Tangled Up in Love by Heidi Betts Read Free Book Online

seconds to get a nice eyeful.
     
    It was that ass again. Son of a bitch.
    Dylan swallowed hard, wishing the waitress would come with his beer already. He could use a tall, cold one to wet his dry throat and lower his internal temperature a few degrees.
    On either side of him at the wide round table, Gage and Zack were arguing about the Rockets’ last game. It hadn’t gone well, and Gage was giving Zack some pointers on how the team might win next time around. To which Zack was suggesting Gage do one of two things—get out on the ice and put his stick where his mouth was, or do something to himself that Dylan was pretty sure was anatomically impossible.
    Dylan had watched Monday night’s game and was as disappointed in the loss as the others, but at the moment his full attention was locked on Ronnie’s hips and rear and long, long legs where she stood at the bar, shimmying in time with the music that filled the room.
    No matter where he went, he couldn’t seem to get away from her tight, heart-shaped ass. It was beginning to haunt his dreams, and that was just downright scary.
    He shifted in his seat, aware of the sudden tightening of his jeans in the area of his zipper.
    Along with Ronnie’s behind dancing through his dreams on a regular basis these days, the other thing he did not need was to start getting turned on by his archrival. She was a ball-busting shrew who shouldn’t be able to attract any man unless he lived under a bridge somewhere, threatening to eat little billy goats as they passed.
    But erections didn’t lie, and his was like a divining rod pointing straight in Ronnie Chasen’s direction.
    Tired of waiting for his beer to arrive, he pushed away from the table and stood. “I’ll be back,” he said by way of explanation to his two friends, who were still arguing heatedly over Monday night’s game and getting no closer to a truce.
    He sidled up beside Ronnie, bumping into her as he made room for himself at the crowded bar. She turned to see who’d jostled her and her expression transformed from calm and unlined, almost happy, to scowling.
    “Can’t you find anyone else to annoy, Stone?”
    “Do I annoy you, Chasen?”
    “Only as much as a pebble in my shoe, a thorn in my side, a boil on my butt . . .”
    He let his gaze slide down, figuring her mention of that portion of her curvaceous anatomy was as good as an invitation to look his fill.
    “And a nice butt it is, too. If you’ve got any boils on it at the moment, I hope you get them lanced before they scar an otherwise perfect canvas.”
    While he was preoccupied ogling her behind, she placed three fingers of her right hand flat to the side of his jaw and applied just enough pressure to pull his gazeupward again. The heat of that touch burned against his skin and made his chest go tight.
    “Don’t you worry about my butt,” she told him in a tone just this side of arctic. “And keep your eyes up, or I’ll be tempted to poke them out.”
    As much as he knew it would piss her off, he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. Only Ronnie could dress him down like a parochial school nun and still send blood pumping hot and thick to his groin. Coming from any other woman, those words, in that cold, sharp tone of voice, would have shut him down in an instant and threatened to shrivel his tea bags.
    “You gonna do that poking with your knitting needles?” he asked, thinking back to earlier when she’d both held a pair to his throat and stabbed him in the thigh. The two spots on his upper leg still throbbed.
    “With whatever’s handy,” she murmured distractedly, catching the bartender’s attention and waving him over to take her order. When Turk approached, she ordered a round of Cosmos and pointed to the back booth where her friends were waiting.
    She turned to leave, but before she could move away, Dylan caught her arm. Her dark brows arched, and she looked pointedly at where his fingers curled around her