Page 268 of Branded
Christ.
I’d forgotten about that.
My stomach hadn’t, apparently. It churned as the memory tried to surface.
I turned to my mother. “Why do I get the dating inquisition when they all get to talk about other stuff?”
“Because,” Margot said before our mom could reply, “we’ve all heard enough about sticks and pucks and how you like your skates sharpened.”
“It’s called a radius,” I corrected. “And I prefer?—”
“Five-eighths,” Kathy said, rolling her eyes. “Please save us the time spent waxing poetic about your skate blades and tell us when our highly successful and attractive older brother is going to stop playing the field and settle down.”
If they only knew.
That I did want to settle.
That I wanted to find that settle with Jules, or at least to explore what we had together. Because she was funny and smart and worked her ass off. Because she was beautiful and I’d caught her gaze on me as often as my eyes were drawn to hers.
But I didn’t want to talk about Jules.
I understood why she’d turned me down—well, I didn’t really understand it, not when her stare tangled with mine so often, not when she was always friendly and stopped by my table to say hi and chat, even if I wasn’t sitting in her section. Those brief moments of conversation only lasted a couple of minutes, but they were the best parts of my day.
My week.
And she didn’t want to date me.
So, none of it really mattered.
Not the conversations, nor the way our gazes caught hold. Not the way my body focused on hers whenever she was in the vicinity, an inner Jules Detector that had my fingers itching to touch, my pulse speeding, my nose searching for any scent of her. Not even the way she intrigued me, made me desperate to know every secret and memory and thought in her mind.
That made me sound like a sociopath.
But I couldn’t help it.
Jules was a puzzle I wanted to solve.
All of that was a fact that I didn’t want my family to know.
The nosiness, the pressure from them if they did…fuck?—
No. I’d rather talk about wedding colors—and all the merits of the various shades of peach—than share the fact that I wanted a woman who didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t want me back.
So, I tried to come up with an answer that would prevent any further questions.
Unfortunately, despite my trying, I was drawing blanks.
“I’m not dating anyone,” I said.
And the tone was wrong.
All wrong.
Which was why every single pair of eyes on the screen suddenly focused on me with laser precision.
Damn. I’d set off all of my family’s internal alarms.
“But you want to be dating someone,” Margot said softly. “The woman who put the kicked-puppy look in your eyes.”
