Forbidden Fling (Wildwood 1)

She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe your conscience is whispering to you.”

He smirked. “Truce?” he asked, offering his hand.

“Why would I believe you want an honest truce?”

He heaved a frustrated sigh and picked up her hand, pressing it to his, fingertip to palm—not at all the handshake he’d offered, but a far more intimate connection. “Because I’m not my father. And you can’t deny there’s something between us. Something . . . intense.”

Ethan threaded their fingers. And when he met her gaze, he found her watching him. Assessing.

“No ulterior motive,” he said. “I’ve just been dying to touch you.”

Something flickered in her eyes. A flash of something soft and gentle, but it vanished in an instant. “Don’t you have better things to do with your night?”

“I can honestly say there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than touching you.”

“Don’t you have other women you can touch?”

“Maybe. But you are the only woman I want to touch.”

“You certainly like playing with fire.” Her smile curved a little deeper. “Definitely a change from that once-upon-a-time Boy Scout.”

“We all change.”

Her gaze lowered to his mouth. “Some do. Some don’t.” Pulling her hand from his, she tucked her box under her arm and wandered around the bar. “I’m sure you have beer to brew.”

“There’s always beer to brew.”

When she just smiled, he leaned his forearms on the wood and looked around the space. She’d swept and mopped the old floor, moved the tables, piled chairs in one corner, and wiped the grime from the windowpanes.

His joy at seeing Delaney took a hit from the fear she may have decided to actually renovate. “You’ve cleaned up. Have you made any decisions? Since you’ve been back, I haven’t seen anything come across my desk with your name on it.”

“That doesn’t sound like the beginnings of a truce.”

“Just making conversation.”

She flicked a look at him that said she knew different, then refocused on the contents of her little box. “I’m meeting with a friend tomorrow. We’re going to see if salvage is feasible.”

Fuck. That stabbed his little bubble of hope. “Who’s the friend? How will he know if salvage is feasible? And why are you asking someone else when you could just ask me? I could go over every inch of this place with you if you really needed someone to tell you what it would take to renovate.”

Delaney laughed, the sound soft and tired. “Right, because that went so well the first time.”

Dammit. He’d really screwed himself. “You blindsided me. Now that I know you’re serious, I’d approach it differently.”

“Thanks but no thanks. I’ll know all I need to know after I talk with my guy. And you’ll know everything you need to know when it’s time for you to know.”

My guy. Ethan didn’t like the sound of that—for a variety of different reasons he didn’t want to think about. But he hadn’t come here to fight. Besides, the possibility of meeting the application deadline for a building permit with all the required paperwork plummeted with every day that passed. She sat on the floor, cross-legged, the box on her lap, and started rummaging again.

“Got something good in there?”

“Just the stuff my dad left. He lost our family home to foreclosure about five years before he died and moved in here, upstairs. I found a bunch of old family stuff down here under the bar.”

Ethan rounded the bar, pausing beside her. “Can I sit?”

She looked up at him, incredulous. “Seriously? You’re going to sit on the dirty floor of a bar while I go through old boxes?”

“Call me quirky.”

“I’ve got better words to describe you, but sit if you want.”