her and held open the screen door for her to walk through. As she passed by, she would have laid her hand on a stack of Bibles and sworn that it felt like walking outside right before a thunderstorm, when the whole world felt electric. She didn’t mean to look up at him at that moment, but she did anyway, and her heart sped up. She’d never, ever admit it out loud, but there was something about him that had that effect on her. No doubt he knew exactly what he was doing with the little touches, and he was probably going to continue to push her buttons the entire week.
That was okay. She could take it.
After all, it wasn’t like she was in any danger of falling for him. Will Holt was the most bullheaded, annoying, frustrating person she’d ever met, and no amount of hotness wrapped up in Wranglers was going to make her forget that.
…
He wasn’t flirting; he was a man with a plan—at least that’s what he kept telling himself as he flexed his still-buzzing fingers and followed Hadley inside. Maybe it was because he’d been distracted by watching her walk in front of him, but it wasn’t until he was standing in the middle of the open-concept living room that the full beauty of the house hit him.
This was not the kind of ranch house he’d been expecting. Too much TV had planted the idea that it would look like a log cabin on steroids. Oh, there was plenty of wood and antlers on the walls, but it was the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the house that grabbed his attention. The outdoors looked bigger out here. The nearly flat green land with its gentle rolls seemed to go on forever, and the puffy white clouds that hung in the atmosphere almost looked painted on against the clear blue sky. As a guy who’d grown up with Harbor City’s Center Park as the biggest green space he’d ever seen in person, the view was awe-inspiring.
Hadley stopped beside him, taking in the sight, a slight smile curling her pink lips. “A little bit different than the view from your penthouse, right?”
“I could get used to this,” he said, imagining himself out on the range painting fences or tracking gophers or whatever it was that someone did on a ranch. “Might need to get a place out this way. I have the clothes for it now.”
That pulled her attention from the view to him, which would have been more ego-boosting if it hadn’t resulted in her looking at him as if he were wearing a head-size belt buckle.
“Please, you’d freak out as soon as you figured out you couldn’t get your favorite Chinese place to deliver.”
“So I’d learn to love pizza delivery.” There. He could be a man who compromised.
Hadley laughed so hard, she snorted. “Let me know when you make the call for an extra-large pepperoni. I want to be there to hear how hard they laugh when you give them the address.”
Oh really? He was going to have to pull the rich-guy helicopter-food-delivery option out of his back pocket? Determined to prove her wrong about not being able to get pizza to the front door, he pulled out his phone. That’s when he spotted notification after notification rolling in now that they were within a cell phone service area again. As he scrolled his brother’s Instagram posts, realization dawned with a smack to his face. Web hadn’t just set him up for a long and miserable drive in the country.
“Have you seen this yet?” he asked Hadley.
“What?” She took a step closer, her hip brushing his leg, and peeked at his phone screen. “You don’t think he faked it?” She looked up at him, her pink lips parted and her eyes wide. “He wouldn’t.” She glanced back down at the photo of his didn’t-look-like-he’d-been-sick-for-even-a-minute brother. Her eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna kill him.”
Shaking his head, Will grimaced. “You’ll need to get in line.”
Then they stood there in a silent what-the-fuck moment, staring at the photo of a very healthy Web out on the family yacht with a handful of people in cowboy hats and bathing suits behind him. Web was obviously having the time of his life. The caption read: Celebrating the two people I love most in the world finally getting to spend some time together. That definitely calls for a little vitamin D! Yeehaw.
She made a sound that bordered on a growl. “He