Page 9 of Enemies in Earnest

I don’t tell him the real reason I need a babysitter. Just in case that same magnetic pull reared its ugly head again—I wanted a stop gap so I didn’t suggest she come back to my place. As badly as I wanted to spread her out and spend hours worshipping her, it was a very bad idea. Very bad. Especially with thin walls and guests on the other side of the duplex.

Well, and the fact that she hated me. Hate fucking is always a bad idea. We couldn’t get embroiled in any kind of dalliance. Not when we brought the worst out in each other. It would just end in broken hearts, and then we’d become theLuke and Loreleiof Candy Cane Key. Suddenly the whole town would be sporting blue and pink ribbons.

Nicko’s wouldn’t have been on my radar for places Little Miss Prim and Proper patronized. Though she’d surprised me with the wholeI’m on the planning committeenonsense. I never would have pegged her for one of the Christmascookies. The ones who leaned hard into the Christmas theme of the island.

I saw her from the window in the door. She stood, laughing with the hostess, her head thrown back in complete unguarded delight. It took my breath away. Not just how completely unguarded she was in her laughter, but she’d dressed for the occasion, and she looked…stunning.

While the dress was by no means immodest, it did something for her figure. Acacia put hourglass figures to shame. She was the thrill of a winding mountain in a sportscar that turned like it was on rails.

My hands tingled with the remembrance of how that body felt the day prior. Even with the bulk of her overalls she’d been soft in every place I worshipped—like her hips, ass, and thighs– and firm in places that begged for my mouth to tease and touch, like the breasts that pressed against my chest as we kissed.

“Acacia.” I placed a chaste kiss on her cheek. “You are an absolute vision.”

I assumed she’d gotten dressed up for me. Maybe that was a dickish thing to assume. But the dinner had implications of being adateand when her hair was curled in soft rings that seductively cupped her breasts and her makeup did that swoopy thing along her eyes to make them more feline…it felt like she’d done it for me.

“You owe me an apology,” she said by way of greeting, pressing a red lacquered fingertip into my chest.

It took me a minute to recover. I’d expected a returned kiss. A smile. Some kind of show of affection that hinted she felt the pull as much as I had. That she had been powerless to it too. And, despite me telling Klaus he was a babysitter to ensure I didn’t do anything wrong, I also wanted the satisfaction of knowing I wasn’t the only one that hadn’t stopped thinking about it since last night.

“An apology?” I asked just as the hostess stepped out from behind her podium with two menus.

“And will you be sitting in the nice or the naughty section tonight?” she asked.

“This one isdefinitelynaughty,” I told the hostess. “Sit us in theso naughty Santa’s calling Krampussection.”

The heat seeking missiles Acacia called eyeballs bore into my profile as we followedHannah,according to her nametag.

“I should storm out of here right now and make you eat by yourself!” she hissed at me as we wound through the restaurant, past the Christmas karaoke. Thank god being naughty meant you didn’t get placed in that version of Chinese Water Torture. I liked my ear drums intact, thank you very much.

“You’re the one that invited me to the dinner, or did you forget in all that sexual haze?”

I pulled out her chair when Hannah finally stopped at a table, thankfully tucked in the back corner. Acacia looked at me like I had two heads. She stared down at me over the tip of her nose, her proud chin jutted in defiance.

“Sit, Acacia.”

“Oh, first I’m pretentious. Then I’m nothing more than a beer wench. And now I’m an animal you can bring to heel with a cluck of your tongue and a pat of your leg? I think not.” She huffed, crossing her arms and tapping her toe.

“I called you pretentious before we kissed, Acacia. Wouldn’t the time to be upset about that have occurred prior to the kiss and the dinner invitation?”

Even angry and a little flummoxed, she still stood proud. Like Joan of Arc or some other super feminist warrior that I knew shit all about. I had to remind myself—again—that this dinner couldn’t be anything more than clearing the air. Because hate fucking was a terrible, terrible idea. And Acacia made it loud and damn clear I was beneath her. Less than beneath her. A cockroach was higher on the ladder than I was.

“Look.” I folded my hands in front of me, staring at her dead in the eyes. “I don’t know why, today, you’re upset, but I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight with you. When you take jabs at my college and my intellect, however, it does toe you into the bullseye of pretentiousness. If you don’t like the word, don’t judge people based on assumptions.”

She didn’t budge. Figures. Why would anything with Acacia Ashley be easy? “Wheredidyou go to school anyway?”

“Oxford,” she said. “My dad went there. He wanted me to go there too.”

Pretentious to the nth degree. But I kept that judgment in my head.

“Why don’t you sit down and tell me about Oxford. How did your dad end up there?”

She wavered. It was barely a centimeter, but I saw her body flinch like she wanted to sit down. But as soon as the delight fluttered across her features, it was gone again. Jesus, she was exhausting.

“Acacia, might I remind you, again, thatyouinvitedmeto dinner. So we can continue to play this tiresome game of you stubbornly holding on to this self-righteous offense or we can just pull out our white flags and call a truce to whatever it is that has made you hate me for the last five years.”

The emotions that played across her face rivaled a vaudevillian. I watched with rapt attention as the offense registered first—because how dare I call her stubborn when that was exactly how she was acting. Then the lightbulb went on, that ohyeah!Iwas in fact the guest and she, the host. And she was a shitty host.

“I heard someone has beenvery naughtyover here.” A holiday elf approached the table, feigned reproach looking foreign on his cheery, glitter coated cheeks.

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