Devastated (Anger Management, #1)(35)

“Then yes.”

“Definitely spoiled,” Kylie muttered, but thankfully for the sake of his sanity, she kept scratching.

---

“Wait! Let’s talk about this!”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Miss Tompkins,” Hunter said, as he tried to gently pull the small woman clinging to him off, only to sigh heavily when she shook her head frantically and tightened her hold around him.

“You’re not going to drown,” he promised her even as he gave up trying to pry her away and wrapped his arms back around her.

“You don’t know that!”

“We’re in the shallow end,” he pointed out, glad that she couldn’t see him smile since she’d probably go for his balls.

Again.

But that one was his fault. He shouldn’t have warned her that they were going swimming until he had her in the pool.

“You can drown in an inch of water,” she pointed out weakly.

“You’re not going to drown.

“Why are you lying to me?” Kylie demanded, pulling back far enough so that she could send him one of those cute glares that he liked so much.

“Do you know what I’m thinking?” Hunter asked, releasing his hold on her so that he could push a wet strand of hair back behind her ear.

“That I hate you?”

“No.”

“That you’d fit in nicely in Hell?” she asked, blinking innocently.

“No,” he said, chuckling as he carried her towards the deep end, “I was thinking that we should probably see how you’d do in the deep end.”

“What? No, I was kidding, Hunter! I was kidding!”

“So, you don’t hate me?” he asked, pausing a few feet away from the deep end.

“Well, I mean, you did drag me into the pool and-”

“Wrong answer,” Hunter said, sighing heavily as he headed back towards the deep end.

“Wait! I don’t hate you! I don’t hate you!” Kylie yelled somewhat frantically, which he decided to take as a sign of her devotion.

“And you trust me?” he asked, because he felt that really should be cleared up before they continued.

“I’m not sure that I would go that far,” Kylie said only to quickly change her mind with an exasperated sigh and a chuckle when he turned right back around. “Fine! I trust you. Are you happy now?”

“For now,” Hunter said, because something told him that they were going to have to go through this all over again when they moved onto the underwater portion of this lesson.

---

August

“Why do I have to sit over here?” Kylie asked, as she took her time selecting the next delicious morsel that she planned on devouring.

“You know why,” Hunter said, looking up from whatever he was doing to the Jeep’s engine to glare at her. When her car finally died yesterday, and she had a feeling that the man glaring at her had something to do with her car’s demise, she’d decided to take her chances with finding a used car online. She’d managed to find a Jeep with low mileage that only needed a little bit of work and Hunter decided that he would be the one doing the work. Since it gave him something to do, she didn’t argue.

“It was an accident,” she pointed out, only to bite back a sigh and shift to get more comfortable on the large workbench where he’d deposited her with orders to stay after she’d accidentally knocked a wrench into the engine.

“Are you going to let me have a cookie?” he asked, as she stared down at the beautiful basket of cookies that arrived for her earlier.

“No,” she said, shaking her head because they were just too beautiful to share.

“There’s over a hundred cookies in there. You can’t eat them all,” Hunter pointed out.

“Oh, but I can,” Kylie said, selecting a particularly yummy looking butterscotch oatmeal cookie.

“You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“Worth it,” she said with a firm nod and a sigh as she savored a bite of the delicious butterscotch deliciousness.

“Want to tell me why my men sent you a basket of cookies?” he asked, as her attention went to the selection of oatmeal raisin cookies that weren’t going to survive the night.

“Because they adore me,” she said, popping the last bite of cookie in her mouth before adding, “That, and I make sure that they don’t have to deal with you directly,” with a shrug.

“I’m not that bad,” Hunter bit out, nearly making her choke on her cookie.

Clearing her throat, Kylie said, “You scare them,” as she selected a particularly juicy-looking oatmeal raisin cookie and took a bite. God, they were so good, she thought even as she decided that this should only count as one cheat snack. Maybe she could freeze half of them for next week, she thought as she-

“Do I scare you?” Hunter asked softly, drawing her attention to find him suddenly standing between her legs.

“No,” Kylie mumbled weakly, as she found herself looking into Hunter’s green eyes, because he didn’t scare her.

At least, not in the way that he thought.

With one of those incredibly sexy grins that wreaked havoc on her heart, he leaned in until his lips were brushing against her ear and whispered, “Liar,” making her breath catch as he plucked the cookie out of her hand.