“I haven’t done something real, Salem. I loved Poppy for a lot of reasons and I don’t know looking back on it now that any of them would have lasted or would make any kind of sense now. What I do know is that when I saw you that day you got hired at the shop, it was like walking face-first into a wall, and not only did my dick get hard just by looking at you but something in my chest felt like it broke loose. I don’t know if any of that is good or bad yet, but what I do know is that it feels pretty damn real. More real than anything I ever felt for your sister. I know it all feels less like something that’s going to be easy and a good time and more like something I have to work my way through. I also know feeling all of that scares the living shit out of me.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly a sweeping declaration of love and they weren’t words that put all my apprehensions to rest, but there was no denying the magnetic, physical response that we most definitely brought out in each other. I just needed a minute to get my head and my heart on the same page and I told him as much.

“I need to figure out how I feel about the fact you were willing to spend the rest of your life with my sister, Rowdy. Nothing has ever mattered enough for me to want to put it all together before. Normally I get bored and move on when things get difficult or complicated. Including my feelings. It’s easy to run away and much harder to stay.”

His eyes darkened to a fathomless turquoise and he took a step back from me. “Already been in your rearview once, Salem. I have no intention of ending up there again.”

I sighed and bent to pick up the dog when he whined up at me. I rubbed my face in his soft fur and looked at Rowdy over the top of Jimbo’s head.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He snorted and turned so that he was walking toward the door.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He nodded to where he had left the drawings on my counter. “Take a look at those and let me know what you think.”

He had the door open when I called his name: “Rowdy.” He looked at me over his shoulder and I saw everything I wanted from him in that electric-hot gaze. “We started out as friends, maybe we should try that first and it’ll give you time to see I’m here to stay and give me some time to figure out if I can work through your history with Poppy in my head.”

He considered me for a long, silent moment and all I could hear was Jimbo panting and my heart thundering. If he said no, if he told me he wasn’t interested in rekindling that easy camaraderie we had always had, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I needed to have him in my life but I needed a minute for clarity as well.

“I have plenty of friends, Salem. I don’t want get any of them na**d or take any of them to bed. We don’t need to try and be friends again—we always were. That never went away—you did. You started this game of chase, so when you figure your shit out let me know because I’m already caught.”

The door closed behind him on that definitive note and I was left staring after it not sure what to say or how to feel.

I was fine on my own. In fact I thrived and had made a pretty wonderful life for myself all on my own. I wasn’t the type of woman that ever felt like I needed a man to be complete or fulfilled, but staring at the closed door and having my body still burning and sensitive from his attention, I suddenly wanted to call him back and ask him to stay. He was messing not only with my feelings, but also with what I thought I had always known.

I kissed Jimbo and set him down after collecting my destroyed shoe and walked over to the counter where Rowdy had left the images for me to look at. I spread them out and just stared at them in awe. He really was amazingly skilled. The sketches looked 3-D and so lifelike that I had to touch one to make sure it was just plain pencil on paper. People were going to lose their minds when I got the graphics put on cute little tank tops and fun T-shirts. The gypsy would look awesome on the back of an old-style mechanic’s jacket.

I was designing stuff in my head, so it took a second to register as I stared at the girl’s lovely face that she looked familiar. I picked up the picture and held it closer to my face since Rowdy had snatched my glasses and I could hardly see.

She had long, dark hair. She had endless midnight eyes. She had a heart-shaped mouth with just the hint of a smile on her face. She was lovely, soft and romantic-looking. She was the spitting image of me. The face, all the features, everything was me if I was a 1940s fortune-teller.

I made a strangled noise low in my throat and let the picture fall from numb fingers. He was still mad at me, holding on to a lot of anger and feeling abandoned from when I left all those years ago. With his history of love and loss I couldn’t blame him. He didn’t trust that I was here for the duration, that he was enough to keep me rooted in Denver. He was leery and kind of harsh, but even in all of that he still saw me as something so beautiful it almost hurt me to look at it.

It made me want to cry, mostly because as much as I loved the picture, loved the way he viewed me, I couldn’t stop my very next thought from being, was that how he still saw Poppy as well?

Crap. This game of catch was turning out to be way trickier than I had anticipated.

CHAPTER 7

Rowdy

NOW THAT THE TABLES had turned and Salem was the one avoiding me, giving me sidelong looks and running the other way when I crowded her, I saw just how annoying and frustrating it must have been when I was the one doing it to her. I took every opportunity that presented itself to touch her, to be near her, to crowd her and press in on her. I was the one treating her like prey and she was looking back at me like a deer caught in the headlights with those deep, dark eyes.

I knew something was going to have to happen one way or another between the two of us. Either she was going to get over all that nonsense in her head about Poppy and let me take her to bed, or she was going to decide it was all too much and not meant to be and cut and run like she apparently had been doing all her life. I wasn’t sure which outcome I was gunning for since both had pros and cons.

On one hand I wanted to get na**d with her, tangle myself all up with her in all the raunchiest and dirtiest ways I could think of, but I didn’t want to have sex with her and then have her pull up stakes and leave me hanging. I had a feeling if I ever ended up in bed with Salem, it would mean an end to my hit-it-and-quit bedroom habits. There was no quitting with her, not considering how strongly I still reacted to her after a decade of no contact between the two of us. As a result I think subconsciously I was pushing her, trying to make her run because I knew all along that’s what she was more than likely going to do. It was her pattern. I was just trying to speed the process up before I could get any more invested in her and the fact I wanted her so bad I could taste it. The thing was, no matter how hard I pushed her, how close I got to her physically, she never told me to back off. She just gave me a knowing look, like she knew all the plays before they were called out and already had a defensive strategy in mind to counteract them.