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Alone. Without my parents going on about the best time of their life. Because college for me was the furthest thing from best. Once I've made that happen, I'll take the next step from there.
“It was odd how fast he took off,” Mellie says, a frown coming across her features.
“He seemed pretty uncomfortable at the line of questioning,” I reply, recalling how his eyes strayed across to me then snapped back to Mellie with each new inquiry before finding their way across the sweater stacks to meet me once more.
He was definitely interested. In which case why did he take off like he had a down to make.
“He disappeared without making his purchase,” Mellie notes, before finally making a decision of her own. “I'm getting Anya the blue.”
She heads to the cash desk purposefully and my heart sinks like a boulder into my lower belly.
What was sexy Jared Helmsley doing in the ladies department? A man like him has got to be attached. I pull up the image I first had of him. Of his hand, resting so provocatively on a pile of neatly folded cuddly pale pink wool. Making shivers curl across my skin as I pictured that perfect masculine hand, broad and almost vibrating with power, cupping my breast the way it caressed the soft wool.
There was no ring on that hand but he probably has a girlfriend. Or a parade of them, a personal Miss America line-up similar to what Mellie described at college.
The thought of that hand cradled around some other woman makes me indescribably miserable. I feel like I've lost something which is madness when I've never even had it. He's so damn hot. The lust jack-hammering at my core for my dad's old friend, or is it nemesis?- is overwhelming.
We head back home. My twin sisters arrive home from college and the evening hurtles by with them telling Dad and Mellie about their exciting lives. He listens all ears, a glint of pride in his eye that he bestows on all three of his girls in equal measure.
“How's your life life now,” Anya turns to me with a direct question. “You over that idiot jock from the summer?”
“I'm fine,” I say. Why'd she have to bring Storm Weathers up?
“Sure you aren't smarting?” Anya adds.
“Of course she's not smarting,” Daddy interrupts her. “Because let me tell you any jock hurts one of my little girls like that again, he will not sit down for a month after I'm done kicking his ass. And I still have quite a right foot jab.”
“Speaking of jocks you'll never guess who we ran into today,” Mellie pipes in.
I can tell Dad's not impressed by the mention of the searingly handsome dude from his football team.
“Everything just fell into that arrogant jock's lap way too easy,” he grunts. “He never had to work for a damn thing.”
At least their reminiscences cover up the flame of pure fire across my cheeks at the mere mention of the sexiest guy ever's name. Although my sister does a second take at me and grins like she gets it. That girl never misses a thing.
“I invited him to dinner over the holidays,” Mellie says and receives an eye roll from Dad.
“Ooh yes, let's see this hottie from the old days,” Anya says, with a sneaky glance at me.
I toss her my most ferocious glare which only ramps up the teasing. This is what I mean about coming home. The roles remain the same. Even though I'm the eldest, my dad still thinks he has to go all alpha on any man that breathes the same air as me. My kid sisters never stop teasing. Or treating me as though I don't know how to deal with love, because I can't seem to keep it.
