He thought he had the upper hand. He thought if he could get her to calm down and see reason, they’d get past this.
So he was unprepared for Hanna Boudreaux rocking his world.
“I’ve crushed on you since I was six. We were on the same tug of war team three years in a row at Grams’s picnics. We were both out of class and alone in the hall at the same time second semester my freshman year, your senior year. Your locker was nowhere near mine. I don’t know what you were doing in that hallway but I’d gone to the nurse because I had flu and was getting my stuff to go home. You walked by me, looked at me and said, ‘hey’. I said ‘hey’ back, but I don’t think you heard me because you kept walking and didn’t look back. Until the pet store, that was the only word you ever said to me. ‘Hey.’”
Fucking shit.
“Hanna—”
“You left Willow then you came home and I went to Rachelle’s once a week, twice, three times just to catch a glimpse of you. You looked through me, dozens of times. Once you caught me looking at you and you jerked up your chin. You looked right at me and jerked up your chin. Then you looked away. Months later, I run into you in the pet store and it was like you’d never seen me before.”
Christ.
“I don’t remember that at the café,” Raid said softly.
“I know,” she replied. “When you met me, you didn’t know me at all, but I’ve been around for years.”
“Baby, me not remembering you doesn’t mean dick.”
“It does to me.”
He could see that. He knew she was that into him before she told him all that. No woman got that flustered around a man who she wasn’t extremely attracted to. And he’d liked it a f**k of a lot. From the minute she first tucked her hair behind her ear, hiding she was glancing at him to be sure he was still checking her out when she was with Bodhi and her bike.
And he liked it more than a f**k of a lot that she knew she was on his tug of war team when he was f**king eleven or whatever and remembered them walking by each other in the hall in high school years ago.
It was cute. It was sweet.
It was her.
He just didn’t understand the history of it, but Hanna explaining the length and extent of her crush on him explained a lot about her behavior the last week and a half. Raid could see that his not noticing her would cut deep.
He moved his hand from the wall to wrap it around the side of her neck. She tried to jerk away, but he dug his fingers in and pushed closer. This had the desired effect. She quit moving.
“A buddy of mine has some issues in Denver,” Raid explained. “Those issues leaked to Willow. He called me in, contracting me to find the supplier who’s been shifting drugs through Willow. This ass**le is slippery. Every lead we got led to shit. He’s got soldiers everywhere, but he’s a ghost. Honey, you might have been at Rache’s, I might have seen you, but I had a lot of shit on my mind.”
“You thought I was involved with drug people and investigated me. You got involved with me to investigate me.”
“I got involved with you to get involved with you, but I also had to clear you of that shit so we could move on and get his f**kin’ guy.”
“Raiden, can’t you see how I can’t see that I’ve been around, you’ve even looked right at me and didn’t see me and now, all of a sudden, you’re into me, and how I can’t believe you’re actually, well… into me?”
“How the f**k can you make something that makes no sense make sense?” he asked back.
“So you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do and it might make sense, honey, but it’s still whacked.”
Her eyes rolled to the ceiling.
“Hanna, look at me,” he ordered.
Her eyes rolled back.
“I’m into you,” he told her.
“I don’t believe you,” she told him.
“Why the f**k not?” he asked.
“I just don’t,” she answered.
“Christ, honest to God, you think I’m a man who comes back to his hometown, a town his mother and sister still live in, takes the town’s beloved native daughter—who also happens to be the great-granddaughter of the town’s matriarch —out to dinner in order to play her, and I’d do that shit at Chilton’s where everyone can see?”
She blinked.
She hadn’t thought of that.
Thank f**k, he was getting somewhere.
Raid kept going.
“And you think I’m a man who lays out bullshit lines to cute, sweet, pretty women and keeps at it after a job is f**ked just for shits and grins?”
She pulled one side of her lips between her teeth.
Yeah, getting somewhere.
Raid kept at it.
“And serious as f**k, Hanna, you think that kiss was pretend?”
She stared into his eyes and her little white teeth appeared to bite her lip. She let it go and whispered, “That kiss was really good.”
Raid’s eyes didn’t go to the ceiling. His head dropped and he contemplated his boots.
He also saw she had f**king sequins glued to her toenails that looked varnished with black polish, but had some kind of white flower design painted around the sequin.
Christ, she was adorably ridiculous.
A sequin stuck to her f**king toe.
He couldn’t help it, and didn’t try. He started laughing.
“Are you laughing?” he heard her ask.
“You got goddamned sequins on your toes,” he said, his words trembling.
“They’re pretty,” she returned, and he lifted his head to look at her, no longer laughing.
His reward.
“Yeah,” he agreed. He wasn’t talking about sequins and he knew she knew it when he heard her sharp intake of breath. “Are we done with this idiotic conversation about me not being into you?”
“Uh… I think so.”
“So you get I’m into you,” he pushed to confirm.
She pressed her lips together and thought on it awhile.
Raid used the last of his patience to let her.
Then she nodded.
“Thank Christ,” he muttered and finally relaxed.
“So, uh… when you said you were going to call me tomorrow, which is today, incidentally, you actually meant it?”
Raid heard the growl roll up his throat before he rumbled after it, “Yeah, Hanna. I meant it.”
Her eyes lit. She liked that, didn’t hide it and he liked both.
Again, he wanted to kiss her.