Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(6)

He’s seven.

This isn’t going to end well.

But just as I decide getting the hell out of here and calling a sheriff is probably a better idea, I see what’s lurking in the bathroom.

A woman.

Alone.

In the corner tub.

Her dark hair is piled in a short ponytail on top of her head. The faint sound of country music drifts out of her earbuds. Candles line the tub shelf and the platform it sits on, causing the flickering glow. The bath bubbles are so high I can’t see her face.

My heart gives a squeeze and shoots out guilt, but I tell it to knock it off.

Beck lets anybody who asks use this house.

It’s not Ellie.

Her hair’s too short and too dark. Ellie always has blond streaks in her hair.

I step onto the cool tile floor, and I’m about to clear my throat to get her attention when Tucker exclaims, “A bubble bath!”

The woman shrieks, straightens, and spins, wide blue eyes connecting with mine for a split second before she disappears.

One second, she’s gape-mouthed and goggling like she’s just as shocked to see us as we are to see her, and the next, there’s a splash that sets my heart spiraling into a panic, because fuck me, that’s Ellie.

A flurry of foamy bubbles shoots into the air as she goes under the water. Her arm flaps up, then the other, waving wildly like she’s trying to find purchase to pull herself up. I dash across the slick tile to grab for her in the deep tub. My hand connects with soft wet flesh, and suddenly I’m getting a fist to the chest as she breaks through the water. “Back up, asshole. I’ll fucking cut you!”

Fuck, that voice.

It’s coming out of a face covered with bubbles from the top of her head to the foam sticking to her eyelashes all the way down to the droopy bubble beard, but I know that voice, and it has my pounding heart suddenly beating from somewhere around my voice box.

“Ellie. Are you—”

The bubble eyes blink. “Wyatt?”

The shriek is amplified by the hard surfaces in the bathroom, bouncing off the glass window over the tub, the mirror, the hard floor.

She gasps, looks down and flings her arms over her bubble-covered chest, and ducks back down, but then she shrieks and disappears under the water again, arms flailing again, and what the fuck is she soaking in that’s making the tub so slippery?

I bend at the waist to reach into the tub and grab onto her arm and pull, but no sooner does she surface than her eyes narrow. “Let. Go,” she sputters around the bubbles cascading down her face.

“So you can drown?” Christ, she nearly died the last time I saw her. I’m not letting her drown.

No matter how much she irritates the fuck out of me.

Or how—

Nope.

Not thinking about Ellie in any other way than the annoying and alive ways.

Still, we’re so close, I can count the specks of midnight in her blue irises and the new list of reasons she has to hate me.

And I know she’s naked under those bubbles.

Fuck fuck fuck. Think about my kid. Remember Beck. Think about Beck in his underwear…

Her eyelids snap up and down, more heat—anger, not interest—surging out of them. “I’m not going to—fu—”

Her words are cut off as she slips and flails again. She doesn’t go under, because she grabs a handful of my shirt.

And pulls.

Hard.

The floor slips beneath me, and suddenly I’m falling face-first into the bubbles.

Wet heat crashes over my face and soaks into my T-shirt. I choke on a lungful of soapy water and come up sputtering.

I probably deserve that.

And more.

“What the fu—he—heck was that for?” I spit out around a cough while I shove away from the tub though, because while I can admit to myself that I deserved that, I’m not ready to admit it to her.

I’m still pissed at her for ignoring me so effectively for the past six months.

She huddles in a corner, firmly gripping the faucet. “Get out.”

“Dad, you got bubbles on your head,” Tucker laughs. “Can I have bubbles? Can I take your picture?”

The force of Ellie’s glare is so hot I’m surprised the bubbles don’t melt. “Get. Out,” she repeats.

I swipe water off my face and ignore the stinging in my eyes. “Gladly. You’re welcome for trying to help.”

She flips me the bird.

Not the first time.

Won’t be the last.

Ellie Ryder and me?

We mix as well as water and lava.

And I don’t want to talk about how fucking good it feels to finally confirm for myself that she’s still in one piece.

That she’s still breathing.

And that she still hates me.

More so, if that was possible.

I hate that she hates me, but I also need her to hate me.

Fuck, we’re complicated.

“Can I take a bubble bath?” Tucker wants to know while I pull him back out of the bedroom, grabbing my duffel and then his suitcase from the guest bedroom too. Water sloshes off my shirt and drips onto the runner while we head for the stairs.

Fucking Beck.

He knew.

He knew she’d be here.

Dude, seriously, get the stick out of your ass, fuck your pride, and use my place out in Shipwreck. Tucker will love the pirate festival, and you’re not gonna get a more comfortable bed. Or a better chance to teach him to play Pac-Man. Or a cheaper vacation. How much are you paying in alimony? Fuck.