Page 28 of Brewbies
Her eyes turned liquid as her posture grew stiffer by the second, and tension settled into her body like a heavy mist.
Staring into those evocative eyes filled Ethan with an overwhelming urge to protect her. To kiss and soothe, stroke and caress her worries away.
Which really pissed him off, because he was one of those worries.
I don’t want to be your enemy.
The last thing in the world he expected to follow that thought was the rush of her breath caressing his lips.
When had they leaned in so close?
For three seconds he sat like a pile of spare parts as she inundated him with the aroma of chocolate brownies and strawberry lip stuff, the scent of her underscored by the loamy moss still clinging to her hair and bits of her clothing. It was like the air after a storm. The beach after the pull of a wave deserted it.
Ephemeral. Intoxicating.
I want to be free to want you.
As if she could read his thoughts, she leaned forward, her eyes locked on the lips he’d accidentally just moistened with his tongue.
No. Nope. Nuh uh.If she kissed him, he’d forget his name, and possibly all the reasons they were wrong for each other.
Right before they might have connected, he turned his head slightly, allowing her kiss-ready lips to land against his clenched jaw.
She jerked back, touching her mouth as if his chin bristles had drawn blood.
If he was in such proximity, he was in danger of forgetting that kissing her would be a betrayal of them both.
And that would be wrong.
Ethan heaved himself to his feet and put the car door between her eye line and his erection before she noticed. One look at her told him he’d failed.
Everything they’d done and left undone swelled between them, but a beloved oak tree bristling in the wind cemented Ethan’s tongue to the roof of his mouth.
Wordlessly Darby stood and brushed off her backside, her tongue still making enticing sweeps over her lips.
“Why Townsend Harbor?” he lamented. “You could have picked anywhere else.”
“I came because I thought I needed to get away from everything and be in the trees,” she said. “I’m staying because this town needs someone like me.”
FIVE
Drip Method
BREWING METHOD THAT ALLOWS HOT WATER TO SETTLE THROUGH A BED OF GROUND COFFEE.
Darby satat her tiny kitchen table, a steaming cup of coffee at her elbow, and Ethan Townsend on her mind. The sun hadn’t yet peeked over the horizon, and despite an icy shower in her tiny bathroom cubby, her body still hummed like a tuning fork. Every time she blinked, the immaculately maintained interior of the sheriff’s SUV assembled itself around her. Slow, fat tears of rain sliding down the windows and beating on the roof. The air between them heavy with the scent of him—an intoxicating brew of briny wind and woodsy soap emanating from skin heated by richly earned irritation.
Laced with lust.
Darby’s throat still ached from the fat crow she’d had to eat after the obviously suicidal and/or masochistic buck decided to tear ass directly into her path.
Hit by a goddamn deer.
Of all the lousy luck.
A shiver worked its way through her as flashes of the nightmare that had rolled her out of bed before the ass-crack of dawn flickered through her mind. Wide, startled eyes. Sharp-pronged antlers. Scrabbling hooves and an unearthly scream of animal terror.
Okay, that last bit might have been churned out by her fevered subconscious, along with the “Watch it, lady” that had fallen from its black-lipped maw in a Southie accident remarkably similar to Tony Two Toes, the bookie who had frequented her very first coffee shop in Boston.
