Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (Cactus Creek #3)(12)

A very real possibility.

Especially considering the very pleased smile the man was wearing right now.

She should’ve kicked him harder.

When he started flat-out chortling, pain seemingly a thing of the past, she realized she’d said the last reflection out loud.

“You are nothing like what I thought you’d be,” he said removing the gel pack from his face to look at her. “If I invite myself to breakfast with you, will you keep surprising me? I’ll take it as your apology. You know, for tattooing what feels like dainty little flowers across my temple.”

She bit her lip to keep from laughing. But she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She liked being a surprise to someone for a change.

“My treat?” she asked. “I’ll take you to breakfast at the Saturday Market at the Town Square—it’s like a Bazaar with food and crafts booths, and stuff for the kids. There’s a great little Cajun and Creole breakfast booth with just the best grits.”

He smiled and closed his eyes again. “Stop with the dirty talk already. A man can only take so much. I’ve spent almost the entire night up. Literally. So now that I don’t have to worry about sex noises from you, I’m going to get a little shut-eye for a bit. Wake me when you’re done with your auctions?”

Criminally flirtatious and attentive to her work to boot.

He was almost too good to be true.

Before she could respond, he continued, serious as can be, “I figure seven a.m. should be early enough for us to head out for breakfast, don’t you? Unless you think your brothers will be stopping by before that to check if I’m still here. Then we should leave earlier. I really prefer not to have to tell them they don’t have to rough me up because their sister already took care of it.”

Lia blinked at him for a few seconds. No one ever talked to her like this. Folks were always so gentle with her, men especially. Either that, or they were usually trying to prove their toughness to her for some reason, again, men especially. True, that would be utterly unnecessary and just redundant where Hudson was concerned, but she never expected him to be like this.

She wondered over that as she went to get him a new ice pack. Pulling the melted one away from his battle wound, she placed a gentle kiss on it before putting the new ice pack on.

Damn. The way his eyes caught fire from that one simple peck, she could only imagine how hot they’d burn over something more.

So much for no more sex noises on her part.

He shaped his warm, calloused palm against her cheek. “Sweetheart, if you put those sweet lips of yours on me again, innocent gesture or not, I’m definitely going to deserve that beating your brothers threatened me with last night.”

She stared at him for a second, surprised at the novel thoughts running rampant through her brain…and other parts of her body.

“I’m holding you to that,” she said quietly, before hurrying over to her computer without waiting for a reply. She told herself it was because her eighth, ninth, and tenth alarms of the morning were buzzing away, telling her she needed to get logged in soon.

Not because she could feel his focus on her, though his eyes were now closed.





CHAPTER FOUR


“SO WHY ANTIQUE ARMS?” asked Hudson as he followed Lia across the street toward what appeared to be a town square of sorts.

The most unusual one he’d ever seen.

Lia waved at a woman manning a funnel cake food truck that was parked along the street before turning back to him with a thoughtful look. “I sort of fell into it, I guess. I worked part time at Spencer’s all through high school and got sucked in by the unique intricacies of each weapon, and the windows to the past each provided. And while I was never really interested in the fabrication aspects, I absolutely loved the authentication part. It was like solving a puzzle, unraveling every chapter of the weapon’s story. Antique weapons are one of the most striking combinations of art and innovation, science and history. In most, the story of a man along with his town or country. Each shows forward thinking beyond what most could imagine at the time, all for the basic human struggles.”

Her eyes twinkled with humor. “Aaand that particular geek-out is exactly why folks always say I’m more like Jack Spencer than his own sons.”

“Ah, mystery solved. So you’re not ‘officially’ a Spencer. I was wondering.”

She laughed. “What gave it away? The fact that I’m full-Chinese while my brother Caine looks like a Swat Team Ken doll, just like my foster dad?”

“I was going to go with a humor-challenged Captain America, but we can use your description.” He grinned when her mouth fell open in a mischievously awed I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that…I’m-so-going-to-use-that sort of way. “But see that’s exactly what threw me off,” he continued. “You call the guys your brothers. Minus the foster.”

Her soft smile was quietly affectionate. “The guys wore me down. The Spencers took me in after my parents died when I was a freshman. Sometime during my junior year, the three of them decided they didn’t like me calling them their foster sibling anymore. So they proceeded to play the copycat game with me whenever I referred to any of them that way. Drove me freakin’ crazy. While Max used to parrot everything I said in an annoying imitation of my voice, Gabe—being the quintessential little brother that he was—would copy every single thing I did as well. Hell, even Caine, who was already a grown-ass cop living out of the house at the time, would jump in on the copycat torment whenever he’d come by to visit. Despite all their differences, in this, they’d always been a united front.”