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

can’t see us moving forward if I don’t feel you’re being honest with me.”

She slowly looked up at me, her eyes shimmering with tears. When one tear fell, I brushed it from her face and hoped that she would open up to me.

“I didn’t love him,” she whispered. “I just…” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head slightly. “When he died, I felt free for the first time in years. I was glad, not that he was dead, but that I could finally live my life.”

For the first time since I met her, I felt like I was finally getting somewhere with her, and that was enough for me. She might have some other agenda, but a killer? Not a chance. Something else was going on and I was going to find out what, but for today, I just wanted to spend the day with her, try not to freeze my ass off, and get to know her better.

“You know, I think that we should paint today,” I said, changing the subject.

Her head jerked up and she blinked away her tears. “What?”

“Well, what else are we going to do? Sit around and talk about our feelings?”

“Well, we can’t actually do that,” she said.

“Why not?”

“First, you have a head injury and I’m pretty sure that falling again would be bad.”

I scoffed at that. “Falling again? As if I would do that twice.”

She stared at me, as if urging me to prove her wrong.

I spluttered for a second. “Well, okay, so it could happen, but—“

“But if you get on a ladder and lose your balance because your equilibrium is off, you’re going to end up falling again.”

“Unlikely,” I muttered. I didn’t want to be seen as weak, which was exactly what she was implying.

“Besides, it’s too cold in here to paint.”

“What are you talking about? It can’t be too cold to paint. That’s just ridiculous.”

She smirked at me. “You should never paint when it’s below fifty degrees. Plus, you have to take into consideration the temperature of the walls, and since the power’s been out, the walls are much colder than before. If we were to paint now, it would be a waste of time.”

“Well, then what the hell are we supposed to do all fucking day?”

“For starters, you could come under the covers and warm me up.”

It wasn’t a terrible idea. I mean, I could spend the day with her, making love to her and— Making love? What the hell was I thinking? Making love implied feelings much stronger than what we had. Well, than she had. I already knew that I was falling for her, so it would be making love for me, but what would it mean to her? Would she consider it making love or just fucking?

“What are you thinking over there?” Lorelei asked.

“Uh…” I huffed out a laugh, shaking my head. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Try me.”

“You like me, right?”

She nodded, hiding a smile. “Yeah, Andrew. I’d say that I like you.”

“And that liking would be similar to…” I waited for her to fill in the blanks.

“Similar to liking a man that I’m sleeping with?”

“Right.” I nodded and tried to think of another way to go about this. “So…if you said you liked me on a scale from one to ten, which number would you pick?”

“Well, that depends. Is ten high or is one high?”

“Ten is always high,” I said, a little confused at how she didn’t understand that.

She nodded thoughtfully. “So, is one the first number or is zero? Because zero technically isn’t a number. It’s nothing. So, would one be the lowest, or would zero?”

I stared at her for a moment. What the hell? Was she messing with me? “Okay, let’s try this again. We’re walking down the street and a car comes out of nowhere—“

“Wait, are we walking on the street or the sidewalk?”

“What?”

“Well, it would be silly to be walking in the middle of the street. It would make more sense if we were on the sidewalk. Unless, of course, the car is playing a part in this story and we need to be on the street.”

“We need to be on the street.”

“Then I would say that we’re idiots and we deserve whatever’s coming.”

I grunted in frustration. Why was she making this so damn difficult? “Okay, so, we’re at a crosswalk and our light is green.”

“It’s white actually.”

“What?” I asked in exasperation.

“It’s white. The little man on the crosswalk sign is white. Green is for stoplights.”

“Whatever!”

She laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corner as my frustration built. She was enjoying this way too much.

“Anyway, the little man is white. We have the right of way and we’re within the lines of the crosswalk. Got it?”

She nodded, holding back her smile. “On board.”

“So, anyway, a car comes out of nowhere—“

“It had to come from somewhere. I mean, did it just drop out of the sky? Was it invisible and one second it wasn’t there and the next it was?”

“Goddamnit, woman! Will you just let me finish?”

She threw her head back and laughed, then schooled her features and waved me to go on.

“Anyway…A car comes barreling down the road and you see it before me. Do you shout for me to move out of the way or do you try and push me out of the way, thus sacrificing yourself to save me?”

“Hmm…that’s a tough one. Are we together when this happens?”

“Of course we’re together. We’re walking down the road,” I said, thinking that was a pretty stupid question.

“I know that. I meant are we together, as in dating?”

Were we dating? I mean, I spent a lot of time with her, and we’d slept together twice now. That had to mean that we were more than friends. On the other hand, I slept with Stacy all the time before meeting Lorelei and I wasn’t dating her.

“We’re dating,” I said with a nod.

“Okay, how long have we been dating?”

My brows wrinkled in confusion. “Why does that matter?”

“Well, if we’ve just begun dating, how do I