Forbidden Fling (Wildwood 1)

“Still don’t know where she is.”

She lowered one hand from his shoulder and threaded her fingers with his free hand. Kissed his neck and whispered, “Miss you, too.”

Ethan’s already half-hard erection stiffened beneath her thigh, and he let his lids slide closed. But he didn’t act on the desire, because this time with her was special. These quiet moments were golden. He was pretty sure she didn’t give them to just anyone.

He wanted to broach the subject of the bar with her but didn’t want to lose this intimacy. So he held her waist firmly, twisted, and lay back, pulling her with him.

She tried to sit up, pushing against his chest.

“Relax, relax. I’m just getting comfortable.” She gazed down at him, those beautiful eyes a little wary. “What? You have somewhere pressing to be right now? Because my calendar happens to be wide-open.”

Her lips kicked up on one side. “I hear that’s rare.”

“Not as rare as it used to be.”

“Why’s that?”

The thought made him grin. “Because I closed down the mayor’s free favor-for-a-friend service.”

That brought both her brows up, and her laugh was low and dubious. “That couldn’t have gone over well.”

“Nothing I do goes over well unless it’s exactly what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. And, well, we all have to draw the line somewhere, right?”

“We do.” Her lashes lowered, shading her eyes. “I just wish those lines weren’t always so difficult to draw.”

She propped her elbow on his shoulder, her chin in her hand, and seemed to drift.

Ethan twirled a piece of her hair around his finger, unable to remember the last time he’d been so utterly comfortable. But something about her comment on drawing lines had him saying, “Tell me about your job. How’d you go from waiting tables at your father’s bar to climbing the ladder at a company like that?”

“A lot of being in the right place at the right time willing to bust my ass. I picked up a job working at their bars down south and was able to improve their efficiency because of all those years I’d had to work Dad’s bar alone. That earned me a management position, where I made more changes, which they liked.

“And then one winter seven years ago, seventy percent of the construction crew working on a new restaurant in Burbank came down with some nasty intestinal bug. They think it was some kind of food poisoning, but it lasted weeks. The corporation was scrambling to stay on course, and I always needed money, so when I wasn’t working my shift in the restaurant, I was on the construction job site.”

She smiled, the expression soft. “Those were great days. Filled with lots of fun guys, loud music, belly laughs, and hard work. I’ve never felt like more of a team than I did with them. They took me under their wing, taught me everything. Some of the best days of my life. It was like having twenty fathers to make up for the one I never had.

“I knew that’s where I wanted to be, so I transitioned out of the restaurant and into the construction crew. And as soon as the bigwigs put two and two together—my customer service experience with my construction experience—they jumped at the chance to push me out of construction and into design.

“Everything I know I learned on the job. I’ve never spent any time in a classroom. I haven’t been back to school since Wildwood High.” Her expression sobered, and she sighed. “Wish I’d known how much more value companies place on education than they do on experience before I quit.”

“What made you quit such an amazing job?”

“They turned the construction department over to one of the brothers who’d been living in Europe for years.” Her voice made a drastic shift toward derision. “Basically just to shove him into a corner where he wouldn’t cause the rest of the family trouble. Which meant I ended up getting stuck with him. And he was the epitome of why I don’t value education over experience. He’d graduated top of his class from some fancy Ivy League university with freaking double majors in engineering and business, but his parents had to promote me to run the division because he was absolutely worthless.”

“His parents promoted you?”

“Yes. On paper, they made it look like he promoted me in an effort to give him the illusion of power, probably in hopes that he’d actually grow a pair and claim some.”

His lips lifted. “From the sounds of it, that didn’t happen.”

“He was too busy trying to continue living his French lifestyle.”

“What’s the French lifestyle?”

“Working too little, talking too much, partying too much, eating and drinking too much, and fucking too many women who weren’t his wife.”

Ethan’s stomach squeezed. “Ah.”

“Not me,” she said. “Not for lack of trying, but I was not one of his conquests.”