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“No,” she said quickly. She took a step back and bumped into the door.
“You okay?” I asked as she rubbed her elbow.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “But we should go inside. We don’t know who’s watching.”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t know if your mom’s looking, or your dad, your brothers, or Olivia, or Eloise.” She dropped her gaze to the ground, looking a little guilty.
“What? You don’t want them to see us standing outside here?”
“I just don’t want them to know that we kissed,” she said.
I threw my head back and laughed. “Shouldn’t that be my line?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why?”
“I’m just saying Amelia is my mom and she’s the one that’s trying to get me married. If she knew that we kissed, she’d think that something else was going to happen. And, well, I don’t want to have to deal with that.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that.” Arya’s voice was suddenly sharp. “Nothing else is going to happen, anyway.”
I wasn’t sure what had happened. “Are you mad at me, Arya?”
“No, I’m not,” she said. “Let’s just go inside.”
“You sound like you’re mad.”
“Why would I be mad, Chet?” she snapped.
“I’m not upset that we kissed,” I said softly. “I just don’t want my mother to know that we kissed.”
“Why not?” she said.
“You’re the one that didn’t want them to know!” I was confused now.
“Yeah, because I was trying to protect you. But why don’t you want them to know?”
“For the same reason. Why were trying to protect me?”
“I just feel like…like maybe I’m not good enough for you,” she said.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I think you’re amazing and Eloise is amazing. She’s a sweet, adorable girl and she deserves to have a father figure. I’m just not in that position right now.”
“Okay, fine,” she said in a voice that said it was not fine. “Well, good for you. I’m going inside now.”
“Don’t be mad!” I made to grab her arm, then decided to let her go. We’d had a nice day and I’d ruined it with this conversation. I waited for her to go in, and then I walked inside and almost ran into Beau.
“Hey, what’s up bro?” he said.
“Not much,” I told him. “I’m just about to head into the shower. I had a long day doing work at the cabin.”
“Oh, yeah? What do you do?”
“Patched a couple places in the roof. What about you?”
“Well, I was on the phone talking to one of the lenders about one of the loans to build some more log cabins. It looks like we might be able to get two million.”
“Oh, that’s great,” I said. “Super exciting, so we can go ahead for sure then?”
