Page 179 of Story of My Life
“I will not be distracted by…aww! That’s literally the most adorable thing I’ve seen in my life.”
“Do me a favor and pour the wine, will you?” I said, moving to the sink to wash my hands.
Automatically she reached for the bottle then stopped. “Stop trying to distract me, Cam! And tell me what the hell you were thinking last night.”
“I was thinking I wanna be the one taking you out to the Fish Hook. I don’t want to have to hide naked in your closet again. And I’m tired of dressing like a fucking ninja just so I can sneak into your house at night. I damn near tore a hamstring going over the fence last time.”
She scoffed and reached for the wine. “Oh, please. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I’m too old for this sneaking-around shit.”
“And I’m old enough to know when I don’t want to be in a relationship.”
I shook my head. “You’re overthinking this. Nothing has changed. We can still just be having sex. It’s just now everyone knows you won’t be having it with anyone but me.”
“I don’t know whether to be appalled or infuriated by that emotionally stunted logic.”
I flipped the burgers. “Cheddar or Swiss?”
“Both. Why didn’t you just talk to me like an adult?”
I put down the spatula and backed her against the counter. “Because you would have panicked and spent a week overanalyzing the whole thing before deciding that us having a few drinks in public and only having meaningless, no-strings sex with each other was too much of a commitment. Then I would have had to put in another week of being extra sexy around the jobsite until you threw caution to the wind and got back in bed with me.”
“How can someone be so astute and stupid at the same time?” she mused.
“I’m right, and you know it.”
“There were better ways you could have gone about it that wouldn’t cut me out of the decision-making process completely.”
“Maybe. But I’m used to looking at the fastest way from point A to point B. And if these burgers and that pig work their magic, we can get back to business as usual a hell of a lot faster.”
“I think I’m even more mad now than I was before,” she said. But her hands were on my chest, and they weren’t pushing me away. They were rubbing small circles over my pecs. “Out of professional curiosity, how were you planning on being extra sexy around the house?”
“Work on the yard outside your office shirtless while taking breaks to dump water over my head.”
“That’s not bad.”
“Then I was going to come up with a ploy to use your shower.”
“What kind of ploy?”
“I was leaning toward spilling some kind of dangerous chemical on my skin and then letting you see me in a towel.”
“Also not bad.”
I leaned into her, wrapping her ponytail around my fist and tugging until she looked up at me. “Hazel.”
“Yes, jackass?”
God, I wanted to kiss that smart mouth.
“I like what we’ve got going on here, and I don’t want to share.”
“I’m not some toy or dumb action figure.”
I gave her a wicked look. “I’m aware. I’m not locking you up. I’m locking you down. For exclusive fucking.”
She rolled her eyes. “There’s a pig in this room, and it’s not Peaches.”
