Page 29 of The Good Girl (Nashville Neighborhood)

I got that she was shy, but she didn’t seem to be painfully so. At least, no more than some of the other girls I’d been with, so that probably wasn’t the reason either. It had to be something else.

It only took two steps to bring me right in front of her and my voice went quiet. “Are you, like, not interested in sex?”

A strangled noise escaped from her throat, and she matched my low tone. “No, I’m very interested in . . . that.”

Her focus slid down my body, and fuck. My pulse climbed.

When the pools of her eyes heated, it was clear she was thinking the same thing I was at that moment. She pictured us naked, her legs wrapped around my waist as I pushed my dick inside her for the first time. Maybe she’d make that same noise of surprise I’d just heard from her.

But she blinked away the desire and her guard came up, creating a wall between us. I didn’t like it, and that overrode the voice in my head telling me not to push her. “Tell me.”

My tone wasn’t demanding, but it didn’t matter. The second it was out, I winced, knowing I’d made a mistake.

Her single word was cold and definitive. “No.”

I was irritated with myself. She’d tell me if and when she wanted to, and I needed to get that. I shouldn’t care what her reasons were—only that she’d come to me for help when she could have gone to anyone else. Plus, my insistence might be making her feel like I thought there was something wrong with her, when . . . shit, no. That wasn’t what I thought at all.

The longer I was around her, the more obsessed I became.

But I was honestly confused on why she was so hellbent on hooking up with me. Sure, I was good-looking, but I wasn’t the only hot guy on the planet. Why bother with me when she could have someone less complicated?

At the very least, she could have someone who wasn’t best friends with Colin.

When we’d stepped onto the golf course, it hadn’t been busy, but there was a couple behind us now who was finishing the previous hole. I felt their impatient stares at the same time she must have because Sydney abruptly moved.

She stalked to the next hole, dropped her ball to the astroturf, and swung without even setting her feet. So, it wasn’t all that surprising when her ball plinked off the rock in the center of the green and rolled to a stop in a corner that didn’t have a clear path to the hole. It was a terrible, rushed shot. She didn’t seem to care, though. She marched to the side, moving out of the way for me to tee off.

Unease made my shoulders tight, but I tried to ignore it. I drew in a breath, lined up, and took my shot.

I didn’t get another hole-in-one, but I came really close. I tapped my ball in, retrieved it, and waited with my mouth shut as I watched her finish the round—

Which was a disaster.

My plan had been to fluster her, and it had worked a little too well.

Sydney no longer cared about the game, and when she missed her next two shots, I began to feel bad. I liked winning, but this felt . . . wrong. Empty.

She finally knocked the ball in, and we shuffled on to the next hole. I struggled to find a way to make it right and get rid of the weird vibe between us. I needed her to focus on something else so I could bring back the sunny girl she’d been earlier.

“You’ve always wanted to be a chef?” I asked.

For a moment, it looked like she was going to ignore my question, but then she sighed, and her attention turned my way. “Yeah.”

I made sure it sounded light. Conversational. “Why?”

She dropped her ball and swung her putter, making the ball careen carelessly across the fairway. “I don’t know. I guess it’s a little like this can be. How you get better every time you do it, and so I’m always trying to improve and one-up myself. To make the dish better each time I make it.”

She was competing with herself, and that? I totally related. “I do that, too. Every event I host, I want it to be better than the last.”

“How’d you get into event planning?”

“My mom has her own company in North Carolina, and I used to help out when I lived with her. I kind of hated it back then, but now . . .” I shrugged. “It sounds weird, but I like managing all the moving parts and bringing them together to make something great. Even if it’s stressful or chaotic leading up to it. If the result makes my clients happy, then I’m happy.”

She looked pleasantly surprised. “I get it. That’s how I feel when I finish a dish. When I have all these elements with different timing, and I execute it just right and get them on the plate together—it’s like a rush.”

I understood completely. I got that same swell of pride she was talking about whenever I pulled off an event that I knew was going to exceed expectations. Plus, it was awesome seeing all my work fall into place to create the finished product.

It shouldn’t have been surprising we had shit in common. We were both into creative, customer-driven fields, and yet it caught me off guard anyway. It made me wonder where else we might be similar.

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