Frenemies

I blinked at him.

And waited.

“Did you?” I said after a moment.

“Well, yeah. We’d been up all night, and I wanted a coffee and Fran wanted sleep.”

“It’s gone right over your head, hasn’t it?”

“What has?”

“She said that and bribed you right after. With coffee.”

He peered over his shoulder at me for a moment, and I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain as it occurred to him that his mom had proved her point within seconds of her words.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, putting down a knife. “You’re right.”

Bless him. “How did you graduate law school if you can’t even recognize bribery from your own mother?”

“I slept with my professor, obviously.”

I gave him a flat look.

“He was seventy. It wasn’t all that enjoyable.”

Rolling my eyes, I stood up and took my empty mug to the sink. “And that’s enough of you for today.”

He laughed, turning around and meeting my eyes. “Oh, come on. I can see you’re enjoying talking to me again.”

“I’d rather cuddle a coyote.”

“I bite on request.”

“Mason.”

“Imogen.”

I folded my arms across my chest and stared at him. “What?”

“Would it kill you to say the last twenty minutes haven’t been so bad?”

“It might. Why risk it?”

“What’s life without a little risk?”

“Safe, secure, and probably a lot less deadly, for a start.”

He laughed and pulled Maya’s pancake out of the toaster to let it cool for a second. “Also, a bit more boring, less exciting, and potentially vindicating for me, because if you don’t admit it, I know it’s true.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What if I do say I enjoyed talking to you? How do you know I wasn’t lying?”

He planted one hand flat on the counter next to me and leaned forward ever so slightly, just enough that I could smell the coffee on his breath and see flecks of blue-black in his irises. “Because your eyes are sparkling.”

“Eyes do that. It’s thanks to a little thing called tear ducts.”

“Don’t be awkward, Imogen.”

“‘Don’t be awkward, Imogen.’ At what point in all the time we once spent together did you think I would ever not be awkward?”

“I can think of plenty of times you weren’t awkward. Granted, you usually had your legs around my waist and your nails raking my shoulders to shreds, but you weren’t awkward.”

Heat flushed to my cheeks. That was not how my morning needed to continue. “Stop talking like that. It’s in the past.”

“Memories last forever.” He pushed away with a shrug and went to the fridge where he pulled out a can of whipped cream and strawberries. “You said the past brought back memories for you. It did for me, too.”

“It brought back memories of how you hurt me, not how hard you screwed me on a Saturday night.”

He snorted, but it quickly turned into a cough that made him back up from Maya’s pancake before he coughed all over it. “And a Monday, and a Tuesday, and a—”

“All right, all right. Feed your child before she starts a mutiny.”

His laugh sent a shiver down my spine, but he turned and quickly sliced two strawberries. After placing them on the pancake, he added some whipped cream and cut it into four pieces.

He tossed a wink my way before turning around and disappearing through the door, Maya’s plate in hand.

I slumped against the counter. What the hell was I doing here in his house? Talking to him? Enjoying it?

I was going to kill Grandma for making me bring pancakes. The woman was a mastermind, I swear. She knew what she was doing when she decided to make pancakes this morning, and I was going to find out if church was actually canceled or if it was her being a heathen.

I was willing to bet on the latter at this point.

I rubbed a hand down my face and straightened up. I’d showered last night after my fight with the grass, but I felt like I needed another one. Showering helped get my thoughts straight, and right now, I desperately needed that.

“Huh. I thought you would have left while you had the chance.”

“Damn it. I missed my chance.” I turned around and looked at him. “I was considering whether or not I wanted to try being friends with you.”

“And?”

“It was going well until I caught sight of that.” I pointed to the fucking clown that’d given me a heart attack yesterday. “Now you can fuck yourself.”

He laughed. It took him mere seconds to cross the room and reach me, leaving only a few inches of space between us. “If you’d done that to me, you’d think you were a genius.”

“Moot point.” It took everything I had to control my breathing so he didn’t see how affected I was by his closeness. “You almost killed me with fear. It’s unforgivable. You’re lucky I opened it before I started my class, or you’d have killed my students, too.”