Page 16 of His Curvy Distraction

“Amelia had an appointment this morning she’d forgotten about and wasn’t available for the meeting. She’s the one who, um, puts things together and makes it sound right.”

“I thought this was your project.”

“It is. But Amelia is better with people than I am.”

“Okay, well, I’m not here to judge your speaking skills. I need to know what you’re planning to do with the budget for the campground.”

She drew a breath, her chest rising with the move. She bit her bottom lip, and dammit, I had to shift in my seat.

“The campground needs work. A lot of work. The bare minimum we need to do is remove the wiring and connections for all the old campsites. Unfortunately, that could mean a lot of landscaping afterward. There is a tree down on the basketball court, and the volleyball court has more weeds than sand, but the bigger concern for me is the pool.”

I opened my mouth to argue with her about it, but she rolled right on as though she didn’t notice me.

“It’ll take a lot to get the pool functional, I’m guessing, but whether we do that now or later, the pool needs a fence. As it is now, the department of health is not going to give us an operating permit. It’s unsafe to leave it open like it is.”

I nodded slowly. I hadn’t been to the location, but she was right. Any pool had to have a way of stopping people from wandering into it. And a camp full of kids was going to have even tighter rules than anywhere else. “Do you think all of that will fit into the budget?”

She shook her head. “No. I know it won’t. We’ve been talking to contractors about what it would take to get everything done. We don’t have official quotes, more ideas, but I have a plan. It’s not simple.”

“Okay, let me hear it.”

She looked up at me as if she was seeing me for the first time. The light in her eyes made me wonder what she expected from our meeting.

Was I really that big of an asshole?

“Everything I mentioned is phase one. It’s the bare minimum for a functional space. Ideally, we would also have a structure for the kids to get out of the sun and weather, if there’s rain during the day, but that’s more of a nice to have thing.”

“Is it, though? What happens if there’s a thunderstorm?”

“There is a small camper on the site. It wouldn’t hold a lot of people, so we would be limited to the number of kids we can safely have inside the camper.”

“I thought the whole point was to expand the programs.”

“It is, but if we don’t have the budget to make these things happen, I can’t pull it out of my ass.”

I snorted at her vehement response.

She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mayor. Please don’t fire me for that.”

“Fire you? Why am I going to fire you?”

“Because you don’t like me. And I… grabbed…” She glanced down. “You. And Amelia isn’t here to make sure I don’t say things like that to you, so I’m sure you’re just going to fire me and I’ll have to go back to teaching, which I hated, but I’ll do it because I love this town and I love the kids here and?—”

“Natalie! Stop. Please. I’m not going to fire you. Just take a minute.”

She closed her mouth. Her face was red, her eyes wild and bouncing all over the place, except at me. She ran her hands through her hair, stopping when she reached the ponytail that contained most of her hair. She removed her hands, then yanked the band from her hair and let the strands fall loose down her back.

Fuck me, the woman was a temptress. And she didn’t even know it. She wasn’t doing it to tease me, she was just flustered.

She fluffed her hair, then wrapped it in her hand, spearing her fingers through it until she contained all of it in one hand. She wrapped the band around the ponytail and tied all her hair back up into a sexy knot on top of her head once more.

A knot I desperately wanted to untie. A knot I wanted to loosen with my fingers.

I cleared my throat to eliminate the tightness that took over my whole body.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still looking away from me. “I did not mean to make this so uncomfortable. I seem to do that all the time, which is why I canceled the meeting. Amelia is better than me.”

“You’re fine,” I grunted. Could she hear the desire in my voice? Dammit. I needed to get a handle on myself. “What is phase two?”

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