He came up a step, crowding her as he now stared down at her. “No one but my brothers call me Dev.”
“Oh I’m sorry? Do I need permission to call you an abbreviated version of your name?”
“You should. After all, that’s what’s appropriate.”
Rosie couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes so far back in her head, they’d probably get stuck.
“How would you like if I called you Rose?”
“That’s actually a pretty nickname and I wouldn’t mind,” she shot back. “Rosa would make more sense since my first name is Rosalynn.”
“Rosalynn? So Southern,” he murmured in a way that irritated her.
“Okay, I won’t call you Dev, Dev .”
“You just did,” he said dryly.
“How about I just call you Dickhead, then? That sounds about fitting.”
“You already did that.”
“Then that’s perfect. I’ll just—” Her phone suddenly rang from her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that it was Lance calling again. “Excuse me.” She held up her hand, silencing Dev as she answered her phone. “Hello?”
Dev stared at her—no, he gaped at her.
She smirked as Lance said into her ear, “I’ve been calling you all afternoon. What in the world have you been doing? I got news on the Mendez case.”
“I’m sorry. I know. I’ve just been really busy today and right now isn’t a good time.”
“Is something wrong?” Lance asked, concern filing his tone.
“If it wasn’t a good time, why did you answer the phone?” Devlin asked.
“Was that a guy’s voice?” Lance asked as Rosie shushed Devlin.
“Did you just shush me?” they both demanded at the same time.
Rosie clutched her phone. “I didn’t shush you, Lance. I’d never shush you. Look, can I call you back in a little bit? I’m in the middle of a very important argument with Devlin de Vincent over whether or not I can call him a dickhead instead of Dev.”
Devlin’s mouth dropped open, and for a moment she thought he was going to fall over backward. The shock pouring into his expression was the first real hard-core reaction she’d seen from him.
“Devlin de Vincent—the Devlin de Vincent?” Lance sounded like he might fall over, too.
“Yes.” She met Devlin’s stunned stare. “The Devlin de Vincent. So, can I please call you back? Like I imagine most things with him, I don’t think this is going to take long.”
Devlin snapped his mouth shut.
“Uh, yeah. Call me back as soon as you can,” Lance muttered, sounding way confused.
“Thanks, babe.” Rosie ended the call and slipped the phone into her pocket. “You’re still here? I was hoping you’d go ahead and walk down.”
“Who was that?” he demanded.
“The Pope. Can you please move out of the way so I can move my car before your precious truck gets a raindrop on it, even though it looks like it could use a bath?”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“No,” he repeated, and then he moved in.
They weren’t as close as they’d been on Saturday, but she could see the flecks of green in his blue eyes. Close enough that if she took a deep enough breath, her chest would brush his, and she knew that would be bad, because as terrible as it was, her body wanted that closeness. Her brain, however, was not on board with her body. Her brain was seriously considering the consequences of pushing him lightly down the stairs.
“I want you to listen to everything I say, because I will not ever repeat myself,” he said, his voice so low, so soft that she could barely hear him. “I should not have to explain how incredibly rude it is to answer the phone in the middle of a conversation, one in which you’re insulting the other person, but then to shush me? Even as a child, I was not shushed.”
Her heart rate tripled. “I guess there’s a first for everything?”
“You’re not listening. If you were, you wouldn’t be speaking.”
Rosie narrowed her eyes. “I’m listening.”
“Good. Silence must be a new thing for you,” he continued, and when she opened her mouth, he placed his finger over her lips. So shocked by the contact, she was effectively silenced. “I am not done, Rosalynn.”
Oh dear.
His thumb curled under her chin and his touch was oddly gentle in comparison to the hard line of his jaw. Then he dipped his head, bringing his mouth within an inch of hers.
Oh my good God, was he going to kiss her?
That would be a sharp turn in events, so sharp she just stood there as a hot flush swept over and an acute heaviness settled into her breasts and flowed down to her stomach and lower, much lower.
Wait. Bad Rosie. Bad. Bad. Bad.
She did not want him to kiss her. He was a dickhead douchebag of the highest order!
But yep, her nipples were hard, and yep, something was wrong with her, and nope, he did not kiss her.
“Being shushed was a first for me and it will be the last,” he said, definitely not kissing her. “But most importantly? The insinuation you made on the phone about most things not lasting long with me? I can assure you, that is not the case.” His finger slid over her lips, eliciting a gasp from her. “That takes longer than I’m betting you can last and you’d be begging me to stop while pleading with me to keep going the whole time. I can assure you, no one would ever fuck you longer or harder.”
Oh.
My.
God.
Rosie was actually speechless. Utterly shocked into real, honest to goodness silence while her body and mind engaged in a full-fledged war with one another. Her mind was telling her to be offended, like kick him in the balls offended, and her body had liquefied as molten lava swept through her veins, sparking to life a fire—a need she’d never experienced before, not even with Ian.
Devlin dragged his finger back over her bottom lip, tugging on it before lowering his hand. “But that, my dear, is something you’ll never have the honor of experiencing with me, because the mere idea of me even thinking about fucking you is laughable.”
His words were like having a bucket of cold water dumped over her head. The fire was doused in a heartbeat. What he said . . . that was, wow. . . . Never in her life had anyone ever spoken to her like that. Ever. A horrible messy knot of emotion plugged her throat. His words stung more than they should, probably because she was getting close to that time of the month and was overly emotional.
Holding her wide-eyed gaze, he turned sideways and stepped aside. “Now you may go move your car.”
A thousand retorts rose to the tip of her tongue. She could out-shade him to the point he was eclipsed by the shade she could throw in his direction, but he . . . he wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth a single second of her snarkiness or her time.
He wasn’t worth anything to her.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to serve it right back at him, because she was not the kind of woman to let a man stand there and talk to her like that.
Pushing the knot in her throat down, she held his gaze even though her eyes burned. “I think you misspoke. I think you meant to say that fucking me is an honor that you know you’d never be worthy of and that is why it would never happen, Dev .”
Something flickered across his face that looked an awful lot like respect—reluctant respect, but she didn’t give a flying chupacabra’s ass what Devlin de Vincent thought or felt.
Slipping past him, she walked down the steps without looking back and without saying another word.
She was a lot of things. A little out there. Definitely weird. Sometimes irresponsible and she probably drank too much wine and ate way too many sweets, but she’d never been a doormat for any man to wipe his feet on, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to become one now.
Chapter 9
“What in the world were you doing with a de Vincent?” That was the first question Lance asked when Rosie met up with him at Jilly’s place. He’d been sitting out on the porch, waiting for her.
Lance was a couple years younger, and with his head full of auburn hair and big brown eyes, he had a perpetual baby face. The man would probably still look like he was in his early twenties even when he was in his forties and he really was a good guy.