Better Than You (The Walker Family Series Book 3) by Lauren Gilley

some overly macho dickhead who’s going to fight over you. If you don’t respect yourself, how can I respect you?”
    He might as well have called her a slut. She swallowed hard, feeling the insult all the way down to her bones. “Respect?” she hissed through her teeth. “You don’t even know me well enough to know that I hate steak. And I hate badly written porn novels. And that there’s a difference between Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio!”
    He blinked.
    “You don’t know me at all, Greg, so don’t act like you respected me or even liked me beyond what I could do for you at parties as your arm candy,” she ground out the last and snatched her purse up off the side table in her front hall. Her ankle boots went on in an angry rush; she stomped them into place. “Excuse me,” she said as she locked her door and stepped around him. “I’ve gotta go screw a guy.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
    9 .
     
    M ike lived in a townhouse: an end unit done in antique white brick with black shutters and door, a crabapple tree anchoring the complex-provided landscaping at the front corner. Parked cars went up the narrow drive and around the front curb. Delta nosed her Volvo up behind a black 4-Runner and took a deep, rattled breath.
    By choosing Mike, she’d put an undue amount of pressure on him. Greg had proved a disappointment to the last moment – he didn’t even care enough to have a true argument with her – but walking away from him tonight meant she’d sided with Mike, and she wasn’t so proud of that choice.
    With one last check of her lipstick, she braced herself to deal with the consequences of her actions and climbed out of the car.
    Mike must have been watching for her because he opened the door as she was lifting her hand to knock. She started, hand suspended in front of her as the fast, inward snatch of the door ruffled her hair. He was in an old sweatshirt with fraying cuffs, jeans and socks – she was thankful she’d dressed down – and his grin was ear-to-ear. “Hey.”
    Her nerves had built on the drive over, champagne bubbling behind a cork. But his smile diffused them, and left her with nothing but the after-champagne warmth that was so desperately lacking in her life. Regina’s words came back to her now: “When was the last time you did anything just for the fun of it?” So Mike wasn’t the picture of upper crust stability she’d always seen herself with – so what? He left her nervous and doubting and frustrated the hell out of her – and those emotions were better than no emotions. And it wasn’t like she was marrying the guy – she was just having fun. She’d almost forgotten how, but his smile made the relearning curve bearable.
    “Hey.” S he stepped into a foyer full of men’s shoes and hanging jackets; there was a black leather biker number next to Mike’s bomber and she almost grinned. A thick stew of deep voices was churning somewhere deeper into the house and her nerves tightened again. “Am I late?”
    “Nope.” He shut the door behind her and caught her coat as it slipped back off her shoulders. “Pizza’s on the way. We’re having beer but I think I might have some wine somewhere.”
    “Beer’s fine,” she assured as she smoothed the front of her sweater and turned to face him.
    He was staring at his coat rack and all its taken pegs like it was a Rubik’s cube. Delta bit back a smile when he finally pulled someone’s windbreaker off, dropped it across the shoes on the floor, and hung her wool military coat up in its place. “Jordie can get over it,” he said with a shrug, and then both of them were standing awkwardly in his foyer.
    Scratch that, she was standing awkwardly, the night before and her argument with Greg battling for supremacy in her mind. But Mike put a hand on her hip and leaned in to press a fast kiss to her lips. “Come on,” he said as he stepped away, “I’ll introduce you to the idiots.”
    The foyer continued on into a narrow hall: