Page 61 of Falling for the Grinchy Bad Boy

22

COOPER

The smell of burning meat hit me just as Katrina’s fingers snapped in front of my face.

“Earth to Cooper,” my sister said, her voice cutting through whatever fog had settled over my brain. “Unless you’re going for the charcoal special, you might want to flip those burgers.”

I blinked, focusing on the griddle where six perfectly good hamburger patties were well on their way to becoming hockey pucks. Black smoke curled up from the edges. I was about thirty seconds away from setting off the smoke detectors. The guys at the station would never let me live that down.

“Shit.” I grabbed the spatula and quickly flipped each burger, wincing at the scorched undersides. Salvageable, maybe, if I could stop my mind from wandering long enough to actually cook them properly.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Joy. Sex with her was better than I imagined. I was a little embarrassed I had only held out about ten minutes. She was too sweet. Tight. Amazing.

And it had been too long since I’d lost myself in a woman like that.

“What’s wrong with you today?” Katrina leaned against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed. “You’ve been spaced out since you got here.”

“Just tired,” I said, turning my attention back to the griddle. “Long night.”

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. I had gotten very little sleep. But it wasn’t exhaustion making me distracted. It was the memory of Joy Murphy curled against my chest.

“Yeah, I bet.” There was something in Katrina’s tone that made me look up sharply. She was grinning, that knowing smirk she’d perfected sometime around age twelve. “The whole town’s talking about you shacking up for the night with Joy.”

Heat that had nothing to do with the griddle crawled up my neck. “We got stuck in a snowstorm. We took shelter. End of story.”

“Uh-huh.” Katrina’s grin widened. “That’s why you look like you haven’t slept and you’re burning lunch? Because you spent a perfectly innocent night sharing space with a beautiful woman? It’s all platonic, right?”

“People need to get a life,” I muttered, aggressively flipping the burgers again even though they didn’t need it.

The truth was, we had done more than just share space. We’d shared heat and breath and kisses that had left me aching in ways I’d forgotten were possible. Joy had fallen asleep with her hand pressed against my chest, and I had lain awake for hours listening to her breathe, memorizing the weight of her against me.

But I sure as hell wasn’t telling Katrina any of that. A gentleman didn’t kiss and tell.

“You know I love Joy,” Katrina said, apparently deciding to torture me further, “but maybe you should be careful. I don’t exactly have the best track record with you dating my friends.”

There it was. The real reason for her concern, wrapped up in sister protectiveness but rooted in our shared history of romantic disasters. Katrina and Lynn used to be good friends. Katrina had been the one to insist we were perfect for each other, right up until Lynn decided that some tennis asshole was better.

“We’re not dating,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth they felt like a lie.

“Good,” Katrina replied, but she was still watching me with those sharp eyes that missed nothing.

That was the twin thing. She could read between the lines. Tap into my brainwaves whether I wanted her to or not.

“Back off,” I growled.

“Joy is not sticking around, you know. She’s only here to regain her footing and then she’s off to whatever city she can find.”

I knew that. Of course I knew that. It was one of the many excellent reasons why getting involved with Joy was a spectacularly bad idea.

I ran through the list as I assembled the burgers—reasons I’d been cataloging since I watched her walk away looking as shaken as I felt. First, I wasn’t ready. The wounds from Lynn’s departure were still too fresh and the betrayal was still too raw. I had barely figured out how to live alone again. I was just not getting used to coming home to an empty house.

Second, she was here temporarily, passing through, and I couldn’t afford to let myself get attached to someone who was already planning her exit strategy.

Third, we worked together now, at least tangentially. She was organizing the festival and I was providing safety guidance. It would be messy and complicated if things went south between us, and they always went south eventually.

But then I thought about the way she laughed and how she turned our ridiculous situation into something almost magical. The way she looked at me when she’d settled onto my lap, playful and challenging and so beautiful it had made my dick instantly hard.

Joy made me feel things I’d never felt before. Not even with Lynn, if I was being honest. With Lynn, everything had been comfortable and predictable and safe. What I felt for Joy was none of those things. It was electric and terrifying and completely out of my control.