot glass to his lips and knocking it back. He grimaced. “That’s a shame. Because so do I.”
She looked at him and blinked slowly, her expression comically bland. “Good thing this isn’t a real date, then.”
“Good thing.” He stood up. “Because then you would be obligated to let me win at darts.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I would do no such thing.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she returned. “Any man who needs to beat a woman at darts to feel good about himself is no kind of man in my book. I would rather see how my date fared in the face of defeat.”
“So confident.”
“With good reason.”
“Okay,” he said, “show me how it’s done.”
* * *
OLIVIA FELT LIKE she’d had alcohol, and she absolutely had not. But she felt bubbly, fizzy, and her blood felt slightly overheated. It was a strange turnaround from a few moments before when she had been certain that she was going to pass out. It was just that when Luke had held her hand like that...
She’d held hands with two men in her life. Which was lame and silly, and probably completely ridiculous to get worked up over, but her level of experience was what it was.
She had very briefly dated one guy before Bennett, and it could hardly even be called dating. They had gone out a couple of times. They hadn’t even kissed.
But she had held his hand. And then she had held Bennett’s. Often, obviously, as they had dated for more than a year.
Holding hands with Luke... It had been unexpected. It had been one thing for him to help her out of the car, although, even that small bit of skin on skin had felt significant. But once he had woven his fingers through hers her entire body had gone tight, like fencing wire, and she had found it almost impossible to breathe.
And it wasn’t like when he shocked her, when he said things that made her blush. No, this was different. It had made her hot, then cold; it had set off a chain reaction that she could hardly figure out even now. It was just... Such intimate contact to make with a man she had known for so long, but never like that.
She had known Luke since she was a kid. Since he had been a kid, too, honestly. Even though he had always seemed like a grown man to her, because that was a child’s perspective on teenage boys. And that had always put him in this other realm, as this other thing, separate to her. But she wasn’t a child anymore; she was a woman. And he was a man. And that was very... Alarming to fully realize. That there was no longer this invisible wall between them, something that kept them on separate sides of that divide. It made this game they were playing feel far too stark. Far too dangerous and real.
It felt like something different all of a sudden than what it had felt like when they had conceived it a bit earlier. Far different than that vague itch that usually rested beneath her skin when she dealt with Luke.
But now they were in the bar trading barbs, and getting ready to play darts, and that felt familiar somehow. And she was ready to jump into it with both feet. To do something to get herself back on balance, because she could not go back to that place she’d been in when his hand had touched hers. No, that, she did not want to contend with. Not at all.
So darts and good-natured banter it would be.
She was far better at darts than she was at banter, but you couldn’t have it all, she supposed.
“Are you really that good, Liv?” he asked, his voice huskier than normal, and strange, the roughness abrading places inside of her she would rather it didn’t.
She was back to feeling slightly dry of throat and out of her comfort zone.
“I’m better,” she said. “Haven’t you seen me play before?”
“Sure,” he said, “but I’ve never played you. For all I know Bennett let you win. Usually, you just play Bennett.”
“Bennett never let me win,” she said. “He didn’t have to.”
“I wonder what he’ll think of another man getting to play with you,” he said.
Okay, this Luke she could deal with. Cocky and arrogant, throwing out innuendo expecting that it would make her blush. And yes, it often did. But at least that was a comfortable pattern. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” she said.
She went over to the dartboard and collected the darts from where they were stuck into the cork, and then she carried them back to the line, steeling herself for her first shot.
“You’re really not a bar girl,” Luke said. “So how is it exactly that you are the most notorious dart player in Gold Valley?”
“I like to have a bit of mystery about me, Luke.”
“Fine. You have to get a bull’s-eye on this next shot, or you have to tell me how you learned to play darts.”
She laughed, then she straightened her posture, cocked her arm back and let the first dart fly, effortlessly sticking it in the center of the bull’s-eye.
“No shit,” he said, slightly annoyed, slightly in awe.
“I told you I was that good,” she said.
She liked darts. She had ever since she’d outgrown the little wooden dollhouse she’d played with when she was young. If there was one thing Olivia had done a lot of, it was playing by herself. Because Vanessa always wanted to push the boundaries, and Olivia never had. So she’d played with dolls. And then when she was a teenager, it had been darts.
She had spent hours fiddling with them down in her dad’s man cave in their house. Countless times when Vanessa had decided that she was too cool for Olivia and all of her rule following, when she had gone out with her other friends. When she had decided that drinking and sex were far more important than having a bond with her sister.
When Olivia had ended up grounded because she’d come home a few minutes too late, or her grades had slipped and it had caused her parents to tighten their restrictions on her, while Vanessa ran absolutely wild, uncaring if she was grounded or not.
Olivia had thrown any kind of silent frustration she had felt into sticking that sharp pin into the corkboard. Into watching that dart fly straight and true and land exactly where she wanted it. Control. Even in all those muddled, mixed-up feelings, she had found control. Had found a way to channel them. And God knew that had to be better. Better than simply exploding and getting messy emotion all over the people that you were supposed to love and care about. Better than going off and doing whatever you wanted.
Her parents had been hard on her. Harder, in the end, than they were on Vanessa. But hadn’t she turned out better for it?
Olivia hadn’t disregarded their parents’ warnings.
Olivia had played darts.
“Okay,” he said. “Now you have to tell me where you learned.”
She tossed her hair, shooting him a smile. “I don’t have to tell you anything, cowboy. Because I hit the bull’s-eye. And I’m going to keep hitting the bull’s-eye. All night long.”
A strange crackle of tension arced between them and she felt as though she was electrocuted by her next breath.
She looked away from him, and her eyes automatically went to Bennett’s table. He was looking at them. He really was. He was looking at her and Luke and he was not happy.
Their eyes caught for a moment and her breath hitched. It wasn’t the same kind of tension that she felt standing there with Luke, but it was a strange adrenaline rush. That she was accomplishing this. That she, Olivia Logan, who was quite possibly the polar opposite of a femme fatale, was somehow managing to draw attention. To cause friction. Make a man jealous.
She noticed then that Kaylee was looking at Bennett, and then that she looked up at Olivia. The look was filled with so much anger that it made Olivia’s breath catch in an entirely different way.
She flicked her attention back to Luke. “I’d say that we’re drawing the focus of the crowd,” she said softly.
“Good,” he said, not looking over at Bennett’s table at all. “That’s what you wanted.” He leaned back against their table, resting his forearms there, his hands dangling loosely over the sides. His green eyes were fixed on her. “You going to go again?”
“Of course,” she said. She whirled around and faced the dartboard and brought her arm back one more time, zeroing in on that bull’s-eye. Letting go of everything except for the target. She threw the dart and it landed satisfyingly right where she wanted it.
If only life were like darts.
“Good,” he said, “one more, and then it’s my turn.”
“Yes, I do know how it works, Luke. Thank you.”
“Bull’s-eye,” he said, “or you have to tell me how you learned to play.”
She snorted. “I’m not even worried.”
She turned away from him, facing the dartboard. And suddenly, she felt heat at her back. And then a large hand resting on her hip. He leaned over her shoulder, his lips near her ear. “I just want to see how it’s done. How exactly you’re standing. You know, I’m not anywhere near as good at this as you are. So, it would help if I could observe. If you could teach me.”
She froze completely, her whole body going rigid like a board. The place he was touching her, on her hip, felt like it was on fire. So hot, the press of his palm against her so heavy that she could hardly breathe. That was reasonable, right? That it was the weight of it on her hip... Affecting her ability to breathe?
Her heart was thundering erratically, and when she lifted her hand again, it was unsteady. Her pulse was fluttering hard at the base of her throat, and more disturbingly there was an answering pulse between her thighs.
“I’m not distracting you, am I?” His breath was warm on her neck, and that was a very strange sort of intimacy. His breath against her skin. She could honestly say there was only one man whose breath she had ever felt. And it was not Luke Hollister.
“I’m fine,” she said, not willing to admit that he was affecting her at all. She didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. But then, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to throw a dart when her entire person was trembling like she was an overly excited rat terrier.
Olivia had never been accused of being overly excited in her life. She was hardly going to start behaving in such a way now.
She took a deep breath, her stomach twisting sharply. Then she lifted her arm, raising the dart back. She tried to zero her focus in on that little red dot at the center. To block out everything around her. But there was his heat. His lips so very close to her ear, his hand resting all proprietary and possessive on her hip.
Possessive.
What an odd word, except it was the one that fit. That’s what it felt as though he had done. As though he had walked up and claimed possession of her in some way. And she should be okay with that. It should be what she wanted. The kind of display she was after.
But it felt terrifying and somehow outside the bounds of the game she knew they were playing. Somehow different than what they were trying to accomplish. She didn’t like it at all.
And if she showed him that he was affecting her, if she missed the shot, there was going to be a lot more of it and she knew it. He might be claiming to help her out, but somewhere underneath all of that, she had a feeling that it was more of Luke messing with her. Why, she didn’t know. She only knew that he seemed to take joy in it. And if nothing else she wanted to deprive him of a little bit of joy.
She let out a long, slow breath and ignored the fact that it was a bit shuddery. A bit shaky.
Then she drew the dart back and let it fly. She gave out a whoop of triumph when it hit the bull’s-eye, even though it was resting just on the edge of that red, it was definitely there.
She whirled around without thinking, and brought herself nearly nose to nose with Luke.
“I hit it,” she said, all the breath leaving her body as she stared into those green eyes. As the nerves in her face lit up like a power grid, every part of herself feeling electric and bright with him right there. She was conscious again of those whiskers that covered his face, just evidence of a long day spent working, a shave that had happened some twelve hours before.
And the shape of his lips.
The way the top lip dipped sharply in the middle, and the lower was fuller.
“I played darts in my father’s basement,” she said in a rush, taking a step backward from him.
If she didn’t tell him he was just going to keep pestering her. She didn’t know how much more of it she could take.
“Really?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting upward. “By yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Not with friends?”
She frowned. “I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, if you must know.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody likes a tattletale, Luke,” she said, not meaning to echo her sister’s words. Not meaning to reveal so much about herself. But echo them she did.
Her stomach sank, her hands getting a little bit clammy.
“Were you a tattletale, Olivia?” he asked, humor in his voice. Clearly, he didn’t understand that they were treading on very bad memories for her.
When everything she had wanted had been at odds with everything she had been. When she had tried so hard to be both good and accepted, and found that she could only be one.
“Yes,” she said, her teeth locked together. “I was. And so I played alone a lot, so I spent time at my parents’ house in the basement playing darts. And I threw them and threw them and threw them until I could hit a bull’s-eye every time. So you’re never going to beat me. You’re never going to throw me off my game, Luke Hollister. It’s going to take more than invading my personal space to throw me.”
“You were pretty thrown, darlin’. I just think you’re that good at darts.”
“I wasn’t,” she insisted, “not at all.”
“You sure about that?”
Ugh. That cocky smile of his. It made her want to... It made her want to something, and she didn’t know what. That was Luke in a nutshell for her. He made her feel restless and strange. Made her feel like her skin was too tight. And she had no idea what she was supposed to do with any of it.
Worse, she had no idea how to ignore it.
“Yes. I’m completely sure.”
“Want to place a wager?” he asked, his grin getting that wicked bent to it that never failed to make her stomach a bit tighter, never failed to send a little shot of adrenaline through her.
She couldn’t predict him, that was the problem. Because as they’d discussed earlier, he didn’t answer to anyone.
This was dangerous, and she knew it. He was playing games with her, and she felt as though they were the kinds of games she might not actually know the rules to. But she was also angry that he had affected her, and angry that he had stepped on vulnerable places inside of her.
That anger propelled her forward.
“Sure.” She tried to sound casual. Unconcerned, even.
“All right,” he said. “We are going to do a little experiment. And then you’re going to throw the dart, and try to hit the bull’s-eye.”
“Fine.”
He held up the shot of whiskey, extending it to her. “You want me to throw the dart after I take a shot?” She laughed. “First of all, are we in high school? Are you peer pressuring me to drink? And second of all, that’s not even a challenge.”
“Oh, kiddo.” He lifted his glass and pressed it to his lips, tilting it back, taking the whiskey down in one swallow.
She gaped at him, confused.
His mouth turned up at the sides in a smile she was sure was meant to be an answer, but only raised more questions inside of her.
“You’re a lightweight, I assume,” he continued, “since you claim you don’t drink often. It wouldn’t be very sporting of me to expect you to throw a dart after you take a whole big bad shot of whiskey. But I do think you should have a taste.”
And before she could protest, before she knew what was happening, Luke had wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against his body, where she was staring at those lips again. And then, he was closing the distance between them.