Page 25 of Trigger Happy

“Dammit, can you stop eating food I have to google?”

He wraps an arm around the curve of my waist, pulling me back against his solid chest. He’s warm and smells like an addicting trifecta of soap, salt, and smoke, and I actually have the urge to sniff him.

What is happening?

This isn’t me. I don’t snuggle. I’ve spent years teaching myself to thrive in the eye of loneliness, but when his hand drapes over my hip, I almost lean back into him.

Another knock sounds at the door.

“Come in!” we both say.

The bedroom door swings open and Bobbi steps inside, holding a pewter tray piled with scrambled eggs, freshly toasted sourdough, and a side of juicy, ripe raspberries. I catalog everything from her high ponytail to her flour-dusted jeans. Did she bake the bread herself? What kind of criminal has a sourdough starter?

Her blue eyes bounce between us. “Okay, I didn’t want to interrupt, but breakfast was getting cold, and who likes soggy eggs? Not me. It’s like eating snot, but I will say Johnny B, B for Becker, not Johnny Bee as in buzz—he lives on the property over—likes his eggs extra runny and—”

“Bobbi!” Arch calls from outside.

“Right,” she says, setting the tray down. “Food.”

I’m about to tell her she wasn’t interrupting anything, when Lawton leans in and bites my earlobe. A shiver dashes through me like he just licked up my spine, and I have to remind my earlobes we’re acting.

“Thanks for the food, but we’re kind of busy,” he says, brushing his thumb beneath the hem of my T-shirt.

There’s a cocky gleam in his eyes that tells me he’s doing this just to irritate me, and I want him unsteady, so I scoot my ass back, just enough to rub up against him. That gleam in his eyes catches fire, and his fingers edge toward the rim of my panties, where no one can see. My breath stumbles, and his gaze drops to my chest, tracking each uneven inhale until Bobbi’s voice cuts through the haze.

“Of course. I’ll leave, but I made coffee. Black for you, Sophie, because I’m pretty sure that’s what you put on the check-in questionnaire, and a latte for Luke. I actually made it a pumpkin spice latte because I grew the pumpkins myself out in the garden, and they’re so finicky. The growing season is ridiculously short, and the frost—”

“Stop talking to them about pumpkins!” Arch calls again from outside.

“Okay, I’m leaving!” She turns to us. “You two are so cute. Enjoy.”

Two dimples bracket her mouth. I paste on my warmest grin while trying to find the cracks in hers, but it’s smooth. I know better, though. It’s the counterfeit smiles that shine brightest, so I’m going to dig up whatever secrets she has buried between those dimples.

13Sabrina

The second Bobbi shuts the barn door with a soft click, I shove Lawton off the bed. “This is all your fault. I still can’t believe you told them we’re married. Why didn’t you just tattoo Montoya on my ring finger?”

“Pretty sure I’ve said dumber shit than that…” He groans, standing up so the morning sun highlights every scar notched into his chest. “I was taking out an Italian mafia boss once with Walker, and figured I’d treat myself to a croissant, so I asked the waitress for strawberry jam, but she wasn’t getting it, so I go, ‘You know, jam? Jelly? Preserves?’ She came back holding a condom. Turns out preservativi means condoms. Walker lost it. Couldn’t stop laughing.”

My palms turn slick, but I don’t want Lawton to notice, so I swipe them on the sheets. I hate picturing it, Walker laughing. His brother deserves to have his face carved into a frown for what he did to me.

I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. “How are we going to pretend to be married? I could barely listen to that monologue.”

He takes a seat at the bistro table by the expansive barn window that doubles as a garage-style roll-up door. “There are worse things than being fake married to a guy who asks for condoms with his croissant.”

“Like being fake married to a six-foot-two man who wears cowboy hats on planes?”

“I’m six three,” he says, shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth.

I inhale a deep, calming breath that smells like cinnamon vanilla, courtesy of the coffee Bobbi brought. “We’re going to kill each other, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, but we always knew it’d come to that,” he says as if it’s inevitable. As if we’re inevitable. “If you think about it, it works. A married couple looks way less suspicious than two single strangers trying to get to know them.”

“That’s not a terrible point.”

My mind’s already racing ahead, making plans. This will make surveillance more efficient. It’s not like Bobbi’s going to put a gun to my head and force me to have sex with Lawton. This could work. Except we’ll need a bulletproof alibi.

I climb out of bed in my oversized sweatshirt that reads on the back, When it Comes to My Little Girl, I Smile in Mugshots. It was my dad’s old sweatshirt, and it’s the softest thing I own. It still smells like his spicy cologne too.