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“Cisco!”
He shook himself out of his pleasant stupor and turned at the familiar voice. Ellen Sothard was practically sprinting toward him, looking over her shoulder every few seconds before she eventually sidled up next to him.
“Ellen, it’s great to see you,” Cisco grunted down at her, wondering why she was looking so sneaky.
“I’ll make this short,” the older woman said, giving him a brief hug, but with her eyes still darting rapidly, side to side. “Hilly really likes you…”
Damn. Another one? Within a matter of minutes? Still, who was he to complain?
“… but she has some issues. Things in her past have made her scared of going with her feelings where you are concerned, so if you’re really interested, you have to be patient.”
Cisco shook his head. “It seems like people around here know more about what’s happening between Hilly and me than I do,” he snorted, amused. “Was I part of the morning announcements or something?”
Ellen winked. “Nope. Just a little girl-talk before breakfast. Now I’ve got to scoot. I don’t want Hilly to catch me pleading her case, and I’ve got supper to prep.”
The woman took off at a decent clip, leaving Cisco to ponder everything he’d just been told. Apparently, Hilly liked him. Enough to talk about him, anyway. But the down side—as he’d suspected—was that something she considered extremely foreboding in her history was holding her back from moving ahead with what she wanted. And, of course, neither of her cohorts were talking, which meant Cisco was going to have to pry it out of Hilly, himself.
Cisco loved a challenge, that was true. And when was the last time he’d run into Hilly’s kind of truculence while doing the dating-dance? Never, actually. And he’d never tangoed for very long with any woman. Most of the ladies he’d hooked up with hadn’t made it as far as dating. Liaisons were normally one-and-done in the sack before moving on to new territory. Which probably made him an asshole, but that wasn’t all on him. He’d never promised any of the badge bunnies more than a quick romp. The very few women over his adult years he had agreed to date for a longer term because they were well-skilled in bed, generally parted ways with him as friends.
Cisco pointed his feet toward the covered slab of concrete where he’d set up, while pondering that this situation with Hilly was all new territory for him. She was someone who hadn’t been bowled over by any of his overt charms, and she was the first female he’d ever laid eyes on who made him feel something other than his normal, horn-dog attraction.
It was a good thing Cisco wasn’t scared to see where he and Hilly might take things. He was thirty-three, and more than ready for what the old goats in town called a “lifer”.
Hilly’s bright hair alerted Cisco to the fact that she was already in the pole-structure where he was headed, and it looked like she was struggling with a large mat. Just as he was about to call out for her to wait until he could help, a young man—one of her counselors, whose name he seemed to recall began with a V—ran to her side and took the burden from her.
Cisco felt a stab of jealousy that he hadn’t been the one to help, but shook off that idiotic green-eyed-monster. Hilly wasn’t Cisco’s property, and the counselor was a kid. A kid with a crush, if body posture told the story, but the brat was way too young to be any real kind of threat for Hilly’s affections.
“Hey, Hilly,” he called out as he drew closer.
She stumbled at his voice, and the V kid caught her arm, keeping her from a face plant.
Cisco growled to himself, but managed to keep the smile on his face. “Sorry,” he apologized as he walked into the open structure. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The only thing mitigating the fact that the kid’s hand remained on Hilly’s arm a little too long was that she regarded Cisco with wide eyes and a definite flush to her skin.
As he walked toward her, he saw the pulse in her neck also beating overtime.
Hah. See if you get that reaction from her, you little cur, Cisco scoffed silently.
“You’re early,” Hilly responded breathlessly, and he didn’t think it was because of the mat she’d just been schlepping. “I thought I’d have this whole place set up for you by the time you arrived.”
“Thanks, but you didn’t need to put yourself out,” Cisco lauded her. “I normally organize things myself before I give a class.”
“But you’re still healing,” she chastised in the schoolmarm voice that Cisco already knew was her fallback when she was nervous. “And I don’t want you relapsing because of something we have or haven’t done here.” She turned to the young man who was now shuffling his feet by her side. “Vishon, maybe you can take direction from Cisco and help him place these mats where they need to go.”
Vishon. Cisco would have to commit that name to memory as the kid with the crush on Hilly, in case he ever needed to dress the guy down for being inappropriate with her. Still, the youngster recovered fast enough, and turned a fake, but wide smile toward Cisco.
“Just tell me where you want things.” He tightened his body; his chest thrust forward. “I work out, you know.”
Cisco tried not to laugh when the kid did everything short of flexing his arm muscles to showcase his still-skinny, adolescent physique.
Damn. Had Cisco ever been that shameless?
Probably.
He cut the dude some slack. “Thanks, Vishon. I’d love your help. I’m healing from a gunshot wound, and the doc says I’m not supposed to do any heavy lifting for a week or so.”
Sooo…posturing?