Page 35 of Toxic

I turned the stove on, set the pan down, then turned to face her. “I have an easy solution for all this. You still do whatever you want, provided that what you want is for me to do the heavy lifting.”

She tossed her hands up in disbelief. “You can’t just come here and…take over.”

“Why not?” The look of disbelief on her face nearly made me laugh, but that would just skyrocket her blood pressure again so I held back.

“Because it’smyranch.”

“It is,” I said, content and perfectly agreeable about that point. Turning, I started cracking eggs into a bowl. “Doesn’t mean I’m not going to do the work that needs doing while I’m here.”

For the rest of our lives.

I didn’t voice that out loud because she seemed to be struggling to hold onto that temper again. I continued, “You know you need me. You asked Keely for help for a reason. You don’t need day laborers, you need me.”

“Look,” she gritted out. “I really am appreciative of what you’ve done here-”

“Don’t mention it.” I could all but hear her grinding her teeth as I cut her off.

“But we really need to establish some ground rules.”

Turning again, I nodded. “I agree.”

“Good. I-”

“I’ll do all the work. And the cooking. You take care of your grandfather.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What?” She shook her head. “That’s not even… I’m not agreeing to that. I’m not going to just make you take over everything.”

“You’re notmakingme do anything, Billie,” I told her.

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m notlettingyou either,” she argued.

“Then you and I are going to keep butting heads, Sweet Girl,” I said with a shrug. She sputtered at the nickname, but I didn’t give her a chance to speak. “And eventually, I’m going to lose my patience. I guarantee you won’t like what happens then.”

“Wait. So you’re telling me you dumping me in a water trough wasn’t you losing your patience?”

“Nope,” I replied. “Just cooling you off.”

She was struggling to understand. She was easy to read. Like a fucking book. Except of course what started all this. I still didn’t know what had made her angry this morning.

“And what will happen when you do?” she taunted. “What? You’ll hit me?”

My temper snapped and I stalked over to her. I used my hand on her thigh to pin her to the chair. Her eyes were wide and she’d tried to scramble away from me, realizing she’d pissed me off. I stuck my face into hers again. It was hard not to kiss her. A good rage fuck would go a long way toward cooling off both our tempers now that mine was right up there with hers.

“I don’thitwomen. Ever.” I paused, looking away as I thought about that. “Unless they’re trying to kill me or kill my family,” I amended. “But thatalmostnever happens. There’s a lot that you can justly accuse me of, butthatis over the line.”

“Wha-” she broke off when I focused on her again.

“If you push me past the limit of my control, Lightning, I’m going to end up fucking you until we’re both too goddamn weak to keep fighting.” I searched her face, noting the shock and interest there in her eyes. “Go ahead,” I purred. “Keep pushing me.”

She swallowed hard and squeaked out some protest, but there was no heat behind it.

I’d effectively shut that fight down. It took all my damn self-control to remove my hand from her thigh and go back to the stove. The silence in the room was heavy and thick, but she didn’t go back to needling me. Now at least she knew what would happen if she wanted to in the future.

CHAPTER 13

Billie

Isat there in disbelief as he went back to prepping breakfast. What was wrong with me? If I was being honest, I was mostly mad about those nurses this morning. But that was just so…unreasonable.

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