Page 24 of Lucky Shot

“No.” I help myself to the barstool open at their table and finish my answer before Whitney can protest. “And I hear my stepfather’s voice every time someone calls me it—and he’s a dick—so I prefer Hardy.”

It’s truth enough. I can hear the pompous prick calling after my mum every time she’d ring me at the boarding school—where he said it was pertinent I attend. Good ol’ Monty couldn’t stand the idea of her sharing a moment of her time—even if it was with her son. Selfish prick. Fuck. What does that make me if I’m being one too?

That’s sobering.

And fuck awful.

“Makes sense,” Suri says, but my attention is already focused back on Whitney.

My hands are folded and my eyes are locked on hers. She wants a staring contest, I’ll give her one.

“I can do this all night,” I say.

“I doubt there is anything you’re capable of doing all night,” she mutters beneath her breath, eliciting a chuckle from me.

“For a woman who despises me, you sure are thinking of me a lot.”

She slaps her hands on the table and pushes her stool back. “Are we done here? Because I sure as shit am.”

I reach out and grab her wrist. There’s the briefest of moments where, I swear to God, we both pause from whatever that jolt of—adrenaline, lust, desire—something is that races through my system before she shakes her wrist out of my grasp.

“I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“Don’t be,” she says.

“Fitting. You just unload on me over not showing up, and then when I tell you I’m going to show up, you tell me not to?” I step toward her and resist the urge to move a lock of hair off her shoulder. “Gotta say, you’re not really making sense.”

She puts her hands on her hips and tilts her head to the side as she studies me. “Ever gotten mad at someone for not saying thank you, so then they say thank you and it doesn’t mean what it should because you told them to say it?”

“That was a mouthful.” I’ll get her to crack a smile yet.

“You saying you’ll come to the academy?” she says, disregarding my quip. “It’s kind of like that. So, nah. Don’t come. We don’t want you there.”

“But you’ll take my money.” Why do you care, Hardy? You got what you wanted—to be rid of this obligation—and now you’re fighting it?

“Reluctantly. Yes. For the kids? Yes. Out of spite? Most definitely, yes.”

“Taking it out of spite? You act like it’s a huge hit to my pocketbook.” I roll my eyes.

She blinks several times at my comment. Fucking hell. That sounded even more like Monty. Ugh. I want to shrug out of my own skin.

“Then write a bigger check,” she deadpans and pulls me from my self-loathing.

Who the fuck says shit like that?

“You’re something else, you know that?”

“I am.” She nods unabashedly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s way past my bedtime.”

I step into her path and chuckle. “It’s only ten o’clock. The night’s still young.”

“Ah. Yes. Here comes the part about how you have a nice little place where we could go have a chat and I’d be the luckiest girl on earth if I went,” she says flippantly.

“Thought never crossed my mind,” I lie.

“But your eyes keep checking out my chest and my ass so . . . try and get all of you on the same page.”

Why is her hostility so bloody attractive?