Page 60 of Make Her Mine

She holds the shirt up, rolls her eyes, which is stupidly gratifying, and says, “Okay.”

Ten minutes later I’m in the kitchen on my phone, pulling up recipes for spicy popcorn when Harlow walks into the room.

Her hair is up in a ponytail, her make up is scrubbed off, and she’s wearing my shirt. And only my shirt. Which, of course, I was expecting.

But I realize in that moment that my insistence on not stopping at her house and making her feel the fullness of being on my turf is very much going to backfire.

She looks hot as fuck.

She looks relaxed, ready for a night in, but despite the fact that my shirt is huge on her, I am acutely aware of her long, tan, bare legs, bare feet, and that there isn’t much underneath that shirt.

She looked gorgeous in that dress tonight with her full make up on and those heels.

But this is Harlow. The Harlow I’ve known for so many years. The sassy small-town girl I’ve grown up with.

Looking at her, I immediately flash back to so many nights with her hanging out at my house with Graham, before they were old enough to drive and go out on the weekends.

She’d look a lot like this, lounging on the sofas in our basement, or cooking in our kitchen, or goofing around on our back deck.

It also reminds me of so many barbecues, hangouts at the Come Again, street dances, and football games with our friends and family.

And it reminds me of how she looked when we were scouring the county for Alex the night he went missing, how she looked sitting up next to his hospital bed. She’d been rumpled, tired, worried, not caring at all how her hair looked, or what clothes she was wearing. She’d been fully focused on him and what he’d needed.

She’d been so fucking beautiful that night. Her raw emotions exposed, leaning on me, letting me help her.

Harlow can dress up. She can pull off updos and high heels with seeming ease, but this is the real her.

Of course, she usually wears pants.

“I’m ninety-eight percent sure this scrunchie is Ginny’s,” she tells me turning her head so I can see the hunter green elastic that’s holding her hair up. “Do not tell me if you know that’s not true.”

I pull myself together and grin at her. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure you’re right.”

She props her shoulder against the doorframe and crosses her arms, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out what exactly spicy popcorn is.”

She looks surprised for a moment, and I realize I just confessed that I overheard her comment to Ginny and remembered it. And that I am giving some effort to trying to give her something she wants.

But truthfully, if she was my girlfriend, that’s exactly what I would do.

She doesn’t comment on it though and just pushes off the doorframe and comes into the room fully. “You don’t need a recipe. I know exactly how to make it. Where are your spices?”

I point to the cupboard next to the stove. She pads across the room on her bare feet and opens the door, then stretches to reach the higher shelves.

And that is a terrible idea. Heat slams into me as my shirt rides up on the back of her trim, smooth thighs. It still hits well below the curve of her ass, but the move pulls the cotton up against her curves and, a better man might be able to avert his gaze, but not me.

“Is there any chance you have ancho chili powder?” she asks, flipping through the small plastic bottles of spices on the shelf.

I clear my throat. “I can’t imagine why I would.”

She turns holding three bottles. “I guess we’ll make do with these.”

I read the labels. There’s onion powder and garlic powder but she’s also got my chili powder out.

“But it’d be better with ancho and cayenne powder,” she says.

“You weren’t kidding when you said spicy.”

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