Page 43 of Chasing Your Ghost

A surprised laugh burst out of her, and she wanted nothing more than to be able to shove his shoulder. “Ew,” she groaned through her fading giggles. “Absolutely not.”

“Whew,” he sighed, his shoulders visibly slumping with relief. “For a minute there, I was worried we couldn’t be friends.”

Riley raised her eyebrows at him. “You’d refuse to be my friend if I ate mayonnaise sandwiches?”

“It’s just a layer of mayonnaise between two slices of bread,” he said almost indignantly. “Of course, we couldn’t be friends if you insisted on eating something that disgusting.”

Riley grinned. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I know,” he replied with that shiver-inducing grin. “It’s my best quality.”

“Nah,” Riley corrected him, her cheeks warming with the words on the tip of her tongue. “Your best quality is most definitely your eyes.”

Asher’s smile slowly dropped as he took in her words, and the few inches between them seemed to fill with the type of tension that Riley dared not break.

“You like my eyes?” he asked so softly that Riley nearly didn’t hear him.

She bit her bottom lip and nodded. “They’re green,” she said lamely, immediately wishing she could take back the words and replace them with something smoother. “What’s not to like?”

The corners of his lips quirked up. “How very superficial of you,” he said with a teasing wink. “You think my best quality is one of my physical features? How disappointing.”

Riley blinked at him. “You said my best quality was my hair,” she accused him, her voice suddenly too loud.

Asher smirked. “Yeah, but I wasn’t being serious. Your hair is cool, but it’s not your best quality.”

“So what is?”

“I’m not telling you until I’m one hundred percent certain you don’t secretly love mayonnaise sandwiches.”

Riley narrowed his eyes at him before looking back at her laptop screen. “Fine. Be like that,” she sighed, even as the butterflies in her stomach returned with a vengeance.

12

“Hey, Olivia,” Riley greeted her half-sister.

The sixteen-year-old turned away from the television screen and looked at Riley with what looked like exhausted defeat. “Hi.”

“I’m making a smoothie. Do you want one?”

Olivia’s pale blue eyes dropped down to her lap. “That’s okay. I ate after my lesson.”

Riley let out a sigh of disappointment. “Alright. I’ll let you get back to your movie.”

“Wait,” Olivia said, halting her from returning to the kitchen. She shrugged, looking nervous and unsure. “A smoothie sounds good.”

Riley smiled. Things had been tense and uneasy between them, but this was another small step in the right direction. Olivia asking for a smoothie might have seemed inconsequential to most, but Riley knew it was the girl’s way of extending an olive branch. “Coming right up. Any special requests?”

“As long as there’s nothing green in it.”

Riley wrinkled her nose in disgust. “We’re in agreement on that. Only masochists put spinach in their smoothies.”

Olivia grinned, more of her hard shell chipping away. “Do you need help?”

Riley waved her off. “I’ve got this. Carry on with shirtless Liam Hemsworth.”

Olivia’s entire face flushed scarlet as she turned back to see Kate Winslet standing in front of the bare-chested Australian actor. Riley frowned when Kate started measuring said chest.

“What movie is this?”

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