The Rival by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2024-02-06T14:00:34+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

BY THE TIME Quinn got back to the farmhouse, she was shivering. Soaking wet in her overalls, and not at all cold.

She was just...

Shaken.

The whole thing with him had been...a lot. Too much, really. He had stripped his shirt off, and she hadn’t had any idea where to look, so she had looked down at her phone and decided to dig into the whole thing with the Christmas trees.

But the sight of him was emblazoned upon her soul.

Broad shoulders, perfectly sculpted pectoral muscles and a washboard-flat stomach. The dark hair on his chest had done something strange to her.

She had never considered herself a fan of a hairy chest—she had never really put that much thought into it, in all honesty—but she was a fan of his chest.

Why? Why this man that infuriated her so much? Why did he dig down in the things that she had never wanted to examine before? Why did he uproot all of this stuff inside her? Maybe it was because he irritated her that he managed to get down to the attraction.

Because he was peeling back all kinds of things that she normally kept covered up. From her temper, to her desire, so it sort of stood to reason that all of it could easily be refocused onto him.

She didn’t want to be out of control. It was a horrible thing. For her, that had always been anger. Her temper would spark and off she’d go, the red haze driving her forward, making her say things, do things, she hadn’t even had time to think about.

And he made her feel this horrible, layered emotion that seemed to have her in a headlock she couldn’t break out of. When he’d taken his shirt off, everything in her had been thrown into a tizzy, and her go-to for that sort of thing was...being mad. But it was all awful and out of control. It was all letting someone else derail her. Steal her focus. Make her so disoriented she couldn’t find her way to her goals.

Wanting to please her dad had been all-consuming. The pain when she’d failed to please him, and he’d left, just as much.

When she’d had her punch-out in ninth grade, the teacher had threatened to kick her out of the school. She’d nearly compromised something she cared about so much because she couldn’t control herself.

You thought being angry made you different. But you really are kind of like your mom. Burning it all down over a man.

She rejected that, wholly.

“What the hell happened to you?”

She looked up from the driver side of her car window and saw Rory standing there, looking shocked.

“Nothing,” she said, getting out of the car, which just revealed that she was soaking wet.

Of course, Fia chose that moment to come out onto the porch.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Fia frowned. “You’re soaking wet.”

“Yes, thanks, Fia. I did notice that,” she said dryly.

“What happened?” Rory asked again.

“I fell into the pond at Levi Granger’s.” And she tried to smile, and she tried to look like she wasn’t holding back some of the truth.

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