Tara cringed. It was true. “Times are tough. I can’t turn my back on people in need.”
“Not even when you’re one of those people? I know that worthless boyfriend of yours cleaned out your savings before he left town.”
A sick feeling settled in her stomach. “How do you know that?”
A rueful expression softened his angular mouth. “Mrs. Levison likes to gossip.”
“It’s not really any of your business.”
“And yet you’re always trying to meddle in mine. Face it, Duvall, you’re too generous for your own good.”
She notched her chin up. “I consider generosity a positive trait to have.”
“Not at the expense of your own welfare. Do you know how hard it is to sit across the street watching you making the same mistakes over and over?”
“No. How hard is it?” she asked impishly, hoping to get him off her case by embarrassing him. Humor was her weapon of choice.
It worked. Boone’s face flushed. “Time’s wasting,” he mumbled.
“And you just made things worse by running off the movers.”
“Hell, if you hadn’t been so flirty, I wouldn’t have had to run them off.”
Oh no, he didn’t just say that! Outrage shoved a cold barb down her spine. Chuffing out her breath, she sank her hands on her hips. It took a lot to piss her off, but seriously? He was making this her fault? “Excuse me?”
“You know what your problem is, Duvall?” he asked.
“You mean, besides being too generous?” Her tone was as cold and brittle as a Montana winter.
“You have no boundaries.”
His criticism stung, but it wasn’t the first time she’d heard something similar. Well, fudge crackers. She was who she was and if he didn’t like her, he could kiss her derriere.
Her mind flashed to an image of Boone’s lips planted on her bare backside and she instantly grew hot all over. See? No boundaries. The man made a good point. Damn him.
“You dress too provocatively. No wonder the mover was eyeing you like chocolate candy. Your shorts are too darn short.”
Her head shot up and she caught Boone checking out her legs.
Holy ham sandwich! He was jealous!
Hmm. Tara suppressed a grin, touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. “Sorry. I’m not going to wear a snowsuit just to suit you and I don’t appreciate you making me feel badly about myself.”
To his credit, Boone looked chagrined, but then he went and ruined it by saying, “I’m not responsible for how you feel. I’m just calling it like I see it.”
“Hey, you’re not my big brother.”
“Thank God.”
“Why do you say that? I’m a good sister. A great sister, in fact. I can play shortstop and I don’t scream when my brothers put bugs down the back of my shirt, and I have cute girlfriends for my brothers to date and I—”
“Because if you were my sister, I’d be arrested for the thoughts I’ve been having about you.”
“Oh.” She blinked. Grinned. “What kind of thoughts?”
“Illicit thoughts.”
Imagine that. She sidled closer. “Real-ly?”
Boone stepped back, shook his head. “Duvall, you have no boundaries.”
“I have five siblings,” she explained, not knowing why she bothered other than the supreme satisfaction of knowing that he wanted her. For months, she’d been trying to charm him, but he’d been immune. Or so she’d thought, but apparently he put up a good front. Yet here he was admitting he liked her when she was moving thousands of miles away. What lousy timing.
“Five? That’s quite a brood.”
“Three brothers, two sisters. When you grow up in a crowd, it’s a free-for-all. Try riding in the back of a minivan where you can’t move an elbow without smacking someone in the eye and you wouldn’t have any boundaries either.”
For the briefest moment, he smiled. “Hey, I was in the military. I can relate to cramped quarters.”
“So why do you have a problem with no boundaries?”
“Because it feels…” He trailed off.
“What?”
“Where are you in the birth order?” he asked, changing the subject.
She let it go, even though what he had not said whetted her curiosity. “Third youngest or fourth oldest, however you want to look at it.”
“Stuck in the middle, huh? That explains some things.”
Tara frowned. “Yeah, like what?”
“The outrageous clothes, the way you change your hair color every time the wind blows, the in-your-face cheerfulness. It’s all a bid to stand out from the pack.”
“Seriously? We’re doing this? Because if we’re pointing fingers, boy, do I have some stuff to unload on you.”
“I wasn’t pointing fingers. Merely making an observation.”
“Guess what? I have eyes. I’ve observed a few things about you, too.”
His eyes narrowed and darn if he didn’t looked amused. “Yeah? Let’s have it.”
She ticked off his faults on her fingers, one by one. “Testy. Controlling. Rigid. Hypervigilant. I’d take no boundaries any day over brooding stick-in-the-mud.”
“That’s the worst you can do?” He arched an eyebrow, made come-on-let’s-fight motions with his fingers.
“Oh,” she said, new understanding dawning. “I finally get it.”
“Get what?”
“You think you deserved to be punished. That’s why you resist my attempts to draw you out. Sorry to break it to you, but I’m not going to be the one to crack the bullwhip against your back.”
“Huh?” He made such a disgusted face that she knew she’d nailed him. Boone hadn’t forgiven himself for coming home. Survivor’s guilt. She didn’t know much about the details of his injury, only snippets of local gossip, but clearly Boone was still torturing himself over it. Her heart went out to him.
Being a hairstylist gave her a peek into the human psyche. People spilled more confidences to her than to their therapists. There was something about having your hands deep in someone’s hair that made them talky. An odd intimacy developed between a stylist and her clientele. A lack of conventional boundaries. It was one of the things she liked about her profession.
Boone’s dark-eyed stare seared her skin, making her feel as naked as the day she was born. Things normally rolled right off her back, but for one split second she was tempted to jump into her car and drive away in the half-loaded U-Haul.
“We better get to work,” she mumbled and reached for one of the boxes sitting on her kitchen table. “Without the movers this is going to take us twice as long.”
He didn’t say another word, just moved over to reach for a second box. In the process, his arm accidentally brushed against hers and a tingle of awareness shot straight to her groin. Instantly, her nipples tightened. Hello, soldier, pleased to see you.
Involuntarily, Tara sucked in her breath.