Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Lennix
Iwould have gladly told him off right then and there, if we had been alone.
But part of hiding what had happened between us was pretending like everything was fine in front of my family.
The only ones at that table who had any idea were me, Raylan, and Rae, and I wanted to keep it that way.
If we started fighting like cats and dogs, they would start asking questions.
The smile I gave him was hard and brittle, and I was sure he could read the prominent thought rolling around in my head: I want to claw your eyes out.
But I did my best to tamp down my rage. Swallowing my pride, I pulled out the chair beside him and sat down, scooting it over a couple inches to put more space between us.
“So how’s the brewery doing, sweetie?” Mom asked as everybody helped themselves to the spread she’d set out on the table.
My mouth watered at the smells of the delicious dinner I was about to consume.
If there was one meal in particular that my mother excelled at making, it was her lasagna, and the large pan at the center of the table, surrounded by a basket of homemade garlic bread and a huge bowl of salad, was calling my name.
I tore the corner off my piece of garlic bread as I answered, “It’s really good. Tours are steady, and the tasting room stays pretty busy. I talked to Earl the other day, and he thinks the new fall brew he’s been working on will be ready in a couple weeks.”
Zach shook his head at me from across the table as he shoveled a bite of lasagna into his mouth. “I still can’t believe you hired that guy.”
Earl was the brewmaster I finally hired after months and months of interviews and applications and one miss after another with everyone we tried putting into that position before him.
I’d questioned my sanity at hiring him at first—the man was a moody bastard who seemed to live in a perpetual state of PMS. But he made some of the best beer I’d ever tasted, so, for the most part, I let his attitude slide.
I shrugged and popped the piece of bread into my mouth.
It was soft and flaky and melted like butter on my tongue.
“When it comes to Earl, I learned that genius breeds bitchiness. Took us a little while, but we found our flow. He promised to keep his tantrums to a minimum and I swore I wouldn’t make his life a waking horror. ”
I smiled unabashedly at my brother, enjoying the look of fear in his eyes as my mom and grandma snickered.
I’d been raised by strong females to know my worth and to know my strengths.
And one of my strengths was getting revenge on a person when they pissed me off.
Something my big brother was all too familiar with.
He’d been the victim of my revenge the few times he’d tried to prank me growing up.
It never ended well for him, and he learned quickly that I wasn’t one to be pranked.
The words I remember being thrown around were “psychological torture” and “sociopath”.
“I can’t believe there’s someone out there with a bigger attitude than you.”
I narrowed my eyes and slowly swiveled my head in Raylan’s direction as he lifted his glass of iced tea to his lips and took a drink.
From this close, I could see those flecks of silver flashing in his blue eyes, and I knew he was trying to push my buttons on purpose to get a rise out of me. He was enjoying it.
“Wonders never cease,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. The smile I wore undoubtedly looked feral. The grip I had on my fork was so tight it was a wonder I didn’t bend it in half as I stabbed at my lasagna with the same force I wanted to use to stick it in Raylan’s thigh.
Speaking of his thigh . . . I jumped in my seat when Raylan’s leg suddenly pressed against mine. The wine I just took a sip of went down the wrong way, causing me to choke and sputter.
“Honey, you okay?” Dad asked, eyeing me with concern that I quickly waved off.
“Fine,” I croaked, nearly choking again when Raylan’s hand came to rest on my back.
He patted it like he was trying to help, but just that smallest touch was enough to set my entire body ablaze.
It was pathetic, really, and I needed my little infatuation to come to an end so I could move the hell on with my life.
As discreetly as possible, I shifted my chair over a little farther, trying to reclaim some of the space between us that he had encroached on without me noticing.
“Oh!” At her sudden and unexpected burst of exuberance, I looked across the table to Rae and could see the wheels spinning in her head as she desperately tried to latch onto something to change the subject and keep the peace. “How’s Mitch?”
I coughed, nearly choking on my wine again.
I put the glass down and pushed it out of the way before I accidentally drowned myself at my parents’ dinner table.
Out of all the topics she could have switched to, that had to have been one of the worst choices.
Mainly because I hadn’t told anyone in my family I’d been seeing Mitch in the first place, let alone that I’d already ended it.
“Mitch?” Mom sat up straighter, her expression bright and hopeful. Now that one of her kids was happily married and settled down, she desperately wanted the same thing for me. “Who’s Mitch?”
Rae’s eyes widened for a second. That was all the time it took for the two of us to hold a silent conversation.
Oh shit. You didn’t tell them about Mitch?
I pursed my lips as the skin around my eyes tightened. Nope. But it looks like the cat’s out of the bag now.
“Ooh,” my grandmother cooed. “Do you have yourself a new boyfriend?”
I could have sworn I felt Raylan tense up beside me, but did my best to ignore it. Whatever his reaction, it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care what he thought. At least that was what I kept telling myself.
“You mean Mitch Olsen?” Zach asked around the bite he’d just taken before I could get a word in edgewise. His brows slammed together as he placed his fork down on his plate. I knew the face he was making. That was his overprotective big brother face. “Isn’t he a little old for you?”
That question hit a little too close for comfort. “He’s thirty,” I shot back defensively.
“Yeah. Too damn old.”
I was just about to rip my big brother a new one when Raylan chimed in. “Wait, you mean that loser from the bar a few months back? The one you exchanged numbers with?”
I whipped my head around to face Raylan.
“He’s not a loser,” I snapped sharply. That was the truth.
Mitch wasn’t a loser, it just hadn’t worked out between us.
But it wasn’t a need to defend Mitch that drove me so much as my desire to argue with Raylan every chance I got.
It was a tit-for-tat thing between us. A weird, twisted push and pull.
If he liked to push my buttons, I liked to push his right back and just as hard.
“I’ll have you know, he’s an incredibly sweet guy.”
“And cute too,” Rae added, waggling her eyebrows.
I had to hand it to her. At least she was trying to help. She was failing miserably, but it was the thought that counted.
“He isn’t that cute,” Zach muttered childishly.
Rae rolled her eyes and smacked his arm with the back of her hand. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
This conversation had really gotten away from me.
“I agree, Rae. He is cute,” I shot my brother a petulant smirk.
“But no,” I hurried to add before my mom and grandma could get their hopes up any higher than they probably already were.
“He isn’t my boyfriend. Well, not anymore.
We were seeing each other for a while, but . . . it didn’t work out.”
Because of the asshole sitting beside me.
Zach sat back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling in that annoying big brother way. “Yeah, well, I still think he was too damn old for you.”
“Hello, hypocrite! Have you forgotten that your wife is only a year older than me?” I raised my brows at his audacity.
“Yeah, well . . . that’s different.”
I sputtered in bewilderment. “How?”
“Because you’re you. And my little sister. And I’m still capable of beating the shit out of anyone I don’t think is good enough for you.”
My brother was absolutely ridiculous.
“Oh, stop that,” Mom scolded. “Your sister isn’t a little kid anymore, Zach. She’s a grown woman.”
As if this whole evening couldn’t possibly get more uncomfortable, we were now discussing one of the very excuses Raylan used to shoot me down.
I would have given anything right then for a hole to open in the floor beneath me so I didn’t have to suffer through one more second of the world’s most awkward family dinner.
Raylan chose that exact moment to lift his arm and drape it over the back of my chair. The move appeared so casual I would have thought he did it without realizing. If I hadn’t felt my chair give a slight jolt as he used his grip to pull me back toward him.
I scanned the table to make sure no one noticed. Luckily it seemed that everyone had broken off into their own conversations.
I leaned toward him and lowered my voice to a whisper, hissing, “What the hell are you doing?”
Those silvery-blue eyes of his met mine, and I struggled to stay afloat. I couldn’t afford to keep drowning in that gaze.
His features were awash with innocence that I knew was a lie. “I didn’t do anything.” He was messing with me again. Pushing my buttons. I knew then that I was going to be up half the night plotting ways to get back at him.
I narrowed my eyes, glaring at his stupid, smirking face as I tried to think up some cutting remark when I was interrupted by Zach clearing his throat loudly and obnoxiously in an effort to get everyone’s attention.
I turned my focus back to him, noticing the look of sheer joy that swept across his expression as he smiled down at Rae.