Divided Interests (Southern Bride 3)

“What are you doing?”

She jumped and screamed. I didn’t bother to hide my smile.

“For fuck’s sake, you jerk! You scared the piss out of me.”

“Wow, your mouth has gotten colorful these last few years. Who are you texting?”

Paige looked at me like I was insane. I was pretty sure I was on my way there where she was concerned.

“I’m not texting anyone, if it’s any of your business. I’m looking at fabric samples for curtains.”

When she flipped the phone over to show off the fabric, I instantly smelled my grandmother’s oatmeal cookies.

“Those look like the curtains grandma had in here.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been looking everywhere for this fabric. I’m going to order it and make some curtains.”

“You’re making the curtains?” I asked with a laugh.

Paige almost looked hurt, and I hated myself for it. Like I hadn’t already hurt her enough and had to keep taking jabs.

“Why? Do you think I’m incapable of making curtains?”

With a shrug, I answered honestly. “I don’t know what you’re capable of anymore.”

She swallowed hard and looked back at her phone. I was an asshole. Yep. Grade-A fucking asshole.

I shrugged off my dickhead behavior and went for brute honesty. “Are you dating Milo?”

Her eyes met mine. “No.”

“So you’re just randomly going to hook up with him for sex?”

Something in her eyes changed. “Maybe,” she said evenly.

“You can’t. He’s my best friend, and you’re not that type of girl, Paige.”

Her eyes widened, not from shock but anger. I took a step back as she moved closer to me.

“You don’t know what kind of woman I am, and by your own admission only moments ago, you don’t know what I’m capable of, Lucas.”

My eyes roamed openly down her body. Yeah, Paige wasn’t a girl anymore. Fuck me, she still had a body that would make any guy’s cock come to attention, and I remembered feeling that way many times when we were dating. She had an incredible body in high school, but now she was all womanly curves. Curves that would bring a man to his knees. Paige had the kind of body guys broke their necks to get a second look at. In a word, perfect.

And I was a total bastard.

You have a girlfriend, you asshole.

I looked back at her eyes, my face still neutral so she couldn’t see how my body reacted to hers. “You’re right, Paige. I don’t.”

For moment, she looked like she might tear up. The urge to pull her into my arms was so strong that it instantly freaked me the hell out.

She cleared her throat. “I’m going to put up new curtains on all the windows. I’m going to head to the storage unit to see what’s in there. I’m assuming you would want to sell all of the contents of that, but lucky me, that one is all mine.”

“What storage unit?” I asked, drawing in my brows.

Paige looked confused. “William didn’t tell you about the storage unit that has a lot of furniture in it?”

My granddad hadn’t mentioned anything about a storage unit. When I opened his letter in the study, I had expected there to be an explanation for why he left the house to both me and Paige. There wasn’t. All that was inside was two items: a picture of me and Paige the night of our senior prom and a key. The letter simply said, “To my beloved grandson, Lucas. Find the chest and you’ll find the answers. Always follow your heart, son. It will lead you home.”

I wasn’t in the fucking mood to play games. I needed to buy Paige out before Bianca got wind of all of this. She was not going to handle the news well about Paige co-owning this house with me. For Bianca, Paige was a sore subject. It probably had to do with the fact that I had accidentally called her Paige once…while having sex. Yeah. Not one of my finer moments. And my mother purposefully slipped up every now and then and called her Paige. Didn’t help that my parents didn’t really care for Bianca. Hell, if I was being honest with myself, even I was at the point where I didn’t care for her.

That thought made me pause for a moment. I’d almost broken up with her before this stupid trip.

“No, he didn’t mention that in his letter.”

“Really?” she honestly looked confused.

“What was in your letter?”

Paige pulled out a folded piece of paper from her back pocket and stared at it. She chewed on her lip, then handed it to me.

“You can read it.”

I looked down at it. The fact that Paige carried my granddad’s letter in her pocket made my chest tighten. I knew how much she loved him, and he loved her. In the last few years, their relationship had grown, while mine had faltered. Regret and guilt felt like they were swallowing me whole. Bianca had hated coming to Johnson City, so I had made the trip less and less. My voice cracked slightly as I asked, “Are you sure?”