Page 82 of Married in Michigan

I smile at him. “I know. I’m joking.”

“Are you hiding behind humor?” he asks.

I close my eyes briefly, to get away from his piercing golden gaze. “Maybe.”

“Don’t. This is real.”

“It can’t be real, Paxton. It can’t be. I don’t belong in your world. I can’t afford to fall for you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have abandonment issues, Paxton.” I smile sadly. “My father was a rich white guy, and he abandoned me. He didn’t want me. He didn’t want Mom. He didn’t wantus.”

“Thus your ingrained, automatic disdain for me and everything I represent.”

I nod. “Exactly.”

“What if I didn’t abandon you?”

“I don’t know how to trust that. I don’t know how to emotionally get past the doubt. It’s a big hang-up.”

“I mean, I don’t know shit about getting past emotional hang-ups, because god knows I’ve got enough of my own, but it seems to me that they are something we’d have to deal with one step at a time. You don’t just get over this stuff.”

“What if you’re just saying all this to get me to sleep with you?”

He laughs. “Makayla. If I just wanted you to sleep with me, I’d have seduced you already.”

I frown at him. “You say that like…like if you were to decide you wanted me, it would be a foregone conclusion. As if you seducing me was an automatic thing.” I laugh. “Like I’d just drop my panties for you at the first glimpse of that thousand-watt grin of yours.”

He gives me that exact grin, and my heart hammers. “This one?”

I try valiantly to hide my smile. “Yes, that one.”

“It’s more than just the smile, Makayla.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a whole art to it.”

“To seducing women?”

“To seducing stubborn, hard to get women.” He’s grinning, a cat-ate-the-canary grin.

“Is there.” If he’s at all observant, he’ll note the ice in my tone.

“Oh yeah. I’ve got it down to a science.”

“Do you.”

“You doubt me?” Wounded, almost.

“You think, if you turned on the charm and put your moves on me, that I would sleep with you, just like that?”

“I know you’re attracted to me, Makayla.”

“No,” I say. “You know that I’m aware that you’re an attractive person. It’s hard to miss, and I’ve never denied that you are.”

He smirks at me, and my eyes follow the movement of his mouth, the set of his lips, the shift of his eyes. I’m hyperaware of everything he does, in this moment. “That’s true enough, I grant you. But you’re also attracted to me.”