The Christmas He Loved Her (Bad Boys of Crystal Lake 2)

She grabbed the sponge that she’d held and shrugged.

“I have nowhere else to be.”

And then she put in her earbuds, turned back to the sink, and proceeded to scrub the hell out of it.

Chapter 15

Jake had just finished sweeping up the mess in the foyer when his cell rang. He grabbed the phone from his pocket and glanced down. It was Lily. Again.

Shit. His gut twisted as he held the cell and stared down at it. This was either going to be a high-maintenance thing to deal with or bad news. And after the morning he’d had, he didn’t know if he was up for either one.

He felt like an absolute shit for the way he had treated Raine earlier, and having Lily ream him out would be the frosting on the cake.

He cursed and looked outside. It was nearly three in the afternoon and was already getting dark—though considering the low, mean clouds in the sky, it shouldn’t have been surprising. They were rain heavy, and a steady drizzle had fallen for the

last few hours. As another wave of water hit the window hard, he noticed the pings weren’t soft anymore. They were sharp, and that meant freezing rain.

He crossed over and looked out the front window, his eyes on the cedar hedge and the warm light that spilled into the gloom. Already the driveway looked like a sheet of ice.

His cell vibrated and chirped again, and with a sigh he held it to his ear.

“Yeah,” he said distractedly.

“Jesus, Jake, if you don’t want to talk, why the hell did you answer your cell?”

“Because I wanted to piss you off,” he retorted sharply. Jake wiped a dirty hand across his forehead and took a second. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?”

Jake winced. She sounded pissed.

“I’ve been texting you all day, and this is the tenth time that I’ve actually called, so I guess I should be grateful that you care enough to pick up? And when you do, all you got is What’s up?” She made the same throaty sound she did when she was annoyed. “Hmm, let me see.” She’d moved from annoyed to sarcastic. “Shit, Jake, thanks for asking, but not much. What the hell is up with you?”

Okay, she was more than just a little pissed, but this was Lily. She would get over it.

“I’ve been working my ass off here, you?” He decided to overlook her mean streak and get on with it.

“Me? Well hell, I’ve just had about the best day ever. It involved a pedicure, a manicure, and a massage by some big guy named Lars.”

“Lars,” he said drily. Lily’s mind worked differently than most people’s, and when she went off on a bullshit tangent, he knew things weren’t great.

“Yep, Lars…or maybe it was Gabriel. I don’t know. The point is, this man had magic fingers, and I could have stayed on his table all day, but since I had a date with the king of England, I had to pass up an afternoon with Lars.”

“You mean Gabriel,” he deadpanned.

“Or Gabriel. But shit, Jake…the king of fucking England.”

He supposed he could point out that there was in fact no king at the moment, just a queen, but he decided to let it go. He wasn’t in the mood to fuel her fire. Jake gazed out the window toward the cedar hedge that hid the stone cottage.

He couldn’t believe Raine was still out there. Christ, she had to be freezing. He at least had a propane heater.

“Earth to Jake, are you still there?”

“Yep.”

“So anyway, turns out he’s a huge fan of my reality show and—”

“Who?”