Braxton: one.
Johnston: zero.
“Boyfriend, huh?” I raise an eyebrow at Hadley, forcing the smirk down. She splashes water at me, and I chuckle before walking to her side of the hot tub. “We can make that happen.”
Her face is flushed, but I’m not sure if it’s from the heat of the water or my attempts at flirting.
“I didn’t need your help. I could have handled him.” She sulks.
“Sure you could have.” I pat her head, continuing to laugh. She retaliates with a look that could have rivaled my mom’s you-know-what-you-did-wrong stare. “That’s why you called me your boyfriend.”
She shrugs away from me, saying, “That’s precisely how I was handling it myself. You just happened to be the man with me this time.”
“Touché, Bully.” I try not to think too hard about the fact that she saidthis timeas if she goes hot tubbing with a bunch of other men on regular occasions.
Looking Hadley over myself, I see hot pink and porcelain skin through the bubbling water, and I notice she has a lollipop in her hands. Keeping a lollipop on hand is something new she’s started in the past few months, and it KILLS me. I try to think of the way she would look with rotten, sugared teeth instead of the way her lips fold around the candy. My skin tingles like I’m in the middle of an acupuncture treatment.
I’m only a man. Time to get into the water.
In one practiced swoop, my t-shirt is off and on the floor beside the hot tub. The temperature outside sits around 68 degrees. Perfect autumn weather for a hot tub.
I slide in, sitting opposite Hadley, who has taken to staring at me.
“In the time that you called me, and I made it here, a man already zeroed in on you,” I cluck, shaking my head. “Or was he here when I so rudely invited myself?”
“He wasn’t here,” she says hastily. “But you didn’t have to scare him off with your grizzly size and death stare. He was getting too close and flirty, but I could have gotten him to leave myself.”
So the man does suck. I shake my head again. “That quick, huh.”
She shrugs, sliding neck-deep into the hot water, bringing her sucker back to her mouth.
Hadley knows she is a beautiful woman. A temptress.
But I also know she doesn’t like the attention as much as she lets on. She likes to just be left alone.
Oh…
“Did you want to be down here alone?” I ask, realizing maybe she needed this time after being in the truck all morning and afternoon with me.
“It still feels like I’m alone when you’re here,” she says, and as much as I try to control it, my face falls. Ouch.
Her eyes grow wide as she slides up in the hot tub, that pink frilly bikini top surfacing.
I look away out of respect. But I still saw…
“I didn’t mean it like that, Braxton. Oh my gosh!” She brings a hand over her mouth. After a beat, she says, “I meant that I’m so comfortable with you that I can be myself when you’re around. I don’t have to pretend.”
“I get it.” I breathe the words out, holding her gaze while sinking further into the water, careful not to let the water splash onto my face. “I can be just Braxton Lane Rawls with you.”
“And I can be Hadley Anne Dawson.”
We stay like that, her crystal blue eyes locked onto mine, until she looks away, a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of her naturally pink lips. She licks her lollipop, and I avert my eyes.
Her phone buzzes on the side of the hot tub, breaking the comfortable silence. She glares at the device before picking it up.
“You’ve got some nerve calling me,” she growls to the person on the other end of the line.
I whisper the words, “Is that Daniel?” She curtly nods. I hold out my hand to take the phone from her, but she only shakes her head. After half a minute of listening to whatever he’s saying, she turns her scowl toward me.
