Page 33 of A Reckless Memory

* * *

Aggie

“Don’t try that again.” My heart hammered. I was ready to prance around him and raise my tail. One shocking but chaste kiss and he’d cracked my resolve to stay far away from him.

“Answer me, Aggie. Why’d you hire me?”

“I already told—”

He put a finger to my lips. I licked my tongue out, tasting the saltiness of the fries we’d been sharing.

“Christ, I forgot how good you are with that tongue.”

Before I climbed him like a tree and proved I was still good with my tongue, I stepped back, attempting to put distance between us. He advanced and my back ended up against the cold door.

“Why, Aggie?” He towered over me, the parking lot lights casting shadows over his face, making the cut of his cheekbones and chin harder than they were in daylight. He wasn’t wearing a hat to otherwise hide his expression. His gaze was intense, like he yearned to know.

I needed an answer to the same question too. “Revenge.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Why are you still here? You could walk away at any time.” Hope climbed a small notch in my chest. I’d been lying to myself. I wasn’t over this man.

“I have nowhere else to go.”

The hope shriveled. The bastard. “I’ve gotta go.” I tensed to duck around him.

“I lied.” His words made me stop. “I have one other place to go and that’s back home. I miss Dad, but if I go back there, then everything I’ve done has only led me back to the same shithole I was running from instead of returning to make things right.”

My stupid, soft heart cracked open for him, but in the end, he was living his life for himself. I didn’t factor in.

A faint smile played over his full lips. “Then you sent me that email full of typos.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“‘Offer’ only had one ‘F’ and you spelled ‘rescue’ three different ways.”

I winced. The screen had been pretty blurry by that point.

“I thought for sure I was going to get jumped and wake up to find a kidney missing, but you appeared. You’d seen what they were saying and plotted your revenge anyway. It means a lot.”

My heart was going to be mush before I knew it. “Getting back at you means a lot?”

“You didn’t question that the accusations were false. None of my other references had the same confidence in me. I was almost afraid to tell Archer and find out what he thought.”

“I bet they believe you’re not guilty of animal abuse.” When one of Daddy’s broodmares broke a leg, Ansen had been her biggest advocate. Daddy thought the animal was useless if she couldn’t be mounted, but Ansen was willing to try every method possible to heal the break.

Daddy won in the end.

“There it is again. That unwavering resolve.” He leaned in farther. “Why are you still single?”

“I told you.”

His mouth was set. Again, he wanted more from me. At some point, I had to stop giving bits of myself to this man. He couldn’t be trusted with me.

But I’d answer him. “I seem to be a magnet for guys who resent independent women. So I’m done with men.” I struggled to sound nonchalant, but my pulse was kicking up thanks to his proximity.

“Done, huh?”

---