Oh, no. This was... It was impossible.
“Where were you last night?” Levi asked.
Oh, great. Leave it to her brother to make it weird. To make itimpossible.
“I was nowhere,” she said. “What I mean is... I was here.”
Levi made a face. “You were not here. I looked for you. Anyway, I heard you stumbling around at midnight, so I know you got in late.”
“I just went to Smokey’s,” she lied, hoping he wouldn’t actually ask anyone if she’d been seen at the local tavern, since she absolutely hadn’t been there.
“Really?” He narrowed his eyes over the top of his coffee cup.
“Yes,” she said. “Really. I went to Smokey’s. There’s no law against that.”
He frowned. “If I recall correctly, there used to be.”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “It was called me being under twenty-one. Which you may recall I’m not anymore.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
It was difficult to maintain the casual conversation—which was also a lie—with her brother, when she was so extremely conscious of the way Damien was looking at her. So incredibly aware. And she wanted to run away. Or crawl out of her skin. But she felt like neither one of those things was a great option, all things considered.
“I’ve got to head out,” Levi said. “The cows will not feed themselves. You coming out with me, Prince? Or are you soft?”
“I’m not soft,” he said. “But it’s not my ranch, and I had a late night. I’ll meet you out there in a bit.”
He sounded so casual. There was absolutely no weight to those words. Not a bit of heaviness. And that almost made it more ominous.
She couldn’t guess what he was going to do or say or...
“Suit yourself. See y’all later.” Levi drank the last of his coffee down, and nodded once before heading out the door. And that just left her and Damien.
“You were not at Smokey’s last night.”
Of course not. But she didn’t want him to know that. Or at least, she didn’t want toadmitit. She wanted to make him question what he suspected.
“Sure I was,” she said, her throat getting tight.
“Jessie,” he said. “Did you know it was me?”
Well. That was direct.
She froze; that place between her legs was throbbing when she looked at him. She had always felt perfectly safe around Damien. Actually, to the point where it was sort of infuriating. She’d always thought he was beautiful, and she wanted to feel a little bit...like something had happened between them. But of course, he had never acted like that was a possibility. And the one time... Well. He rebuffed her pretty soundly two years ago. And her maneuver had been clumsy, and not even all that overt. But now... Now she could feel possibility between them. Because she’d had sex with him. That made her feel dizzy. Unsteady.
“I don’t... I didn’t... No. I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
“For heaven’s sake, Damien,” she said, calling on all the spirit her brother had raised her with. “No, I didn’t know it was you. Don’t flatter yourself. I was there to have a good time. That’s all.”
“You’ve changed that much in the last two years?”
“People change. You grew a beard.”
He reached up and touched his cheek. “So I did. Is that why you didn’t know it was me?”
“Why didn’t you know it was me?” she countered.