Page 26 of Trigger Happy

Lawton’s eyes roam over the tattered material and down to my bare legs, then he sniffs the air. His jaw tightens. “What poor bastard had to sleep with you to leave you that sweatshirt?”

“It was my dad’s.” I turn around, showing him the back.

“Oh.” His face relaxes, and he takes a giant gulp of coffee. “I didn’t realize you Chastains owned sweatshirts like the rest of us plebeians.”

“Only ones made of woven gold silk.”

I take a seat across from him at the bistro table. The morning sun glitters on the lake in the distance, beneath the mountains keeping watch. It’s nice, sitting still for a moment. There’s no hopping on a flight or repacking the same duffel bag, but there’s this pang in my chest when I think about the end date. I don’t even have Bonnie waiting for me when I get back.

Lawton sips his pumpkin spice latte and smacks his lips. “Damn, this is good. Have you had one of these?”

I put a palm-sized serving of scrambled eggs on my plate while mentally tallying the protein. “You’re going to develop a sugar addiction if you drink those every morning.”

“Better than being addicted to limoncello.”

I press my lips together, but I can’t help asking, “Why limoncello?”

He pauses, looks me over. “It was the last drink Walker and I had together before your mom decided he didn’t deserve to breathe anymore.”

His voice turns rough, and a pinprick of guilt worms through me. I do feel bad for what my family put him through, but this is better than telling him the truth. If he needs to hate me to work through his grief, then so be it.

“I told you, it was an—”

“Accident,” he finishes, a muscle twitching in his jaw. He slants his head, and a strand of hair falls across his forehead. “You sure about that? Think hard.”

I change the subject. “If we do this marriage thing, we need to figure out our covers. Establish a fake story. Oh, and I’ll need a ring,” I say, grabbing my black coffee.

He stares at me for a long moment, and there’s something hard in his gaze. “You know I’m gonna pull the truth out of you, Chastain, even if I have to pluck every last tooth out of your mouth.”

I give him my most wicked grin. “You won’t. You like my smile too much.”

His eyes narrow to slits, but then he butters a piece of toast. That’s Lawton, always bouncing between lethal and unpredictable. I watch him lick the berry jam off his thumb.

“I’m not buying you a ring,” he says. “Order one off Amazon.”

“Off Amazon? Absolutely not,” I say, grateful my subject change distracted him. “What about opals? That’s my birthstone. October baby. Opals are classy but not too much, don’t you think?”

He rubs his temples. “I don’t care about the ring.”

“The woman you actually marry is going to be so lucky,” I say flatly.

“The woman I actually marry won’t give a shit about some ring.”

“Right, of course. I’m sure she’ll also be prettier without makeup, and she’ll go down on you every morning.”

That gets a genuine laugh out of him. It’s low, rough, and entirely too sexy. I think we’re both surprised by the sound.

“Anything else?” Lawton says, drawing my attention back.

“We need to get our story straight. How did we meet? Fall in love?”

“Easy. We’ll say we met at a bar. Everyone in small towns meets at a bar.”

“A bar? No. I want to be wooed.”

“What is this, the eighteen hundreds? I don’t woo anyone.”

“And that’s the problem with men,” I say. “What happened to the hand-flex? Or cradling both cheeks? Or angling a woman’s head up before you kiss her? A you up? text does not count as romance.”