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“I assume you don’t mean a fire emergency?” I arched a brow at him. “Right. A few times in my younger days, yeah.”
“Why?”
Rafe shrugged and thought about it over a few spoonfuls of chili. “Mostly because I knew I shouldn’t have slept with her.”
Interesting. “Because she was married? Ugly?”
He shot me a look. “No and no. But there were women who wanted more than I was ready or willing to give, and I knew it. Or the ones who got that look in their eyes.” Even now, I could see the guilt he felt, and I now understood it because even though Jackson deserved it, I didn’t want to ever be the reason someone felt like that. “Why?”
“No reason. Curiosity.”
His brows arched suspiciously. “No reason, or curiosity? Do I need to kick Jackson’s ass?”
“No.” Whoever said revenge was sweet was wrong.
Dead-ass wrong.Jackson“Who in the hell chose to have a rib cook-off all the way out in Boonesville?”
I had to work hard to keep my smile to myself at Reese’s words. She was upset—not that the town of Boonesville was so far from Tulip, all the way on the other side of the county, in fact. No, she was upset that after nearly a full week of avoiding me, she was stuck in this van with me.
It was enough to make me laugh out loud. But I didn’t. “Might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.” She’d done a damn good job of ignoring me from the moment I’d showed up at her restaurant early this morning.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” It was a reluctant admission, but one that made me smile all the same. She reached for the stereo and turned it on, groaning when there was nothing but static. “Damn radio.”
“I guess you have no choice now but to talk to me.” Something she’d grown good at avoiding this week, leaving just as I showed up or being suddenly unavailable. It would probably make a less secure man feel worse, but the effort she put in told my detective’s brain a hell of a lot more than she wanted it to.
“What would you like to talk about, Jackson?” Her tone was haughty and almost condescending, like I couldn’t possibly have anything important to discuss.
“Why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been,” she said automatically.
“Don’t even bother denying it, Reese. I just want to know why.”
She turned in her seat, brown eyes spitting mad and a denial poised on the tip of her tongue. “Is your ego so big that you can’t fathom that I might be busy and have things on my mind other than some man?” Arms folded, she looked the picture definition of righteous indignation.
“My ego may or may not be big; that’s not what we’re talking about.”
“It absolutely is,” she said, scowl darker and more threatening that a few moments before.
“No. What we’re talking about is me watching you, with my own eyes, sneak out of the back of your restaurant just two minutes after Maven said you weren’t available.”
“I was going to an important business meeting.”
“At the Gazette offices?”
Her shoulders slumped in defeat which, unfortunately, gave me no satisfaction. “No. Okay, fine, I was avoiding you, but I had a damn good reason. I felt guilty.”
Of all the things I had expected Reese to say, that wasn’t it. “Guilty that you took advantage of me after working me hard in the kitchen all day?”
“No.” She was exasperated, trying to come up with a diplomatic way to say whatever was on her mind. “I feel guilty because even though you totally deserved it, I shouldn’t have walked out while you were sleeping. I thought it would make me feel better, payback and all that. But it didn’t and I was upset. And guilty.”
“So, you avoided me?”
“Yep.” There wasn’t one hint of remorse in her voice.
“Real mature, Reese.” I would have expected that behavior from someone else, but not her. She was, I don’t know, steady and stable. Almost predictable. Not melodramatic. “Wait a minute, why did I totally deserve that?”
A low growl escaped that was so damn sexy it took me a moment to register that parts of me could be in real danger. “Are you serious right now?” I nodded, and that only made her madder so I stepped on the gas, hoping I could remove some of the minutes left on our journey. “You are an even bigger jerk than I gave you credit for being!”
Ouch. “Okay, well, why don’t we table the insults, and you can tell me what I’ve done to earn your guilt-inducing behavior?”
My words made her freeze for a long moment, her gaze focused on my face with disbelief written all over hers. Some sort of realization came over her, I’d seen it a dozen times from perps who realized they were caught, that we were onto all their lies and it was best to just give up the ghost. For Reese, I didn’t know what that meant. “What you’ve done? Oh, nothing, you only slept with me and then pretended I didn’t exist for the past year. Until your community service reminded you that I do.” The long breath she let out after the rush of words told me she’d been holding on to that hurt and anger for a long time.
