Unbuttoned Read Online Free PDF

there had been breakfast.
    But keeping a variety of cereals stocked was one of Carly’s indulgences. One she’d started the minute she’d gotten her own place. And one of her other private indulgences was eating that cereal for dinner, which she was doing now.
    And it had nothing to do with Lucas’s parting shot at the restaurant. No, it did not.
    Though she was starting to wonder if it was true. If part of her was so angry at him because he just didn’t care. He was impervious to what people thought. And she . . . she was crippled by it. Because in school, everyone had known, always, what was going on in her home, because her parents had made their fights so ugly. So public. Because their parents would gossip about the fact that Dan and Holly Denton had been screaming at each other outside the bar again.
    No one had ever let their kids come over. Not that she could blame them. But it had meant no sleepovers for her. Very few friends. The only outside presence in the house had been Lucas, and part of that was because he’d been just as much of a misfit.
    He hadn’t cared then. He didn’t care now.
    Why didn’t he care? She did. So much she felt frozen with it sometimes. She wanted to change the way people saw her. And it wasn’t enough to just move away and start over, because people back in Silver Creek would still think the things they did.
    But she’d gone to school, and she’d come back and proven that she’d succeeded. And then she’d gotten elected to the city council. She was the youngest person to serve on the council in the town’s history.
    She and Mac were making a new story for the Denton family and she was proud of that. She worked hard to protect that.
    There was a knock on her door and she set her cereal bowl on the table, her hand going straight to the ponytail she’d done haphazardly after her shower. She was in her sweats, she didn’t have makeup on, and she was a mess. So not the time for company.
    “Who is it?” she called, heading to the door.
    “Lucas.”
    She cursed fluidly under her breath and opened the door, pasting a smile to her face. She wasn’t going to act bothered. No. He would like that too much. “Lucas,” she said, far too brightly, blocking the doorway, “what brings you here?”
    Her held his hand up, a twenty dollar bill folded between his fingers. “You forgot this.”
    “I paid,” she said.
    “Nope. I did.”
    “Oh, of all the macho . . .” she started to say, then took the money. “Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll see you . . . later.” Hopefully much later.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    The words stopped her cold. “You’re what?”
    “Sorry. For what I said earlier.”
    “I . . . thank you.” She dropped her hand from the door frame and took a step back. “It’s . . . it takes a lot to admit when you’re wrong.”
    Lucas seemed to take her movement as an invitation to enter the house. He walked past her and into the living room. “Oh, I wasn’t wrong. But I’m sorry I said what I said the way I said it.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
    “You’re wound up tight, sugar, no mistake. I wasn’t wrong about that. But I shouldn’t have picked a fight with you, not over something so sensitive, and not in public.”
    “I’m not . . . sensitive. And I didn’t invite you in.”
    “Family friend, remember? I’m allowed to come in.”
    “Why are you so dead set on driving me crazy this week?”
    He paused. “A good question. And I could ask you the same thing.”
    “What? I thought you were going out with my brother tonight, anyway.”
    “Blew him off.”
    “Why? I thought you were going to go hook-up, or whatever you guys call it.”
    “Not interested.” His dark eyes clashed with hers and her stomach tightened. “At least, not with some random girl from the bar.”
    She swallowed hard, her stomach so tight it was painful. “I don’t . . . I . . . and what do you mean you could ask me the same