A vein in Will’s forehead popped out, and Alex tried not to delight in it. After he’d rejected her brutally, she’d started to get her thrills by pissing him off. She was glad that the weird touching thing had stopped and they were back to hating each other.
“You liked that guy.” He didn’t ask it as a question, but it was a question when Will was anything less than emphatic.
“Why do you care?” Alex was this close to pushing Will away and stomping out. He couldn’t both crowd her and treat her indifferently. He didn’t get to turn her on, reject her, and then critique her choices.
“I’m seriously thinking about doing a show with him, and I don’t want to work with anyone that you’re involved with.” He made it sound like it would be distasteful if anyone wanted to be involved with her.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. He’s married to someone else.” She looked away, and Will sighed.
“Why are sniffing around your married ex?” He moved away from her then and crossed his big arms across his chest. “You’re better than that, Alex.”
The idea that he thought she was better than that, but still not good enough for him, said a whole lot that she didn’t have time to get into. She didn’t have the time, in this moment, to think about the fact that it was vitally important that he know that she was very much not involved with a married man.
“I’m not involved with him, and I’m not looking to get involved with him.” She cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter. “Married men are a very complicated luxury that I have no time for or interest in.”
Will huffed out a breath, and she remembered why it bothered her that he was still hanging around a decade after his dad and Lexi split up. “You’re seriously thinking about doing a show with him?”
He looked at her for a long moment. He was sort of like a troll with his secrets. She wondered if she would have to solve some sort of riddle for him to be honest with her. Sometimes waiting him out helped, so she tried that.
This time, it worked. He didn’t like it when she stared at him like he was a bug on the sidewalk in the summer sun—with curiosity and dread. “My publicist thinks it would be good for the restaurant. She’s gone on and on about the number of places that fail within the first year.”
“She’s right, and you should listen to her.” Alex had concerns about Will putting himself even more in the public eye, however. Given that he wasn’t great about letting people into his life in general, he seemed to be the last person who would do a reality television show. She’d been shocked enough when he started posting live videos from his kitchen. “But you realize that you would have to do more than grunt occasionally. It would involve actual talking.”
Will looked away from her. “That’s why I wasn’t going to tell you. You don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?” Alex hopped off the counter and walked toward Will. “I’ve known you for longer than anyone else in this town, and I’ve never known you to be open about your feelings.” Except that one time when he’d been a little too open about how he felt about her.
“Why did you have a meeting with Andrew?” He really wasn’t going to let this go, was he?
“I was trying to figure out why he dumped me.”
EIGHT
Will just stared at the woman in his kitchen for a long moment. The Alex he knew would never even care why someone as insignificant as a man didn’t want to date her. She had more important things to do and think about. She always had.
One of the many things that had bothered him about seeing her sitting in Andrew’s office, smiling at him, was that Will couldn’t see them together in the first place. He didn’t like rolling that idea around in his brain, the idea that that guy had gotten to touch her in a way she would never allow from Will.
It was the only thing that had kept him from indulging his usually deeply buried fantasies about Alex while he’d been tending to her injuries. Alex was usually careful not to be alone with him. Especially after she’d kissed him, and he’d rejected her.
“Why would you be interested in anything that stupid?” As soon as Will said the words, he knew they were a mistake. Just like the things he’d said at the end of that first summer. He could see the hurt bloom on her like a plant that only unfurled itself at night.
“It’s really none of your business.” Will thought she meant to sound angry, but the words didn’t have heat. They echoed in the empty kitchen.
“I shouldn’t have said—”
“There are a lot of things you shouldn’t have said.” Alex turned from him, and he stopped himself from following her. They didn’t have the kind of relationship that would allow him to turn her body into his. They didn’t even really have a relationship, except the one that was mediated through Lexi’s presence. They were both moons to Lexi’s planetary gravity, and it would mean something had gone very wrong if they actually touched. “You know, I’ve changed my mind. You’d be great on a reality show, because you’re so good at saying the thing that makes other people angry.”
“You’re the only person that I make angry on a regular basis, and I think that’s mostly just my face.”
She turned and looked over her shoulder at him with a narrowed gaze. “Your face is extremely punchable.”
That was more like it. She hadn’t seemed like herself for a few minutes there—as though the fall had shaken her normal surly attitude loose. He wasn’t sure what to do with a soft, vulnerable Alex. It turned something inside him upside down, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stifle the urge to protect her if he saw too much of her soft side. And that was aside from the fact that he’d spent fifteen years wanting to see only her soft side. It was never just teenage hormones. Alex was inimitable. There was a fire inside her that drew him in like a beacon. But he knew that he would get burned if he allowed himself to get too close.
Because all men were drawn to Alex. It wasn’t just because she was gorgeous. From her crown of glossy waves to the tips of her pointy—treacherous—shoes, she was built perfectly for him. She was tall and curvy, with skin that seemed to glow from within. She hated when people said it—he didn’t know why—but she looked like a picture of Lexi in her youth all grown up.
It was almost impossible to meet Alex Turner and not walk away with a huge crush. The first time he’d met her, he’d barely spoken. She’d talked so fast and had so much to say that he was terrified of stumbling over his words. He’d also been a teenage boy, and his mind had wandered to the possibility of her bikini top slipping off. And then, when she’d flitted off to a party with one of her friends, he’d spent hours thinking about how she must have thought that he was an idiot.