Forbidden Fling (Wildwood Book 1) (13 page)

Trace stood, pulled a palm-size notebook and a pinkie-size pencil from his back pocket, and flipped it open to a blank page. He grinned at Delaney. “I’m ready.”

She returned his grin, wishing she felt even a fraction as confident.

“The question is”—a deep, authoritarian male voice pulled both their gazes around to the bar’s main entrance—“ready for what?”

The man was a cop. He was about Trace’s height with closely cropped dark hair. With the sun behind him, Delaney couldn’t see his face well, but she still smiled for Trace’s brother, Zane.

“Coming around to check up on your big brother?” Delaney’s last word was barely out of her mouth when the light hit the newcomer’s face, and she realized she wasn’t talking to Zane. “Oh, sorry, I thought you were—”

She stopped midsentence when she glanced at Trace. His expression had turned to stone. Flat, hard, granite. Delaney’s smile fell. Her chest chilled. “Tra—”

“What do you want, Austin?”

Austin?

Her gaze swung back to the man approaching with an arrogant swagger and a superior grin. And the chill in her chest twisted before frosting over. Austin Hayes had his father’s dark eyes and plastic veneer. Like Ethan, Austin had matured into an incredibly handsome man; unlike Ethan, Austin’s every breath screamed of compensation for some invisible shortcoming.

“No need to start off all hostile,” Austin told Trace. “Heard you were in town. Then I heard you were here with her.” He looked directly at Delaney, his smile nothing but a sneer now. “And I knew someone better check up on Wildwood’s two most notorious troublemakers. Now I’m glad I did, because this”—he wagged his index finger between them—“the druggie hanging out with the dealer—uh-uh. Not a good idea.”

Belligerence flared inside her like gas-fed flames. All the bad habits she’d wielded as a teen rushed forward and pushed to get out—the fight, the fury, the foul language, her love of confrontation.

Every muscle in her body tightened as she took one giant step toward Austin, mouth open, ready to tell him exactly what he could do with his accusations and his bullshit. But Trace stepped between them and halted her by the shoulder.

“Thanks for your opinion,” Trace told him without an ounce of gratitude. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re in the middle of a conversation.”

“I heard all about that, too.” Austin tucked his thumbs in his duty belt and never took his gaze off Delaney’s, but she caught sight of movement out front. “I’m just here to tell you not to waste your time planning anything other than a demolition, because nothing else will be happening here. Too many powerful people want to see this dump plowed under for you to think you’ll be seeing any Hail Mary resurrection—”

“I don’t know about that.” Another new voice joined the conversation, and Delaney’s heart jumped. Her gaze skidded toward the front door and rested on
another
cop.
What in the hell?
“If you can manage to pull rabbits out of your ass every goddamned day to save yourself, why can’t Delaney?”

This time when the man came into view, she recognized him as Trace’s younger brother, and Delaney breathed a little easier.

Austin twisted just enough to shoot Zane a bored look. “Hutton, why are you always such a pain in my ass?”

“Because you’re always just one step away from crossing the line, and if I can help you out by giving you a push, well then . . .” Zane grinned. “I’m here to serve.”

Austin huffed a dry laugh as if Zane were a ridiculous waste of time.

A rough, monotone female voice came over their radios, and both men went silent. Delaney still didn’t catch much of the scratchy transmission.

When the radio crackled into silence, Zane told Austin, “They’re playing your tune, bro.”

Austin muttered something into the radio on his shoulder and walked backward toward the door, pointing at Delaney, then Trace. “Trouble’s around every corner. Watch yourselves.”

When Austin’s cruiser sped out of the lot, Delaney heaved a breath, but she couldn’t unclench her teeth or uncurl her fists.

“He’s an asshole. What are you gonna do?” Zane said with a shrug, then saluted Delaney. “Good to see you. Say hi to Avery and Chloe for me. I’ll keep an ear open for Hayes’s location when I’m on duty, but just call if he comes back.”

Delaney smiled. “Thanks, Zane.”

“Yeah,” Trace said. “Thanks.”

He nodded once more and headed out the door.

Trace shook his head and met Delaney’s eyes. “It’s like a fucking stain. No one ever looks at you like a normal person again, do they?”

“What? The reputation?” Delaney looked out the door to the parking lot, where only Trace’s truck and her Jeep sat now. “I don’t know, but it sure seems like the past sticks hard. Unfortunately, both the truth and the lies seem to stick equally well.”

“Amen.”

Delaney thought of Ethan. Of his blind faith in her. Of his compassion and attraction, despite her reputation. She added, “But the good people will see through it. Your real friends, the special people that wander into your life, they’ll be able to separate out the bullshit. They’re your therapy. The ones who help you believe in your self-worth again. They’re the ones you want to keep.”

A lopsided smile turned his mouth, but pain dulled his eyes. “Maybe I’ll find one of those someday. Until then, work is my therapy. Do you still want to tackle this today?”

She nodded even though her gut ached with the realization that Ethan was one of those special people, but that she’d never be able to keep him in her life. A Hayes and a Hart were never meant to be friends, let alone anything more.

“The sooner I tackle this,” she said, “the sooner I can get the hell out of town.”

Ethan covered his latest mash and double-checked the temperature on the kettle, then grabbed a bottle of the chocolate stout he’d brewed a month before and dropped into the chair nearby. He thumbed backward in his brewing journal to the day he’d cooked up the stout, a beer he wanted to add to his opening lineup.

If he got the chance to have an opening lineup.

His mind immediately drifted to Delaney, and his stomach twisted the way it always did when he thought of her.

He read over the beer’s ingredients, the fermenting time and temp, even the music he’d been listening to while brewing. There was something missing in this beer, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.

Closing his eyes to heighten the sensitivity of his palate, Ethan tipped the bottle to his lips, took a full drink, and let the beer linger on his tongue as Coldplay’s
Ghost Stories
album played in the background. He swirled the cool liquid in his mouth, focusing on every hint, pang, and nuance of flavor while evaluating balance. Finally, he swallowed, and he hummed with the smooth slide of this beauty down his throat.

Ethan had discovered an erotic element to drinking any good beer. The way it teased the desire for more with seductive flavor. Lured the drinker deeper with a hint of spice or fruit or funky hops. Then there was the whole mouth feel—cool on the first touch, warming as it rolled intimately over every surface of the mouth, circling and swirling and tantalizing the tongue, then finally quenching a craving as it coated his throat.

Once again, thoughts of the beer vanished as memories of Delaney overtook every brain cell. With his eyes still closed, he saw her as she’d been that night—naked, her hair down, her eyes filled with lust as she locked gazes with him and took his cock deep into her mouth.

A sharp stab of desire burned through his belly and groin, and his cock hardened the way it always did when he thought of her in his bed. Of the way her creamy skin contrasted with his navy sheets. Of the way her auburn strands felt like silk fanned out on his belly.

So erotic. So sexual. So passionate. She was everything he’d ever fantasized—but better. So much better. She was also funny. And smart. And feisty. And strong. And sweet. And the way she saw the good in him regardless of the bad she’d seen in his family showed more strength of character than his entire family had, put together.

He sighed, but it came out as a moan. God he wanted her. Wanted her so bad his entire body ached. And this was exactly what he tried to avoid. Exactly why he stuck with one-night stands. Because he didn’t want a woman in his head all the time—the way Delaney had taken up residence.

When that zing of desire came up, he just had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t want any kind of attachment. This lingering craving for Delaney would fade.

“Dammit.” Now he couldn’t focus on his beer. He pushed from the chair, and after three of his triple ales, his head swam for a second.

The buzz was nice. It helped him put all the stress in his life into perspective. It helped him let most of it go. But his lowered inhibitions had him thinking about going next door and finding out why Delaney continued to burn lights into the early morning hours.

Instead of seeking out trouble, he repositioned his erection and turned to his kettle to stir his mash.

A knock on the window of his front door surprised him. He barely had time to look that way when the door opened and Delaney stepped in.

Surprise and excitement stung the pit of his stomach but vanished the second her intensity registered. With her hands curled into fists at her sides, she met his gaze directly with a look he couldn’t quite figure out.

“Hey.” He covered the kettle, checked the temperature again, and made sure the steelhead pump was recycling the wort the way it should. Then he deliberately settled himself into a false casual front, as if he hadn’t been obsessed with the thought of her. As if she hadn’t been invading his every conscious and unconscious moment. As if he didn’t really care one way or the other whether or not she was into a quickie on his workbench. “I was just thinking about you.”

When he refocused on Delaney, she was taking in the space. Her gaze swept over the warehouse from the painted cement floor to the open rafters, skipped over the grain mill and the mashing tun, roamed the boiling kettles and the fermenting tanks, and took in his digital control station and bottling corner.

Ethan’s desire would never fade if she kept dropping in on him looking like that. She wore camo fatigue shorts, a black tank top, and the same worn leather boots he’d seen her in during the inspection. And he was damn sure she was the only woman on the planet who could make that outfit look so hot. But her scrutiny made his belly jump and churn, as if she could see right into his cheating heart and the way he coveted her liquor license.

“Nice setup,” she said, refocusing on him. Ethan was working up a justification for the equipment when she crossed her arms and asked, “Why did you drop out of UC Berkeley?”

His stomach fell.

She must have been talking with people around town for this to come up. And Ethan didn’t need to think about all the damn mistakes he’d made. Especially not when he’d been hoping she’d come here because she’d missed him the way he’d missed her. Because she wanted him the same way he wanted her.

“It doesn’t matter.” Disappointment swam in his gut, and he returned to the mash, lifting the cover to stir. “That was a long time ago.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He replaced the metal cover a little too hard. “Maybe I don’t want to give you an answer.”

“I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Because if I’m the reason you pulled out of school, if what happened at the bar changed the direction of your life . . .”

She paused, her face pressed into a pained frown. Her fingers gripped and released her biceps, and she kept shifting her weight. Her distress tangled his mind and his heart into knots, leaving him uneasy and confused.

“Then what?” he asked the hypothetical question to make the point that it was unanswerable. He knew because he’d done the what-ifs thousands of times and come to the same conclusion. “None of that matters now.”

“Of course it matters.” She threw her arms wide. “It’s your life. You lost everything you wanted because of one stupid fight that didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“It didn’t have anything to do with you either, so forget about it.”

“
Of course
it had to do with me.” Her voice rose with incredulity. “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you hate me like the rest of your family? You certainly have plenty of reason.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“What difference does
that
make?” she yelled back.

He rubbed his face with both hands. “Jesus Christ.”

“I didn’t come here to fight.” Her expression slid back into torment. “I came because . . .” She gestured absently. “Shit, you’re right. Forget it.” She turned for the door. “Forget everything. Forget—”

He caught her arm as she passed, forcing his hand gentle when he was frustrated enough to yank her into his arms.

“Don’t go.” He hated this ache. Hated this need. Hated this sense of desperation. Hated this ugly shadow between them. “I’m sorry.”

Emotions broke across her face—pain, anger, and so much guilt. He knew that feeling well. “You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one they were fighting over. It was my boyfriend who pushed Ian too hard. And now it’s my fault that all your dreams—God, you were so right. Ian’s death caused so much more hurt to so many more people than I knew. Than I ever imagined—”