Jeannie Watt - To Kiss A Cowgirl

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “This is your baby. I’m just curious in case Mike has questions.”

There was something in his tone that caught her attention. “Will Mike have a problem with this?” She liked the gruff old guy and wouldn’t want to upset him.

“Mike doesn’t like change.”

“At all?” Was that why Finn had also dragged his feet when she’d discussed improvements during the few weeks they’d worked together?

Dylan gave his head a slow shake. “Not a fan. It’s gotten worse over the past few years.”

“Then moving has got to be killing him.”

“If the house didn’t have so many damned stairs, he’d never leave.”

“Well...” she said slowly, “can you convince him this will be a change for the better? After you convince yourself, of course.”

He didn’t deny that he had to be convinced, but she hadn’t expected him to.

“How are you going to display this stuff when it comes in?” He leaned an elbow on the counter as he cast a sweeping glance around the store and again she had that feeling of being too close to him, even though there was a good two feet of wood and glass between them.

“I’ll have to rearrange, but all of your stock will be easily available.”

“Just run any big changes by me, okay?”

“Sure.” She caught the scent of his aftershave and it made her want to lean even closer...maybe even follow him when he retreated to his office. That had never happened in high school. Had they been so busy sniping at each other in the lab that she’d never noticed that the guy was jangling her nerves?

No. Something had changed. They were still sniping...but it felt different. And even though Dylan was technically her boss, it didn’t feel the way it did with Finn.

Maybe because of that fantasy comment he’d made?

Even though she told herself it was only a quip, meant to throw her off balance, it had stuck with her. As had the realization that Dylan had lips that could take part in a fantasy—hers—and that was...disconcerting.

She cleared her throat, bringing his attention back to her, which had not been her intent. She smiled at him, hating the feeling that she was somehow at a disadvantage because his very presence was making her feel all edgy and unsettled.

“You were going to say something?” he finally asked.

Instead of saying no, as she should have, Jolie decided to take control. “I was wondering if you have some kind of time frame in which you have to get back to your other job.”

He blinked at her as if she was not making sense. Or as if he didn’t want to answer that particular question. “Counting the days until I’m out of your hair?”

“Actually, no. I was just curious.”

“As soon as Finn gets back, I’m heading home.”

“You’re on leave?” She leaned on the counter. He was withdrawing. Fast.

“Yes.”

“Your old job waiting for you?”

“Pretty much.”

She waited a moment. “Not going to share any details, are you?”

“Don’t really see any need to,” he said, his eyelids dropping an iota. He regarded her for a few long seconds, as if challenging her to ask yet another question he wasn’t going to answer.

She did love a challenge.

“What happened to your leg?”

“The windshield got shattered on my cruiser and I lost control and hit a power pole.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected a real answer, but before she could ask about the windshield, he raised his index finger in a warning gesture.

“Don’t ask, because I’m not answering.”

“All right then,” she finally said, pulling her papers closer and doing her best to ignore the sparks snapping between them. “I think it’s time to heat up my lunch.”

“Don’t let me keep you.” He gave a slight nod and headed for his lair.

Once he disappeared, Jolie shut her eyes and let out a short breath.

CHAPTER FIVE

DYLAN SHUT THE office door and tried to shake off the feeling that he’d just escaped. Ridiculous. He had work to do and he’d wasted too much time chitchatting with Jolie.

The office was a paper nightmare and he’d been slowly going through everything, one file at a time, deciding what was needed, what should be shredded and what could be simply trashed.

He hated paperwork—all cops hated paperwork except for the overachievers—but this seemed like a good time to make a few more inroads.

Over the course of the next hour, he filled two black garbage bags with stuff that shouldn’t have been kept in the first place: old calendars, advertisements, magazines, catalogs. It was as if Mike hadn’t thrown anything away in the past decade. Dylan couldn’t figure out why until it struck him that most of the collected junk was dated after 2005—the year Grandma, the keeper of the office, had passed away. Maybe Mike had given up after that. Maybe going through the accumulation after he’d stopped grieving had been too much. It’d obviously been too much for Finn, since he hadn’t tackled it.

Or maybe he hadn’t felt the need to hide out from his associate.

The thought came creeping out of nowhere and Dylan disregarded it almost as soon as it registered. He wasn’t hiding...he was just in his office, with the door closed and no intentions of coming out any time soon.

All right, he was hiding, but it wasn’t from Jolie. He was avoiding questions that he didn’t want to answer. Hell, he was avoiding questions he couldn’t answer because he didn’t know the answer. He’d never been one to run away from hard issues, but he didn’t want to discuss them with Jolie, and he really didn’t want to come right out and tell her to mind her own business. He sensed that, despite everything, she was honestly concerned about him on some level and it seemed cold, even for him, to tell her to back off.

And then there was the matter of the tension between them that they were both obviously aware of and both obviously ignoring. Something else he didn’t care to think about. But it was a big part of the reason he was in the office doing something that Finn could do when he came back.

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