“Payton, I’m the one who should apologize again. I initiated it.”
And was the one who shut it down just as quickly. “It’s fine.” It wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to get all emotional about it.
“No, it’s not. Look—”
“Alex.” She whirled around and cut him off. “I’m a big girl. It’s fine. Nothing happened. It’s just a chemical reaction of two people being in close proximity with each other alone in the same house. Situational circumstances. It could happen to anyone.”
“Not with just anyone.”
Come again?
“It’s not just a reaction to being alone with you in this house, though it is making it worse.”
He’d just admitted he didn’t want to be here with her. She’d suspected, but to hear him admit it was a dagger to her heart. This was like her biggest fantasy come to life. Though her fantasies involved a lot more naked time, not arguing. “Then I’ll ask Colin to switch places with you. He can at least stand being in the same house as me.”
Alex actually growled at that. “He is not staying here with you.”
“Then we’re at an impasse.” She didn’t understand his hostility to Colin being here. They were best friends. He was just as capable of playing babysitter as Alex was. Colin would be easier to talk to. He didn’t make her feel nervous and beneath him.
“No, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, just no personal talk and keep at least a ten foot distance between us.”
“Anything else, lord and master?” She crossed her arms over her chest, staring him down. The insolence of him telling her what to do.
“You could try putting some clothes on too; it’s freezing in here.”
Payton raked her gaze over his half-dressed state. “Hello, kettle,”
He looked down at himself as if seeing for the first time that he was in shorts and a tank top. “That’s irrelevant.”
Payton snorted. “Of course it is.” He refused to hold her at the same standard as himself. Dick.
“Excuse me?” His eyes were like two hot burning coals as he glared her down. Daring her to challenge him.
It wasn’t in Payton’s nature to back down. He and his threats could go to hell. “Look, hate me for whatever bizarre reason I’ll never understand, whatever, but my dad’s life is in danger. That might not seem super important to you, but you need to pull her head out of your ass and stop complaining about everything I do, or I’ll go back to doing this on my own.”
“How the hell can you accuse me of not thinking Nick’s return is important? As soon as I got the phone call that he was missing, I dropped everything to be here to find him.”
“True, but you’ve been a one man show since you got here. Wanting to do everything yourself, pushing me away. Refusing to listen to me. I’m sure you don’t even listen to Colin. It took Colin threatening you to have us finally working together.” Her long legs closed the distance between them, and she jabbed him in the chest. Her brain warned that she was poking a bear, but she was beyond caring. Payton was tired of being treated like a leech that was only tagging along because Alex allowed it. “And since we’ve been stuck in this house together, all you can complain about is me in a tank top. All you do is complain and push.”
“Because I can see your nipples and it’s driving me crazy,” he yelled, startling her back a step. He took a breath before talking calmer this time. “I don’t hate you, Payton. Far from it.”
Payton was struggling to keep up with the conversation. She was fixed on his comment about her nipples. True, she had gone braless because she’d forgotten to pack another one, but also because she thought he didn’t see her as a woman. Then he said he didn’t hate her. Obviously she was wrong about him and his mood swings. “Well, you have a funny way of showing it.”
“I know I’ve been a dick with you for years now, and I’m sorry about that. I just thought if you hated me, you’d stay away from me.”
“Why?”
Alex looked around the room like he was struggling with the reason. As if it would just appear to him out of thin air. If it took him that long to figure it out, she didn’t want to hear it. He’d just make up some excuse. Sometimes in war, retreat was the only option.
Payton stepped around him and collected her laptop from the couch then went to her room. If Alex wanted them to keep their distance and just focus on finding her dad, she could do that. But she wasn’t changing her wardrobe just to please him.
Chapter 19
“Do you ever sleep?” Alex asked, walking into the room around six a.m.
Payton didn’t look up at him from her perch on the couch. “I do.” She just didn’t require a lot to function. Not when there were more important things to do than sleep. She’d been slaving away on the addresses and their connection to her father all night.
“How long have you been up?”