“We’ll see,” Uncle Jared snapped back.
“The house is ours,” Craig said with one last glare before turning his attention to the SUV and watched as the small group that they’d been waiting for climbed out.
“That’s going to leave a mark,” came the softly mumbled words that had his cousin Matt turning around and-
“Ow! You mean bastard!”
Jumping the hell out of the way as Reed leaned down and picked up the small little thing that had tripped over a root and helped her to her feet.
“Stupid boobs,” she mumbled with a sad little sigh as she reached up and dusted off her shirt, drawing Garrett’s attention to a large pair of breasts with, “Never Trust an Atom. They Make Up Everything,” written across her black tee shirt, making his lips twitch as he took in the rest of her, noting the adorable expression on her face, followed up with a second glance at those breasts and—
Felt the appreciative grin on his lips slowly die as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and had him looking over to find Reed, who was one of the kindest men that he’d ever met and who always wore an easy smile on his face, glaring at him. Garrett glanced from Reed, who looked ready to tear him apart back to the small woman beside him and felt his lips pull up into a shit-eating grin that quickly disappeared when he looked back at his cousin.
“Holy-”
“Don’t,” Garrett said quietly when his cousin Bryce started to say something that was going to get them both killed.
Bryce quickly shut his mouth when he caught the murderous expression on Reed’s face and as one, they averted their gazes to the right only to find Jackson, Reed’s best friend and a hardened Marine that they’d quickly learned not to fuck with when they were kids, standing there, giving them a look that had them clearing their throats and deciding that tormenting their cousin would be a very bad idea.
Deciding that it would be in everyone’s best interest to get this over with, he turned his attention to the reason that he was here, pasted that smile that he’d perfected for his clients on his face, and—
Found himself drawn to the small woman standing in the middle of the street, wearing baggie flannel pajamas and the oversized pink bunny slippers that he’d bought her for Christmas when they were fifteen and felt the smile slip from his face. It had been five years since he last saw her, but he would recognize her anywhere, he thought as the simmering rage that he’d once thought was gone surfaced and he found himself shoving Bryce aside and deciding that it was time to end this once and for all.
---
“You promised that you wouldn’t do this again,” Kristen said, shaking her head in disgust as she folded her arms over her chest and pointedly looked away, refusing to give him a chance to do this to her again.
She should have known better, she told herself only to shake her head in disgust, because she had known better than to trust him. But one look at those brown eyes and she’d melted. She was pathetic.
Correction.
She was beyond pathetic, because not only had she fallen for this again, but now she was stuck standing out here in her pajamas acting like a crazy woman and it was all because of the lying jerk that she’d let sleep in her bed last night. When he’d showed up at her door a month ago, she should have ignored him, but he’d been persistent, and she’d been helpless to do anything but let him in. If only she’d known then what she knew now, she thought, sighing heavily only to throw her hands up in disgust when he gave her that look that always broke her.
“No,” Kristen said firmly because it wasn’t happening.
“You promised,” she said evenly as she struggled not to look at him again because she knew that if she did that it would break her.
“You always do this,” she said, tapping her pink bunny slipper on the street, more determined than ever to put an end to this, because she wasn’t doing this again.
She didn’t care if he pouted or kissed her, she wasn’t getting up at the crack of dawn for him again. From now on, he was on his own, she told herself even as she felt herself soften and-
“I’m not doing it,” she told herself when she felt herself weaken because it just wasn’t going to happen.
It wasn’t.
It really wasn’t.
It-
“Fine! But this is the last time!” she said, as she turned around and found the dog that she should have named Satan lying on his back with his paws up in the air and giving her that pathetic look that shouldn’t have this much power over her.
But it did.
Maybe she should look into those assertive classes again, she thought as she leaned over and tried to pick him up only to decide that it would probably be for the best if she stopped feeding him table scraps.
“You need to get up,” Kristen said, shaking her head with a heavy sigh as she stood up and gestured back toward the house that was barely twenty feet away.
When he only wagged his tail, she narrowed her eyes on him and pointed toward the house. “You told me that you wanted to go for a walk so if you don’t get off your furry butt and get inside then I swear on everything that is holy that we will go for that goddamn walk!”
When his only answer was another tag of his tail and a whimper, she crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “No.”
A whimper.
“Damn it!” she said, sighing as she reached back down to pick him up and-
“Oh, god, no,” she managed to get out when she saw the man that she never wanted to see again glaring down at her. Before she could figure out how he’d found her, he was kneeling down next to her and whispering in her ear, “Playtime’s over.”
Chapter 40
“You’re dead to me,” Uncle Jared bit out with a glare aimed at Trevor that was matched by everyone else at the table as he grabbed the platter piled high with pancakes and took a stack. Everyone except for Joey that is since she was curled up in a chair lost in another book, completely oblivious to everything going around her.
Again, Reed thought, feeling his lips twitch as he studied the small woman that he had no idea what he was going to do about. He didn’t want her to leave, but at the moment the only thing that he had to offer her was a low paying job with questionable benefits, and something told him that wasn’t going to be enough. His only hope was that she decided to finish her sabbatical here, but once her grandparents’ house sold there was really nothing holding her here.
He already had the school board’s approval to let her finish out the rest of the year while he searched for a permanent replacement for Miss Dawson, but once summer came, she wouldn’t have anything to do for the last nine months of her sabbatical. Knowing Joey, she’d go crazy with nothing to do, which meant that he was going to have to figure something out and fast because he wasn’t ready to lose her yet.
“How much is it going to cost to fix the house?” Reed asked, glancing at Reese.
“With that historical designation restricting what we can do, it looks like it’s going to cost around three hundred grand,” Reese said, making Trevor groan with a muttered, “Shit!” because he was out.
“How much if you deduct labor from the equation?” he asked, watching Joey, who hadn’t said anything since Jackson told her that he had to get going over an hour ago. She’d wished him a safe trip, gave him a hug and a warm smile that turned sad, making him wonder about a few things.
“That was without labor,” Reese said, taking away his last hope because there was no way that she was going to be able to afford that even with his help.
“I can do it,” Matt said with a glance at Joey’s untouched plate and-
“Ow!”
“This family is really violent,” Mikey said with a sad shake of her head as she helped herself to a piece of bacon off Sebastian’s plate, who was busy reading a book that he’d helped himself to from one of the many stacks that Joey left around the house.