Turning my head, I met her eyes, a smile playing on my lips. “Don’t lie. It looks like shit.”
She covered her mouth with her hand and nodded, masking her laugh.
Jesus, this was going to be a long week.
***
I took a long drink from the beer bottle as I typed one-handed. Finishing the email before I finished my long slug of beer, I hit send, then pushed the laptop to the side.
Technically, I shouldn’t be drinking and working, but spending hours alone in a tent with Halley Dawson was more than enough to make me drink.
I’d put myself into a drunken stupor by the time the fair was over. It was probably frowned upon to be a part of a kissing booth contest while drunk.
Fuck me dead.
It’d been a good idea at the time. Beat Halley at her own game. Steal her crown just because I felt I could and, yeah, raise money at the same time. The fair really wasn’t my thing, and she had every right to question my being there.
I was surprised that she hadn’t pinned me to a wall and interrogated me further. That was her style—information, information, information. It was probably the librarian in her.
My front door opened a touch, and a familiar flash of purple filled the tiny space there.
“What the fuck do you want?”
My sister grinned. “Hello to you, too.”
“Go away, Reagan.”
“I have pizza.”
I paused. Shit. She knew just what to say to make me pay attention. “Fine. Come in.”
She slipped in with two pizza boxes balanced on one hand and kicked the door shut behind her. “Works like a charm every time.”
“Yeah, for what it’s worth, I don’t want to spend my evenings with my little sister.”
Reagan stopped and looked around my apartment. She even put one hand against her forehead as if she was looking for something. “Yeah, I mean, your company is overwhelming. I can barely move. Is this a rave?”
“Sit down and bring me that pizza, you pain in the ass.”
She glanced toward the kitchen as she joined me in the living room. “Did you eat already?”
“What did I just say?”
She put them down on the coffee table and grabbed the smaller box, then took the armchair. “I don’t care, to be honest. I wasn’t really listening.” She pulled a slice out, folded it in half, and took a huge bite out of it.
My sister ate like a man.
I opened my box and pulled out a slice.
“So. How goes the kissing booth?” Reagan asked.
“Why don’t you ask your best friend?”
“I did. There was a lot of cussing plus a demand that I fuck off.”
“That sounds like Halley.”
“Uh-huh.” She shoved the crust into her mouth and nodded. When she finished, she said, “You look like someone beat you with a twelve-inch dildo.”
“Reagan.”
“What?
“Can you rein it in tonight?”
“No. I’m not a horse rider. Can you pull your dick from your ass and I don’t know, fucking smile?”
“Can you shut your fucking mouth?”
She grinned, folding another slice of pizza in half before shoving it in her mouth again.
Well, technically, she did what I asked.
“I know what you’re fishing for, and I’m not going to give you what you think you want.”
“I know what I want. I want a six-foot-two firefighter with a tattoo sleeve and a rescue chihuahua,” she replied. “I don’t want a basket full of catfish I’ll have to ship to Louisiana for a catfish sub.”
“You’re getting off-topic.”
“We were never on-topic.”
“There never was a topic.”
She got up and pulled two beers from the fridge. She twisted the caps on both and handed me one before sitting back down. “Look, I know you’re attracted to Halley.”
“I’m attracted to half the women in this town.”
“And I’m attracted to this pizza, but I don’t want to fuck the crust into next week.”
“Reagan.”
“I get the inappropriate streak from Aunt Karen, okay?”
“And Mom. And Grandma.” I put my beer down and grabbed a pizza slice. “But I’m not giving you what you want. I know you have this weird idea about me dating Halley, but it’s not going to happen. There’s nothing there.”
She rolled her eyes. “There’s something there, Preston. I see the way you look at her. She’s the reason you don’t do one-night stands.”
“You need to lay off Netflix. All those romance movies are scrambling your brain.”
“Pres—”
“No, Reagan. And before you start, I’m not going to date Ava either. There are already enough insane women in our family without adding either of your best friends.” I hit her with a hard look. “No. Forget about it.”
She sank back into her chair with a huff. “Fine. I’ll forget about it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
HALLEY
Who Needs Family When You Have Friends?
“You could have told me.” I pushed the dishwasher closed, and it spurred to life. “I can’t believe you didn’t answer my calls. Actually, I know why you didn’t answer my calls—it’s because you knew I’d be mad.”
My dad sipped his glass of red wine and stared at me. “Are you done?”
“For now. I might call you to whine again tomorrow.”
“I will make sure not to answer.” He put his glass down and scratched the back of his neck. “Look, we got to last week and nobody had put themselves forward. I put a call out to the family members of those who work in the council, but nobody answered.”
“So you thought you’d ask Preston Wright of all people?”
Dad hesitated for a second. “I called Robert,” he said, referring to Preston and Reagan’s dad. “I asked him if either of the kids were doing the fair, and when he said no, I asked if they’d like to do the booth.”
“Reagan refused.”
“As I assumed she would. She has to man the store while Robert and Joanna do the fair. Preston took a few days to think about it and only said yes two days ago.” He picked his wine glass back up with a shrug. “I was going to call you, but then we had a crisis at the office so I didn’t get a chance. Why are you so bothered, anyway? I thought you’d relish the thought of having some real competition.”
“Because she loooooves him,” my stepmom, Abigail, sang as she joined us in the kitchen, fresh from the shower. She rubbed her dark, wet hair with a towel and grinned in my direction. “Right, Halley?”
It was always jarring to see my usually impeccably put-together stepmother without her makeup and lovely clothes, but it didn’t straight-up shock me anymore. “Wrong. I do not love Preston. I barely even like him—I tolerate him because he’s Reagan’s brother, but no. You’re wrong.”
She took the glass of wine my dad handed her and tossed the towel over her shoulder. “I’m not wrong. You have a crush on him.”