Page 48 of Smokin' Situation

“We’re going to have fun tonight, thundercloud,” he responded, leaning forward to look past me at my scowling sister. “Because you need a night out to shake that stick out of your ass. Unclench already.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have volunteered to be their buffer for the evening. The tension between the two of them was a lot.

My sister leaned forward, aiming a glare so cold I felt a draft at Baker. “I’m about to shove something up your ass.” Her hissed growl had me biting my lip to keep from laughing out loud.

“Let’s not scar the kids with what you like to do to me in the bedroom,” he quipped, and my eyes widened as I shot my sister a concerned look.

She leaned back into her seat with pink cheeks, and I wondered if Tripp might have been correct earlier about the tension between Reese and Baker being sexual in nature. The real question was whether it was unresolved or if something had happened already.

“On that lovely note, where am I picking up Rhodes?” Tripp asked, shifting the truck into gear. I shouldn’t have found the fact he knew how to drive a stick attractive, but I shamelessly ogled the way his forearm flexed when he shifted the oversized pickup into first.

“He dropped Emi off at his moms for a sleepover after his shift, so he should be back at his apartment. Just head to the station, it’s only a few blocks away,” Baker replied, typing a text message out on his phone. Probably telling Rhodes to head to the fire station for us to pick him up.

Elias Rhodes had been a few years ahead of me in school, but he was the quintessential golden boy. Honor society, a three-sport athlete, volunteered at the senior center and had been wildly in love with his high school sweetheart.

I’d only seen him in the bar a handful of times over the last few years since he’d returned to Sage Springs, but the death of his wife, Jasmine, had changed him. His five-year-old Emilia was the spitting image of her mother, and while I’d had a few classes with her in high school, we never ran in the same circles.

I couldn’t even imagine what his life was like. Thirty-three and back in his hometown, raising a kid by himself. Both his parents and Jasmine’s were still living in town, and I knew they helped him out a lot, but raising a kid alone had to be hard.

Rhodes was waiting in the parking lot, quietly climbing in the passenger seat and waving at us in the backseat while Tripp headed toward the road that led south out of town. The roads were quiet on the trip, and I sat twisting my hands in my lap while trapped between my sister and the man I wasn’t so sure she hated anymore.

Both were absorbed in their phones, but I had a sneaking suspicion they might be texting each other when my sister’s furious texting was countered moments later by a chuckle from the man on my right and a lazy response.

The two of them couldn’t be more different, but there was also undeniable chemistry between them, and there had been since they were children.

While I didn’t know adult Baker, I had known preteen and teen Baker. He and my sister had once been inseparable, and I wondered if they’d ever find their way back there.

I guess only time would tell.

“WhatcanIgetyou to drink, sweetheart?” Tripp whispered in my ear, his large, warm hand resting in the middle of my back. His thumb rubbed the skin just above the neckline of my dress, and I fought the urge to shiver at his touch.

Tipping my head back, I leaned it against his shoulder. “What are you having?”

He leaned close, his lips ghosting the shell of my ear. “Just water for me tonight. I’m driving and I want to remember every second of ruining this pretty dress later.”

Well, wow… talk about sending a girl from zero to sixty-nine in 2.2 seconds.

“What if I like this dress?” I asked, unable to control my smile as I turned to look at his smirking face.

“Then I’ll buy you another one, but I have plans for this one later.”

Lifting my hand, I rested my palm on his neck, my thumb absently rubbing his scar. He tilted his head into my touch, and I suddenly wanted to abandon my sister in a country bar with her arch nemesis and retreat to Tripp’s tiny cabin in the woods to make him fulfill the promises he’d been making all day.

“What happened to my good boy, who wanted to cherish me?”

He chuckled, tucking his face into my neck. “This good boy wants to be bad tonight and ruin you for anyone else, Rhey.”

“Too late.” He’d already done that.

“Come on, fuckers. It’s time to dance,” Baker announced, clapping loudly from his seat on the barstool next to me. “I didn’t come here to watch your foreplay. I came to have some fun tonight.”

“Dance with my sister, then,” I told him, enjoying how Tripp had wrapped himself around me possessively.

“What the fuck, Annie?” Reese practically shrieked, clearly not liking my suggestion that she dance with the man she wanted to avoid tonight.

Glancing over at her, I fought the urge to laugh at her murderous expression. “I’m going to remember this the next time you need my help with something.”

“I’m sure you will,” I replied, but maybe there was some merit to Baker dragging her out tonight. She’d forgotten how to have fun.

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