“If you think for one second that I’m allowing you to buy me underwear—”
He cut off my tirade by slinging an arm over my shoulder and covering my mouth with his hand. “Here,” he said, sliding his card across the counter.
I was squirming against him until he leaned down. “If this is what it takes to get out of this fucking store without passing out from a goddamn hard-on, I’m buying you the fucking underwear.”
By my count, this was the second time he’d mentioned his man parts having a reaction to me. I wasn’t a big enough liar to pretend I wasn’t happy that he found himself in the same predicament as me: Turned on by the physical, turned off by everything else.
I stopped squirming when he pulled me in front of him. With my back flush to his front, I could feel the irrefutable evidence of his claim. My body reacted entirely without my brain’s input and went into five-alarm arousal. I worried that I was going to need to be carried out of the store.
“That was incredibly inappropriate,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as we left the store, his arm still around me.
“You wanted me to buy something. I bought something.”
“Underwear. For me,” I screeched.
“You look tired,” he said smugly.
“Tired? I’m exhausted. We’ve walked fifty miles in a mall. I spent every dime and then some. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Most of all, I’m confused, Knox! You’re so mean all the time, and then you show up today and buy me nice underwear?”
“Maybe you’ll think of me when you wear them,” he said, his gaze scanning ahead of us.
“You’re the worst.”
“You’re welcome. We got one more stop,” he said, taking my hand.
I was tired. Too tired to fight. Too tired to pay attention to what store he dragged me into.
“Mr. Morgan.” A tall, skinny kid with a dark goatee waved at us. “We just finished up,” he said.
We were in a cell phone store. I dug my heels in, but Knox merely pulled me forward to the counter.
“Good timing, Ben.”
“Here she is,” the kid said, sliding a brand-new phone toward me. “It’s all set up and in the case. If you need any help downloading your old contacts from the cloud, we’ll be happy to help you. Your new number is written inside the box.”
Baffled, tired, hungry, a little furious, and a lot confused, I stared down at the phone, then up at Knox.
“Thanks,” Knox said to Ben, then handed me the phone.
The case had sparkly daisies on it. “You got me a phone?”
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
I let him pull me out of the store, remembering at the door to give Ben a wave and a “thank you.”
We were halfway to the arcade when my brain started connecting the dots. “You walked me all over this damn mall without complaining just to wear me out so I’d be too tired to fight you on the phone, didn’t you?”
“Burgers, sushi, or pizza?” he asked.
“Burgers. Knox?”
He kept on walking.
“Knox!” I poked him in the shoulder to get his attention.
When he looked down at me, he wasn’t smiling and he didn’t look smug. “You needed a phone. I got you one. Don’t make this into a thing.”
“You call me needy. You yell at me for working at your bar and tell me the only part of me worth spending time with is my body. Then you show up on my shopping trip uninvited and buy me underwear and a really expensive phone.”
“That about sums it up, minus the only part of you worth spending time with.”
“Are you always this…this inconsistent? This confusing?”
He stopped walking and looked down at me. “No, Naomi. I’m not always this fucking inconsistent. And I blame you. I don’t want to be into you. I don’t want to spend an entire day wandering around a goddamn mall and fighting traffic for you. I sure as hell don’t want to watch you try on underwear. But I also don’t want you home alone when there’s some guy back in Knockemout looking for you.”
Uh-oh.
“Some guy? Who is it?”
“Dunno. Justice and Wraith are taking care of it. They’ll call Nash in if they need to,” he said grimly.
“What do you mean ‘taking care of it’？” I had visions of bodies and tarps and duct tape.
“Don’t worry about it.”
I started laughing and kept right on going. I couldn’t help it. I’d spent the last four years in a relationship where I took care of everything. Every dinner reservation. Every vacation. Every load of laundry. Every grocery run.