Page 101 of Single Dad Dilemma
“Go back to your warm house with your fucking twin. I have blankets and ... more blankets. I’ll be just fine right here without being tormented by you and your mirror image.”
Lily couldn’t even look me in the eye when she said it, the color climbing higher in her cheeks.
“I’m sorry you found out about my brother that way. We will talk about this, one way or the other,” I told her in a rough voice. “Doesn’t matter if it’s now. Or tomorrow. Or next week.” My volume increased. “But you arenotstaying here with the power out.”
By the time I’d finished, I was yelling, and Lily sucked in a deep breath, eyes lit with emotion. God, she was beautiful when she was pissed off. She shucked off her blankets and poked me in the chest.
Anger caught fire the moment she touched me. Anger and something else. Something hotter, and much, much harder to control. A high I’d never felt in my entire life.
“What the hell are you going to do about it?” she said, leaning until I almost grabbed her face and used my mouth and my hands to shut her up. “I fuckingdareyou to try and boss me around right now.”
My molars clenched together so tightly, I swear my jawbone creaked.
That slight pause must have looked like defeat to Lily, because she stepped back, a smug smile pulling at her lips.
That was when I bent at the knees, braced my shoulder in her midsection, banded my arm tight around the backs of her legs, and straightened to my full height.
“Put me down!” she yelled.
“Not a chance.”
The door slammed behind me, and with Lily pounding ineffectually against my back, cursing my existence to the angry, swirling sky, I marched us right back through the snow to my house, a grim sort of satisfaction flaring to life in the empty parts of my chest.
Keep pissing her off,my brother had said.
No fucking problem.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lily
From my upside-down view, two things were abundantly clear.
First, Barrett’s ass was fantastic.
Second, the man had a death wish.
“Put me down!” I yelled, smacking ineffectively against his back. I almost went for the ass, but the thought of addinganysort of spanking dynamic to whatever was happening here blurred way too many lines, and the sudden addition of the cavemen carry was already doing that quite effectively.
“Once we’re inside, I’ll be happy to.”
A foot of snow had already fallen, and for the last few hours, I’d watched the piles outside grow with increasing alarm. Even the food on the island had started to seem insufficient.
“My food!” I cried, trying to push up but failing miserably. God, I needed to do more ab work.
“What food?”
“I got groceries this morning. A lot of them.”
Barrett grumbled something under his breath that I missed.
The wind on my cheeks was brutal, and I tucked my face against the warm wall of his back until he shoved open the door leading into their garage. Was that betraying my principles? Possibly. But I hated being cold more than I hated being annoyed at the manhandling.
To be honest, I wasn’t even all that annoyed, because it was fun as hell to get mad at this guy. Weirdest kind of foreplay I’d ever experienced.
Once we were inside the house, the world flipped, and as soon as my feet were on the ground, I scrambled back, trying desperately to fix my hair. He thrust his hand out, my hat tight in his grip. What with all the flinging of my body, I hadn’t even noticed it had fallen off.
With as much dignity as I could muster, I tugged it back in place.
