“I’ll do all the work.”
Fucking hell. And I thought I was insatiable.
For once in my life, I take the mature, sensible path. I scramble off of Finn, my feet barely hitting the floor before hecatches me, drags me down for another kiss. “We need to talk, Lot.”
I stiffen. An abrupt image of his face last night, ofthat look, flashes through my mind.
Panic rushes through the rest of me, and Finn sees it. He softens. Tenderly strokes my cheek, just as gently requests, “Can I make you dinner later?”
“I don’t know,” I tease because teasing issafe, teasing iseasy. “Can you?”
For the briefest of seconds, frustrations hardens that handsome face. And then it’s gone, then he pushes me away, hissing playfully as he smacks my ass. “Get away from me before I try to fuck the smartass out of you.”
Now that, I like the sound of.
“Hm.” I stoop, curling a hand around the back of his neck, nudging my nose against his, our lips brushing. “Let’s do that instead of dinner.”
Finn groans against my mouth. The next thing I know, I’m on my damn back again, all two-hundred-ish pounds of him pressing me into the mattress, and this joyous,ridiculouslaugh leaves me that I don’t even fucking recognize the sound of. “Fuck it. I want breakfast instead.”
A knock on the door makes us both jump.
“Conjugal visit’s over,” Lux yells, and I think my boyfriend dies, just a little. “Downstairs in ten minutes or I’m whipping out the hose.”
Surprisingly, Lux more or less ignores me when I stroll into the kitchen less than a minute after her summons, having left an uncharacteristically bashful Finn scrambling to shower.
I guess she has bigger things on her mind than a boy spending the night in my bed—actually, she definitely does. That much is clear by the state of the kitchen table, covered in various sheets of paper and thick files and God knows what else that she rifles through chaotically.
“I have to meet the window guy at the A-frame ten minutes ago,” she tells me without looking up, adjusting the wire-frame glasses she only wears when shit is really about to hit the fan. “And then I gotta go to the bank, and pick Alex up from a play-date, and call those construction people about Ruin’s new paddock.”
“So…” I lean against the doorframe, fingering the wooden four-leaf clover that Finn pressed into my palm a few nights ago, that lives in my pocket now. “Not a good time to talk?”
Part of me hopes she’ll say no. That I won’t have to tell her where I went last night, to confess what I did, or at least not now. Even though a different part, abiggerpart, knows that if I don’t get it out right this second, I never will.
Pausing her frantic rummaging, Lux eyes me over the rim of her glasses. “Is this about wherever you snuck off to last night?”
Fucking hell. Why am I even surprised? “Maybe.”
“Tell me later.” Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she gathers the rest of the shit strewn across the table in her arms. “Tell me about your date too.”
“It wasn’t a date.” I move to the front door, pulling it open for her and kicking the screen door open too. “We went to the rodeo. The other hands were there too.”
One foot out the door, Lux pauses. “The rodeo?”
“Yup” I follow her out onto the front porch, stacking my forearms against the railing as she slowly starts down the steps, frowny and distant all of a sudden. “Y’know. Broncos and bull-riding. That Everett guy was there.”
Lux swears as she misses the bottom step, stumbling and dropping half her loot on the grass. She doesn’t pick any of it up. she just stares at it, swallows loud enough for me to hear. “Everett James?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“He hit on me.”
Lux whirls around so fast, she nearly topples over. “What?”
“He asked if we’d met before. Said I look really familiar. Shit line, right?”
She doesn’t say anything, and now I’m frowning, I’m staring at her hands—her shaking hands—as they quickly collect her dropped items. Straightening, she hauls ass to her truck and tosses everything in the backseat before throwing herself in the front.
