Page 34 of Hard To Leave

Her eyes narrowed slightly as soon as the door closed behind us. “What was that?”

Apparently, I was more obvious than I had thought.

“What?” I asked, feeling this crazy swirl of irritation rush through me. Knowing that I wasn’t going to be around to keep my eyes on Phil the fixer drove me crazy.

She slanted her head to the side. “Phil is just a neighbor who helps me out a lot around the house. There is nothing going on between us. You didn’t need to piss all over my yard to mark your territory.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, feigning innocence.

She smacked my chest. “Why were you out there acting like a jealous boyfriend?”

I reached out and grabbed her wrist, feeling my patience snap. “If you are going to be sleeping in my bed, you won’t be sleeping with anyone else.”

Her mouth fell open, and then she blinked her eyes trying to register what I just said. I was trying to find the words but came up short. It was probably a dumb thing to say, and I probably sounded like an asshole, but I didn’t care. She could be pissed all she wanted.

She cleared her throat and looked me dead in the eye. “You must suffer from memory loss, because I told you less than twenty-four hours ago that you are the first man I’ve been with in over seven years.”

God, I was going about this all wrong. This is why I didn’t do relationships because I suck at them. I needed to tamp down the foreign feeling of jealously and turn this around. I didn’t want to leave like this. Resting my forehead against hers, I softened my tone. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just didn’t like the way he was looking at you.”

“Jack, he’s just a friendly neighbor. I have no romantic interest in him at all.”

I reached out to run my thumb along her jaw, loving the way she leaned into my touch. “That’s good to hear because I want to be your only romantic interest.”

She looked guarded and unsure, and I didn’t like that one bit. “Does that go both ways?”

My thumb found her cheek as I looked into her eyes. She made me nervous, which was ironic because I was usually the one to make a woman nervous. Not the other way around. “Damn straight, it does.”

I pulled her in tight and made a promise to myself at that moment that I would do everything in my power to not fuck this up.

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