Love on the Lake (Lakeside 2)

“I’m not angry.” He tries to step around me again, but I’m right in his face.

“Yes you are! Your face is beet red, and your nostrils are flaring, and your hands are balled into fists.” I tap one of them with my finger, then fling my own in the air. “I was trying to flirt with you, and now you’re pissed off!”

“By referencing all the ‘lawns’ I’ve mowed.” He unfurls his fists and makes air quotes around the word lawns, then crosses his arms. “That’s your version of flirting?” he asks incredulously.

“Okay,” I concede. “That probably wasn’t my best attempt, but you fluster me! And I can’t get a read on you. One second you’re nice and complimentary, and the next you’re angry. What is the deal?”

His jaw cracks. “What are you going to do? Hold me hostage until you get the answer you want?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“Why can’t you let it go?”

“Not my style.” Actually, it’s totally my style. Or it was. But something about Aaron makes me want to push buttons and figure him out. Especially with how up and down and all over the place he is with me.

“You’re not the way I thought you’d be,” he snaps.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You show up here with a freaking metallic-pink zebra-print suitcase—”

“It’s cheetah print.”

His eyebrow rises. “Excuse me, a metallic-pink cheetah-print suitcase, looking like you stepped off the goddamn runway, all wounded bird—”

“Wounded bird?” I hate that it took him all of ten seconds to pick that up about me. Troy always told me I wore my emotions on my sleeve. I didn’t want him to be right, but maybe he is.

“You were on the verge of tears,” he points out.

“You practically bit my head off two seconds after I walked in the damn door!” I fling a hand toward said door.

He mirrors the movement. “Because you scared the shit out of me!”

“Why are you so agitated?”

“Because I don’t need complications in my life, and you’re becoming one!”

I feel like a sad balloon that’s been pricked with a pin.

Your family situation is too complicated.

I can’t be with someone who attracts this much negative attention.

You’re dragging me down with you.

All the excuses Troy gave me as to why he was breaking it off with me and why he’d started sleeping with my best friend. She had been the one to comfort him, to agree that he was right: I was too much of a complication for his family. They didn’t need my drama.

I step aside. “That’s enough. I don’t need to hear any more. You can go.”

“Shit. Teagan—”

“Leave. Please.” I lift a hand but keep my eyes on the floor. On his scuffed work boots. On my bare toes. I need a pedicure.

He sighs but does as I ask, pulling the door closed behind him with a quiet click.

I inhale to the count of four and exhale to the count of eight. “Way to go, Teag. Good job embarrassing yourself.”

My fingers and toes start to go numb. I head for the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet, scanning until I find my antianxiety medicine. I take a few deep breaths, warring with myself before I finally give in. I’m on the verge of losing it, and I would prefer for that not to happen.

Not when Van and Dillion will be home from work soon, probably asking all kinds of questions. Ones I’m going to have to dodge or lie about.

Whatever Dillion thought was going on with Aaron was very wrong, because he definitely doesn’t want anything to do with me.

CHAPTER 9

NICE WORK, DONKEY

Aaron

I stand outside her door for five minutes. Because I’m a donkey. A giant, stupid donkey.

So fucking stupid.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

“You’re twenty-seven years old, dipshit. How hard is it to tell a woman you actually like her?” Pretty fucking hard, I would guess, considering I insulted the hell out of her. Like this is some high school–level crush.

And after she basically bared her soul to me.

Okay. She didn’t bare her soul, but she told me some personal stuff.

And I shat all over that sharing by being a dick.

Because she called me out. And she was right.

I have a reputation in town for getting into bed with the women on the other side of the lake. For a while I got nice and familiar with those entitled women and the sounds of their orgasms. Past tense. At least since last summer, when shit hit the fan. And the cost outweighed the benefit, which was no-strings sex with women who seemed to think I was a shiny toy they could play with, consequence-free.

When that changed, I stopped providing orgasms to the sad, lonely women in their huge, empty lake houses.

But that kind of thing follows a person around for a long time, like the stench of garbage that’s been baking in the sun too long; it burns itself into people’s memories until that’s all they can see or remember.