Chapter 13
CINNAMON AND SUGAR AND I THINK SHE brOKE ME
Rhys
Lucky, who showed up under the pretense of checking the propane tank, stays for dinner, which is good.
I need someone else here to keep me from doing anything stupid.
Like grabbing Margot and hauling her into the bedroom and tearing her clothes off and devouring her mouth and her skin and her pussy and basically any part of her that I can touch and lick and suck on and then some.
Fuck on a cupcake, she tasted like cinnamon and chocolate and temptation, and one kiss is not enough.
Especially after watching her split that wood.
It was equal parts funny and beautiful, and I’m just fucking gone.
I can barely keep my boner under control beneath the table, while she’s carrying on as if we’re practically strangers instead of two people whose tongues were wrestling twenty minutes ago.
“You don’t have a dog like Jack does?” Margot—Margie is asking Lucky as we eat roasted potatoes and carrots and balsamic-glazed chicken that I barely taste for being distracted by everything about her.
“Nah, I work too many hours,” Lucky says. “So I get to be a dog uncle instead, which is even better than being a real uncle, because real uncles have to change diapers. Plus, dogs don’t have opinions the way almost-four-year-olds do. Ask me how I know.”
“So that’s why you chose geriatric care? Because it’s easier than pediatrics?”
He chuckles. “Nah. Honestly, it picked me.”
She smiles at him, and I want to punch him for stealing one of her smiles from me.
He’s her brother. She’s not doing anything else with him. This is platonic. Family-ish.
And I still want to punch his stupid face in.
And I rarely want to punch people.
Get a goddamn grip, O’Malley, I order myself.
“You like working with older people then?” she asks.
“Are you serious? I fucking love it. Seasoned people tell the best stories. They’ve seen things.”
“And you have no stories of your own?”
The way the dude’s eyes twinkle leaves no doubt. “Might have a few. We have fun around here. How about you, Rhys? Accidental face and hair dye job aside, you have any stories?”
I look at him, then at Margot, almost forget the question, remember it when she stifles a smile that should’ve been aimed at me, then look back at Lucky. “Yeah. I have a story or two.”
“Anything about Decker?”
Focus, idiot. “I don’t sell out my friends.”
“Probably already heard it,” Lucky says.
“Then you tell it.”
“He’s no fun,” Lucky says to Margot.
“He taught me to chop firewood,” she replies.
“Split,” I correct, latching on to the one thing I have at ready disposal in my brain. “Split firewood.”
Lucky smiles at her. “No shit? You any good?”
“I girlbossed it.” She flexes a bicep.
He holds out a hand for a high five while my dick reacts to Margot Merriweather-Brown pretending to be Margie Johnson pretending to be a badass.
Yes, she did a decent job, but it’s not like I gave her hard wood to split.
And it’s not like she’s not a girl boss in her real identity.
Fuck.
Now I’m thinking about how I’ve always been a sucker for girl bosses and how I currently have very hard wood.
“But then the moose showed up—” she says, pausing when Lucky’s eyes bug out.
“You saw a moose?”
“He was in the backyard, and—”
“You saw a moose here?”
“Called nature, my friend,” I interject.
Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. That sounds normal. I’m getting a grip on myself.
Not the way I need to, but at least mentally.
Lucky looks at me. “I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve never seen a moose here.”
I shrug. “Maybe you don’t have the moose touch.”
Margot smiles, and I suddenly want to be the asshole.
I want to be the asshole who’s been assuming the worst of her because she’s an heiress lying about her identity, when I should want her to be the asshole so I quit liking her so much for all of the little things I’ve seen her doing for the people here.
Lucky looks between us.
Then looks closer between us, then starts puffing up his chest as he settles on staring at me.
Or, more appropriately, glaring.
Like he’s just noticed me looking at his sister wrong even more than he thought I was last night, when I wasn’t looking at her wrong at all.
And like he’s enjoying having a sister to defend.
As if she needs anyone to defend her.
Goddammit, why won’t this boner chill the fuck out? Why am I getting harder over the idea that I get to defend my territory?
She’s not my territory.
I just want her to be.
Because you didn’t learn your lesson the last time, dumbass? an intelligent part of my brain finally says.
“So I met this fascinating guy at the retreat center today,” Margot says.
She taps Lucky on the hand, getting his attention.
“He said that he raises cows back home, and one day he decided to write a children’s book about them as if they’re actually matchmaking grannies setting up other farm animals. Isn’t that adorable?”
Lucky angles another look at me before smiling back at her, suspicion still etched in his expression. “Yeah. That’s cute.”
“I love the retreat center,” she says. “It’s so neat to meet so many different people with so many different stories. You probably get the same thing at the nursing home?”
That fully distracts him.
Lucky launches into story after story about his patients and the things they’ve told him, including a few about his grandfather, who’s not a patient but still a seasoned citizen and also in a committed relationship with Lucky’s cousin’s husband’s grandmother.
My dick finally starts listening to the part of my brain reminding us both how dangerous dating high-powered women is.
Maybe just women in general.
One kiss and a few kind gestures don’t make her any less dangerous to the heart I’m never offering on a chopping block again.
By the time Lucky’s left after dinner, I feel like I have a hangover from the effort it’s taking to fight my attraction to this woman.
The attraction that’s one-sided.
Or if it’s not, it’s on a different page. Singing a different tune.
Definitely not a compatible attraction.
Margot orders me to let her do the dishes since I cooked.
I should go out to the garage just to not be near her, but instead, I linger in the doorway, watching her be domestic.
Lying to myself.
Telling myself that I’m fully back in the game of looking for holes in her story so I can tell Decker what she’s up to before she decides to share herself.
“Something on your mind?” she asks as she scrubs the glass dish that I baked the chicken in.
Entirely too much, in fact. “You do dishes at home too?”
“Yes.”
“Always?”
“If I cook, I clean.”
“You cook?”
She glances over her shoulder at me.
The curl in her hair has tamed this evening, but the dark dye job and the glasses are an oddly effective cover still.
“I’m a human, not a robot,” she says, parroting what she told me outside. “What have you been doing since you left your last job?”
“This and that. It struck me—if you’re here pretending to be someone you’re not, your parents don’t know about the triplets either, do they?”
Her spine stiffens.
It’s subtle enough that I wonder if I’ve imagined it until she looks over at me again.
The blue of the cabinets behind her makes her eyes brighter and prettier.
“I don’t like to ruin people—I much prefer to build them up—but I will do what’s necessary to protect the people in my life, and yes, that includes my half brothers.
My father would make their lives hell if he knew they exist.”
I shift in the doorway, crossing my arms while she goes back to the dishes. “Why haven’t you told him?”
“I’m sure you can imagine a thousand different scenarios, and whichever you want to settle on for your peace of mind is fine with me.”
“Are we playing poker here? You trying to bluff me?”
“I will tell the triplets the truth when it’s time. And then they get to decide what to do with that information. But that time is not yet.”
Yes, I’m poking her.
But it’s for a good cause.
And the cause is to trip her into saying something that makes me not like her.
Something that will get through to my dick the next time she does something attractive.
But every time I think I’m close to getting her to slip and tell me something horrible, she says the only thing that could possibly appease me.
It’s not annoying though.
It’s dangerous.
I’m done letting my heart convince me someone might love me and not leave me or betray me.
And it unfortunately knows no other way to be interested in a woman.
It’s all or nothing with me.
I shove away from the doorframe with a grunt. “I’m gonna go watch TV.”
“Which show?”
“Something gory and horrible.” I’m turning on something fluffy that I’d deny watching if anyone ever asked me if I’d seen it. Mostly because of who I’m shipping on the show.
Stupid romantic heart.
But at least it’s safe to ship fictional characters since I only watch the shows where they get their happily ever afters.
“You like popcorn?” she asks. “I learned how to make this amazing cinnamon-sugar popcorn off a food show.”
And there she goes again.
Saying the exact right thing that shouldn’t be the exact right thing but is.
I swallow, studying her closely.
Does she know?
Or is this a coincidence?
She lifts her brows, a silent please answer the question, Rhys.
I clear my throat and break eye contact. “My mom used to make cinnamon-sugar popcorn.”
“So…is that a yes or a no?”
The right answer is no.
If Margot’s cinnamon-sugar popcorn is better than how I remember my mom’s, I’ll hate it. If it’s worse, I’ll hate it.
But I don’t have to eat it, so I just shrug at her. “Whatever you want.”
I head into the living room without waiting for her to decide what she wants, closing up the hide-a-bed and shoving my blanket off the couch in case she does make popcorn.
Being a shithead is my only current defense against how much I like her.