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“Sure,” Lachlan said. “Though it begs the question why you all had already decided to do this before talking to us.”
“Well, because we were just talking outside the barn, and you two were inside the barn making out. Nothing wrong with that. If I wasn’t doing my job, I would rather be making out with my wife, too.”
Gus seemed so...happy. Lachlan didn’t feel happy. He felt...ragged. At loose ends. He felt... Honest to God, like something was breaking apart inside him. Like all these carefully built structures that he had erected around his soul were beginning to give way, and he didn’t know how the hell to grapple with that. Didn’t know what to do.
“Yeah. We’ll go.”
“Great. See you both there.”
“I have to go,” she said. “I have other jobs.”
“Well, that’s just inconvenient for me,” he said, moving nearer to her, the possessiveness that rose up inside him like a thing with teeth.
He wondered what had happened for his easy feelings for his friend. Those nice, simple friendship feelings. Yeah. He wondered what the hell had happened to those. “See you in a few hours,” he said.
She smiled sweetly. “See you.”
He felt like he was coming apart, and the way she looked at him only became more and more dreamy. That almost didn’t seem fair.
He was counting down the hours until he saw her again. This girl was messing with his head. In an extreme way.
Finally, it was dinnertime, and he had his brothers drive him over to Smokey’s, where he had already planned to meet Charity.
He didn’t think he was imagining it, but she looked...sexier than usual. Not to him. He thought she was sexy in her little white socks. He always would. But sexy in the way that other men might notice. She was wearing a pale pink top that conformed to her curves, and a pair of pants made out of some light fabric that seemed to hug her rear a lot more than what she wore normally did.
It made him want to put his hands all over her so that everybody there would understand who she was there with.
Instead, he sat down at the table with his family and made a good show of behaving himself.
Drinks got passed all around, followed by burger baskets, and he and Charity mostly just sat in silence listening to the others talk. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t much feel like talking. But he supposed it was the same reason she didn’t.
“Let’s dance,” Alaina said.
Her sisters were babysitting, so she and Gus were there baby free.
“In a minute,” Gus said, taking a sip of his beer.
“I’ll meet you out there.”
Alaina went off onto the dance floor, and Elsie and Elizabeth followed.
“You can go,” he said, even though everything in him tensed up.
“Really?”
“Yes. If you want to go dance with the girls, go dance with them.”
She grinned and kissed him on the cheek before heading out to the dance floor.
“So things are pretty hot and heavy with you and Charity,” Gus said.
“Sheismy wife.”
“Sure.”
“She’s also pregnant.”
“I’m aware. I just didn’t think that meant...you have it that bad.”
