She ignored Harry’s total meltdown and backed away instead. Grabbed a towel and got just close enough to hand it to Peter before she backed away again as Harry moaned,What iswrongwith you?
Peter didn’t mean what he’d just said. He’d simply slipped back into—what had he called it before? Hisbar hookup pattern.
Peter sat up, rubbing his head with the towel.
Shayla pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “I’m gonna…go shower myself now.”
“Right,” he said. “Of course.”
“It’ll take me about forty-five minutes,” she said. “To get ready to go to the lawyer’s office—Fiona’s aunt—Susan Smith?”
“Oh,” he said. “No. Don’t. You don’t have to. I got that. I’ll be ready myself in just a few minutes, so I’ll just…do it. Myself.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid,Harry muttered.You aresostupid, it was contagious and now he’s caught your stupidity, so he’s being stupid, too.
“Oh,” she said, unable to hide her dismay. “I thought…Well, Icouldhurry—”
Peter cut her off. “Really, Shayla, it’s okay. I don’t expect to get any information from the woman anyway and…You should be writing. You’ve already gone above and beyond.”
He didn’t want her to go with him.
Yeah, because hewantedyou to kiss him, and you didn’t, so now he’s all “Let’s not spend an awkward hour in the car together, ’kay, thanks, bye.”
“Will you let me know if Izzy and Hans find anything in Van Nuys?” Shay asked.
“Yeah,” Peter said. “Sure. I’ll, um, text you.”
Jesus, he was stupid.
As Pete stood in his shower and washed his hair with a second handful of shampoo—for the first time in his life, he was following the directions to lather, rinse, and repeat—he marveled that he’d managed to stay alive for closing in on four decades. Someone as stupid as he was should’ve been eaten by a tiger by now. After stupidly jumping into the tiger’s enclosure at the zoo. Because that’s what stupid people did. They did a stupid, stupid thing, despite all of the signs that warned them,Don’t Do That Stupid Thing.
Shayla Whitman wanted to be friends with him. Period.
She’d made that very, very,veryclear.
And just becauseheloved spending time with her, and just becausehethought she was both cute and hot as hell, and just because theideaof her running her fingers through his hair had given him a raging hard-on…
She’d posted the sign, he’d seen it, he’d heard it, and he’d jumped in with the tiger anyway. What a fucking stupid idiot.
And his dick was even more stupid than he was. It was still at high alert. Like painfully high. LikeJesus, I’m gonna come just from her running her fingers through my hairhigh alert.
He’d had to close his eyes and clench his teeth, but God, he’d wanted her hands on him, all over him, wrapped around him…
As he rinsed his hair again, he looked down, and yeah. His dick was like one of those one-legged, happy air dancers, bobbing in front of the local used-car dealer. If it could talk it would be shouting,Yo, bro, we had the foreplay, it was awesome, but where’s the fucking sex?! Come on, come on, come on!
Pete closed his eyes and breathed as the water washed over him and made his elbow sting. He’d scrubbed the crap out of it—literally—as Shay had suggested.
Shay.Sit,she’d ordered with that commanding conviction that he found so utterly attractive. Ah, Jesus, thinking about her was not helping.
He focused instead on Maddie and Dingo—on his daughter maybe making him a grandfather before he turned forty, and on Hiroko who was still angry about injustices she’d faced when she was a child, on Lisa shouting that he didn’t give her what she needed, that it washisfault that she was packing up and leaving and taking Maddie with her….His sweet little Maddie, whom he loved more than he’d ever thought he could love anyone…It was his fault, his fault,his fault….
No wonder Shay had backed away.
And yeah. That did it.
Pete shut off the water and dried himself off, vowing that he would not make that same mistake again, but knowing that he was so stupid that he just might jump back in with the tiger, if he was given half a chance.
As Izzy approached the house in Van Nuys, he saw that it was locked up tight.
