Tangled Web: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 6) by Giulia Lagomarsino (an ebook reader txt) 📕

Opening it up, her eyes lit up like Christmas morning. She didn’t waste a second tearing into the box. “Wow, this is so amazing. Thank you.”

“Well…”

“I could have bought this for myself, but it means so much more that someone else bought it for me. I’ve never gotten a present like this.”

“Really?” Perfect opening. “Not even from your husband?”

“Well, he bought me diamonds and stuff, things that other girls want. He didn’t really understand my love of cars.”

She didn’t even look up as she spoke, so I couldn’t really see the expression on her face. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

“Can I ask what the attraction was? You seem to be totally different people.”

She shrugged and smiled up at me. “Sometimes opposites attract best. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing ever is.”

“Do you still miss him?” It was a stupid question, one that she could easily lie about, but I felt I needed to ask.

She looked up at me and the smile melted from her face. “Every day.”

I tried to read her eyes, tried to get some hint of whether or not she was lying, but it was so hard to tell. Either she really did love the guy or she was a really good liar. And if she really did love him, what did that make us? Did she just sleep with any random dude to get her rocks off, despite how she truly felt? Who moved on from their beloved husband like that? And if she didn’t love him, and this was all one big lie, I was in even deeper trouble than I thought, because she was so damn good at it.

“So, what do you want to work on today?” she asked, catching me off guard.

“Uh…”

“Oh, unless you just came to drop this stuff off. Sorry, I feel so stupid just assuming you came over here to—“

“No, I’d love to stay and help.” I wanted to slap myself. Why had I just offered to stay? I could have told her that I couldn’t, that I had other shit to do, but I just offered to stay with her and put myself at risk.

“Perfect,” she smiled. “I actually have something I want to get done, but I need some help.”

“Lead the way,” I smiled.

Watching her walk toward the kitchen was like watching a fine piece of art work in a museum. I sighed, watching her sexy ass sway from side to side and the swish of her hair over her shoulders, it was amazing. She had one of those bodies that was just perfect in every way.

She peeked over her shoulder and flushed slightly when she caught me staring at her ass. “Are you coming?”

“I really hope so,” I muttered, following her into the kitchen.

“So…I want to paint today.”

I looked around the kitchen, taking in everything Eric’s crew had done. It looked amazing. Wide rustic boards ran along the floor, giving it a very farmhouse feel, and the ceiling was done with large, wood planks, crisscrossing the white ceiling beneath it. The cabinets were white to balance the dark tones throughout the room. New windows had been put in all along the sink, letting the bright light fill the room. He had also put one long shelf along the top of the windows, but I had no idea why. But the coolest part of the room was the oven set in the wall, surrounded by brick.

“Did you design this or did Eric?”

“Eric. I mean, I had a general idea of what I wanted, but he did all the rest.”

I looked down at the paint cans and grinned. “You didn’t go with yellow,” I pointed out.

“No,” she smiled. “I decided to stick with white.”

“What are you putting up there?” I asked, pointing to the shelves.

“Well, I wanted to put up blue and white plates. I saw it in a magazine and I just loved it. It’ll bring some color to the room without being overwhelming.”

I nodded, seeing how it would all come together. “I like it.”

“And then…” She took my arm and led me over to the pop out window with the window seat already built in. “He put in this bench seat that opens for storage, so I thought I would put a few blue pillows over here to add to the room.”

“What kind of table will you use?”

“I haven’t decided yet. That’s for another day.”

“So, you want to paint today?”

“Yep,” she grinned. “Eric wants to install the crown molding next week, so I told him I would do the painting.”

“Why didn’t you just have him do it?”

She shrugged. “I wanted to do something myself.”

“Okay, let’s paint.”

Lorelei

After setting out the drop cloths and getting the paint and rollers set up, we were ready to start taping. I actually hated taping, but there was too much to do to leave it all to Andrew.

“We’re going to lose the natural light soon,” Andrew said, pointing outside. “I didn’t expect it to actually snow so much.”

I walked over next to him and looked outside with a sigh. “I love snow, but I wasn’t expecting a snowstorm like this.”

“We usually don’t get them. I think I was a kid the last time we got a really good snowstorm. This will probably pass over.”

“That’s not what Eric said. He was pretty sure this was going to be a bad one.”

Andrew snorted. “Yeah, they always say the snow storm will be bad and then it ends up being a nothing burger.”

“A nothing burger?”

“Yeah, you know, it turns out to be no big deal at all.”

I nodded, trying to hold back my laughter. Every once in a while, Andrew said these really odd phrases that I just didn’t understand, but I found it cute. I was quickly developing feelings for Andrew, something I promised myself wouldn’t happen. I had a job to finish, and he was getting in the way. What I had originally intended for him was morphing into a distraction I didn’t need. And distractions needed to be eliminated. I couldn’t let