realized that Logan, Cru, Holden, Lincoln, and Sawyer weren’t that different from him. They were all just teenagers struggling to survive the cards they’d been dealt. And most of the Double Diamond boys had held much worse cards than Val.
He only had to deal with his addiction to sweets and the daily fear of getting his ass kicked. His home life was as pathetically generic as you could get. His father was a college English professor and his mother was an author of dessert cookbooks—which explained Val’s childhood obesity. His mother was always testing her new recipes on her family. While his parents had been excellent parents to him and his sister, they’d never been the cool parents. They preferred listening to classical music rather than popular music. They preferred going to museums instead of movies. They preferred playing scrabble rather than watching television. In fact, they hadn’t even owned a television or cellphones. And it was hard to fit in with other kids at school when you knew nothing about pop culture.
Val might’ve never known what cool was if he hadn’t spent that summer at the Double Diamond Ranch. The other boys were the definition of cool from the clothes they wore to the way they talked. When they welcomed black sheep Val into their fold, he felt cool too—like he was invincible and nothing could harm him. Maybe that’s why he’d decided to come back to Simple to write his next book. Maybe he had been looking for that invincibility.
Instead, all he’d found was an insecure author who had lost his ability to write.
At least anything but crap.
And now Ms. Dixon knew his secret. Something that irritated him to no end—as if the woman didn’t already irritate him. He had yet to figure out why. She was just a simple country girl who ran a boardinghouse. He had dated much more sophisticated and educated women. Yet, there was something in her direct bluebonnet gaze that made him uncomfortable. Like she could see right through his confident, successful author persona to the scared bullied boy beneath. And he didn’t want anyone seeing that boy.
Which is why he had become a complete arrogant ass when she was around.
“Writer’s block, Ms. Dixon?” He spoke in the haughty tone he’d learned from Holden Lancaster. When Holden had first come to the Double Diamond, he’d been a spoiled rich kid who talked down to everyone. Val had hated him at first, but then he’d learned Holden had only used his superior attitude to keep people at arm’s length. Val wanted to keep Reba Dixon and her penetrating blue eyes, which made him want to fidget like a kid in the principal’s office, even further away. “If you can read the words, then it’s writing.”
She picked up a pair of jeans he’d left on the floor and shook the wrinkles out. It was just another thing he didn’t like about her. She was always moving and doing something, even if it didn’t need to be done. “English might not have been my favorite subject in school, Mr. Sterling, but that doesn’t look like writing to me. It looks like someone throwing a hissy fit. Sort of like the hissy Jonas Kirby threw when he failed the fifth grade for the second time and spray painted that exact word all over the front of the school.” She folded the jeans, then hugged them to her breasts like they were her favorite rag doll. The sight intensified the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach and his tone became even more arrogant.
“I don’t throw hissy fits, Ms. Dixon.”
“Of course you don’t, Mr. Sterling.” A smirk quirked her full lips.
Reba Dixon had full everything. Full lips. Full breasts. Full hips. And a full set of deep red curls she tried to keep contained in a clip at the back of her head. But a few curls always escaped to trail down her neck or frame her full face. And Val didn’t like red hair. It was too brassy. Nor did he like full woman. He liked his woman as skinny as his latte. Which didn’t explain why his mouth suddenly went dry when Reba set his jeans on the table and bent over to pick up his shirt.
He tried to look away from the curvy bottom in the snug jeans, but it was impossible when there was a swipe of what looked like flour on one butt cheek. Val hadn’t eaten anything made with white flour since he’d left