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I winced, but I didn’t cry out—not once. I refused to give him the satisfaction.
There were several more clinks of gravel into the bowl before he spoke again. “Tell me what’s going on with you and your boyfriend.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
An evil grin followed another tweezer jab. “Tell me.”
“I said, I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.” I emphasized every word as if it was its own sentence.
An even deeper jab. “Grace says you’re messing with him.”
Typical Grace. She thought she knew everything.
“Still not talking about it,” I huffed.
“I’d like to know.” When he looked up at me, his eyes almost broke through my defenses.
“So…” I went on offense rather than give in. “Who’s Lisa to you?”
Success. The question shut him up for a second. “Lisa is Stacy’s cousin. I went out with her for a while.”
“Stacy seems to think Lisa still cares for you.”
He shrugged as he studied my knee, likely planning his next attack with the wicked tweezers. “That’s her problem.”
I’d found the button to push. This was a sore subject for him.
“Want to tell me about her?”
“Nope,” he said, echoing my refusal.
Seeing Boone in his element tonight had intrigued me. “You always dreamed of leaving town. Is she the reason you stayed?”
“Nope.”
“What was?”
Silence followed as he rubbed antibiotic over my knee, then fastened a bandage with tape.
“I ventured out to Charlotte and Richmond. Small towns like this are a dying breed, and I learned I really like it here. People know their neighbors and care about each other more than in bigger cities.”
Each swipe of his fingers as he sealed the edges sent uncomfortable tingles across my skin.
“And I decided I wanted to be a part of keeping Clear Lake like that. So, with Dad’s help, I bought the hardware store when it became available. It’s the small businesses like that—and the hair salon where everybody knows your name, and the coffee shop, pizza joint, and hamburger joint that aren’t run from across the country—that make a town like this cozy and intimate.”
My eyes watered a bit as I sensed the commitment in his words. He truly cared.
His voice was softer. “The cookie-cutter coffee shops and pizza places that are identical to every other one in the country sucks the souls from small towns like ours. Then the big box stores like Home Depot come in and push out the small community stores like mine.” His voice took on an angry tone. “The clerk at the big box store isn’t going out after dinner to put Stacy’s water heater in, or remember what kind of faucet somebody has in their house to get them the right part so they don’t need to repeat the trip.”
I nodded my understanding. “Yeah.”
Pheromones be damned, I shouldn’t be having this reaction to him. I knew what he was, and that should have been enough to shut down any attraction.
Somehow it wasn’t.
He shifted back. “You’ll need to keep this dry for a few days, and add more antibiotic to any spot that opens up.” He pulled plastic baggies and a roll of tape from the box. He added gauze pads to the pile before handing it to me.
“Thank you,” I said as I pulled up the ripped, bloody jeans he slid my feet into.
