“Okay. Yes.” She nods, trustingly. “Thank you.”
I grip her chin and enjoy having her focus on me for a full ten seconds before I say anything else. “And the second your chores are done tomorrow, you better be on my doorstep ready to bite your lip and take cock.”
five
Billie
When Knox opensthe front door of his house the following afternoon, I immediately wish I hadn’t brought the peach pie in my hands. He narrows his eyes at the baked offering I’m holding, like I’ve brought him a dead squirrel or something.
“The hell is that?”
“I baked you a pie,” I say, stating the obvious. “It’s a little crumbled on one side because it got bumped around on the back of my horse, but it’s still warm.”
A muscle slides up and down in his throat. “I don’t want a pie from you.”
“It’s peach,” I mutter, feeling stupid.
“And?”
My cheeks smart with embarrassed heat. What was I thinking baking this grumpy jerk my favorite peach pie recipe? I don’t know, all right? But I’m pretty sure he saved my life yesterday and it felt like I needed to say thank you. It’s not every day someone hides a body on a girl’s behalf. Obviously, I’ve made an egregious error, though. Now I’m humiliated and defensive. “Don’t eat it, then!” I shout, dropping the pie onto theporch, just to the right of the door. The crust ruptures down the center, pieces of my forked edges crumbling off onto the wooden floorboards. “Leave it for the birds.”
Knox stares down at the pie with a clenched jaw.
I stomp past his tensed body into the house. Watching him over my shoulder, I remove my hat and set it on the kitchen table. Next, I remove my boots—and he’s still standing in the open doorway looking down at the stupid pie.
What is he doing?
Finally, he curses and bends down to retrieve the pie, glaring at me as he carries it back into the house. “Are you happy?”
“No,” I fire back.
“I don’t like gifts.”
“Well, I don’t like your attitude!”
He slows to a stop in the kitchen, looking incredulous. “You don’t like my…”
“Att-i-tude,” I sound out. “The proper thing to do when someone brings you a pie is to say thank you and offer them a slice. Not make them feel like a gigantic dumbass.”
He processes that. “Are you hungry or something?”
“I wouldn’t eat a slice of that pie now if I was starving to death.”
“Stubborn.”
“You don’t know the half.”
Shaking his head at me, he puts the pie in the refrigerator—rather carefully, in fact. When he turns back around, he points at me. “Get in the bedroom and strip.”
I don’t move.
In fact, I stomp my foot, I’m so irritated.
Knox raises a single eyebrow.
I came here to do exactly what he told me.And the second your chores are done tomorrow, you better be on my doorstep ready to bite your lip and take cock. Now that my pie has beenrejected in such an unnecessarily rude manner, however, I am physically incapable of following his order.
“Maybe I should come back tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to calm down. If you come near me right now, I’ll probably just bite you.”
