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She frowns. “This what? I can’t taste test with the chef.”
“You were flirting.”
“I’m allowed to flirt, and I wasn’t.”
But I’ve had enough, and I grab her arm dragging her down off the porch and into the backyard to an old swing.
She feels good beneath my hand, warm. Solid, like something I need. I let her go.
“So,” I say, “what the fuck is your problem?”
Chapter Seven
Sarah
The last thing I need right now is to see or be near Leland.
He’s the kind of creature that stirs things in me, even when he’s like this, sparking with power. Lean and tall and all man—overpowering.
Oh God.
The last thing I want is him, because I do. I want him. Regardless of what I know about the kind of man he is, I want him. More than anything. And now he’s furious at me for what? Laughing with Jonah. For flirting with the chef?
I’d love to think that it’s because he wants me, too, but he doesn’t. I learned years ago that a man can want you as his and not want you. Like my ex—
Like Billy.
Crap.
It all comes tumbling down on me.
That thing I’m trying to hold at bay, the knowledge taking me over.
I’m still married.
To a man I don’t want. A man I haven’t seen in years. A man I don’t like, and who I regret ever being blinded by his charm and marrying him. Thing is, I might not have seen him and gone long periods of time without thinking of him, but according to him, he’s thought of me.
He knows where I am. All of it, there in his handwriting.
The letter was so Billy.
And I want to shower and scrub myself clean. Has he been watching me all these years? It sure sounded like it, and he said he liked having a wife, even if we weren’t together. I’m going to have to find a lawyer, put the divorce my idiotic little twenty-two-year-old self thought had happened into action, and see it through.
I’m more than aware I’m face to face with a furious lawyer, but he’s the last person I want to help me. But he’s most likely the only one who can assist unless I look elsewhere.
Pathetic, that’s what I am. Completely pathetic. I’m the one people rely on to support them, to come into battle and defend. I’m the strong shoulder and the voice of reason. And yet I’ve got a stupid situation on my hands—starring me—that eats at me.
Dakota would rip into me if I told her. Not because she’d think I’m weak or to blame, but because I didn’t come to her sooner.
But I’m not going to turn to her regarding this. She’s got so much on her plate. The whole bullshit with Alpine Energy, getting the resort off the ground, and an upcoming marriage she doesn’t know about.
In the low light out in the backyard, Leland paces in front of me, looking like a wild, caged animal that’s hungry. He slides me a look. “I get it, I do. Wait. No, actually, I don’t.”
“What—”
“You do your thing, Sarah. Really. We piss each other off even though there’s something there and I know you can fuckingfeel it.” He pushes his hand through his hair as he comes to a stop. “But that was just too much.”
“Leland, I thought . . .” No way am I bringing up Billy. I don’t even know what I thought. I thought that since Billy’s on my mind that he somehow knows through osmosis, that it? “What are you talking about?”
