Page 7 of Merrily Mine
She hummed. “What are we celebrating?”
“Old friends?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “We were neverfriends, Mason.” She looked away. “Back then, I was nothing more than your best friend’s annoying kid sister. I was practically invisible.”
I frowned. Maybe she’d been younger than Hunt and me, but I’d never minded when she tagged along with us. “Maybe we weren’t friendsthen. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends now.” I winked at her.
She pursed her lips as if she were debating the idea.
“Is the thought of being friends with me really so bad?” I placed my hand over my heart. “I’m hurt, Emmie girl.”
Her cheeks turned pink, and she looked away—bashful.This was the Emily I remembered: quiet and always blushing around me.
Not the vixen of a woman in front of me, the one who looked like temptation andsin.
The totally off-limits gorgeous girl who I definitely wasn’t allowed to want.
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emily
Emmie Girl.There was something about my childhood nickname on his tongue that really did me in.Who was the man in front of me, and what had he done with Mason Elliott?Never in my wildest dreams had I ever pictured himflirtingwithme.
Friends? Could we really befriends? My heart sped up, beating faster as I took him in. The way he filled out those Wranglers. His green plaid flannel that almost seemed to bulge around his muscles. Even his damn boots and the brown leather jacket he was wearing. I swallowed roughly.
Because this man was every wet dream come to life. And it wassounfair. Because he was Mason. My brother’s best friend growing up. The boy I’d watched at every opportunity. Riding horses, playing video games with my brother, or hanging out in the living room with my family.
The cowboy I’d been crushing on since I knew what a crush was.
Is the thought of being friends with me really so bad?No, no, it wasn’t. And that was the problem.
Because I was just like everyone else. I was pretty sure every girl within a twenty-mile radius had drooled over him when he was younger. He was stupidly attractive, and damn if he didn’t know it. Cocky as all hell, and definitely not for me.
“No,” I finally answered him. “No, I don’t think it would be so bad at all.”
I reached up, stealing his hat off his head and placing it on mine, fluttering my eyelashes.
His eyes filled with heat, and his eyes raked over mine, not even trying to hide his attraction to me. I liked that. The blatant perusal, the way he’d been so bold earlier, sliding in and wrapping his arm around my body.
Mason stepped forward, the stubble on his cheek brushing against my face as he dropped his mouth to my ear. “You know what they say, darlin’.”
“Hm?” I tipped my head back, pressing up onto my tiptoes. It was the first time I could really appreciate how tall he was—how he seemed to tower over me with that impressive height and build. There was no denying how Mason spent his days, not when he looked likethat.
He flicked the brim of the hat up, exposing my face to the light.
Mason’s head dipped low, his lips only inches from mine. “If you wear the hat, you gotta ride the cowboy.” His voice scraped over my skin, making goosebumps appear on my arms.
He couldn’t be…no.“Is that so?” My voice was all breathy. Damn if I didn’t know it. I was just pretending to act coy, hoping he wouldn’t see how much he affected me.
There was no way that Mason was thinking about what it would be like to be with me, right?
Of course not. Except… He hummed against my skin, taking the hat back and placing it back on his head.
My body felt like it was on fire.
Fuck, he was hot. Hotter than he had any right to be. I’d done my best to forget that fact over the last ten years—namely because he’d never seen me as anything other than a kid growing up—and then because he’d been married. He was taken. Off-limits.
And now, he was…what?
