Page 11 of Tangled Up With You

“Awesome.” I kept smiling even though my stomach was twisting into knots all of a sudden. “See you then.”

I stood justoutside the diner, staring in through the picture windows as a sour taste coated my tongue. I was wrong for using an innocent person like a pawn, and I hated that I’d let my pride take control. Tanner had been nothing but nice, and I felt like a grade-A asshole for taking advantage of that. I might have made questionable decisions, but I wasn’t cruel.

“Shit,” I hissed under my breath. “Might as well get this over with.” I pulled in a breath and prepared to head into the diner to confess to Tanner what I’d done when I heard my name from behind me.

“Ivy.” I twisted to look back as he lifted his hand in a wave, that gorgeous smile firmly in place. The man caught the attention of pretty much everyone he passed by as he moved down the sidewalk. “Sorry I’m late. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

God, he was so damnnice.My stomach twisted painfully. “You aren’t late,” I assured him. “I just got here a minute ago.”

“Great.” His straight white teeth flashed. “Should we head in?” He took a step toward the diner’s entrance, his eagerness to get this fake date started as guilt tangled my insides into knots.

“Tanner, wait.” Reaching out, I wrapped my fingers around his forearm to stop him. “I need to tell you something.”

He tilted his head and looked down at me with curiosity but was otherwise silent, waiting for me to get on with my confession.

“I’m really sorry. I asked you here under false pretenses, and I feel terrible about it.”

“Is this about that guy back at the lodge who looked like he wanted to take my head off for talking to you?”

My jaw hinged open. “I—What?”

“That guy. What was his name? Connor?”

I gave my head a brisk shake. “How—I don’t...” I stopped to clear the frog from my throat. “How did you know?”

One of his massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It was impossible to miss. The jealousy wafted off that guy like the stink coming from my gym bag when I’ve accidentally forgotten it in my trunk for a few days.”

I snorted out a laugh at his colorful description while desperately tamping down the strange feeling in my belly his words had stirred to life.

“It’s not like that. Believe me, he wasn’t jealous.” He couldn’t have been, not whenhewas the one who snuck out that night. “But things are kind of... complicated.” My mouth pulled into a wince. “We have history that’s kind of embarrassing for me, and I’m ashamed to admit that I asked you here because he was standing there and I was, I don’t know, hoping to maybe rile him up or something?” I held my hands up at my sides. “It was childish and a shitty thing to do, and you didn’t deserve to be thrown into the middle of it.”

Seconds ticked by as he studied me with a measured silence that made me squirm uncomfortably. I was nearly ready to come out of my skin when he finally spoke, and what he said was the last thing I had been expecting.

“I get it. But we’re already here and I’m starving, so I say we head inside and eat anyway.”

My head jerked back in bafflement. “I—Really?”

“We have to eat, right?” he asked, casual as could be. “I don’t see why it should be awkward as long as we go in there with the understanding that it’s just two friends having dinner together. I can do that if you can.”

“I-I can do that too,” I answered, smiling genuinely for the first time in hours as the weight of the shame I’d been carrying around finally drifted away.

“Awesome. Then let’s eat. You can make it up to me by telling me what’s going on between you and that guy.” We started for the glass double doors, only taking a few steps when he stopped and looked back down at me. “Oh, and you should know, your plan totally worked.”

My brows dipped down in the middle. “Huh?”

“To rile him up? It worked. I’m surprised smoke didn’t start pouring out of his ears.”

My heart started to beat faster and my belly swooped. It definitely wasn’t the reaction I wanted to have, but I was quickly discovering I had no control over my body when it came to Connor Bennett.

After my confession, dinner went off better than I could have expected, and it wasn’t only the awesome food that the crazy old couple who ran the place, Sally and Ralph, cooked. This diner, along with those two, was an institution here in Hope Valley. They’d been around since before I was born, and people liked to say they’d be around long after the rest of us were gone. Sally and Ralph joked that it was all the fighting they did that kept them going.

On top of being incredibly sweet, Tanner was also funny and managed to make me laugh several times throughout our meal. Even when I was sharing all the ugly details of how things went down between Connor and me.

By the end of dinner, Tanner had managed to demolish two slices of Ralph’s famous meatloaf, a double helping of mashed potatoes, green beans, and at least half an apple pie. I was full just from watching him.

“Good lord. You really know how to tuck it away, don’t you?” I asked with wide-eyed astonishment. “Where the hell does all that food go?”

He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin that had been used to roll his silverware and sat back with a satisfied expression on his handsome face. “All I can eat during the season is grilled chicken and steamed vegetables to stay in shape, so when I get to cheat, I cheat big.”

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