Love to Hate You (Hope Valley #9) - Jessica Prince Page 0,40
moved to the bright, lemon-yellow fridge and pulled out a beer. She popped the top as she headed toward me and slid the bottle across the bar.
“Thanks,” I murmured under my breath, picking it up and taking a big gulp.
“No problem,” she returned, just as quietly. “I remembered what you said the other day, and I know you’d drink it just to make her happy, but I figured this would be a safer bet.”
I was quickly coming to realize she hadn’t been lying when she said she wasn’t normally a mean person. Sitting in her kitchen with her aunt and daughter, I was seeing the side of Hayden I’d seen that night in the bar, the side I’d thought was just a fluke. I’d only had brief glimpses of it then, but it had been more than enough to make me want to fuck her. And I’d be damned if seeing this lighter side of her now wasn’t making me want the same damn thing.
“Appreciate it, Red.”
I caught a peek at the pink that was blooming across her cheekbones just as she turned her back on me, and I knew then how completely fucked I was.
Because there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to have this woman under me again.
Chapter Thirteen
Hayden
Dinner turned out to be surprisingly fun. Between Ivy filling any silence with her usual chatter and Sylvia sharing stories of me as a girl and stories of Micah in the time she’d lived beside him—most of the stories embarrassing as hell—there hadn’t been a single lull in the conversation. I laughed almost as much as I had the night Micah and I first met.
I managed to find out more about Micah as we ate. I learned he’d been with the Hope Valley Police Department since the start of his career as a police officer over thirteen years ago. I learned his drive to become law enforcement came from his father, who was a cop in Richmond, but he preferred the slower pace of a smaller town and had left the city specifically for this job.
The better I got to know him, the more I liked him. He was funny and down-to-earth, and he didn’t seem to mind that my baby girl had latched onto him like a suction cup. But that was part of the problem. It wasn’t just about wanting to strip him naked and climb him like a jungle gym. That attraction I’d felt the very first night, the one that hadn’t faded even while we were fighting, was there in spades, only now it was more intense, because I was getting glimpses of the real man beneath the surface. He loved his job, he cared about the people in this town, and he was loyal to his friends and family. That was a side of him I’d never seen before, and damn if it didn’t make him even more attractive.
When dinner wrapped up, he offered to help clean, but I quickly shooed him out of the kitchen to join Sylvia and Ivy in the garden while I took care of everything.
Truth was, I needed a few minutes to myself to get my head straight. I was discombobulated and off balance. As I washed the dishes by hand, scrubbing the hell out of the baked-on cheese in the casserole dish, I practiced my yoga breathing, hoping to find my center, as Sylvia would say.
I’d almost gotten myself there when a hand came down on my shoulder, scaring a yelp from me and making me jump around, slinging sudsy water all over the place. “Holy shit,” I exclaimed, placing a wet hand over my heart to keep it from beating out of my chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry about that,” Micah said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I thought you heard me.” One corner of his mouth curled up in a smirk. “So how much do you owe the swear jar?”
“Real funny,” I deadpanned, turning back to the casserole dish. “Do you need something?”
“Nope. I was just wonderin’ what was taking so long. Then I saw you scrubbin’ that dish like you were trying to get a genie to pop out of it or something. Didn’t even hear me call your name.”
“Oh. Uh . . . yeah. Um, baked-on cheese is a real bitch. If you don’t get it all off the pan right away, you might as well buy a new one.”