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“Must be nice to just”—Scarlett snaps her fingers—“snatch it up on a whim.”
The table grows quiet and I feel all eyes on the two of us as Scarlett stares me down.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get on the good side of this girl again.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
ANOTHER LAYER
SCARLETT
I can’t seem to go a full thirty minutes without hating Jamison Ledger.
Or it would be more accurate to say IwishI could hate him. He has a way of oozing charm and all this sexy hotness that has me drooling while also making me want to dropkick him back to Boston.
Like right now.
Before tonight, it would have been impossible to convince me that anyone could look as hot as Jamison does, in a fucking Jesus Hawaiian shirt of all things. The level of agitation I’m feeling should be evident in my use of fuckingandJesus in the same sentence, Grinny would be horrified if she could hear my thoughts, and so am I, but these are special circumstances—it is cool Jesus in the surf and sand after all.
Jamison looks so hot tonight that I’ve had trouble getting a full breath to reach my lungs and my legs have been squeezed together as tight as they’ll go, like that will keep me from soaking the slate blue lace teddy I made this morning…something else that I can’t stop doing since our night together. I probably have twenty new lingerie pieces that I haven’t even worn yet, and I’m putting in a lot of time at work and with the puppies. But every time the dogs are sleeping and I should be, I end up tiptoeing back to the sewing machine and starting another new creation so my hand doesn’t try to recreate what Jamison did to me that night.
I’d gotten in the habit every morning and night in the weeks after our night, but now that I have to see him every day, I just haven’t felt right about pretending my fingers are Jamison’s.
Of course, all of these thoughts are running through my mind as I’m staring at him, wanting to hate him, and I feel my face flame. His eyes take on a gleam and he licks his lips slowly, drawing in his lower lip with his teeth afterward. I swear he knows my mind is in the gutter even when I’m glaring at him.
“I’ve been trying to talk Scarlett into staying on as general manager,” he announces to the table.
And now I’m really mad.
Because everyone erupts at once, talking about what a great idea that is, and how that is so wise of him to make that judgment call so quickly, and…
“What about it, Scarlett?” Sutton asks. “Did you say yes?”
“Of course, I didn’t say yes,” I snap.
I push back from the table and toss my cloth napkin on the plate I haven’t filled yet since I’ve been so busy staring at Jamison.
The room goes silent as everyone turns to me. Jamison looks conflicted as his jaw tightens, his eyes unreadable as he looks at me, and it catches me by surprise when he stands up and turns to Grinny.
“Grinny, thank you for inviting me to dinner. It’s an honor to be in your home. I’m so sorry I can’t stay. I know when I’m not welcome.”
His eyes fall back on me, and I want to wither into the ground.
“I never wanted to come in and take the place of your grandfather.” His voice is calm and yet it does a number on my heart. “I’ve tried to come in and include you, make you feel a part of this, but you’ve resisted every step of the way. Moving forward, it’s for the best that wedon’twork together.”
He looks around the table, giving my brothers a cursory nod, and walks out of the room.
My hands are shaking, every part of me is shaking, and I don’t know whether to run after him or go hide in Grinny’s bathroom until I can catch my breath.
“So thingshaven’tbeen going smoothly between the two of you,” Wyatt says dryly.
I roll my eyes and Theo laughs.
Sutton clears his throat. “You know, we’re the ones you should be angry with, Scarlett,” he says. “We basically pulled a Granddad and left you out of the decision about the place when you weren’t in the will, thinking we were ‘saving’ you by giving you that check, giving you your freedom.”
“Most owners would have come in and started tearing it up by now, hiring a whole new staff…” Callum says, looking down at his plate.
“You’re taking it out on Jamison when it was all of us who made this decision,” Wyatt says.
