Page 9 of Forget Me Not

“I have the pit stains of an oil rig worker.” “Oh, you do not,” Tara laughs. She swats my ass and practically shoves me towards the hall to go back to the front. “Just be friendly. He’s a guest.”

“He’s a nuisance.”

Friends. I have a hard enough time making friends with the cats out back.

“I’m never forgiving you for this,” I murmur, shooting daggers at her over my shoulder.

“Have fun,” she giggles.

I return to the dining room, meeting his darkly amused eyes with a roll of my own.

“Come to lecture me about the moral discrepancies with feeding hungry wildlife?”

He cocks a brow, but otherwise, his expression doesn’t change.

“I came to enjoy a beer and decent company, but it seems all I could find was you.”

“Okay . . . rude . . .”

He doesn’t seem to care, but I didn’t expect anything less. I mean, who is this guy? He comes in out of nowhere, stays at my family’s inn and he has the audacity to insult me.

“Maybe we got off on the wrong foot.”

“Do you have any right ones?”

My mouth falls open and I start to tell him just how big of an asshole he is when that devil may care smirk comes to his face.

Oh.

Oh . . .

“I don’t like you.”

“Good.”

Okay?

I stand there, staring at him like an idiot.

“Anything else?” he asks, that indifference in his tone something that gets under my skin.

“Yeah,” I say. “As a matter of fact, you don’t deserve a cat’s affection.”

He tips his beer back and I struggle to keep my eyes from following the bob of his Adam’s apple. I swear, he makes even the smallest act of taking a drink look like a live porno.

“You speak to all your guests like this?”

“No, just the rude ones.”

He chuckles darkly and the hair on the back of my neck stands up.

Suddenly, the inn is a sweltering temperature mirroring the center of the sun.

“I take it this inn is yours.”

“It will be.” And just because I don’t have anything to do with my hands, I put another beer on the bar in front of him. “It’s my family’s.” Something about that must be amusing to him because he smirks, swallowing half his beer. If I did that, I’d be so drunk I’d forget my name in no time.

I fill a couple orders, all the while avoiding that gaze of his and finally, Matt steps back into the bar and I feel the cooling sense of relief wash over me.

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