The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (carter reed TXT) 📗

is making it as easy as possible for people to pretend everything is fine." He gave a quick shake of his head to my shoulder, ran his lips along my neck. "And if anyone has a problem with you, they'll have to go through me first. It's not going to be any other way, Jasper."

This insistence…I decided I could get used to it.

13

Linden

It wasn't my style to make snap decisions.

I didn't waffle or ruminate either but I preferred to take my damn time on the things that mattered.

The partnership with Magnolia was a good example.

Introducing Jasper to my family was another.

Lucky for me, my mother jumped in and took care of the latter for me. Awesome.

I probably would've invited Jasper along on Sunday if my mother hadn't beaten me to the chase. It wasn't like I wanted to keep Jasper away from my family. I didn't want them getting the wrong idea was all. I didn't want my mother gushing about how special Jasper was and how she had to attend the party, as if she could force this relationship into permanence if she pulled the right strings and pushed hard enough on the soft spots.

Permanence wasn't even in Jasper's vocabulary. She wasn't staying in a sleepy Boston suburb, first because she was only here to escape her present situation and second because she didn't want to stay here. This wasn't where she wanted to be. Even if recovering from her last job—and that marriage—she wasn't turning in her power heels for duck boots.

This was temporary and that was why I could live with taking her home with me on Sunday and to the party next month. When she left town and returned to her life, or some version of it, my mother would have to accept the absolute pointlessness of challenging me to find someone special on a prescribed timeline. She'd have to.

So, yeah. I told Jasper I wanted her with me. I meant it too. I liked Jasper and I knew my family would adore her. As far as the party went, well, that was for me. I wasn't positive Jasper would still be in town when that event rolled around but if she was, I got the bonus of hanging out with her all night.

Seemed like a good deal to me.

I wasn't getting attached. I was just looking out for her. Being a good neighbor, really. Or something along those lines. I liked her and—and, well, I didn't hate her. I wasn't irrationally angry about her fixing up Midge's house anymore, even if I did completely lose it when I saw her marching toward the half-dead rhododendron in the backyard with an axe the other day. We only yelled at each other for ten minutes that time, which was progress.

We only yelled at each other for ten minutes because I grabbed the axe out of her hands, tossed it into my yard, and kissed her while she flailed those bony little fists at me, but it was still progress.

I wasn't getting attached. This wasn't attachment. It was something else. Something that made me want to physically shake sense into her at least once a day while also making me want to fuck her clear through my mattress at least five times an hour.

I still had to talk myself out of both in order to survive this invasion.

Her life was a bunch of puzzle pieces thrown up in the air and she wasn't staying. I was all about casual sex but there was nothing casual where it came to Jasper. Taking her to bed would mean something. If not to her, definitely to me. After she left, she'd always be the beautiful maybe-burglar who blew into my life with a cloud of bats at her back and a toxic banana bread. She'd always be the woman who told an eternity of secrets the first time she stepped into the heart of the woods. She'd always be the woman who made my heart stop when I saw fire trucks outside her house and the one who got woozy at the sight of blood. She was the one who'd catalyzed ordinary concern for my neighbor into the kind of worry that kept me up nights. And she was the only woman I'd ever met who could make a meal out of toasted bread.

I wasn't getting attached.

14

Jasper

Linden found a reason for me to stay over every night that week.

The overnight temperatures were dropping and he was worried about the heating system at Midge's house. (Very valid; I shared that worry.)

He didn't like the idea of me staying there with the porch demolished down to the joists. (Not sure I followed that one but okay.)

I drank two glasses of wine over dinner and he thought it was better for me to stay put. (Since the three-minute walk next door was so perilous.)

That sort of thing.

I argued with him every time because it was in my DNA, but there was no teeth to it. The fight was more a matter of custom at this point, something woven into the fabric of our neighbors-turned-whatever-this-was. Not that I had time to put into defining our whatever.

Sometimes, we kissed. Sometimes, I fell asleep on the sofa with my head in his lap. And sometimes, we fought hard over the right way to fold a bath towel and didn't want to talk to each other all day because of it.

It was fine.

We were fine.

Everything was fine.

Except for those moments when he'd look at me and I'd swear I saw a wolf behind those eyes. Like now, when he gazed at me with brutal intensity every time I handed him another dish to dry. Staring of that sort while someone was elbow deep in soapy water was excessive. It just didn't fit.

Except it did because this was Linden and everything about him was intense and excessive. That didn't mean I had to like it. "Those are some serious looks you're giving me. Are you