Designated Hitter (Reedsville Roosters Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

eat first. Come on.” She canted her head toward the hallway.
    It seemed she was inviting him along. That hadn’t been her intention when she went looking for him, but the idea didn’t bother her so much. She spent so much time eating alone it had become her normal, and she’d come to prefer being in her own company than with someone else who hit all the right talking points but all the wrong buttons. Quinn hit the right buttons, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear him talk.
    He squeezed past the washer and dryer.
    She gestured toward the back door. “Drinks are in the cooler out there. We could share a sub.”
    He chuckled.
    “That funny?”
    “Sorry. My mind just went to a very salacious place.”
    “Do tell.”
    “Nah. Wouldn’t want to scandalize you.”
    She rolled her eyes and shouldered open yet another sticking door. She needed to add those doors to her list of things to have the carpenter look at…or rather for Quinn to have the carpenter look at. “You’d be surprised at how hard to stun I am.” Kneeling in front of the cooler of drinks, she rooted out an ice-cold bottle of water, handed it to Quinn, and then plucked out another. From beside the cooler, she grabbed the canvas sack of deli food she’d deposited upon return. “We can sit in the gazebo. No paint smell there, and there’s a little shade.”
    He folded his arms over his chest and grinned in that frustrating way that made her belly flutter. “You gonna sit and have lunch with me?”
    “Only if you tell me what the joke was.”
    “You really want to know?” he asked.
    “I wouldn’t have wasted my breath speaking if I didn’t.”
    “All right, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You said we could share a sub, and I started thinking about how it takes a special kind of person to be shared like that.”
    His meaning settled into her brain in pieces. He meant sub as in submissive . Even with her gutter-dwelling mind, she hadn’t picked up the double-entendre.
    She swallowed and resisted the urge to drag the cool water bottle across her warm brow. “I take it you’re not the kind of man who’d like to be shared.”
    He grunted and took the bag from her. He started walking, and she followed, somehow managing to keep her gaze above the waist. “Nah. I can only have one person bossing me around at a time.”
    “And do you prefer that? Being bossed around, I mean.”
    He stepped up into the elevated gazebo and set the bag on the bench. The gaze he fixed on her was both intense and wary—like he was choosing his words carefully because he had to speak, had to put that information out there for her to consume, but didn’t want it to bite him in the ass.
    Tell me, Quinn.
    The fact he’d filtered himself at all was a good thing. It meant that he learned, and was mindful of how his words would affect the people he said them to. Another thing she hadn’t thought him capable of.
    “Most of the time I prefer it,” he said finally. “Sometimes, though, I like to have a say. Some folks don’t like that. They like you to be one way or the other. Not both.”
    “You’re a switch?”
    The shock that registered on his face was fleeting.
    She suspected that he was practiced in keeping his expressions neutral, but he didn’t always bother. He didn’t speak, just sipped.
    She watched. She wasn’t going to direct the conversation yet because she wanted him to say as much or as little as he needed to without her leading him. Curious as she was, she wouldn’t ask any probing questions. Generally, she reserved those for partners she wanted to keep. She didn’t want to keep Quinn…or at least, she didn’t think she did. She was becoming less certain.
    He twisted the cap back on and raised a querying gaze to her. “I think it depends on who I’m with and what I need from them. I guess I’m a switch with stronger compulsions one way over the other.”
    Which way? She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t really ask that without