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

napkin. Mike’s friend Tam stepped around the half wall and into the kitchen, and even if she saw him coming, something about the dark, closed-off expression he flashed to her before he picked up a plate startled her. He wasn’t her type – his hair and the way his too-tight jeans looked soft like the rips in the knees were from wear and tear and hadn’t been purchased that way – but the stunning blue of his eyes would have been pretty if he hadn’t been glaring at her. Delta didn’t react, rooted in place while he gathered his food and left, too surprised to shoot him a nasty look of her own. She was used to men smiling at her, giving her the up-down inspection, coming onto her and leering at her, but not giving her the evil eye.
    She was still standing there, stupidly, when Jordan entered. “Couch would be ba ck that way.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder without giving her so much as a glance.
    Mike was right: he was a little shithead.
    It didn’t matter, though, once she was tucked back in the corner of the sofa, fielding more questions from the three normal friends about Mike’s clumsiness on the day they’d met. And it really didn’t matter when the three normals called it a night and Jordan followed them out. Then there were three; Delta’s ankle boots were under the coffee table and Mike had pulled her stocking feet up into his lap, and the tight, welcome knot of positive tension in the pit of her stomach would have been all the more enjoyable if Tam hadn’t been slouched in a chair across from them. No amount of meaningful glances from Mike nor the way he was massaging the arches of her feet, could override the mood killer that was his friend.
    Mike found a spot that made her toes wiggle and pressed with his thumb. “You wanna go upstairs?” he asked in a lame attempt at an underdone, his blonde brows jumping. He was a doofus and it was kind of sweet; he wasn’t suave, but excited about getting her naked again.
    Sweet – at some point she’d gone from hating him to finding him sweet .
    “Well…” S he tipped her head in Tam’s direction and he shrugged.
    “It’s cool.”
    “I…”
    Tam’s empty beer bottle hit the coffee table with a clink . “I’m turning in,” he said as he got to his feet. “Can I still crash?”
    “Yeah,” Mike told him and they exchanged guy-nods that meant she-didn’t-know-what.
    Delta watched him leave the room, heard the stairs shift under the soles of his bare feet, and she waited, silent, Mike squeezing her foot, until she heard the soft click of a door closing upstairs. “Is he your roommate?” she asked as she turned back to Mike, and watched something uncertain skitter across his face.
    “No. But I’ve got a guest room, so he sleeps over sometimes.”
    “Why?” came out more harshly than she’d intended, the memory of the cold way his eyes had passed over her in the kitchen before the only opinion she had of the guy.
    Mike shrugged again, his sideways smile faltering. “He gets into the beer too hard and no way does he need to drive all the way back to Kennesaw like that.”
    “But – ”
    “We’ve been friends forever,” he cut her off, smile returning as his hand slid over the top of her foot and up her leg, settling on her knee as he leaned in closer. “Don’t worry about it.”
    Delta pulled herself upright against the arm of the sofa. “You’re telling me what to do?”
    “You don’t have a problem telling me what to do,” he said, still smiling.
    She wanted to be miffed, especially when he hooked his hands behind her knees, pulled her legs all the way across his lap until she was right up close to him and leaned in to kiss her. But instead she opened her lips under his and speared her fingers through his hair. She had, after all, picked Mike; it was time she admitted that to herself and quit being obstinate.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    10 .
     
    “W on’t he hear us?” Delta asked at the top of the staircase. She swore she