Page 206 of A Vicious Love

She stood suddenly, the blanket slipping to one shoulder. “You buy every flower in Harlan. You almost drown saving me and now I’m supposed to believe the last three years didn’t happen because you’ve decided to be different before dinner?”

The jacket shifted.

My eyes dropped.

I hated myself for it.

My entire body turned into a punishment.

She stood there, furious and wet and I wanted to put her back in my lap with enough force to make the whole cottage forget any other man had ever existed.

I wanted her on that couch.

Against that glass.

Bent over the armrest with my jacket shoved up around her waist and her voice breaking on my name until she learned what it sounded like when I used my mouth for apology.

I did none of it. I deserved another chapel.

Bigger this time.

“Sienna,” I said, voice darkening despite every good intention I had ever briefly possessed, “sit down.”

Her chin lifted.

“No.”

Oh.

That one went straight through me.

Because the frightened, polite girl from Harlan who had once apologized for eating the wrong plate of food was standing in front of me and telling me no.

Pride hit first.

Then heat, guilt, because I was hard enough to suffer for it. I looked at the ceiling.

God and I had never been close, but if he existed, he was laughing himself sick.

“I need you sitting because you almost drowned,” I said carefully. “Not because I think you owe me obedience.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You can be angry sitting down.”

“I don’t want to sit.”

“Then stand near the couch in case your body remembers gravity exists.”

Her mouth pressed together. A flicker of amusement betrayed her.

Then the front door opened.

I turned before the handle finished moving, one hand already near the gun at my ribs.

Except my holster was soaked. My jacket was on Sienna. My weapons had been through a waterfall, and one of the knives along my back had shifted enough to be irritating.

Reeves stepped inside carrying a black medical case, two garment bags, and the expression of a man who had entered worse rooms and judged all of them.