Page 29 of Thirst For Me
This does not compute. Why does he look so ... angry? “I don’t understand.”
His chest rises and falls as he takes a slow, deep breath. Like he’s really trying to rein in the anger but barely succeeding. “When you showed up at my bar yesterday and said you were looking for June Spencer,” he says slowly, “and you had no place to stay for the night, et cetera ... you never once said that you were in town because you were leasing this building.”
“Uh . . . why would I?”
“Because my family runs a pop-up restaurant in Pier Seven as of June first.”
“But ... I have it leased for a pop-up shop for all of June. We’re setting up this weekend.” I’m so utterly confused. “Do you have a lease? In writing?”
His jaw sets. “No,” he grits out. “It’s ... more complicated than that.”
Yeah. I’m getting that.
Family feud, maybe?The older generation likes to hold a grudge.Good luck with that old battle-axe.So many things I’ve heard about June Spencer over the last twenty-four hours suggest that there’s a whole lot of small-town drama going on here that I know nothing about. And I haven’t even gotten June’s side of it yet.
I have to wonder what she’d have to say about all this.
“So ... why would you think you have a lease when I have a lease, on paper?”
“It’s a long-standing situation,” he mutters. “At least, it was until now.” His gaze slices down my curves, that look sayinguntil you came along, and heat floods my body. The way this man ignites me with a look is insane.
It’s disorienting. The lust that courses through me. The embarrassment.Shame... for something I didn’t even do. I don’t even know what he’s accusing me of. But it’s clear, Iambeing accused.
“How would I know that, Mason?”
His gaze lingers briefly on my lips, his voice lowering. “I find it very hard to believe you had no idea what you were doing.”
There it is again, the accusation.
“Doing . . . when?”
“When you asked June to let you lease this place,” he growls. “You want to buy it, I assume? And leasing it first is supposed to make that happen?”
I shake my head, trying to sort this out. “I didn’t ask her. I don’t want to buy it. She invited me here. I didn’t even know Orchard Cove or this building existed before that.”
“Uh-huh. So, then you won’t mind beinguninvited.”
“What?” I can’t even believe he just said that. The businesswoman in me is instantly outraged.
And the woman in me ... the woman who’d started to like this man—very much, in a very short time—is humiliated.
He wants me to leave? Like, leave town?
I hear Sophie move closer to me. Probably ready to tell this man to F the hell off, the way only Sophie can—politely, definitively. She doesn’t speak, but Mason gives her and the building behind her a withering once-over.
Then he glares at me again. “You can just pack up and go back to the city, if this building isn’t important to you.”
I scrape my jaw off the pavement as the businesswoman in me elbows her way to the front. “I just said, I have a lease agreement.”
He scowls deeply, brow furling. Full lips in a pissed-off pout. “For how long? Just one month?”
It is truly unfair how attractive this man is, even angry. But at this moment, I’m acutely aware that he’s a stranger. And Businesswoman Sierra is, thankfully, here to protect the rest of me, pointing out that he’s being downright rude right now.
Just because he spooned me in his childhood bed and he made me laugh and made my panties fucking wet, I don’t owe him anything.
I wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t feel comfortable answering that.”
Mason takes a breath, looks away. And for a split second I glimpse the man I spent the night with. Then that man is gone, and the man I first met in the bar yesterday is back in full force. And he couldn’t give a fuck about me.
