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“I’m going to tough it out. It’s just for the summer. Then I can move on.” And the chances of Larison having similar feelings were slim. Sure, she liked me as sort of a friend and a person who looked after her kid, but other than that? She wasn’t going to be declaring her feelings or ripping my clothes off.

“Let’s just keep going.”

I wasin a bad mood when I got back from the hike and not just because my body was sore. I just hated this limbo I was in with Larison. Liking her so much and having to hide and suppress it sucked. It sucked hairy unwashed ass.

The whole thing made me want to throw a tantrum and scream and maybe break something.

Instead I fumed on the couch and angrily ate leftover Chinese. Figuring I couldn’t be too miserable in the bathtub, I went ahead and added some stress-relieving bath salts to the water and got in with my waterproof ereader and a book I’d been holding off on reading because I figured I would save it for when I wanted to be cheered up. Like now.

The book didn’t necessarily help because my problem wasn’t going away. On Monday I’d have to see Larison and I’d have to deal with my attraction to her and it was going to be awful.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I chanted as I tried to breathe deeply and put away all of those unpleasant thoughts.

Getting out of the tub, I put on a robe and crawled into bed.

I feel bad for contacting you on your day off, but my daughter will not leave me alone.Of course, the messagewas from Larison. A second later a video came through of Juniper doing a little dance in the living room and singing offkey at the same time.

My heart did a little squeeze as I watched it three times in a row. I shouldn’t miss that kid as much as I did.

Tell her I miss her and I can’t wait to see her.I responded.

Larison sent me another video of Juniper talking to me.

Great. She’s now requesting her own phone so she can talk to you whenever she wants. I already lost the tablet war, but I refuse to get my child a phone.

I laughed. Juniper did have a tablet for games and videos, but she wasn’t too addicted to it, thankfully.

You don’t have to get her a phone. She has Mozzarella.

That little dragon had been a good idea. I wasn’t going to tell Larison that the reason I had it was because it had come as a free gift when I’d ordered a custom dildo and grinder online. She definitely didn’t need to know about that.

Okay, I’m going to have to cut her off or else she’s going to sneak into my room and steal my phone.The idea that Juniper was so obsessed with me felt pretty damn good. Like I could run through a brick wall.

I wanted to hear her voice and I almost video called her a few times, but it was late. And I’d just seen her yesterday. Talking to her so much wasn’t going to do anything about my inconvenient crush. I needed to keep myself from falling into those long, deep conversations with her that made me smile and caused my heart to pound and generally wreaked havoc.

It was up to me to not prolong our interactions, and that started now.

I didn’t respond to her message and she didn’t send me anything else. I hated it, but this was best in the long run.

I just had to get through this damn summer in one piece.

Chapter Fourteen

Larison

My stress level was better now that Mama was on the mend, but I noticed that there was something up with Jo on Monday.

She wouldn’t look me in the eye and didn’t seem to want to stand near me. I did my little goodbye routine with Juniper and also said goodbye to her, but she kind of ignored me and focused back on Juniper.

Was something wrong?

My first instinct was to go back and ask her what was going on, but I had things to do that couldn’t be put off. We were getting closer and closer to opening day for Between the Sheets and I couldn’t afford to get too distracted. Especially when I had a bunch of social media content to organize and even a few interviews. Someone was coming today to take pictures for a local newspaper. I hoped I didn’t say anything silly. At least everything with Mama had taken up all the space in my brain that I would have reserved for freaking out about that.

Jo was still on my mind as I did all of my tasks and moved some boxes of books to the back room and emailed with the mural painter that was coming this week and did my best tosound smart for my interview. She’d given me an idea of the questions beforehand and I knew the major points that I wanted to hit. Sharing the story about how Gram and my moms had fostered my love of reading from an early age and how Grams had left me the money to finally make this dream a reality. I also talked about leaving a legacy for my daughter. When she asked why I’d decided to open a romance-focused store, I got to go off about how important the genre of romance was, list off some statistics, and speak about supporting diverse authors.

Somehow, I managed to hit everything I wanted and the journalist said I’d done a great job. She was also a professional photographer and took all the pictures as well.

“That’s pretty impressive,” I told her.