Page 30 of Love to Hate You

She hadn’t seen Wes since the kayak fiasco, when they’d got caught up like seaweed in the riptide. When they’d actually spoken to each other like they didn’t want to rip off the other’s head. He’d been almost sweet with his concern and laser-focused attention. And she’d been, well, turned on.

“It was the adrenaline,” she assured herself. “Nothing more.”

Then why was she staring at herself in the hallway mirror, wishing she’d put on something more attractive than an outfit fit to clean out the garage? She ran her fingers through her frizzy hair, trying to tame it, then puffed her lips out like Autumn often did.

Nope, just looked like roadkill who’d sucked on a lemon.

“What was nothing, love?” a voice asked, and it took everything Summer had not to jump out of her skin.

“Jesus, we need to put a bell on you,” she said.

As if on cue, their phones pinged in unison, RoChance in full swing.

“You were saying?” he asked, and she tried hard to appear unaffected in his presence.

A hard feat, since Wes was leaning against the wall as if he were holding it up with his sculpted shoulders. He was in slacks that hugged him to perfection and a gray button-down that made his eyes look even more intense. And then, just like out of a novel, a curl of hair fell over his forehead.

“Oh, the talk with my auntie?”

“The one where she implied you wear granny panties? I can vouch for you that your choice of underwear is not boring. On the record, of course.”

“What do you know about my panties?”

“More than Dog Boy.”

“Gah!” She marched past him and into the kitchen, stopping shy at the threshold, surprise and gratitude forming a knot in her throat.

The rustic antique table was set, with a bouquet of flowers in the middle. All the ingredients were on the counter, chopped and placed in organized glass bowls, like this was some British baking show. And in a strainer in the sink were dozens of fresh clams.

“You went to the market?” She picked up a clam and examined it thoroughly. It was a perfect specimen of what a clam should look like. “And the Crusty Clam?”

And what had she done? Read on the deck, sucked down a cold glass of Pinot, and thrown on some ratty clothes.

“The market, yes. And the Crusty Clam only to rent some clamming gear.”

“You know how to clam? I don’t believe you.” She picked up the clams and swirled them around in the water, changing it out as sand escaped from the tightly shut shells.

“There is a thing called Google,” he said, but Summer knew he was full of shit. These were clams from an expert clammer. So he was either lying and had bought them off Benny at the Crusty Clam or he’d done this before.

She wanted to bet on the lying part, but her gut said that he knew his way around a clam shovel and a kitchen.

“Did you clam in your loafers and tie?”

He smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Yes. Yes she did. Because when he’d shown up for the race earlier that day and had been wearing cargo shorts that hung low on his hips and a faded Oxford tee, her mouth had watered. Before that she’d never seen him in anything but starch and stick-up-his-assery—like he was now.

“By the way,” he said. “You owe me a hundred dollars.”

“You spent a hundred bucks on groceries?” she choked. She could have bought all those ingredients and three bouquets of flowers for half that. But instead of doing what she was supposed to be doing, she’d gotten lost in a book. “Let me grab my phone and I can Venmo you my half.” Which was her grocery budget for two whole weeks.

“No, I am a respectable man and settle my bets. I lost. I pay for dinner,” he said. “But my time is valuable. So while you were primping—”

“I wasn’t primping.”

He ignored this. “I was in here waiting. You were ten minutes late.”

She pulled up her calculator app on her phone, did some quick math and choked. “You make six hundred dollars an hour?”

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