Page 58 of Shadow

She folded her arms. “Fucking watch me.”

His laugh was menacing as he steered her out of the auditorium by the elbow. “Watch your tone, Olivia. You’re still mine even when you’re mad at me.”

She tried to jerk her elbow away, but his grip was too tight. “Let me go, Cannon. I’m not a dog or an errant child. I’m a grown woman who’s allowed to be mad at her boyfriend. And I’m not sure if I want to be yours if these are the kinds of stunts you’re going to pull. I mean it. I went without you for so long and then you waltzed in and tried to take over. And I’m the idiot who got caught up in all your sexy charm.”

He dragged a hand through his hair and had the decency to look apologetic. “Forgive me. Perhaps I am coming on a little too strong. But that doesn’t change anything, Olivia. There’s something off about that guy, and I don’t trust him any farther than I can spit.”

She laughed. “You’re jealous because I married him. You know nothing about him.” She didn’t trust Mario either, but Ripley didn’t need that information. They could talk about that later.

“Can we please put this behind us and enjoy the rest of our trip? I love Las Vegas, but you’re making me wish I hadn’t brought you.”

That might have been a step too far. They’d done some intense things since getting into town, and she didn’t actually regret bringing him. But he was pissing her off.

“I get it, baby girl. You were right at the pool last night. We need to take the time to get to know each other. I’ll try not to be such an overbearing ass. But I can’t stop being who I am. And I don’t think you can stop being who you are. We’re a good match. Even when you are being stubborn. And don’t think I didn’t hear you call me Cannon again. It was fine at breakfast; you were insulating us from Mario. But I warned you what would happen if you used that name on me again. I guess we’ll have to stop at the gift shop and pick up a couple of notebooks.”

Her face turned red at the thought of him making her write Daddy over and over again. Hopefully, he wasn’t serious. It sounded tedious. “Come on. I’m hungry again, and I want booze.”

“Where do you want to eat?”

She glanced at her watch. They didn’t have much time. “Let’s hit the food court for pizza or Chinese food.”

Ripley snorted. “That crap in the food court is not Chinese.”

She laughed. “I said we could do pizza, too.”

He grumbled but nodded. “OK. Let’s go. But you owe me a good meal during this trip. We’re in one of the food capitals of the world and you want to eat in a food court. Unbelievable.”

Olivia laced her fingers with his. “It’s not that I want to eat in a food court, it’s that there are other things more important than food, and I’m doing my best to get to all of them. But we’ll go to a nice steakhouse or get sushi before we have to go back to D.C.”

That made his eyes light up. Apparently, her boyfriend was a foodie. Something she’d never had the time to learn about him before.

They held hands the entire way to the food court, and Ripley didn’t let go even when they were ordering their pizza with no sauce (Ripley ordered his that way too, insisting he might need to kiss her immediately after their meal and he didn’t want to irritate her tomato allergy.) or carrying their trays to the dirty food court tables.

“There’s a new show opening up at The Cosmo. Want me to get us tickets? It could be fun.”

Olivia pulled up her schedule and flipped through it. “Yeah, we could do something like that on our last night.”

They ate quickly, but Olivia enjoyed his company even if she was mad at him.

She blew out a deep breath and reached for his hand, wanting to smooth things over between them. “I’m sorry for not telling you about Mario being part of this event. I should have.”

He frowned but stroked her knuckles with his thumb. “That was two days ago, Liv. Why are you feeling the need to apologize again?”

She shrugged. “Because I can’t run or try to push you away every time, you make me mad. We’ve spent years only having small doses of each other. The only way we’re going to work is if we learn to talk about the things that are going to bother the other person. If I had told you, you might not have been so upset when he asked me to help him.”

He laughed. “I’m not sure about that. I’m still annoyed that he asked.”

“Are you annoyed he asked or are you annoyed I said yes?”

He sighed. “Yeah, OK. I’m a little annoyed that you said yes.”

She closed her eyes. “Why?”

“It’s not a jealousy thing.”

“Then what is it?”

He pulled his hand free and took another bite of his pizza.

---