The Worst Best Friend: A Small Town Romance

Controlled anger has always been my shield, for better or worse, and right now I’m stone-cold pissed.

I have to hold it in, keep it in my head, focus.

Because it’s either hold the fuck on to this outrage—Option A—or kiss those angelic lips of hers until my demon tongue leaves them a smoldering wreck.

Yeah, I sure as hell can’t take Option B.

Dammit. Damn her.

She looks up at me through her lashes like she doesn’t realize she just came within a spitting inch of losing her life.

I was already reminded of her the instant I saw that fluttering mass of ginger-red curls flying in the wind as a strange woman came bounding through the mud, waving a pastel-pink shirt, trying to move Hercules the boulder-pig.

Believe me, he’ll get a well-deserved chewing out later. He must be taking escape lessons from Edison the horse. For now, I can’t decide if it’s the hog or her who’s got me seeing blood-red.

Rachel.

Shel.

Shelly.

My heart slammed into my throat and choked me at the sight of her and that damn pig, both of them trapped in Karl’s path as he’d steered the loader forward.

I was scared shitless I wouldn’t reach them in time.

I had to.

Call it fucked up kiss of fate.

Isn’t saving Shel Simon what I’ve always done? Ever since the bygone days when she was just Marty’s kid sister, a giggling shortstack tagging along behind us.

I’ve always looked out for her.

I’ve always been her friend, the older boy she needed growing up, until I couldn’t be anything at all.

What the hell are the odds I’d meet her again like this?

After this, I feel like I’ve got the universe wagging a judgmental finger at me, reminding me it’s not done hurling Shel into my life. Hell, maybe into the next life, too.

My throat burns as I blink at her, thinking about how I’d watched her grow from a rangy little nerd-girl into a lithe, excitable, blossoming dork of a teenager.

Does she still run her mouth a mile a minute when she’s playing history professor?

Does she still lay the law down on Marty like any know-it-all brat sister should?

But hell...where, oh where did she get those curves?

The friend—the girl—I left behind when she was sixteen didn’t feel anything like this.

The grown woman flopped down on top of me, caught in my arms, sure doesn’t feel like the Shelly Simon I knew.

She’s been away a good while. Long enough to transform her familiar wiry thinness into the perfect firm, yet supple curves.

Despite the clothes, the dirt, and the mad adrenaline darting through my veins, she fits like she was made to be my second skin.

Fuck.

Even with mud smudged on her cheeks and more clumped in that tangle of glorious red-brown curls, she’s dangerously adorable.