Uncertain I believed that, I surveyed the wreckage, surprised when it appeared she was solely responsible for the entire mess. “Where do you want me?”
“Give me a hand with the carpet. I need it gone so I can prime the floor.” She abandoned whatever task she’d been attending under the table to walk me across the room. “It’s called a salmon patch.”
Puzzled, I glanced around, expecting to see fish-patterned wallpaper or themed kitsch. Neither of which belonged on a steamboat on the Savannah River. “What is?”
“My birthmark,” she said without breaking stride. “People call the ones on your face angel kisses, or the ones on your neck stork bites. Cute names, right? Mine looks like I dribbled a mouthful of wine down my chin.”
“Oh.” Articulate as always. “Do you have gloves I can borrow?”
“You really don’t care, do you?” Marit sorted through a toolbox until she found a pair of scarred leather gloves then tossed them to me. “Most folks gawk and wonder, so I tend to get it out of the way.” She met my stare, unflinching. “Sorry if I came down hard on you.”
“It’s a birthmark. Most of us have one somewhere.” I yanked on the gloves and flexed my fingers. “I have one shaped like a cowboy boot under my left butt cheek if you’d like to make us even.”
“I’ll pass, for now.” Marit chuckled under her breath. “Maybe we can get drinks after work sometime. Get enough liquor in me, and I might change my mind.”
The chorus from the country song “Bad Boys Get Me Good” started playing, and I wrangled my phone from my pocket. “Do you mind if I take this?” I yanked off one glove. “I’ll make it quick.”
“Take twenty-five, but it counts as your first break. Just so you know.”
“That’s fair.” I flicked the green circle on the screen. “Hey.”
“Hey back.” A smile warmed Boaz’s voice. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
Uh-oh. “Really? That’s nice.” I smothered a grin. “I’ve been thinking about you too.”
About how Taz claimed he was coming to town, and he hadn’t said a word to me.
“Missing me already, Squirt?”
“I always miss you when you’re gone,” I said truthfully. “It’s when you’re around that you annoy me so much I look forward to you leaving again.”
“Brrr.” He chattered his teeth for effect. “That’s cold.”
“I’m at work, Boaz.” I bit back a laugh. “Did you need something in particular, or were you just calling to harass me?”
“As much as I enjoy harassing you, I do need something in particular.” He hesitated. “You.”
“Um.” Heat flooded my cheeks, and I turned my back on Marit. “Can you be more specific?”
His husky chuckle warned me I’d made a fatal error. “How specific? Are we talking pics or drawings or…?”
“Boaz,” I groaned. “Please behave.”
“Never.”
“Then please stop wasting my first break terrorizing me. What’s the favor?”
A pause lapsed during which I counted five beats of my heart.
“Go out with me,” he repeated his earlier plea. “Just me and you. No sister to hide behind.”
Always so quick to accuse me of hiding from him. How it must annoy him that I no longer ran headfirst into his arms every time he opened them. And that thought was exactly why I worried about the attention he paid me. I worried what he wanted was what he couldn’t have and not, well, me.
“Earlier you said you’d give me time to see the error of my ways before you asked again. I figured I had a solid twenty-four hours at least.” I gazed through one of the windows out at the darkened river. “Why the rush?”
“I’ll be in town tomorrow,” he admitted at last. “I thought about surprising you, but I didn’t want to drop in and assume you’d have time for me.”
“See me as in put eyeballs on me or see me as in go out on a date? Dates end with kissing.” I ground the toe of my shoe into the plaster-covered carpet. “You’ve never been satisfied stopping there.”
“No one said anything about a date.” He wisely refrained from pointing out that since he hadn’t asked me out until now, I had no idea what satisfying him entailed. “I’m asking my best girl to keep me company while we eat good food and maybe go dancing.”
“What happens if I ask for more time?” Teasing him might not be the wisest idea I’d ever had, but I had never been smart where Boaz was concerned, and the idea of whirling the night away in his arms appealed to the starry-eyed teenager in me who would always idolize him just a little.
“Then I’ll ask you again tomorrow night, and the next, and the next, until you cave.”
I hid behind closed eyelids. Asking questions was safer in the dark, especially where my heart was concerned. “Why do you want this so much?” He had given me the easy answer, but I didn’t want easy. “Telling a girl she’s a convenient pit stop on your way through town is not the way to get her to say yes.”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you goodbye that night in your front yard. Or stolen your first kiss without asking.” Gravel churned in his voice. “I can still taste you, Grier, and I want more. I can’t stop thinking about you. Have mercy on me. Say yes.”
Stolen kisses, no tongues involved, had brought Boaz to heel? I couldn’t believe it. In fact, I didn’t believe it. But goddess, how I wanted to. “Okay, Boaz Pritchard, I’ll give you one date to prove yourself.”
“Grier Woolworth, you won’t regret it,” he vowed. “And, since you called it a date, expect me to cash in on the kissing you mentioned.”
“No tongue,” I said, just to be contrary. “And no touching below the shoulders.”
His pained groan lifted gooseflesh down my arms. “Cold, cold woman.”
“You must like it.” I couldn’t stop my grin. “You’re still talking to me.”
“The thing about ice…” He lowered his voice to a growl. “When you hold it in your hands long enough, it burns.”
Delicious shivers coasted down my arms. “You’re assuming you’re going to hold me at all.”
The chuckle he gusted across the receiver spoke of bad intentions and melted my kneecaps.
“I have to go.” I cleared my throat when I noticed Marit eavesdropping. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Satisfaction rang through his voice. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes.” I sighed, defeated. “That’s a yes.”
“Good girl,” he murmured.
Coming from a bad boy, the praise wasn’t all that comforting.
Five
“You’ve got a boyfriend? Bummer. I should have taken you up on the offer to moon me when I had the chance,” Marit grumbled. “Do you know how hard it is to find girlfriends who aren’t attached to their man at the hip?”
“Don’t worry.” Boyfriend was a loaded word, and I wasn’t ready to pull the trigger. “We can still get that drink sometime, and I can’t promise you a full moon won’t be in the forecast. I haven’t hit a bar since I turned legal, and I’ve never really drank much of anything, so I’ll be trusting you to protect my virtue.”
A rakish glint sparkled in her eyes. “I can do that.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I teased. “I recognize that look. Maybe I’ll bring a friend along just in case.”
“As long as it’s not your boyfriend, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Explaining all the ways Boaz wasn’t my boyfriend would take longer than it was worth, so I let it slide and ignored the illicit thrill that came with imagining he was mine, even for a moment, even if it wasn’t true.
“Unless he’s got a single, morally ambiguous friend.” A calculating gleam lit her eyes. “Then I might be convinced to make an exception.”
Pretty sure anyone who hung out with Boaz checked the morally ambiguous box, but still.
“I was thinking about my bestie, Amelie. We’re starting a new tradition. Girls’ night once a week. No boys allowed.” I grasped the edge of the carpet where Marit indicated, and we started tugging. “Amelie is Boaz’s little sister, so that has more to do with the no boys allowed ruling than anything.”