“Have your clients been canceling?” he asked.
“Not yet but it’ll happen and that won’t be too good. But now it’s happening . . . to Lou. And she needs asses in her chair, Sheriff, not cancellations seeing as she has two daughters to feed, and oh . . . I don’t know, she might want some ramen noodles for herself and maybe to be able to throw some scraps at Bill every now and again.”
“This will blow over,” he said.
And he hoped like hell he was right.
She studied him saying a dubious, “Right.”
“It will and you and Lou will be good,” he assured. “It was a one-time thing, people will see that and then someone else will do something that’ll take their attention and they’ll forget all about it.”
He powered through her wince when he said it was a “one-time thing” and she powered through the rest of it, declaring, “You clearly don’t know women very well. When the sisterhood gets activated, they’ll train their daughters to pile bitch hatred on their mark to insure it won’t die when they kick the bucket.”
His gaze moved to her hair before it went back to her eyes. “Don’t know, but my guess is, you’re talented. Closest hair salon is twenty miles away and someone might make that trek once or twice to make a point, but then it’ll get old. But regardless, Hope has an elevated idea of her pull in this town. You do your job well, I’m sure your clients will be loyal to you.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re sure.”
He moved into the space she’d put between them.
It was a mistake.
Added to all the rest that was her, her perfume hit him.
He did his best to ignore that too and murmured, “It’s gonna be okay, Greta.”
She held her ground even if she did it holding her body stiffly and returned, “It’s not gonna do the cause of communicating ‘it was just a one-time thing,’ you showing here, Sheriff.”
It hit him then she was calling him “Sheriff,” not Hixon or Hix.
He didn’t comment on that or think about the fact he didn’t like it all that much.
He said, “I wanted to give you a heads up.”
“Well, thanks. You’ve done that. You have another heads up to give me, come in disguise or better yet, try smoke signals.”
Shit, she was going to make him laugh.
He couldn’t laugh. He had to get this done so he wouldn’t experience something else that drew him to her.
“While I’ve got you—” he started.
At that, she moved back two steps into the cramped space, nearly running into the shelves, rolled her eyes to the ceiling and declared to it, “Oh boy, here we go.”
He felt tightness hit his neck. “Here we go with what?”
She looked to him. “I jumped the gun, sorry, bud.” She circled a hand at him. “Carry on.”
“Here we go with what?” he repeated.
“You want the multiple choice?” she asked.
He rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms on his chest.
As he did, she watched him do it, her gaze dipping to his chest, and something came over her face that looked a lot like she’d looked the first time he’d touched her hand resting on the table between them at the Dew Drop.
She wiped that clean when she refocused on him.
For his part, he took pains to ignore that too.
“A, you can try to make yourself feel better for treating me like a piece of ass by apologizing again.”
Damn, that was what he’d been about to do.
“B,” she went on, “you can treat me like the piece of ass you think I am by angling for a little nookie in Lou’s back room, or perhaps showing me to the alley.”
Okay.
Right.
He’d been a dick, but even so, he was there, she knew why so she had to know that shit was not on.
“Greta—” he began on a growl.
“Then there’s C,” she rolled over his word with some of her own. “You starting the conversation that you think might win you a piece of ass whenever you get the itch by ascertaining if I’m open to be your booty call.”
He closed his mouth and felt his lips thin.
“Or D, a combination of the above,” she concluded.
“A,” he bit off.
“Right,” she mumbled.
“I’d also like to offer you an explanation,” he continued tightly.
“Well, I’d say I’m all ears, but hopefully I have a client coming in T minus right about now.”
Damn, she was infuriating and hilarious at the same time.
She hadn’t been hilarious at the Dew Drop.
She just sang like a dream, looked like a wet dream, and listened while he talked like she gave a shit what he had to say.
Christ.
And dammit, he hadn’t asked her a thing about herself.
Christ.
“I got divorced very recently,” he informed her.
“Considering I’m learning the hard way that you’re a public personality, Sheriff, I know that. But just to say, I’ve been in Glossop awhile now so I knew it already, which makes me the idiot.”
“You aren’t an idiot.”
“I am,” she whispered.
All of a sudden, Hix grew still.
And he did because just as suddenly, she’d changed. The whole of her changed. Hell, the air in the room changed.
“You’re not an idiot,” he whispered back.
She said nothing.
“It was good, all of it, not just what happened in your bedroom.”
He watched her swallow but she didn’t reply.
“I’ve been married for nineteen years. I signed my divorce papers three weeks and three days ago,” he finally shared.
“You’re counting the days,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he replied the same way. “And now I think you get me.”
She nodded, lifting her hands to cup her elbows in a defensive posture that, strangely, Hix felt a trace of pain just at witnessing it.
“If it had happened in a few months . . .” He trailed off.
“I get it.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“So, the time isn’t right, for me, I got kids, for them, so also for you.”
She nodded again.
“And now I’ve screwed it up,” he said. “Acted like a dick. Made you feel—”
“It’s okay.”
“It isn’t.”
“It’s okay, Hixon.”
She called him Hixon.
The tension went out of his neck.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel what I made you feel and I’m sorry for that. So sorry, Greta. I had a lot messing with my head. Too much. So much I shouldn’t have taken it there between us. You got no reason to believe me but I’ll say it any way. I’m not that guy.”
“I believe you.”
He studied her. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
And it was then she started unraveling him.
She did this letting her face get soft.
“You’ve been married nineteen years. Unless you stepped out on her, it’s impossible for you to be that guy.”
“I never stepped out on her.”
“I believe that too,” she whispered.
And she did. He saw it in her eyes, in the softened line of her body.
Jesus, she was a woman who could communicate with every inch that was her.
No figuring out Greta.
She gave it all with everything she had.
He had to ignore that too.
“Right, good,” he muttered but held her gaze. “But it isn’t okay. I was the ass in all that. You didn’t deserve that. I should have explained it then. You were . . . you are . . . great.”