Chapter Four
Record. Scratch.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tyler growled, raking his hand through his hair, his jaw muscles bunching, unbunching, bunching.
What in the hell had they done? She was the land surveyor? He’d slept with the state’s impartial expert in an ongoing mineral rights mess Tyler was fighting? These folks were always guys.
“Not kidding,” she deadpanned.
“You’re Dr. Carvalho?”
“In the flesh.” She was still smiling, and his traitorous eyes were still skimming said flesh. How in the hell was she still smiling?
He paced a step away, then spun back to confront her. He, a lawyer for God’s sake, had slept with an impartial expert. “I thought you were a paleontologist,” he rumbled. Had she lied?
“Yup. And geologist. And certified land surveyor. Among other things. I told you I’d have a hundred specialties if I could clone myself.”
He huffed. “When do you sleep?”
“Sleep is best had when dead. Life’s too short to live inside a box.” She motioned to her company logo, upside down on the side of her overturned driver door.
Damn, he might just weep reading it: Carvalho Geosiesmic and Geophysical Survey Consultancy. He’d been so worried about her, and then so taken by her, he’d failed to be observant.
That and he was pretty damn content inside his box. Away from outsiders. Away from shadows of Isabella haunting his every fucking move, on billboards, on TV ads for Revlon, on the magazine stand in the checkout aisle next to the candy bars his boys always begged for, clueless that the woman on the cover of Cosmo was their birth mother.
“You didn’t think to say something about that till now?” he argued, hands slouched at his hips.
Her eyes moved from his hands to his lips. Then migrated to his belt buckle. She smirked. “What, like ‘Hey, random hot cowboy at a shitty bar, before we have mind-blowing sex and before we almost have more mind-blowing sex in a ditch tomorrow during a deadly tornado, let me tell you about my job and make sure there won’t be a conflict of interest.’”
His eyes widened. Why, when he was pissed, was he suddenly smiling? He forced it down. Dammit, why did he like her? What the hell had she done to him?
He pointed, other hand still slouched on his hip. “You know the most fucked up part of what you just said, isn’t what you think it is.”
“Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the sex,” she waved him off with the coy grin he couldn’t be mad at. “I was there. You definitely enjoyed.”
“Never said I didn’t.” His eyes incriminated himself and perused her shape again.
“Then what’s the problem?” She shrugged. No animosity like he was doling out at the moment. “It was just sex.”
“Just sex.” He eyed her. She said it like it had been nothing.
Her smile transformed into a devious grin of the cat who got the cream. “Yeah, just sex. Mind-blowing sex, but no need to clutch your pearls over it.”
Yeah, it was just sex. Damn good sex. Probably so damn good because he’d deprived himself for so damn long and she likely partied whenever and with whoever she wanted. Shit, she was right, it was just sex. He didn’t have to tell anyone or disclose it, if she didn’t.
“Look, I don’t normally screw around with whatever woman blows in on a storm.” No, he had a standard: bar, hook up, done. It took care of physical needs and kept random women out of his boys’ lives. But after this experience with this woman, it seemed so…utilitarian, too. Like everything else in his life.
“Someday, some lucky woman is gonna blow into your life and take you by storm…and realize what an amazing man you are…”
Now wasn’t that sudden memory a blast from a past he’d packed away in the storage vaults of his mind. He gave his head a jerk to blink it away. He didn’t like to think about his momma. Didn’t like to rehear her words of wisdom. Or envision her wasting away, the once proud Deborah Dixon diminished to a barely living corpse in a hospice bed while he’d traveled to and fro to execute her legal affairs and act as her power of attorney…
She smiled at him. “You just did.”
Called out.
“I got a massive operation to run here and a bunch of storm damage,” he continued, ignoring her remark. “Not to mention my problems with Fossyl Corporate, which your report, by the way, is only gonna help them, so, conflict of interest my ass. I got a thousand responsibilities.”
“And I don’t?” She folded her arms.