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“No.”
And maybe she said that too sharply, too intently. Maybe it revealed things beneath that outer layer she showed the world…but it was too visceral a response, too instinctual for her to be able to suppress her real response.
Which was absolutely fuckingnot.
Her father wouldn’t give it a second thought. He’d cut her a check before she finished the request.
But that wouldn’t be her doing it on her own.
That would be—
Not what she wanted.
“So, if not me,” Rafe said a few moments later. “If not Ben or your father or your friends”—he hadn’t suggested them, not outright, probably because her reply would have been even more intense than before if he had—“then who?”
She’d been saving for a while.
But if she wanted to do it all on her own, it was going to take her years to get there.
Which was the reason, when Cora had asked her to attend the gathering of rich people, she’d bought that new outfit, the new shoes—well, wanting to look good for potential investorsandalso, maybe a bit because the dress had been killer on the rack and even better on her body, showing off all the curves she and her tacos worked very hard for.
That made her want to grin.
But because it would give Rafe some satisfaction to know that he’d read her right about the dress and the investors—and maybe also, that hewasright, at least about the investors—she bit back the smile.
“What time on Friday?”
Rafe didn’t bother biting backhissmile.
He let it loose.
It was wide and beautiful andRafe.
And God,musthe be such an annoying older brother?
She already knew the answer to that when his smile widened, turned full-on grin, when he said, “We’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”
Ugh.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But I’m just saying…”
“Saying what?” he asked when she paused her shit-giving to jot down another couple of items they needed to have their teams come in and finish up or repair before the space was turned over to their tenets…
Who would no doubt find their own items for the punch list.
But that was part of the process.
One of her least favorite and most favorite, all at the same time, all woven together—least because the project was nearly over and they wouldn’t be in the space any longer; most because she loved gathering all the small details, loved solving problems and finding creative solutions.
That was her lady jam.
Or just jam, because it was weird, her referring to things as herlady jam, especially when they typically involved hammers, nails, and buckets of paint.
But she was weird.
And she was in her jam.
And…she needed to finish her snark because otherwise Rafe would get one up on her, and that couldn’t happen.
