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“The Christmas trees?”

“Yes,” she said. “The Christmas trees. I was doing some research on different outfits who will lease...”

“I’m not interested in leasing anything,” he said.

“No, just listen to me.”

He straightened and looked at her, and noticed that she still wasn’t looking at him. “Quinn,” he said.

“No, you’re not listening.” She took a step toward him and held her phone out, but she still wasn’t looking at him.

“Just read this,” she said.

She shoved the phone in his face at a weird-ass angle, and even if it had been straight on, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to stand there and read articles with tiny lettering on demand like that. He could barely sit down and read when the font was altered to something friendlier and he didn’t have any pressure put on him.

“Stop,” he said.

“You’re just being stubborn,” she said. “If you’ll just look at it.”

She shoved her phone into his hand and looked at him expectantly.

He looked down at the screen, and it infuriated him to see the letters scramble. It was nonsense. Might’ve been in some alien language. Might have been in Russian. Didn’t fucking matter.

And right then he just about hated her. For being so damned full of her own mission that she couldn’t even stop to...

She just didn’t think. That was the thing. She thought everybody was her. She thought everybody was her with her exact same brain and her exact same array of choices. And she had no concept of the fact that things were different for different people.

She thought it made you less. But it made you dumb.

And he felt his anger rising.

“If you’ll just read the article.”

“I told you, I have no interest.”

“It’s just...”

“Look at me,” he said.

And he saw that it took a great and mighty force of will to get her to turn her eyes upon him. “Why can’t you look at me, Quinn?”

“I don’t have any problem...”

“Seems like you do.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“Got a problem with me taking my shirt off?”

“No. I don’t. I mean, I think it’s a little bit gratuitous, but I’m used to men and their muscles, and their frequent need to strip half the way naked just because the sun came out from behind the clouds, but you don’t see me climbing out of these overalls running around in my panties, do you?”

Damn. That put an image in his head that he didn’t need.

He wondered if her thighs were freckled, too.

Damn her.

“No, I don’t. But I do think that you should cool off, Quinn.”