It’s awful.
I was never attracted to Jamison before, and I certainly don’t want to be attracted to him now. Even if he weren’t the wrong kind of guy for me, he’s an unacceptable option. I don’t want a guy I used to bang and broke up with showing up at family Thanksgivings every year.
So, he’s off-limits. That’s it.
Nothing is ever going to happen between us. Ever.
My head knows that, but my libido does not, a point proven when Jamison turns, our eyes meet, and a shiver of awareness sweeps over my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms and legs despite the eighty-five-degree heat.
For his part, Jamison doesn’t look much happier to find his weekend of fun crashed by a childhood friend than I am, but his look of displeasure only lasts a moment before he smiles and hops down from the truck bed with the agility of a jungle cat and prowls across the pine-needle covered ground toward me.
“What are the chances, huh?” I ask, determined to have my first—and last—words with Jamison over as quickly as possible. “Guess we’ll just have to stay out of each other’s hair. Pretend we don’t know each other. Avert our eyes if we see anything we shouldn’t. Or just…anything at all.”
He crosses his arms, and his lips hook up on one side in a smirk. “Is that your subtle way of telling me not to interfere while you’re trying to hook up?”
“No.” I roll my eyes. “That’s my blunt way of saying I’m not here to cramp your style, and I’d be pleased if you’d extend me the same courtesy.”
He inclines his head before casting a glance behind me to where my friends are unloading the van. “I guess that means those three are off-limits?” he asks in a low voice.
“If you want to go home with all your man parts intact, yes,” I whisper back, flinching when he laughs.
Even his laugh is sexy, a sensual expression of mirth that showcases even, white teeth and that delicious neck I know smells better than fresh bread, lavender-scented candles, and a pan of recently fried bacon combined.
Though probably better to keep those smells separate.
While delicious alone, they definitely wouldn’t be great together.
“Got it.” He winks at me before lifting a hand to the women behind me and backing away with a husky, “Good day, ladies,” that triggers a sigh from one of the weaker members of our company.
I spin back around to find out which of my friends has become tangled in Jamison’s smolder-web to find Shelley and Dawn leaning against the van with slightly dazed expressions and Piper wiping drool from her chin.
“Are you drooling?” I ask, glaring at the athletic brunette I’m sure Jamison would have made a play for if I hadn’t made it clear that my friends are off-limits. “Tell me you aren’t drooling, Piper Youngman.”
“Who was that?” she asks with a grin, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “Me like.”
“Me, too,” Shelley adds with a sigh that stirs the fuzzy blond curls falling into her face. “But you can have dibs, Piper. Since you drooled and all.”
“No, she cannot have dibs.” I prop my hands on my hips. “Jamison is off-limits.”
Dawn’s pierced eyebrow lifts. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? Back off ladies. Studly’s already spoken for by the birthday queen.”
“No, it’s not like that,” I say. “I just—”
“And what the birthday queen wants, the birthday queen gets,” Piper interrupts, lifting her hands into the air. “I withdraw my claws. Pounce away, sister.”
I huff. “I am not going to be pouncing anyone, especially Jamison Hansen.”
“But that’s the whole reason we’re here!” Shelley’s full lips push into a pout. “This weekend is for pouncing. It’s like Virginia is for lovers except it’s a weekend instead of an entire state.”
“Jamison is my sister’s fiancé’s brother,” I explain, since none of my besties live in Bliss River. “It would be like incest.”
“No, that’s when you marry a cousin or something,” Shelley says. “I know because my stepsister married her first cousin. She lives in Arkansas, but they went to Tennessee to get married because it’s legal to marry your first cousin there.”
“That’s it,” Dawn says, frowning as she pulls her shiny blue-black hair into a low ponytail, showcasing the mermaid tattoo on her upper arm. “I’m officially divorcing Tennessee as my birth state. I mean, what is the world coming to when something is illegal in Arkansas but not in the Volunteer State?”
“Tennessee is simply volunteering to perform a cousin-marrying service other states won’t,” Piper says as she grabs her pack from the van and swings it onto her back. “I think you should be proud of them. Love is love, after all.”
“As long as you don’t have inbred children,” Dawn adds.
I shake my head, wondering how this conversation wandered so far into the cousin-loving woods.