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Even after my sugar infusion, I didn’t have an answer for Lara. Was I falling for him? I couldn’t come up with a reply. Too many conflicting thoughts pulled me in too many directions.
The words yes and no battled to escape, and in the end, I mustered a lame shrug as my answer.
Facing a shitty choice, I did what any woman who had been trying to limit her carb consumption for two decades would do: I took another bite. Lara put a hand on her hip and rolled her eyes, unimpressed by my choice to hide behind a mouth full of stolen baked goods.
“Those are for the sale.” She pointed to the half-eaten cereal bar.
Zero remorse over here for stealing from the ball team. I needed this sugar rush more than the kids needed the two bucks. Later, I’d put some cash in the till to get square for this and any other emotional support junk food I consumed today. This was a career crisis sundae topped with a morally gray cherry of romantic confusion. It screamed for junk food.
“I asked a simple question. Are you falling for him?”
“Does it matter?” I sounded desolate.
“Of course it matters. If you want him, go for it.”
I shook my head. “Can you imagine the way people would talk?”
There was the big ugly truth. I cared about what people would say. Too much, probably, but I had to live here. Wilson would leave and go back to California. I’d weather the gossip storm alone—again.
“Fuck ‘em.” Lara sounded just like her dad, the crusty lifelong bartender. The curse word spat out like a bullet from a gun. I almost laughed and cried.
“I can’t be the Realtor who sleeps with a client. It’s not me.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “And I can’t quit the TV show or give up the commission.” She knew how much paying for Bailey’s college meant to me. The pressure of reality rounded my shoulders and pressed my chin to my chest.
As depressing as it was, I had my answer. I couldn’t mess up my chance to close the deal on Blue Star Ranch for a roll in the hay.
I hated adulting.
“Fair enough.” She gave me a weak smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes. I was glad to have her to share in my misery.
The half a rice crispy treat I’d devoured was like a ton of sticky-sweet remorse-laden bricks resting in my belly. At least I only had junk food remorse and not sex with Wilson remorse. I’d have to tell him... something. End it before it went any further.
The kiss we had shared on the hilltop had been earth-shattering. The way he’d taken care of my sunburn last night was a dream come true. And this morning, he rocked my world. The best non-sex I’d ever had. Fun and passionate. Explosive and eye-opening. I wanted more.
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, fighting off the twinge of a threatening headache.
“Damn, girl, this sucks.” Lara leaned in and gave me a delicate one-armed hug, careful to avoid my sunburn. “You know what your grandma says. It’s good to want things, but that doesn’t mean the thing you want is the right thing.”
Grandma’s wisdom. Words that, as a pair of single moms, we’d repeated to each other more times than we liked to remember. You learned to sacrifice when you raised a kid alone. Wilson was one more thing I would forgo to do the right thing for myself and my daughter.
Resigned, I reached for a shopping bag full of home-baked cookies wrapped in individual baggies tied with blue and yellow ribbons. I avoided Lara’s sympathy and my emotions by building a mile-high pyramid of them on the table.
In my head, a bratty version of myself stomped her metaphorical foot, demanding that I do everything in my power to get naked with Wilson ASAP. Her whining dominated my distracted thoughts. That brat was wrong. She had no morals, and I couldn’t trust her. She only wanted to get laid. Selfish bitch. My decision was about the bigger picture. My job. My daughter.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
Colton’s snarky comment caught me off guard, and I knocked a few of the cookies off the top of the pile. One look at him and I knew he hadn’t missed a detail of my appearance: my borrowed shirt, messy hair, and yesterday’s jeans. My disapproving brother made me feel like I was taking the walk of shame while standing still.
He looked fresh as a daisy in his other uniform, a Bluebonnet Bisons baseball uniform. The word ‘coach’ was stitched on the shirt front where his heart should have been. He was clean-shaven, and the superior smirk on his lips popped one of his dimples. Ass.
“Don’t be mean to your sister,” Lara shot from the other end of the table, threatening him with another biscotti cattle prod.
“I was the one who had to go get her car from Blue Star. And watch her kid.”
These two and their arguing were going to get on my last nerve today. They needed to dial it back or I’d hurt someone.
I stifled an annoyed sigh. “Hey, I didn’t ask you to stay at my house. Bailey is an adult and more than capable of being alone for one night.” I shook a finger at him like a naughty dog. Unfortunately, it didn’t send my brother scurrying off with his tail between his legs. Nope. It made him step closer and puff out his chest.
“I think you meant to say, ‘thank you, Colton, for all your help.’” The overdramatic roll of his eyes and saccharine tone made me itch to pull his hair like I did when we were kids. I curled my fingers into fists and begged the universe for patience.
