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Lucas turned around to find Annabel wandering up the front steps toward the house. She glanced in his direction with a bored expression, and then Elijah chuckled. “He doesn’t like working with Ella.”
“Ella? As in the mayor’s daughter?” That caught Annabel’s attention.
Lucas stared at her with confusion. He could have sworn she knew he was working with Ella Thompson on this project. Had Elijah not spread the word to the whole family? Lucas’s eyes bounced over to Elijah, his smug smile begging to be washed off with that water.
His brother nodded to Annabel’s question. “Yep. Ella came back to work on that project the mayor put together. Lucas volunteered.”
Annabel snorted so hard she ended up choking. “You’re joking. Lucas would never agree to something like that.”
“He would if he were trying to impress a girl.” Elijah snickered.
Annabel glanced toward Lucas. “Yeah, that tracks. Man, when are you going to understand that you need to stop volunteering for stuff you don’t want to do? First you did it with Scarlett, and now… Ella? She’s not really the kind of girl you usually go out with.”
Lucas folded his arms, shooting a sharp look at Annabel. He opened his mouth with the intention of demanding to know what Annabel meant by her comment, but Elijah cut him off. “He wasn’t trying to impress Ella. He was trying to impress someone else—someone who had a boyfriend.” Elijah laughed louder this time.
That was it. Lucas couldn’t take the teasing a second longer. He was the one who got cheated here. Taking a step forward, he nearly tackled Elijah out of his seat, but then Scarlett distracted him.
“You guys need to be nice. Lucas has been doing a lot of work over there. They haven’t even started on the rebuild yet and it’s just the two of them.”
Lucas swung his eyes to Scarlett. Was she friends with Ella? How did she know what was going on? He couldn’t recall seeing her out there at the property.
She must have felt his inquisitive gaze because she turned her eyes on him. “My dad is friends with Mayor Thompson. They’ve been discussing how far the work has come… from the sounds of it, they’re impressed with your work ethic.”
Elijah laughed out loud again. “What work ethic? Lucas does everything he can to get out of doing anything that will create even one bead of sweat.”
Lucas scowled at his brother. “You know what? Forget I said anything. I should have known better than to think you would care even a little about what I’m dealing with.”
Annabel glanced from Lucas to Elijah. “What’s he dealing with?”
Lucas threw his hands in the air and headed for the door, but Elijah’s off-the-cuff response stopped him.
“Ella’s calling him on his BS. She sees what we’ve all been seeing from the sounds of it. And she’s not going to let him charm her into submission like most of the girls do.”
“Ah, okay.” Annabel said it with such a knowing voice that Lucas whirled around to face her.
“Okay, what’s going on? You’re acting like you know something I don’t. Have you guys heard anything? Did I do something to her I can’t remember?”
Annabel shrugged. “I’m too old to know if you did anything while you were in school, but I can tell you one thing. That girl definitely has some major insecurities.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Lucas snapped. “Ella is the most confident person I know. She just also happens to be the only person who hates my guts.”
Elijah’s laugh was really starting to grate on Lucas’s nerves, but he refused to comment on this one.
“It’s really weird. This week has been nothing but work. We don’t talk about anything but what needs to be done, and then suddenly, yesterday, she sends me off like I did something to really make her mad. But I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s like I said,” Annabel interjected, “almost all women are insecure about something. I would wager Ella is insecure about her looks.”
“What?” he muttered with disbelief. “She doesn’t have anything to be insecure about. She’s pretty enough.”
Annabel and Scarlett exchanged glances, but Lucas didn’t miss even a second of it.
“What was that look for? Do you guys disagree?”
Scarlett shook her head vehemently. “Of course not. She’s very pretty. But in this day and age, society tells women that we have to be something that isn’t always attainable.”
Annabel nodded. “We have to be pretty, but not too pretty. Fit and not too thin or too heavy.”
“Smart, but not so much that we intimidate others around us,” Scarlett pointed out.
