Page 12 of Anger Bang
“I’ve heard,” she said. “I’m Thea Pope.”
His gut sank. “Pope as in the bride Jackie Pope?”
She nodded.
Fucking great.
“This is all some sibling rivalry gone to extremes?” he asked.
She shrugged and then held her hands out so they were closer to the fire. “Not quite.”
He laid back on the cushioned lounge chair to work out what he’d just stepped in, but the explosion of stars in the sky shut down his brain for a moment.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shoot him a questioning glance before following his lead and looking up.
She let out a little gasp. “Wow.”
Then she relaxed back on her chair and they sat there quiet for a few minutes, admiring the Milky Way. Nothing like seeing flecks of light from stars a bazillion miles away that were probably already dead to twist a person’s head on straight and make them wonder about the answers to life’s big questions—and the smaller ones.
He glanced over at Thea. “So what did your sister do to get you so mad you want to fuck me to get back at her?”
“The list is too long to go into it.” She let out a long sigh and turned on her side to face him. “But the final straw was she apparently didn’t even want me here. It’s herwedding. And I’m heronlysibling. She let slip the only reason I’m here is because the production team made her ask me to be a bridesmaid.”
And he’d thought Jackie was bitchy before. “Ouch.”
“Exactly,” she grumbled. “Before I came out here, my therapist gave me an assignment where I’m supposed to try out the other stress trigger reactions, even though they don’t come naturally like fawning.”
“Fawning?” he asked.
“Basically, going along to get along and avoid conflict. There are four—sometimes more, depending on who you talk to—stress responses: fawn, flight, fight, and freeze.”
Interesting. He’d heard of fight or flight—what true-crime writer or reader hadn’t?—but fawn and freeze were new to him. Not that that bit of knowledge was at the top of his things-to-think-about list at the moment. Instead, he couldn’t stop watching Thea’s mouth. The woman had fantastic lips, full and ripe for kissing.
“So which response is seeing if I want to go fuck?” he asked before he thought better of it.
Her gaze flicked over to the fire, but not before he caught the heat in it. “Fight.”
He took a stab at the why and asked, “Because your sister has hated me since the day Dex introduced us?”
She nodded.
Kade got that. Desperate times and all that.
She sat up and pivoted to face him, even as she kept her gaze averted. “I know it doesn’t make a ton of sense but—”
“Actually, it does,” he said, all of the pieces coming together like the plot of a book. “And I’m more than happy to be your fuck boy for the night—or let people think I am. Lady’s choice.”
She chuckled. It was a soft sound that made his dick hard. Hell, it hadn’t been that long since he’d banged a fellow author, who was about as into relationships as he was (not at all), but for some reason being around Thea had him keyed up. She was sexy, in that girl-next-door way, in her tank top and skirt with her long, dark hair brushing against her freckled shoulders. The temptation to slip that strap lower and find out if she had freckles anywhere else had him fisting his hands to stop himself before he forgot that this was just going to be for show.
Thea toyed with the fringe on the pillow she held in her lap, peeking up at him as she paused to nervously gnaw at her bottom lip. “Does that mean you might actually want to hook up for real, or was all that in the barn only pretend?”
Chapter Six
Whowasshe right now?
Thea had no idea.
She was a paleontologist, a woman who had two friends and felt that was more than enough, and she scheduled her self-care (AKA masturbation) sessions for Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. She rarely talked to strangers. She didn’t initiate conversations. She never pushed for the things she actually wanted.
