Page 30 of Brewbies
And dear God, did she enjoy provoking him.
Just as she had when she’d refused his offer to give her a ride home last night.
The reason was embarrassingly simple.
Ethan Townsend brought out the brat in her. And though she doubted he recognized the patterns or would even know what to do with them if he had, Darby now knew she couldn’t trust herself alone in the confinement of a vehicle with a man who quietly and obliviously radiated dom energy by the ass-load.
Because her virulent dislike of the man had done not one thing to dampen—poor choice of words, all things considered—her desire for him.
Finished watering her indoor menagerie of plants, Darby slipped her feet into the feathered mules that matched her pink silk kimono, and stepped outside to address the various flowerpots and planters. Seeing how pretty the camper looked in the pale light of dawn only redoubled her determination.
She had quite literally poured her own blood, sweat, tears—not to mention a healthy supply of cash—into the old Airstream’s renovation smack in the middle of her radiation treatment. An act that had proven utterly incomprehensible within the small circle of friends she’d accumulated during her brief Ivy League undergrad education.
To her, it was a symbol of freedom. Of a life lived outside the long shadow of a trust fund her parents had treated as both a bit and bridle. Of a life lived without dependence on another living soul.
And Darby had no intention of allowing Sheriff Townsend or anyone else to tell her where she could park it.
The birds had taken up their warmup exercises for the dawn chorus. Meadowlarks. Robins. Song sparrows. Chickadees.
“Breakfast,” she sang, lifting the lid of the metal garbage can where she kept her industrial-sized bag of birdseed.
“You should put a lock on that.”
Darby shrieked as a rainbow of birdseed flew from the cup in her hand and rained to the ground at her feet. She whirled around, ready to clock whoever had startled her, when her brain gradually matched the giant, hulking shape and voice with a name.
Roman Fawkes. Cady’s Viking.
He sat on one of her picnic tables, his size-eighty-three boots propped on the bench and his hands gripping the table’s thick edge.
Had she really walked right by him? Given he was roughly the size of a backhoe, she didn’t see how that was a possibility.
“Jesus fuck,” she said, pressing her hand to her rioting heart. “What the hell, fella? You trying to kill me?”
“Something tells me it would take a lot more than that.” The deep voice rumbled out of the darkness.
“Way to make this even creepier.” Darby’s body issued a series of detailed complaints as she stretched sideways to flip on the camper’s exterior light.
The golden glow bounced off the craggy angles of Fawkes’ weathered face, but only cast his deep-set dark eyes further into shadow.
“What the hell are you doing here so early, anyway?” she asked.
Fawkes’ voice was a smoky rasp against the sweet early-summer morning air. “Wanted to talk to you before the hordes descend.”
Darby reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out her cell phone. “For the record, this right here works at all hours of the day and is 99.99999 percent less likely to result in a broken nose and/or perforated testicle than sneaking up on me.”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” Fawkes said. “I was waiting.”
“Maybe wait a little louder next time?” she suggested, bending to refill her cup with birdseed. “A good throat clearing always works for me. Maybe a courtesy cough. Hell, a fart would have reverberated rather nicely on that table.”
The faintest tinge of color haunted Fawkes’ sharp cheekbones as he cleared his throat.
“Yeah, see? That would have worked perfectly about three minutes ago.”
“Noted,” he said. “I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“I appreciate that, seeing as you’ve already stripped a good five years off my life,” she said, picking her way over to the bird feeder. Already, her regulars were bouncing like feathered ping-pong balls between the branches of the ancient oak overhead, waiting for her to move off so they could move in.
“Cady told me about the petition,” he said.
