“We don’t want your damn food. We want you to turn down the volume. Why is everything with you loud?” Santiago snapped.
“Sound travels on Shrouded Lake,” St. James amended. “Some days, if you speak loudly enough on your side of the water, I’d hear you as if you were ten feet away.”
“My apologies. I guess I’ll have to learn to live in accordance with the rules of nature.”
But the unintended bonus today was that she’d already gotten underneath Stillwater’s skin. “It’s good to know that if I screamed someone would hear me and come running.” She smiled at Julian.
“Didn’t I make it real clear that you needed to leave town by Monday?” the sheriff demanded. “Didn’t I say there would be consequences?”
“Oh, but I did exactly what you said. I left Lina’s and I bought this recently available house. Without your ultimatum, I never would’ve been motivated to move on from Lina’s. I guess now’s as good a time as any for you to realize that you don’t tell me shit and think I will blindly do it. I’m not one of your little deputies and I’m definitely not your child?—”
“But you act like one,” Stillwater shot back. “You act like a grown-assed child that needs her ass whooped. Maybe then you’d learn to control that mouth of yours.”
She stepped forward, fists on her hips, and didn’t stop until her breasts where close enough to graze his chest. “You’re confused about who I am, so let me tell you here and now, you smack my ass again and I’ll lay you out just like I did with your boss.”
His nostrils flared and he moved forward, pressing her back because it was either retreat or get mowed over.
She pressed her hands against his chest and tried to push him away but only succeeded in getting her hands stuck betweenthem. She didn’t understand how the situation escalated so quickly. She wasn’t even mad. She just liked fucking with him. Now she was put in a position of needing to defend herself because he obviously woke up not in the mood to be fucked with.
She positioned her foot to knee him in the balls if needed, but the foot that supported her weight was knocked from under her and she was lifted high up on the door, until they were looking at each other eye-to-eye.
She was so used to seeing him in his reflective glasses, she became distracted by the color of his eyes, as if chards of sunlight were reflected in the depths of a powerfully flowing river. And he smelled fresh like a river. Was that possible?
“I don’t know what kind of weak-willed men you’re used to dealing with in California, but as much as you run your mouth, you don’t run this town, Ms. Green. You move up here hoping to turn my life into a war zone; well that’s the fieldIexcel in, and I’m more than willing to engage.” He looked behind her and released her. Her knees almost buckled the movement was so unexpected.
“If I could bottle this sexual tension and pour it over the pages of my next novel I’d make millions,” Julian said from the bottom of the stairs. “More,” he emphasized. “I’d make millionsmore.”
The author’s words seemed to release Santiago from the violent emotions that had seized him, and he took a step back.
It was as if she’d blinked and the sheriff became an expressionless, emotional void of a man.
“You’re a woman who brings out the very worst in people, Ms. Green,” he said flatly, as if she was the one who was unsafe to be around. “That’s not something to be proud of. You moved up here to teach me a lesson I’m sure, but here’s the thing, that house you bought will get you out of town faster than I evercould. We’ll just have to see if it’s of your own volition or in a body bag.”
He walked off her property without looking back.
“Welcome to Shrouded Lake, Ms. Green,” Julian called out before he turned to catch up with Stillwater.
Lauren smiled and waved at Julian, but all her attention was on the sheriff’s densely muscled back so wide she could easily imagine a red target on it. It was easier to imagine that than acknowledge the spiked barb of words the sheriff had twisted deep into her heart. Maybe he was right. Maybe she did bring out the worst in people. Maybe she was to blame for the situation she now found herself in, and not just with the sheriff, but with Derrick and her family. Maybe she was just too hard to love.
One of the workers call out to her for assistance and she turned back to the house with a determined smile on her face. Yes, she was hurting but knew there was no point in showing it when no one gave a shit about her pain or how she managed it.
“Look, I get it,” Julian said. “If someone told me Ms. Green looked like Megan Thee Stallion’s darker skinned auntie, I would’ve instantly understood why you’ve been walking around here all irritable and out of sorts. A woman like that is too much for the average man to handle, Stillwater. There’s no shame in admitting it.”
“Admit being average when I have never been? You’ve been existing in your twisted imagination for too long.”
“So then, where’s your finesse? Didn’t your granddaddy teach you it’s easier to catch flies with sugar than vinegar.”
“Why don’t you handle Roan with your proclaimed sugar then?”
“Man, I ain’t thinking about that rough-handed woman.”
Santiago laughed, then hazarded a glance behind him to see if Ms. Green was still on the porch. She wasn’t.
“I’m going to invite her over for wine once she gets settled in,” St. James said as they parted ways at Santiago’s home. “If you promise to be on your best behavior, I’ll invite you too.”
“I’ll be working…or sick…or…yeah just don’t invite me.”
After he cleaned his house, showered, and dressed, Santiago cooked a quick meal and called his aunt.
