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“I’m gonna stop fucking around.”
“Yaay!” Marcus cheers.
“Don’t tell your wife.”
“Nooo,” he whines.
Chapter 6
Sidney
“What in the holy hell is goingon?”
“Your disposition coulduse a little work. God, the service here sucks.”
Callie laughs at her own joke, quickly apologizing when I move the basket with a turkey club and fries I just plopped down in front of her out of her reach.
“You can’t honestly be mad at me that Noah’s here. It’s fate I’m telling you.”
Noah Graves looks over at us from his booth up by the front window with a big, friendly smile and a wave. Callie calls me a few choice names while I shove a handful of her fries in my mouth, continuing to keep the basket out of her reach.
The fact that Noah just happened to show up at the Wicked Pub and Grub after Callie spent half the morning trying to convince me to give him another shot is just one more thing to add to the list of reasons why the universe hates me today.
Noah arrived in Harvest Grove last month, stopped at Callie’s coffee shop, The Jav-A-Lantern, to ask for directions to a bed-and-breakfast, and Callie took it upon herself to set me up on a blind date with him. Since she assumed the guy was an outsider and wouldn’t fall under one of the many Tanner rules of dating, I agreed to it just to get her off my back.
On paper, Noah seemed like he’d be the perfect match for me to work out some stress. He was good-looking in a clean-cut, boy-next-door type of way. He was a huge fan ofThe Babysitter’s Last Halloween, which meant we wouldn’t run out of things to talk about during the short time we would spend with our clothes on. And he didn’t have any aliveordead bodies in his trunk, nor weapons with which toobtainalive or dead bodies in one’s trunk.
Callie found this out when he let her search his vehicle five minutes after she made him a non-fat, soy, pumpkin latte. The fact that he let this woman he just met search his property for my safety was a big checkmark in the no-strings-attached-sex column, along with him having a last name like Graves. That just sounded like a Halloween good time all around.
When I found out five minutes into dinner that Noah wasn’t a tourist and that he knew so much movie trivia because he’d been hired as one of our new movie tour guides and was moving to Harvest Grove, it was an experience never to be repeated, even if I wanted to. Which I did not. He was a very nice man—don’t get me wrong. But he wastoonice, even for a one-night stand. He is so full of cheerful, sugary happiness it gives me a toothache just listening to him talk.
I let him down easy at the end of dinner, giving him the cliché “It’s not you; it’s me” speech. It reallywasme. He was too easy-going, too willing to let me walk all over him like an eager puppy, and would never in a million years get pissed at me when I did something to annoy him.
“Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”
Ford’s gruff, irritated voice when he found out why I was late for work pops into my head, and I shove another one of Callie’s fries into my mouth.
Every instinct inside me was screaming to call Ford as soon as I saw that flat tire, but I was too pissed and too stubborn to do it. It wasn’t the first tire I’ve changed, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Just because he’s in town doesn’t mean my arms are suddenly broken. Just because I’m so… freaking…tiredof doing this shit on my own doesn’t mean I always have to call him when I’m in trouble. It’s not like he’d be just a phone call away if I’d gotten a flat tire on November 1st instead of October 1st, and it’s best I remember that.
I knew it would make him mad. I just didn’t expect to feel so guilty about making him mad, whenI’mthe wounded party, dammit.
I have no shoes. I’ve rage-tossed enough baked goods into the garbage today that I should be ashamed, when there are starving people all over the world. I left my emotional support cat at home so she could learn more, fun words to call me. My failed one-night standstillwon’t stop smiling and waving at me, reminding me just how long it’s been since I had sex.AndI have a stomach ache from eating that entire box of pumpkin funnel cakes while I searched all over town for my damn shoes. I don’t have time to worry about hurting Ford’s feelings.
I’m mad, and I’m going to stay mad. Not even the fact that my favorite light-up skull headband was sitting in my cubby under the bar where I stow my purse is going to change that. Just because Ford probably roamed up and down Vine Street to find that stupid thing for me today and didn’t even make a big show about the fact that he found it, just silently slipped it where I would see it, isnotgoing to make my heart pitter-patter and forget he can’t do this to me every damn year, then expect me to be okay with it.
Glancing back over my shoulder while Callie rattles off all of Noah’s good qualities, another french fry I was trying to inhale gets stuck in my throat when I see Ford standing behind the bar with his arms crossed and a muscle ticking in his jaw, his eyes glaring so hard it looks like he’s trying to light Noah on fire from across the room.
He’s jealous.
The thought flashes through my head just long enough to make me bark out a laugh at how ridiculous it is.
While also barking out the piece of fry that was lodged in my throat—because why freaking not, universe, am I right?First, the chicken last night, and now this. The half-eaten piece of potato flies out of my mouth and lands with asplatat my feet, right when Ford decides to stop trying to kill Noah with his mind to look back at me.
His mouth tips up into a sexy half-grin when I use the toe of my stupid stiletto to kick the mush under the table to sweep up later. I refuse to like the fact that I amuse him and make him smile, and I quickly turn my head back around and finally give Callie her choking-hazard lunch.
Stop getting all tingly just because you can make him smile. You’re mad at him, remember?
Shit… why am I mad at him again?
