Page 9 of Whispers and Wildfire
I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice. “Melanie?”
We stared at each other for a second or two. Although I saw her family around—small-town life—I hadn’t seen her in years. Especially this close.
The fact that she was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever known could have swept through me like a late summer breeze, stirring pleasant nostalgia. Even latent attraction.
Maybe if she had been anyone else, it would have.
But she was Melanie Andolini, my high school girlfriend and first love. And if there was anything she was good at, it was pissing me off. Even after all those years.
“What the hell?” I snapped. “You almost ran into me.”
Her expression shifted from surprise to defiance. “What? No.Youalmost hitme.”
“Mel, you pulled out in front of me without looking.”
“How do you know where I was looking?”
“Obviously not where you were going. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have pulled out like that.”
“You came out of nowhere.” She gestured emphatically to the road. “How fast were you going?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. Probably too fast, but that wasn’t the point. “I wasn’t going light speed. If you’d have looked, you would have seen me.”
“I did look. You were speeding.”
The truth was, we were probably both in the wrong. And no harm had been done. I could have pointed that out. De-escalated the situation and had us both going calmly on our way.
But I didn’t.
“If we’d been in an accident, you’d be getting the ticket,” I said, not bothering to keep the smugness out of my tone. Because I was right, damn it.
“Well, we didn’t get in an accident, did we?”
“Because I prevented it.”
“Aren’t you the big hero.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
It figured that the first time we saw each other in forever, we’d start fighting. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Still a pain in my ass.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and she planted her hands on her hips. “Oh yes, I’m definitely the unreasonable one.”
“I didn’t say you were unreasonable. I said you were a pain.”
“What’s the difference?”
Tension rippled through my shoulders and back. She was so aggravating.
My eyes flicked to her mouth, and I was suddenly filled with the memory of what those lips tasted like.
Fuck.
Anger surged through me like a hot wave. I opened my mouth to go off on her, but a car pulled up on the other side of hers and stopped.
“You’re blocking the road,” I snapped.
“Thanks, I couldn’t see that.” She spun around, whipping her ponytail, and stomped back to her car.
So dramatic.
