“You,” he growls. “This is why we’ve had shit for business this entire day.”

I march up to him until we’re maybe a foot apart. He drops his hand; I rest mine on my hips and lean toward him.

“That’s part of the initiation at this spot,” I snarl back. “Deal with it.”

His chest heaves, his mouth splits open, and a gust of hot breath shoots out. I swear, this guy is part dragon with his prickly personality and the rough way he introduces oxygen into his body.

“Stop saying that.”

“Make me.”

The unblinking stare he maintains would have been all kinds of intimidating yesterday when I barely knew him. Not today though. Today it emboldens me, because I know exactly what I’m dealing with.

“Imperialist cuisine?” His grunt is dialed back in volume, but not in intensity. His tone is a dare, a call to my bluff. Combined with his stance and body language, it’s obvious what he wants me to do. Back off. Apologize.

Hell if I’m doing any of that. If a pissing match is what he wants, that’s exactly what I’ll give him.

“Pretty appropriate, don’t you think?” My tone is a sarcastic kind of cheery. “Here you are, this big, bad, intimidating English jerk encroaching on territory where you’re not welcome. That’s the very definition of imperialist, wouldn’t you agree?”

Once more his chest heaves. He tosses the sign aside. “That’s some nerve you’ve got posting a sign like that.”

“And that’s some nerve you’ve got setting up shop when it’s clearly against established etiquette.”

It’s a struggle to keep my voice below a yell when all I’m aching to do is scream at this jerk for his blatant disregard for rules.

“Like I said yesterday, there are no laws governing where we park.”

Hot air pushes against my lungs. “And there are no rules governing the kind of signs you can post either.”

“That’s bollocks and you know it. You encroached on our space the minute you set that sign on our truck.”

“Oh, don’t give me some holier-than-thou lecture on encroachment. What you’re doing—parking your food truck right next to ours—is the perfect example of encroachment.”

He shakes his head, opens his mouth, then bites down immediately. Muscles press against the sharpest jawline I’ve ever seen. It matches his thorny personality perfectly.

“Oi, Callum!” Finn yells.

When I look up, I almost gasp. Two dozen customers crowd around us, most of them holding their phones up, recording our spat.

I mutter, “Fuck,” under my breath at the same moment that Callum mutters, “Bloody hell.”

Finn is perched with his head hanging out the food truck window, panic in his eyes. He motions for Callum to come back to the truck. Callum gives me one last glare before spinning around and stomping over to Finn.