And if that wasn’t bad enough, he was heading straight for her. They hadn’t spoken to each other since he’d gone all weird in the gas station / grocery / diner and now she wasn’t sure she could form words. Anticipation danced across her skin, and her breath caught when she saw the way he looked at her—as if he knew and totally endorsed every naughty thought she’d had about him during her shower this morning.
He tipped his cowboy hat at her fairy godmothers, which they answered with a set of harmonized giggles, then turned to Hadley. “Can I have this dance?”
If she could have said no at that moment, she would have. Instead, she took his hand and walked out onto the dance floor.
…
Will should have agreed to driving back to the ranch tonight.
Then he wouldn’t be wearing a ridiculously small T-shirt, holding Hadley in his arms, and swaying to “Lay, Lady, Lay” by Bob Dylan in the middle of a geriatric dance party. Her arms rested on his shoulders, her fingers twined loosely behind his neck, while his fingertips lay lightly on the small of her back.
Feeling her move against him as Dylan sang made it hard to remember why he was here in the first place. Other dancers around them chatted and smiled while they glided around the floor. Not them. They were like those big statues on Easter Island, silent and unsmiling.
It wasn’t suspicious at all.
He dipped his head down, bringing his mouth close to her ear. “If you don’t at least pretend to be having fun, everyone is going to know that this whole thing is fake.”
“Oh really?” She tensed in his arms. “I hadn’t considered that at all.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked as he spun them through the crowded dance floor.
Hadley lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Develop a headache that means I have to go to bed.”
The mention of the word “bed” filled his brain with enough bad ideas to make him miss the beat. She looked up at him, her eyebrows raised in question, and the futility of the situation hit him hard. Despite it all, he wanted Hadley. Why? Because he was the king of fucking bad ideas at the moment.
“Oh yeah,” he said, laying on the sarcasm thick. “That won’t be weird at all.”
“Why are you like this?” She let out a huff of frustration. “From the day Web introduced us, you’ve either ignored me or insulted me. And don’t throw that gold-digger ridiculousness at me again. We both know that’s not really it.”
The only answer he had to that was too close to the truth to be comfortable, which was exactly why he kept his mouth shut. It didn’t help, though, because with each inhale, he got the scent of the daisies in her hair and a hint of something sharper, much like the woman herself—delicate on the outside with an inner mettle that everyone else seemed to overlook.
But not him. He’d noticed it from the beginning, as obvious as a flash in the dark.
From that first moment, he’d kept his distance and watched, waiting for the real her to make an appearance, just like it had with Mia. He hadn’t been vigilant before. He was now.
“One, who in the hell could ignore you?” He sure as fuck couldn’t. She all but haunted him no matter what he did. For the past year, she’d squeezed her way between any two thoughts in his head until she was the constant undercurrent of his day. “Two, I never insulted you. I just pointed out all the ways you were wrong about how the Holt Foundation should be awarding its grants.”
“Really?” She came in closer so their bodies were touching, from the insanely short hem of her dress to her mouth right up against his neck, so every word became a touch. “So in addition to graduating at the top of your business class, having three masters, and being the CEO voted most eligible bachelor in Harbor City, you had time to double major in nonprofit management and philanthropic studies like I did, plus gain more than five years of real-world experience? Wow. Impressive.”
“So you looked into me?” Yeah, that was pretty much his big takeaway from her dressing down, and he wasn’t even sorry about it.
“Yes, I cracked open the Harbor City Post. You’re in it multiple times a week.”
He opened his mouth before he realized he didn’t have a