Her cheeks flushed with indignation. “Or I’ll purple-nurple you so hard, I swear to god, your nipple will fall off.”
I believed it. Mainly because she’d done that very thing to me and Zach more times than I could count. She might have been a tiny thing, but she could pack a punch when she wanted to. But I didn’t let her scare me. Instead, I reached over and booped the tip of her nose—mostly because I knew it would make her head explode.
“You know, you’re cute when you’re pissed off. Now climb in, Chaos,” I said as I rounded the hood of my truck, snatching up my coffee where I’d placed it when she came out of the house. “There’s a coffee and a cupcake in there from Muffin Top with your name on it.”
“Well, why didn’t you start with that?” she grumbled under her breath as she hauled herself up into the passenger seat, then pulled the door closed much harder than necessary, causing my truck to rock side to side.
When I cast an unamused glance back through the windshield, she was smiling evilly at me, one hand holding the paper cup to her lips as she used the other to flip me off.
Chapter Fourteen
Lennix
I’d been stewing since I opened my front door to find that human blister standing on my property like he hadn’t a care in the world, and my mood had only gotten worse as the day progressed. All because that giant, denim-and-flannel-wearing pain in my ass had refused to leave my bar once he dropped me off.
He’d gone from ignoring my very existence over the past several months to being around every corner I turned all of a sudden.
Case in point.
“Uh, Lenni? Why is Raylan walking around your bar, giving everyone in here the stink-eye?”
“What are you talking about? That’s how he always looks.” Not that I could be certain, because I refused to turn my head in the direction she was looking. I put the straw between my lips and sipped my iced tea, wishing there was booze inside the glass. “He’s a surly bastard.”
“No.” She shook her head. “This is different. It looks like... he’s only glaring at the men. Like he wants to skin them alive.”
Rae spoke up before I could get a word in. “I think the better questions would be, why does he have a baby carrier strapped to his chest, and why is there a puppy in it?”
Sure enough, the asshole had gone out at some point and bought himself a sling for Havoc so he could keep the little guy close and his hands free. He said it was for efficiency, but I was convinced it was just another of his attempts to push me over the edge of sanity.
Nearly every damn woman in the bar had swooned over Raylan since he came out of my office with that contraption on. Not that I noticed.
Or cared.
All right, fine. I noticedandcared... and not that I’d ever admit it, but the way they giggled and batted their lashes at him made me a little—alot—jealous. I didn’t want to feel jealous when it came to Raylan. Especially after what he’d said the night before. But my stupid heart refused to listen to reason. Despite how badly I was hurting, I couldn’t stop wanting him. I’d tried. I was one step away from getting myself hypnotized to forget I ever had feelings for the bastard.
We were currently between the lunch and evening rush, so things in the bar were slow enough that I was able to sit with my girls for a quick bite before it turned into a madhouse. Truthfully, I should have been in my office, working on the million and one things I could never seem to catch up on, but that would have meant being stuck with Raylan in close quarters, and after his admission the night before, he was the last person I wanted to be trapped in a small room with.
I’d been gutted after his revelation and spent several hours afterward crying into my pillow while Havoc and Ziggy paced and whined anxiously, worried over the crash-out their dogmom was having before they finally settled in and snuggled me until we all fell asleep tangled around each other in the center of my bed.
I’d woken up with a raging headache from crying, and my dry, puffy eyes felt like they were being scraped with sandpaper every time I blinked. I had to go heavy with the concealer this morning to hide the evidence of my late-night sob fest.
My gritty eyes were another reason to be pissed at Raylan Bradbury. I’d reached a whole new level of petty in which he was at fault for every minor inconvenience or discomfort.
“He’s here because he wants to drive me crazy.” I let out a sigh and rubbed at my tired eyes, momentarily forgetting about the mascara and concealer I was wearing. “Damn it. Am I all smudged?”
I swore, if my makeup was ruined, that was Raylan’s fault too.
“Just a little.” Merritt reached across the table and wiped beneath my left eye. “There. You’re all good now.”
Rae’s face was the picture of concern as she asked, “What’s going on with you? You seem all out of sorts.”
“You have no idea,” I grumbled. I cast a quick glance in Raylan’s direction. No matter how many times I told myself I wasn’t going to look, my eyes seemed to trail after him no matter where he moved, like they had a mind of their own. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he wasn’t already watching me every time I glanced his way. It was as though our eyes were magnets and couldn’t keep from drifting to each other.
Sure enough, his gaze was already on me when I chanced another peek.Damn it.
Before I could pull my focus away, a stunning woman with long legs and shiny brunette hair sauntered up to him, interest clear as day in her eyes. She saw a hot guy with a cute dog, and she was laser-focused.
My face pinched into a hard scowl and red coated my vision as she reached her hand up to scratch Havoc on the head. I was completely aware my reaction was irrational, and this stranger didn’t deserve to have her hair ripped out for touching my dog—and for the casual brush of her fingertips down Raylan’s arm she was trying to be sly about—but rational tended to fly out the window wherever Raylan was concerned.
