Page 224 of Holding On To Good

“What did he say?” Miles asked.

“Kid,” Toby said as he got to his feet. “You need to back away from my sister.”

She shook her head at Reed. “What is wrong with you? Do you have a death wish?”

Not that her brothers would commit murder, but they did have the power to annoy someone to death.

She should know.

Reed smirked, not bothered the least by Toby’s glowering and Miles’s sputtering. And to think, only moments before she’d actually wanted a guy who wasn’t intimidated by her brothers.

She was so going to be careful about what she wished for from now on.

“One dance,” he said. The stubbornness! It wouldn’t end. “And then we’ll be even.”

She could turn him down. She should turn him down. But it was just a dance and she did still owe him.

And she didn’t want him popping back into her life whenever he wanted looking for repayment.

Didn’t want him to think that he had the upper hand, even for a moment. That she was afraid to be close to him for the length of a song.

“One dance,” she agreed. “And then we’re not just even. We’re done.”

She waited and when he finally, slowly inclined his head in agreement, she told herself it was exactly what she wanted.

“If you want to dance,” Verity said in that snotty tone Reed fantasized about when his guard was down, “you’re going to have to let me at least stand up.”

The back of his neck heated. Shit. He was still crouched next to her chair, staring at her.

Hearing her two words over and over again.

We’re done.

It was what he’d wanted. What he’d set out to do that night at the lake.

What he still wanted, he assured himself.

This, him asking her to dance, didn’t change that. Didn’t change anything.

Nothing would change it.

Feeling like an idiot, he straightened and stepped back. Held out his hand.

She stared at his hand for one heart-pounding moment, eyebrows raised, before lifting her gaze to his face. “Yeah, that’s so not going to happen.”

And, ignoring his hand, she rose to her feet, then brushed past him.

The cop stepped in front of her. “Verity—”

“I’ve got this,” she said.

“Are you sure?” This from the other brother, an inked hipster with glasses.

Looking over her shoulder, she studied Reed for a moment, that brain of hers probably going a million miles an hour as she went through every possible scenario and outcome, weighing the pros and cons.

Which was a hell of a lot more than he’d done before he’d hauled his ass over here in the first place.

If he had thought this through, he would have waited until she’d been alone, instead of asking her to dance in front of her brothers.

---