Embarrassment blossomed in Rose’s chest. As did warmth. When was the last time a man had defended her? Or more aptly, when was the last time she’d allowed it?
“I was teasing her,” Toby added.
“Teasing her. Huh. You get ’em where you want ’em pretty fast, don’t you?” Howie muttered.
Toby leaned in toward Howard and whispered, though Rose heard the threads of it. “You let ’em slip through your fingers, don’t you?”
The men held each other’s glares.
Rose exhaled harshly, maneuvering around Toby. “Can I talk to you outside, Howie?” She stepped through the door and closed it, which forced Howie to retreat back down the steps.
“What in the world are you doing?” she whispered. “You’re crossing a line.”
“I’m crossing a line? What the hell are you doing?” he whispered back. “You don’t see the problem here?”
“If it has no bearing on this project, then no. And besides, there’s nothing happening here.” Keep telling yourself that, Rosalinda. “My private life is not an open book to you. Don’t you dare come at me as if you have some right to police me,” Rose retorted. “I have worked my tail off for this department, and it has always been my priority. Don’t you dare get bent out of shape. You have no room. Whatever’s in your system, go work it out. I’m not going to ask you again.”
She gave him her back and climbed the steps, swinging open the door. Toby was peering through the window, the RV curtain lifted up by a fingertip.
“It’s with my permission his grass-fed ass is even here,” he muttered under his breath. “If he’s got a problem, he can pack his shit up for Austin and call an Uber. We clear, Rose?”
No doubt Toby held an honorary doctorate from the school of left hooks and uppercuts. For all his plush furniture and expensive artwork, he didn’t strike her as the type who minded getting down and dirty if he had to, and he looked firmly at her now. She took a deep breath and jammed her hands into her pockets. “I appreciate you defending me. But Howie’s part of my crew. I’d like to be the one to handle it.”
He eyed her, then nodded once and glanced back out at Howie, whose face was boiling as he stared at the closed door, hands balled, then wisely walked back toward the RV he was sharing with Hunter, muttering something that sounded like “fuck you” under his breath and was barely audible through the screen.
“That the best he got?” Toby muttered, dropping the curtain and turning around to face her again. “That guy is angling for trouble. He still likes you all right,” Toby said, slapping his hat back on his head, winking again as if all of this was nothing.
Howie needed the field school to make his resume more robust, same as her. As uncomfortable as he’d made her feel, was kicking him out of her program the right course of action when it might damage his prospects when he moved on? And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, Howie was right. Involving herself with the landowner on a university-sponsored project could lead to problems. She’d been dwelling on that issue since meeting Toby.
“He might like me, but as I said yesterday, he didn’t care enough when he had the chance.”
Toby looked her in the eye now, a glint darkening his gaze. Was that protectiveness again? Odd, he didn’t strike her as the type to get possessive, what with his carefree attitudes about women. And they barely knew each other. What business did Toby Dixon have getting protective?
“What’d he do?”
She shrugged and turned to face the sink while sipping her tea. The sun had broken fully over the horizon now, and soon it would be time for the crew to wake up. She’d let them sleep in after their long haul to get here, having planned to take them down to the site mid-morning to give them an in-depth tour and start them out working at the crack of dawn tomorrow. It would get hot soon. Jeez, why did she have to start worrying about things that didn’t matter?
“Nothing.”
“I call bull,” he said.
She glanced back at him. He folded his arms. Obstinate.
“You don’t want to talk about it, then that’s fine. But I can tell he hurt you.”
She shrugged again. “He wasn’t worth my time. It just sucks when someone betrays your trust.”
“Betrays?” Toby quirked his brow. “The bastard slept around on you, didn’t he?”
She laughed wryly. Toby could see right through her apparently paper-thin facade. “Well, it was my fault, supposedly.”
“Your fault that he had a wayward pecker?”
“I should have established my parameters from the beginning. I thought we were exclusive. He doesn’t believe in monogamy and wanted us to have an open relationship. Fine, whatever, but he should have said that before he gave me a key to his apartment and let me walk in on him screwing someone else. Not afterward.”
“That sonofabitch didn’t deserve you.” Toby sat down on her couch and kicked out his legs, casually crossing his boots—damn fine hiking boots, by the way—as if the sonofabitch really didn’t matter.
“No,” she replied, forcing a smile onto her lips. “No, he didn’t. He hated that he couldn’t be first in my life, but honestly, if he thinks spreading the love is the only way for him to be happy, I fail to see how he could possibly demand I put him first. I don’t care what others do, and I definitely used to be too wild for my own good—”