“
If you hadn’t been there, I’m not entirely sure I would’ve been able to stop myself from hurting the guy worse. That’s why I need to get to the lake house and be alone.”
She sniffed.
There was so much in that one little derisive sound that he had to look her way. “What?”
Her expression went deadpan. “You realize that is a completely ridiculous plan, right?”
He frowned.
“Come on, Finn.” She pursed those red-glossed lips like she could barely tolerate his foolishness. “That is such a man plan.”
“A man plan.”
“Yes. You don’t know how to be among the living anymore so you’re going to…go live alone in a cave. Right. Good thinking. That will pop your how-to-be-human skills right back into place.”
He made a frustrated sound and pulled into the lot of the hotel to park so he could face her, make her understand. “You saw what happened today. I’m not fit to be around other people right now. I beat a guy down for taking a picture. And I was…aggressive with you last night.”
“Aggressive?” Her mouth flattened, and she put a finger to her chest. “I kissed you. I was the aggressor. You were just…complicit in the aggressiveness. And you’re lucky I haven’t gone two years’ celibate, because had I been in your shoes, I would’ve convinced you to go up to my room and used you eight ways to Sunday and back again by now. You’d be limping.”
His libido gave a hard kick and knocked the logical thoughts out of his head for a moment. “I—”
“You need to be around people.”
That snapped his attention back to where it needed to be—mostly. “No.”
“You promised your boss you’d be around friends. You made me promise your boss that I’d make sure you did that. You made me lie to the FBI. That’s got to be a federal offense or something.”
“Made is a strong word.”
“Finn.”
He groaned. “What would you have me do? You want to babysit me, Livvy? Come stay at my lake house and make sure I don’t turn into a deviant?”
She stared at him, her gaze way too sharp, and then tipped her chin up in challenge. “Is that an invitation? Because you know you shouldn’t test me. I could babysit the hell out of you, Finn Dorsey. I know who you used to be. You don’t get to become a bad guy. I will make you do slumber-party things like play charades or watch crappy nineties movies or incessant reruns of Friends. You won’t be able to fight your old goofy side. It will emerge like a freaking butterfly and smother scary Finn.”
He blinked and stared, and then he couldn’t help it—he laughed. “A freaking butterfly?”
She smiled triumphantly. “A goofy freaking butterfly.”
He let out a long breath, some of the tension from the morning draining out of him. “You’re weird.”
“So are you.
”
”