by Flynn, Avery
Plus she understood the value of color coding. That was always a mark in favor in Natalie’s world. “It has to be someone.”
‘‘What if it’s someone who used to work at the brewery?” he asked.
“Like Carl?” Just mentioning the former brewmaster’s name pissed her off. “He’s still in the county lockup. His wife can’t make bail.”
Sean snorted. “More like his wife’s family can’t make bail.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s a Peterson. Her parents own a big chunk of Salvation County.”
“You don’t think she asked for their help?” Natalie asked.
“Probably asked, doubtful she got it.” He took off his cap and ran his long fingers through his thick hair.
“Why?”
“Rumor is her family objected to the marriage.”
Juicy stuff, but not the right kind of information she was after, which was really starting to annoy her. Every problem had a solution, and with enough time, she’d find the one to who was sabotaging the brewery. The only question was, did she have the time? “Will Billy be back at work tomorrow?”
Sean shook his head. “Gave him the day off.”
“Okay, let’s plan on chatting with Hailey tomorrow. Maybe she saw something she didn’t realize was important at the time.” Natalie gathered her pens and her notebook and slid them into her bag. The crinkle of paper being crumpled reminded her of what else she’d brought with her. She took out the three pieces of paper. “I was going through the personnel files today and noticed your W–2 wasn’t in the file. I brought you another one you can fill out real quick.”
He drummed his fingers on the coffee table. “I’ll do it later.”
“Might as well get it over with.” She handed him a black pen. “Anyway, bringing it in tomorrow will give me an excuse to—”
Before she could even get the words “talk to Hailey” out, Sean’s lips came down on hers.
Desperation to get her to stop asking him to fill out the W–2 had pushed Sean into the kiss, but it was going to take a tow truck to pull him away. She tasted too good, felt too right, and moaned too sweetly for the realization that this was all wrong to pierce the lust fogging his better judgment.
She relaxed opened up beneath him, and tasting her was like getting a glimpse of heaven. But Sean wanted more than a view from the cheap seats. Without ever losing contact with her hungry mouth, he tangled his fingers into the knot of hair at the top of her head and found the metal clip holding it all in place. Gripping it between his forefinger and thumb, he slowly pulled it out of the light–brown mass. Her hair fell down in waves, overflowing his hands and falling past her shoulders to the small of her back. His hands followed the trail to the perfect rise of her ass that filled his hands.
All he wanted to do was get lost in Natalie. He’d carry her upstairs to his king–size bed, lay her down in the middle of his sheets, and lick every inch of her until she broke apart in his arms and cried out for mercy. Then he’d make her do it again.
He sucked the juicy fullness of her bottom lip into his mouth, lightly raking his teeth across the tender flesh. The woman he’d too often thought of as a thorn in his side shivered in his arms. The need to touch her everywhere steamrolled over any objections. He brought his hands around front to the tiny buttons on her sweater.
Deepening the kiss, he slid his tongue into her welcoming mouth just as his fingers closed on the button at the bottom of her cardigan and slipped it free. He followed the soft material north to the next fastened button, but she’d beat him to it.
“No,” he whispered against her mouth.
Her hands stilled, but her chest heaved. “Why?”
Removing the button from her grasp, he slipped it through the hole. “I have spent way too much time thinking about what it would be like to unbutton each one of these.”
Not satisfied to remain a passive partner, she snuck her hands under his T–shirt. “You think about that, huh?”
“Every damn day.” The woman had taken up residence in his thoughts the first day she arrived at the brewery with her clipboard. He was beyond fighting the attraction.
Her touch against his abs was the best kind of torture, and the bulge pushing against his zipper grew. How many times had he stroked himself while fantasizing about this exact moment? How many times had his balls tightened in anticipation? How many times had he finished alone but remained hungry for more—for the real thing? For only Natalie?
Three buttons down, two more to go. Torn between the release of going faster and the anticipation of taking it slow, he bought time by trailing his lips down the creamy column of her neck.
“And does thinking about it make you hard?” Her thumb, and only her thumb, rubbed up and down the length of his zipper.
The contact destroyed and rebuilt him with every stroke. “Like concrete.”
Her lips rested against his earlobe, close enough that moisture from her breath evaporated against his overheated skin. “Just because of a row of buttons?”
“No, because of what you keep hidden away from the world behind this conservative facade.” The last button was all that remained.
“What makes you think it’s an act?”
“Right now?” He slipped the last button free. The small amount of blood not concentrated in his dick pounded against his eardrums. “A whole lotta hope.”
“I’d say it’s time to test your hypothesis.”
He parted her cardigan, revealing the world’s most perfect tits, practically overflowing a deep–purple see–through lace bra. The top curve of her dusky–peach areolas peeked above the plunging cut of the bra, and her hard nipples pushed against the lacy prison. He slowly swept his thumb across a pointed tip. Her soft mewl of pleasure made him want to beat his chest caveman style and stake his claim.
Which was exactly why he had to stop. A man in hiding couldn’t afford to grow attached, not when he might have to get lost fast.
Pulling back, he gulped in a breath of honeysuckle air. Instead of lessening the hunger, the flowery smell only drove home just how much he wanted her beneath him, on top of him, beside him—he didn’t care, as long as he was buried inside her.
It took every ounce of self–control he had to rest his forehead against hers instead of following his instinct to throw her over his shoulder and carry her upstairs. Eyes closed and jaw clenched, he shut down the want ravaging him.
“Sean.” Her breathy voice caressed his skin, taunting him with her closeness. “What just happened?”
He couldn’t open his eyes. If he saw her this close, at this moment, he didn’t think he’d be able to hold off. “I kissed you.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Firmer now, her tone sounded more like the no–nonsense efficiency expert turning his life upside down. Still, her fingers fisted his T–shirt like a woman barely hanging on herself, and she hadn’t made a move to put space between them. “Why?”
Because he was Sean Duvin, not Sean O’Dell. Because he couldn’t fill out a W–2 without Rupert Crowley and the other entrainment reporter jackals finding him. But that wasn’t really why he’d done it. Deep down, he knew he’d kissed her because even as frustrating as she was, Natalie made him forget all of that. She made him believe Sean Duvin had never existed. That the person he was trying so hard to be was who he really was.
“It just happened,” he said. A strand of her hair tickled his cheek, but there was no way he was easing back even a millimeter.
“Uh–huh. Look, despite what ‘just happened’, we can’t do this.” She still hadn’t moved away, and her fingers tangled in his shirt were so close to his bare flesh underneath that a piece of paper couldn’t fit between them.
“Why not?” He kept his hands still, afraid the smallest movement would send her flying away.
“I’m your boss. It’s wrong.”
“So why haven’t you moved?” And for that matter, why hadn’t he? The simple truth was
, he didn’t want to.
“Because wanting and needing aren’t always the same thing.”
“Ain’t that a bitch?”
“Yeah, it is.” She released her grip on his shirt and laid one palm against his fast–beating heart. “I have to go.”
The announcement sliced somewhere deep inside him. “Do you?”
She chuckled, a bittersweet sound that twisted his gut, and pushed him away. It didn’t take much. He was on his feet a second later, his hands shoved in his pockets to stop from reaching for her.
Natalie buttoned her cardigan in no time flat, picked up her bag, leaving the unfilled–out W–2 in the middle of his otherwise bare coffee table, and grabbed her coat from the back of the couch. “About what happened, it’s probably best…”
“Don’t worry.” He took her coat from her and held it up so she could slide her arms into the sleeves. “I’m not a big talker.”
Zipping up her coat, she turned to face him. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
He opened his mouth to deliver a rejoinder, but she brushed her lips across his in the briefest of kisses, stealing the words from his mouth. Then she opened the door and walked out into the cold night.
The teasing scent of her honeysuckle perfume lingered in the air behind her, the innocence of it reminding him of just how many dark secrets he was hiding.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Natalie edged forward in her office chair and read the same e–mail for the hundredth time in the past five minutes. How had the Salvation gossip mill been so very wrong?
Even Ruby Sue at The Kitchen Sink didn’t know about this, and she was Salvation’s equivalent of the NSA when it came to uncovering the town’s secrets. Natalie’s fingers flew up and down her strand of pearls like a nun with rosary beads and glanced down at the calendar from The Organizational Outlet on her desk.
The dates lined up.
It made perfect sense.
Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
A light tap on her office door snapped her attention away from the screen and onto someone who made her heart palpitate for an entirely different reason.
Sean filled her doorway in his uniform of jeans—slightly worn in all the right places, a Sweet Salvation Brewery T–shirt tugged tight across his broad shoulders, and baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. The cap hid his eyes but not the full lips that should be illegal on a man. And especially her employee.
Her thighs tingled at the memory of that kiss last night and the feel of his hard length underneath her thumb. Without meaning to, her gaze dropped to his zipper and she licked her lips.
“Morning, Sean!” Hailey called out cheerfully as she passed Natalie’s open office door. “Nat, did Sean give you…” She looked down at the papers crumpled in Sean’s white–knuckled fist. Her head snapped up and she looked at Natalie. Her eyes rounded before she glanced back at Sean. “Uh…yeah…so…bye.”
The office manager sped down the hallway, her heels clacking a hasty retreat on the linoleum floor.
An embarrassed awkwardness bloomed on Natalie’s cheeks. That in itself was pretty damn weird. But every other reaction she had around the steamy–hot brewmaster was completely out of whack. Why not how she’d react to him after he’d gotten to second base?
He cleared his throat and held up a thin stack of papers. “I found the quality control reports for the past six months.”
That brought her right back to the problem at hand. The reports were the least of their worries right now. There was trouble at the Sweet Salvation Brewery. It started with C, and that stood for Carl. “He’s not in jail.”
“Who?”
“Carl.” Just saying the former brewmaster’s name out loud brought her full circle back to annoyed confusion. “He’s not in jail.”
Something a few degrees short of flame–thrower–level anger darkened Sean’s face, and he stepped inside her small office, shutting the door behind him. “Rewind.”
She pointed at her computer. “Come see for yourself.”
He strolled to her side and bent over her left shoulder to read the e–mail displayed on her screen. Natalie realized her mistake as soon as he stood next to her, close enough that she could get high off his so–bad–for–you–they’re–too–good–to–pass–up pheromones. The words on the screen turned blurry as she fought to concentrate on basic tasks—like not drooling on her keyboard.
“So our man Carl isn’t in the pokey.” Sean scooted closer, moving her mouse to scroll down on her screen.
The move put them nearly cheek–to–cheek and set off a series of fizzy pops in her stomach. “His wife posted bail seven days ago.”
“Now he’s on the lam.” His words sent a loose tendril of hair airborne and it tickled the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe.
Her first instinct was to tuck it back into the simple fishtail braid curling over one shoulder, but she couldn’t do it. Not with him this close. The chance of reaching out to finish what they’d started last night had gone from possible to probable the second he’d knocked on her door, and if she made a move it would skyrocket to highly likely.
Inhaling a shaky breath, Natalie ignored the displaced hair. “He missed his first court appearance this morning.”
Sean ground his teeth together as his eyes narrowed. “And the idiots at the sheriff’s office are just now getting around to notifying us that he made bail in the first place?”
“Pretty much.” She shrugged.
Things obviously hadn’t changed that much in Salvation, despite Miranda being engaged to the town’s unofficial prince charming. Most of the people here still considered the Sweet family Salvation’s equivalent of the weird neighbor who vacuumed naked with the shades open. Short of using the little flashy thing in the Men in Black movies to wipe everyone’s memories of all the crazy things her family had done—including the fact her great–grandmother had celebrated her ninetieth birthday by getting busted for running moonshine—there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to change folks’ minds about her family.
Sean muttered some choice words under his breath and jerked upright. “I’m going down there.”
“Wait.” Without thinking, she slapped her hand on his, trapping him by her side.
The physical contact sucked the oxygen out of the room. Damn, she was really regretting not finishing what they started last night. All she should have been thinking about was stopping that asshole Carl from fucking with her brewery, but naughty thoughts about how to get into Sean’s pants—and what she’d do once she got there—kept worming their way in.
Not wanting to, but needing to as much as she needed to keep air in her lungs, she slid her hand away from his. “Storming the sheriff’s office won’t make a bit of difference.” Her voice barely registered a quake. Thank God for small favors. “The deputies have had enough dealings with my family over the years to justifiably hold a grudge. Going in guns blazing won’t be the thing to change their minds.”
Sean grabbed her chair by the armrests and spun her around and leaned in close enough that she could pick out the individual hairs on his beard. Concern and something else simmered behind his warm brown eyes. “But he’s got to be the one messing things up at the brewery.”
“Exactly.” She placed one fingertip to his chest and gave him the slightest of pushes. He stepped back, giving her room to breathe. The protective–alpha–dog thing had taken her simmering lust and kicked it up a few thousand degrees. Fighting to maintain an outward appearance of complete control, she inhaled a cleansing breath and focused on the plan instead of the man. “We just have to catch Carl in the act.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not going to believe a Sweet otherwise.”
“How?” He shot her a skeptical look.
Damn, the man needed to learn to trust her. She sat up straighter in her chair, confidence in her solution as strong and sure as Paul Bunyan on steroids. “An old–fashioned stakeout.”
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br /> “You watch too many movies.” He yanked off his ball cap and twisted it in his hands like a wet dishrag.
“I don’t watch movies.”
He blinked at her in surprise. “Ever?”
“Not since I was a teenager. It’s not really my thing.” She gave him a hard look. “Stop trying to change the subject.”
“This is crazy.”
“No.” Natalie shook her head, sending the loose hair bouncing. “It makes perfect sense.”
“How’s that?” He tucked the tendril behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the sensitive spot behind her lobe.
Her breath caught and for a split second she forgot what in the hell they’d been talking about as a shiver worked its way up from her core. The man was beyond dangerous.
“Because he’s going to make another move,” she said. “Think about it from his perspective. Uncle Julian promised Carl he’d get the brewery. Instead, Uncle Julian left it to me and my sisters. Then Miranda fires him. And when he decides to pay her back by running her off the road, he ends up behind bars. In the week he’s been out, we’ve already had three incidents—one of which sent two people to the hospital. He’s motivated, he’s knowledgeable about the brewery, and he’s accelerating.”
Sean looked heavenward and sighed. “When?”
Finally. “I’m starting tonight.”
“I’ll be here.” He loomed over her, his feet shoulder–width apart and his arms crossed over his mouthwateringly awesome chest. The curve of the biceps she’d felt last night peeked out from underneath his short sleeves. He may have given in to her argument, but judging by the take–no–shit look on his face, he wasn’t done fighting.
A whole night.
Alone.
With Sean.
Her stomach dropped below sea level, which made sense, because her insides had all gone adrift at the mere idea of spending the night with Sean.
“You don’t have to,” she sputtered. “I’ll watch everything on the security cameras, safe in my office.”
Her hand barely trembled as she slid the cabinet door to the side, revealing a small TV. Images from the four cameras flickered on the screen in quick rotation.
