Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86455 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
He was quite enjoying the silence between them, when someone else broke it.
“David!”
He couldn’t help but scowl. He turned to the short, dark haired woman sporting the beauty mark that was now beginning to seem like a mark of the Devil. She wasn’t scowling though. She was grinning triumphantly, as though he were Rumple-fucking-stiltskin, and now he was obliged to take her home.
Tildy lifted her head to stare at the woman who’d interrupted them. “What?” she asked, looking up at Hawk.
Hawk shook his head. “I’m busy,” he told the brunette.
She eyed Tildy. “Doesn’t look like it,” she declared.
“Honey-” Hawk said, irritated.
“Tanya,” she reminded him.
He glared at her. “Honey, I’m not interested, okay? It was one time,” -probably more than one time, but why inflate her ego- “and it was nothing.” Tildy stepped back from him, but Hawk refused to let go of her. “Sorry I didn’t make that clear.”
Tanya shot daggers at Tildy and then turned to Hawk again.
He sighed. “Go,” he ordered.
Tanya was at least smart enough to realize a lost cause when she saw one, and she stormed off toward the bar.
“Does that happen a lot?” Tildy asked quietly.
Hawk shook his head. “Not really.”
“But you date a lot of women?”
Hawk frowned. He didn’t date anyone. That was for damn sure, but that didn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d try to explain to a girl like Tildy. He glanced around, irritated with the bar and its patrons. Normally, Maria’s was the only place he wanted to be on the weekends, but now he’d just had enough of it.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and leading her toward the door.
Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance, and the sprinkle of rain that had been falling all day suddenly came down in a rush.
“Oh!” Tildy cried as the first of the larger drops landed.
“Run,” he ordered, grabbing her hand. He pulled her in the direction of his truck, which was parked pretty close by. He thumbed the fob with his other hand as he threw open the driver’s side door and quickly ushered her in, climbing in after her. He slammed the door on the deluge, none too soon it seemed, because they were both dripping. Tildy laughed, and Hawk took down his ponytail and shook it out. She ran a hand through her wet hair.
“I don’t have a towel or anything,” he told her.
“It’s fine.”
Hawk was parked under one of the lot’s lights, which was illuminating the cab in a dim, gray haze as it filtered through the rain soaked window. Tildy was looking at the storm moving through, but he was only looking at her. Her little green sweater was open in the front, and her damp dress was clinging to her. Tildy was completely oblivious to the fact that her nipples were straining against the fabric.
That was the thing about Tildy, she was completely unaware of herself. Hawk was dead certain she hadn’t led that redneck on, not on purpose anyway. She wasn’t beautiful, not in the regular sense. Hawk had bedded better looking women. Tildy lacked a certain self-assuredness that the others had flaunted. She (and everyone around her) probably dismissed it as a lack of grace, but, in Hawk’s opinion, it was a lack of guile. Tildy didn’t think of herself as sexy, and so she didn’t act sexy. Or, more importantly, she didn’t use sex to get what she wanted.
She definitely had an air of innocence about her, the kind that comes from not having seen so much of the world that you were cynical and weary of it. Hawk hadn’t been that innocent in a long time, assuming he’d ever been. He’d killed too many men to see the world the way she saw it. He would bet that most people saw Tildy as naive. He preferred to see her as ‘untainted,’ which made her both intriguing and off-limits in his books. Hawk didn’t know what would happen if he touched her: Would he get clean, or would she get dirty?
Tildy turned and caught him looking. “Hawk?”
“When it lets up, I’ll walk you to your car.”
“You want me to leave?”
He flexed his hands to keep from reaching for her. “No. Which is why you’re going to.”
Tildy reached out and took his hand. She ran her thumb over the knuckle that had cold-cocked the redneck. “You’re always saving me,” she said.
“Because you always need saving.”
Still rubbing his hand, she said, “I should kiss you. As a reward. That’s what the princess always does.”
“I already kissed you, Tildy.”
She looked up at him. Her brown eyes growing impossibly darker, even in the dim light. “I remember,” she whispered.
With that, Hawk’s carefully constructed control snapped. He grabbed her and pulled her into his lap. He had one arm around her shoulders and the other on her hip when his mouth found hers, and it was better than he remembered.