Page 103 of The Woman By the Lake

“I’m glad.”

“And don’t worry about Angelica. I’ve never seen her like that, at least not since things smoothed out, but it wasn’t about me. It was about Ledger. She’s a female Bubbles in a way. She’s more scared of you than she is of me because she knows her strengths, and her weaknesses. She loves her kids, but she’s competitive, and again, she knows her weaknesses.”

“Ledger seemed pretty excited to see her.”

“He loves his mom. But Angelica had a problem with Kate. Mom, she doesn’t see as competition. She can’t steal one of Mom’s boyfriends or whatever it is that makes her feel like she’s come out on top. But she hated Kate. Tried to make a move on Kate’s man kind of hate. It pissed him off and made him sick to his stomach, and he told Kate immediately. That was fun times.”

Yuck.

“God, Riggs, this is awful.”

He drank the rest of his beer, then looked right at me. “I think you get I like to have a good time.”

“Yes,” I said, because I sure got that.

“I’ve never put anyone on Ledger’s pick-up list, but Mom, Kate, and now, you.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve had women. A lot of them.”

“Okay,” I repeated.

“But I’ve never done that.”

I squeezed his hand. “I know. We’re friends, right? Like you said. But I get it, even though she didn’t give you the chance to explain it. You had to do it because things have been a bit topsy-turvy lately.”

“Topsy-turvy,” he whispered, staring at my mouth.

And he kept staring at my mouth.

Um…

He was staring at my mouth.

And since he was, I couldn’t stop my eyes from dropping to stare at his.

He had a beautiful mouth.

Was this…?

Were we…?

He turned his hand so we were palm to palm and curled his fingers around mine.

We were.

Weren’t we?

I thought of the way he held me while we were in his dining room, looking at the lake.

The way he twirled my hair in his fingers last night.

The semi-argument we had on the ride home from Hutch’s about who was going to pay for Gia (she cost thousands of dollars, and I was loaded! and we left that on what I considered a temporary stalemate, but I believed Riggs thought he won).

None of that said we were just friends.

We weren’t just friends.

---