Page 8 of The Contractor's Rose
Everything I shouldn’t want. And everything I did. Badly.
And I was old enough to know better.
She stood slowly, brushing her hands on the front of her dress—that fucking dress—and looked up at me with those big brown eyes, like she hadn’t just set me on fire. Like she hadn’t just lit a match and left it burning in the middle of my chest.
“You okay?”
No. I’m not fucking okay.
“Fine,” I said. Flat. Too quick. The word scraped past my throat like sandpaper.
She tilted her head slightly, the motion so damn gentle it made something in me twist. “You sure? You look …”
Like I’m imagining you on your knees, at my feet, calling me Daddy?
Like I haven’t gotten laid in three goddamn years and nowall I can think about is the way your nipples are poking through that fucking sundress?
I cleared my throat, swallowing the filth of my thoughts. “Just focused. Let’s keep going.”
My voice sounded distant to my own ears—gravelly and thin.
I turned fast, sharp, the movement covering my tracks. I busied myself with cords and switches and outlets, the low whirl of the fans dulling the edge of my pulse.
I needed my hands full. Needed distance. Needed something—anything—to anchor me before I fucked this up.
Because if I wasn’t careful, I was going to cross a line I could never uncross.
And ifshewasn’t careful?
She’d find out just how filthy a man twenty-five years her senior could be when he finally stopped pretending he didn’t want the pretty little thing right in front of him.
FIVE
GAVIN
She was a mess.
We both were—grime smudged into our skin, dirt streaked across our forearms like war paint. Her blonde hair clung to her cheeks in damp strands, the heat of the day catching on her flushed skin and leaving her glowing.
Still, she was the most beautiful goddamn thing I’d ever seen, and the only thing I could think about was her.
Sweat clung to the back of my neck. We’d been scrubbing and hauling and tossing ruined books into bins for hours. My lower back ached and my shoulders were tight with fatigue, but I didn’t care.
Because every time she bent over to pick something up, the hem of that too-short dress flirted with danger. Every time she brushed against me—her arm against mine, her hip sliding along my side in the tight spaces of the back room—I lit up like a fuse.
So when she wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, loose tendrils of hair falling across her face, and said, “You hungry?” in that soft, unassuming voice, I nearly groaned out loud.
Hungry? You have no damn idea, sweet girl.
“Do you want to come upstairs?” she asked. “I could order us something for dinner. I owe you. It’s the least I could do since you helped me with this mess all day.”
Upstairs again. Just her and me. Two nights in a row.
Not an accident. Not anymore.
I should’ve said no. Could’ve walked out, climbed into my truck, and driven home. Alone.
Instead, I said, “You know that little Thai place around the corner?”
