Hook, Line, and Sinker (Bellinger Sisters)

And he knew exactly how to prevent her from looking too deeply.

Chapter Nine

Hannah woke up at six A.M. with mice using her brain as a trampoline.

Her hand slapped down on the side table, fingers closing around her AirPods, shoving them into her ears. Next came her phone, her thumb locating the music app and selecting Zella Day from her library, letting the notes drift through the fog and wake her up slowly. Today was Sunday. Not an ideal day for working, but it was her first day on set as slightly more than a production assistant—she was an observer now, ooh, ahh—and she needed to set the right tone. Calm but focused.

Hannah, you didn’t need to do that. In fact, I wish you hadn’t.

Fox’s reprimand from the night before came rushing back, and the mice ceased bouncing on her brain, creeping off to go hide in a hole somewhere. Oh man, she’d really yelled at those old men from the middle of the street, hadn’t she? Not a dream? Truthfully, she was fine owning that reaction. Even if she had thrown something at them, they would have deserved the resulting concussion.

They’d deserved it for treating him—anyone, really—with so little respect.

Why didn’t Fox think so?

He’d seemed fine before bed. Maybe the alcohol had amplified a situation that was really no big deal? What if fishermen simply spoke to each other that way and she’d misread the intention behind it?

But none of it sat right, so she resolved to ask Fox about it later and forced herself to focus on the upcoming day at work. She ran through the scenes in her mind, searching for inspiration to enrich the score, but an hour passed without anything feeling exactly right. Which was concerning. She’d never gone so far as to think scoring movies was her calling. That would have been putting the cart way before the horse. But she’d always been confident in her ability to pull songs from memory to perfect the mood of any situation. What if she’d been too confident?

The scent of ginger distracted Hannah from her troubling thoughts.

It wasn’t an unpleasant smell at all. Quite the opposite. It was almost . . . stimulating in its richness? And she’d smelled it in the apartment before, but never so strong. What was that?

Hannah tossed aside the covers and climbed out of bed, leaving her AirPods in on the way to the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and used the toilet, grudgingly removing the earbuds to shower. Fox had no reason to be awake this early, so she tried to be as quiet as possible, wrapping a towel tightly around her body and tiptoeing toward the guest room.

When the door to his bedroom opened and he breezed out, mid-yawn, in nothing but black briefs, Hannah ran smack into the side of the couch, sending a jolt of pain through her hip. It sent her stumbling back a couple of feet, her ass bumping into a floor lamp. Seriously, leave it to her to find two of the only pieces of furniture in the extremely sparse apartment and hit them . . . and now she was staring. Of course she was staring. What else was she supposed to do?

Fox was coming toward her with a lopsided grin and barely any clothes.

Dimples out. Ready to film a razor commercial.

And whoa. Until that moment, she hadn’t even been aware of his tattoos.

The outline of an actual fox stretching across his right hip, a giant squid wrapped around an anchor on the left side of his rib cage, a series of different-sized stars on his pec, plus other ones she didn’t have the wherewithal to decipher because his muscles were demanding attention. Were muscles supposed to be so thick? Yes. Yes, because he hadn’t bought these in a gym. He’d come by them hauling giant steel pots out of the water, pulling in nets of fish, from balancing on a deck during rough weather.

“Whoa there, Freckles,” he said in a raspy morning voice, tipping his head toward the teetering lamp. “Still getting your sea legs?”

“Um . . .” Resolutely, she looked down at the floor. “I guess I’m more hungover than I realized. Better lay low tonight.”

The closer he came, the stronger the scent of ginger. And the harder it became not to look at Fox in all his nearly naked glory. Listen, Hannah got horny with the best of them. Once in a while, at least. Mostly when listening to Prince. But the times she’d felt slightly wanting and uncomfortable were a far cry from this cinching of muscles, this filtering of warmth to her private areas.

Guilt invaded her middle. Not quite enough to scare off her lady boner, but enough to mentally berate herself for being a bad friend. How was Hannah any better than the girls who’d called dibs on Fox at the party on Friday night?