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She snorted. “You own the store.”
“And yet, I actually want my business to make a profit, so I don’t go around swipingfreegoods and handing them out as presents.”
Her eyes widened in surprise and perhaps even a touch of regret. “You paid for this?”
“Shocking as it seems, yes.”
She pressed her full lips together, barely thinning out her luscious mouth. “Well, thank you.” She actually winced like it had been painful.
“Did I offend you in another lifetime that I’m not aware of?”
She didn’t answer, her blank face telling me nothing as she held the bottle away from her body like it might bite her.
Then it hit me. “Wait a minute. This can’t possibly be about what happened back then?”
Her blue eyes rounded. “Back when what?”
“Is this about the glitter bomb?”
She scoffed. Then blew out a breath. And then rolled her eyes. “As if.”
“It is.” I stepped closer, realization hitting, then I lowered my voice to say, “You’re still mad about a glitter bomb hitting youaccidentallyon stage. Over ten years ago.”
Her snarky indifference turned to narrow-eyed accusation. “You embarrassed me in front of the whole town,” she hissed.
“The whole town? The theater barely holds two hundred.”
“Three hundred.”
“I apologized for that.”
“You didn’t mean it.”
Choking on a laugh because this woman was a ball-buster.
“I’m sorry, again.” I gestured toward the wine in her hand. “I seem to be apologizing a lot to you.”
She glanced at the wine, then frowned but didn’t say anything.
“Do you accept my apology?”
Her eyes shot upward like she was thinking really hard about it.
“Come on, you two,” shouted Peter. “No time to waste.”
After pulling the script out of my back pocket where I’d been carrying it all day to memorize lines while I worked, I stepped closer, inhaling a delicious citrus scent.
“Look. I honestly felt bad about your shitty Monday. And I’m sorry you’re mad at me for something I did when I was a stupid, clumsy teenager. I bought a bottle of wine for you. Take it. Smash it against the side of the building. Pretend it’s my head if it helps tamp down the simmering rage you’ve got for me. Or drink it, which is my advice. Preferably with some chocolate or a medium-rare ribeye. Whatever makes you feel better. It was just a gesture of goodwill.”
And there, for the very first time, the redheaded witch—who’d been starring in my daily fantasies all week—smiled. At me.
Something cataclysmic cracked and broke loose inside my chest. Like icebergs calving off a giant chunk of glacial mass, her smile dislodged an oppressive weight I didn’t know I was carrying. Strange.
“Rare,” she said with a sensuous smile that shot like lightning straight to my dick.
“What?”
“I like my steak nice and bloody, Broussard.”
