Page 11 of Unstoppable Love

“Sorry about you and Kip.”

God, it was hard to say his name without sneering, but seriously. Any parent who named their son Kip was asking for the kind of weak city boy he turned into.

“Are you?”

She still wasn’t looking at me. I’d known Ava her entire life, and never once had I seen her face expressionless. Was this being around me? Or Kip?

“Sucks when good things go bad. I understand that.”

Those eyes came to me then. Piercing. Oh, she was angry.

And my dick was getting excited about it.

I gritted my teeth.

“Yeah. It does.”

She bent and reached for her suitcase.

“You think of touching that thing unless it’s to take it straight back upstairs, and we’ll have problems, Ava.”

She froze. Which was good, because it meant she heard me.

It was bad because she’d thrown on some loose top with a deep V-neck, and all bent over like that, I could see the swells of her large breasts and the pink lace of her bra.

“Like I care,” she muttered and grabbed the handle.

Oh hell no.

I stepped toward her at the same time she yanked on the suitcase handle and stood. The suitcase was a buffer between us.

“Where you going to go? Isaiah said you can’t afford to stay at a hotel.”

“I’ve got friends.”

“Friends that don’t live in Plum County?”

Far as I knew, she still went home most weekends. How she even thought she’d marry a guy like Kip was beyond me. They were far too different. He wasn’t nearly good enough for her, either.

“What is your problem? I thought you were going to be gone. You don’t want me here. I’m going.”

“Who says I don’t want you here?”

I didn’t. It would be pure torture. But hell if she was leaving.

“Oh, I don’t know. Your warm and gracious welcome, maybe?” She flipped her hand in the air, gesturing to absolutely nothing.

“I tend to be a little grumpy when I see a friend’s sister passed out on my couch with an empty bottle of wine in front of her, and I’ll remind you, all I did was ask why you were here. You were the one who flipped out on me.”

“Flipped out?” Her eyes grew wide, and her cheeks puffed out as she blew out a breath. “I flipped out?!”

Yeah. Kind of like what she was doing now.

She hated me. She thought I’d forgotten about her. And she’d just broken up with a guy she lived with. I wasn’t helping anything.

I stepped back, conceding. “Stay, Ava. Stay as long as you need.”

“I’m not staying here with you.”

---