Fighting Ever After (Ever After #3) by Stephanie Hoffman McManus Page B

on for a solid ten minutes
while she geeked out over a book she was telling Lucy
about. Instead of boring the shit out of me, I found it entertaining as hell.
She also asked a thousand questions about Lucy and Izzy, and she wasn’t just
being polite to make conversation; she genuinely wanted to know them and to
have a relationship with them. Whatever she’d been through obviously hadn’t
been bad enough to make her jaded or guarded. It was just another way that we
couldn’t be more different. She was dying to love people and it came so easily
to her. I could see it even with Ace and Spade – how quickly she was warming to
them.
    She shocked Spade by
hugging him goodbye when he left with Chris and Danny after dinner. She even
laughed and brushed it off when he took the opportunity to cop a feel, which
annoyed me more than it should have. She was comfortable with his touch,
whereas she was anything but with mine. I’d never fought over a girl before,
especially not with one of my best friends, but when his hand playfully slid
down her body, my first instinct had been to rip her out of his arms, and then
maybe rip his arms off.  My body was staking a temporary claim on her
whether I liked it or not. Until that desire was satisfied, I didn’t want to
see anyone else touching her, even if it was just Spade fooling around.
    I also wanted to be the
one to make her smile and laugh the way she did when she watched Ace chasing
her niece around the living room not long after. Her kissable lips were split
into a full grin that lit up her face, reaching all the way to her eyes. It was
contagious, and I found myself smiling and laughing with the rest of them as we
watched Izzy terrorize Ace.
    This is who Princess was
when she wasn’t being threatened by a violent asshole, or guarding against a
regular asshole who just wanted to get her into bed. She was relaxed and
carefree in a way that didn’t fit with the girl who worked so hard to put up
walls and control her thoughts and emotions around me. I liked her fire; I
enjoyed pushing her and seeing her push back, but watching her laugh with her
niece while they assaulted Ace with pillows was something else. I really liked
seeing this side of her, but it was unsettling for me, because I had no place
in this scene. I wasn’t good with kids like Ace, and I wasn’t the guy to make
her laugh and let go. I knew that, and yet it only made me want to be closer to
her, to hear her laugh more, to see that smile even if I wasn’t the one
responsible for it. I was more likely to be the guy to take that smile away.
Yeah, I was as selfish and greedy as they came, but I wanted her. I wanted what
she made me feel – excited and alive. Lately music was the only thing that did
it for me, and I was bored to death with the rest of it, the same girls and
parties. Princess was unexpected, but she was making life interesting, fun
even.
    A high pitched giggle
tore through the room as Ace pretended to take a hit from the pillow Jax threw
at him. Izzy squealed and clapped her hands, then leapt from Jax’s lap and climbed onto Ace, who was sprawled out,
playing dead. I watched amused, until she lost interest in him and came
waddling over to me. I sat there, watching her as she eyed me curiously. Then
she took a step closer, not at all intimidated by my rough exterior. I frowned,
uncomfortable with the way she was smiling at me like she wanted to make me her
new best friend. She wasn’t at all discouraged by my frown and climbed right up
on my lap. I sat frozen, unsure of what to do. She started tugging on my hair
and giggling in between words that I couldn’t understand because they
definitely weren’t part of the English language.
    I’d lived with my viper
of a mother for eighteen years, faced down dozens of scorned women, jumped out
of an airplane and been in more bar fights than I could remember, and I was
more terrified of this little girl than I’d ever been in any of those
situations. Was I