Love on the Lake (Lakeside 2)

And I’ve done a terrible job of trying to dispel those rumors.

I haven’t done anything to dispel them.

I’ve been happy to let them fester like wounds. It allows me to avoid relationships with substance. And the local women who I’ve known my entire life have zero interest in becoming notches on my bedpost. So it served its purpose. Until now.

There’s something about Teagan. Under the metallic-pink ridiculousness and that bright, sunshine smile and her bubbly personality is a layered and complex human being. One I sincerely want to get to know better. Because I feel like behind all that sunshine is some darkness. The kind of murky shadows that might match mine.

It’s been years since I’ve felt any kind of real draw to a woman, and now that I do, I can’t seem to manage it without being a giant donkey.

I bang my head against the door and grip the knob. Then twist. Just to see if she locked it behind me.

She didn’t.

I push it open and call her name, but no one answers.

Maybe she went out the other door.

I should leave. I can come back tomorrow and apologize. But instead of doing that, I take another step inside and close the door behind me.

The loft is one big open space, so the only places she can hide are the bathroom or the closet. The sound of running water tells me which location she’s in. I still haven’t installed the doorknobs yet, so there’s a three-inch hole where the knob should be, a sliver of pale-green fabric belonging to Teagan’s shorts visible through the gap.

Her fingers, with perfectly filed nails, appear in that hole, and a moment later the door opens. She startles. “What are you still doing here?”

“I don’t think you’re a wounded bird. That’s not what I wanted to tell you. At first that’s what I thought. You reminded me of the women across the lake.” I cringe at the look of disbelief on her face and rush on to explain. “You’re too perfect, too put together, and then you almost started crying, and I decided you must be like them, and I’d sworn off getting involved with anyone like that again. Because you’re right, I did mow a lot of lawns on the other side of the lake for a couple of years—literally and figuratively. I figured why not, right? They were using me because . . .” I motion to my abs. I don’t even remember where I left my damn shirt. “And I was using them because I didn’t want to get involved with anyone who wanted more from me than orgasms.”

She crosses her arms. “Why?”

“Why what?” I actually have no idea what I said to her. Mostly it was a pile of word vomit I’d like to flush down a toilet.

“Why didn’t you want to get involved with anyone who wanted more from you than orgasms?”

I would like to hear the word orgasm come out of Teagan’s mouth without it being related to the women I used to sleep with. “Because I wasn’t in the headspace for it. I needed uncomplicated.”

But it got really complicated because one of those women, who’d told me she was in the middle of a divorce, hadn’t been quite honest.

Teagan’s staring at me like I have two heads. “I only flirt with women I’m not interested in.”

Her brow furrows. It’s so fucking cute. She has this little button nose that scrunches up when something doesn’t make a lot of sense. Based on the amount of nose scrunching she’s done, not much of what I’ve said so far has made sense.

I want to be honest with her, but the difficult part is letting someone see enough of you without showing them all your ugly truths. I have secrets, the kind I keep buried. Stuff even my mother doesn’t know. But for some reason, I want to know Teagan more than I want to keep her at arm’s length.

“My first impression of you was wrong. I thought you were a pampered, entitled rich girl, but you’re not. I realized that the day I saw you working at the Town Pub, and then again when you managed to do all of this with no help.” I motion to the yellow walls and the wallpaper, which I thought was hella ugly in the hardware store but looks awesome in here. “And you make really fucking amazing muffins. I think you’re incredibly talented and selfless, and I wanted a reason not to like you, but I don’t have any, and I didn’t know what to do with that, so I acted like a donkey.”

“A donkey?”

“An ass. I was an ass.” I adjust the brim of my hat. “I think you’re gorgeous, inside and out.”

Both of her brows are arched. “Okay,” she says slowly, drawing out the word.