Gin Fling (Bootleg Springs, #5)(20)

“Before I throw myself down the stairs?” she scoffed.

Apparently, she was still mad. Good. So was I.

She seemed to notice my lack of clothing and made a sound like a balloon deflating, her eyes going wide.

Her hair was still in that long tail. The color of chestnuts and copper pennies. She was wearing those glasses, the thick, tortoiseshell ones in blue. She had more than a dusting of freckles on her fair skin, I realized. And those eyes, even bigger than usual, looked just like the browns and greens of the forest.

She had a small scar on her chest, peeking out of the scoop neck of her tee and a fading bruise in the crook of her elbow. I felt like I was seeing her for the first time. I recalled seeing her at the Black Friday Boot Camp, thinking she was cute, bubbly, attractive.

Maybe now I was seeing her for the second time. And maybe that first impression wasn’t so off, after all.

“What are you looking at?” she grumbled, stepping out of my grip.

“You.”

“I liked it better when you acted like I was invisible.”

Feisty. Mean. And a little hurt. Maybe I did owe her that apology after all.

“Don’t even think about apologizing,” Shelby sniffed as if reading my mind. “I don’t want to hear it.”

She paused, bit her lip.

“Also, I’m not sure I deserve it since I was a willing participant,” she confessed.

“Let’s agree to not apologize and to move on,” I suggested.

“Fine,” she said crisply. Her gaze traveled my chest and torso and seemed to get stuck somewhere around the towel. “I’d offer to shake on it, but I don’t want you to lose your terrycloth.”

As a show of good faith, and maybe to tease her just a little, I took my hand away from the towel and offered it to her.

She shook it slowly, fighting to drag her gaze to my face.

“You’re still mad,” I noted, seeing the flash in her green and brown eyes.

“Yeah, well, so are you.”

“It’s our own fault.” I’d been too busy feeling hurt to get to the truth.

“That’s part of what I’m mad about,” she said. We were still shaking hands, but now we weren’t glaring at each other. In fact, that looked like the beginnings of a smile touching the corners of her rosy lips.

“Do you want to tell me about your dissertation?” I asked.

“No. I don’t want your pity interest.” She pulled her hand out of my grip. “Just because we’re not enemies doesn’t mean we have to be friends.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed.

“I’ll have you know that I’m a very nice person,” she insisted, stepping around me to get to her room. “It’s not my fault that you had the wrong idea about me.”

“No, but it is your fault that you let me continue to believe the wrong idea.”

“I don’t know about you,” she said. “But I’m really looking forward to the end of this month.”





*



Mrs. Varney: Woooo Weee! Sparks are a flyin’ at the Little Yellow House!





Estelle: Dang it! I can’t believe Louisa and I missed it! Catch us up!





Myrt: Don’t know what all the fuss is. Shelby still hasn’t seen that boy naked.





Carolina Rae: But the way they hollered at each other? Either love is in the air or there’s gonna be a crime of passion in Bootleg Springs!





11





Shelby





I should have picked a different athletic endeavor. Like curling. Or badminton. Or literally anything other than a triathlon. My swim that morning had been okay. I hadn’t drowned. So that was a plus. But a fish did touch my leg, and I didn’t much care for that. Also, I got a cramp in the arch of my foot and went down like a ton of bricks.

Now I was running or, more accurately, plodding my way through the woods while gasping for air.

I prayed that any bears in the vicinity would decide today was not the day to eat a person. I doubted my self-defense classes would be of much help against a bear. Besides, if one lumbered out of the woods into my path, I’d probably just lay down on the ground and wait for the mauling. I was that tired.

I wheezed, sucking in a breath and something that felt like a bug.

I spit it all out and cursed the $300 registration fee I’d already paid. It was a lot of money for a grad student. A grad student without an actual job lined up yet. A grad student whose half-finished dissertation and new medical diagnosis battled each other for priority.

“I hate everything,” I proclaimed to the majestic trees lining the path. “Every damn thing.”

I should stop talking. I needed oxygen for things other than complaining to nature.

I heard footfalls behind me and whirled around, hands up.

“Not a bear. I promise.” Jonah jogged toward me. The man was bare-chested and more majestic than any of this nature stuff.

I turned my back on his sweaty glory and made a good show of jogging. Until my foot caught on a tree root.

He caught me by the elbow.

The guy kept catching me.

And while the squealy teenage girl inside me thought that was worth a journal entry, the adult female felt like I should be graceful enough to not need catching. I’d been in this body thirty years. I should know how to operate it by now.