“I thought I taught her better to keep her word. Where did I go wrong?”
“What the hell are you two doing?” I ask, trying to calm my racing heart.
“Making sure you didn’t leave Theo high and dry.” She attempts to move past the bush but gets her pant leg caught in a branch, sending her straight to the ground. “Confound it,” she says, shaking her leg. “Get off me, you branch.” She rattles, shimmies, and then pulls away, rolling like a loose log across the lawn until she’s completely free.
“You okay?” Theo asks.
“That branch had a vendetta and I wasn’t about to be a part of it.” She stands and brushes off her tracksuit jacket. “Now, go on your walk with your man?—”
“He’s not my man.”
“He is and don’t try to walk out on him again. I’m watching you,” she says, pointing to her eyes with two fingers and then at me. Then she snaps her fingers and says, “Rupert, on the double.”
Groaning, Rupert crawls out from under the bush, only to collapse onto the lawn. “It’s too early.”
“Don’t you dare give me that. The sun has risen, which means we’re on the clock. Now get up or I’ll start riding you myself.”
Rupert lifts his brow. “You know I’m not opposed to that.”
“Okay,” I say. “Don’t say creepy shit to my aunt.”
With that, I move past them and start toward the sidewalk. I can’t be a part of whatever is going on with my aunt and Rupert.
“Think you’re going to go on without me?” Theo asks, coming up to me.
“That was the plan.”
“You know, that hurts after the rules I sent you.”
“You never got my revisions; it said in there if you kiss me, the next day I’m allowed to go on a walk without you.”
“I never would have signed off on that.” He pauses and then asks, “Just out of curiosity, what does it say about what happens after I feel you up?”
I glance at him, that ridiculously hot smile of his stretching from ear to ear.
“It says you’re supposed to go back to England.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening. Nice try though. I think it should say, ‘If Renley allows Theo to cop a feel, then she should return the favor.’ So anytime you want to cup me, feel free.”
“That will never happen.”
He scratches the side of his face. “For some reason, I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it. Whatever happened last night is a distant memory. Just a lapse in judgment, something that won’t happen?—”
He snags my hand and twirls me around until I’m under the tree where I found him pretending to be hurt. He presses me against the tree trunk and then lifts my chin.
“A distant memory?” he asks, his body inching up against mine. “So you’re telling me that when I’m this close, it doesn’t have an effect on you?”
I try to hold back my gulp, my shakiness, my need for this man.
“It doesn’t,” I answer, my voice feeling shaky.
“It doesn’t?” His nose runs across my cheek, his lips a whisper away from mine.
“No,” I breathe heavily.
“Okay.” He moves in even closer, his lips barely dancing across mine. “Then don’t kiss me. I dare you not to.”
