by Skye Jordan
“I heard you did a walk-through on the bar with Delaney Hart.”
Crap. Word in this town traveled at freaking warp speed. He’d been half expecting Pops to bring it up earlier.
Ellen’s gaze flickered back to the present. Her watery hazel eyes darted to Ethan’s face, then away.
“Yeah.” Ethan picked up his waffle, but he’d suddenly lost his appetite. He tore at the bread to give his hands something to do. “Nothing official.”
“What are her plans?” Wayne asked.
“Her plans don’t matter,” Jack said. “That building is coming down. Ethan will see to it—”
“Dad. Don’t make promises for me. I have rules—laws—I have to follow.”
“Bullshit.” His father sat forward, and the stare he leveled on Ethan was that you’ll-do-it-or-else look. “You have a lot of leeway in your position. A lot of power. And there is no place for that eyesore or that woman in this community.” He tapped the tabletop with a rigid index finger to emphasize his point. “That building has to come down, and she has to go.”
Ethan sighed and popped a piece of waffle in his mouth. Once he’d finished the bite, he said, “You know, it’s ironic if you think about it.”
“What is?”
“That you’re the reason Delaney Hart is back in town. And you’re the reason she’s looking at the bar. Yet you’re the person most interested in seeing them both gone. That’s called irony.”
Wayne’s gaze dropped to the table, but Ellen’s questioning frown turned on Jack.
God, his family was so screwed up.
Jack flashed an indignant look between Ellen and Ethan. “I didn’t—”
“It was your visual nuisance ordinance that forced the Harts to do something with the property,” Ethan said. “If you’d never pushed that law, Delaney wouldn’t have come back, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be messing with that bar.”
“Jack,” his mother said, her voice troubled. “You told me the citizens brought that ordinance to the city council.”
“They did. That ordinance is a mandate for the people by the people.”
“Some people just have louder voices and bigger wallets.” Adam speared a strawberry, then looked at Wayne. “Ain’t that right, Dad?”
Ellen’s gaze snapped to her husband. “Wayne?”
He wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders, pulling her close, and treated all the men at the table to a glare. “And to think we almost got through a normal outing. Thanks, guys.”
“Thank Jack.” If there was one thing Ethan had learned over the last few years, it was to place blame—or credit—where it belonged. “Someone reminded me recently that at the end of the day all roads lead to the mayor—right, Dad?”
“Shut your mouth,” his father bit out.
Ethan stuffed another piece of waffle in his mouth to keep himself from adding fuel to the fire.
His mother stood as Wayne helped Ellen to her feet and started toward the front door.
Adam heaved a sigh, stood, and fist-bumped Austin and Ethan. “Later, dudes.”
Once they were all out of the room, Austin pushed his plate back, crossed his arms on the table, and leaned forward, smirking at Ethan. “Way to clear a room, bro.”
Ethan shook his head. “Not me.” He pointed at Jack with the remainder of his waffle. “Him.”
One look at the fury stewing on his father’s face and Ethan grabbed his tea off the table. Jack’s fist slammed the wood, rattling all the silver and glassware like an earthquake.
“Whoa . . .” Austin shoved his chair back, but not quickly enough, and the liquid spilled into his lap. “Jesus Christ, Dad.”
Austin’s fumbling attempt to stop the spill of tea was just the comic relief needed to break the stress, and Ethan started laughing.
“Don’t ever talk to me like that in front of other people again.” Jack’s irate demand cut through the chaos, but it didn’t faze Ethan. He’d experienced every level of his father’s rage.
Ethan’s laugh at Austin eased into a chuckle. “Extend me the same courtesy, Mayor, and I’ll consider it.”
Jack shot to his feet, face scrunched in a furious scowl, lips pursed to form words—scathing, condescending, demanding words, Ethan knew from experience—just as his mother turned into the dining room.
“What in the hell?” She looked at the mess Austin was still mopping up with stress etched into her forehead and bracketing her mouth. Then her gaze shot right to her husband. “Really, Jack? I can’t leave you three alone for thirty seconds?”
Ethan’s father shoved his chair aside and marched out of the dining room in the direction of the den. His mother watched him go, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, as if she were thinking. In moments like this, Ethan wondered why she hadn’t ever left Jack. She deserved so much better.
“Later, bro,” Ethan said, pushing to his feet. He picked up his plate and paused beside his mother on the way to the kitchen. “Thanks for dinner. Sorry Dad’s pissed off.”
She shook her head. “Never mind him.” She patted his chest, and her expression softened. “Thanks for coming, honey. It’s really good to see you.”
“How about dinner next week? Just you and me.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then plucked the last waffle off his plate and grinned down at her. “I’ll treat you to Italian at DaVinci’s and a bottle of your favorite merlot.”
“That’s sweet, but maybe after all this has died down. It’s hard enough to live with your father as it is.”
Disappointed, he managed a nod and walked to his truck, wondering when his family had become such a mess—or if it had always been a mess and he just hadn’t been able to see it as a boy.
On his way home, Ethan stopped at the warehouse to check stock so he could put in an order for supplies. He saw the lights on over at The Bad Seed and Delaney’s Jeep sitting out front.
He parked and stared at the property for a long time, ticked that he couldn’t get Delaney off his mind. And twisted over the turmoil this situation had created in his family, which all stemmed from his father—the prick. He created chaos everywhere he turned. Despite all that—or maybe because of it—Ethan made his way over to the bar. While things between him and Delaney might not be good, they still weren’t as backward and fucked up as things between him and his family.
With his hands in his pockets, head down so he didn’t trip over the uneven ground, he realized that he was headed toward the person whose presence in town had whipped up chaos in his life, because she was the one person who seemed to be able to quiet the chaos inside him.
He kept hearing her sweet voice saying, “As much as I would love to get another taste of what we had last night . . .” And it reminded him that despite the problems, she still wanted him.
Which made this visit even more asinine. But it didn’t stop him from climbing the front steps toward the bar’s open front door.
He paused at the new screen that had been installed—one of those removable, draping screens that kept bugs out—and scanned the interior, telling himself he was really just checking up on her. He was just about to call out her name when he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, and his gaze snapped that direction.
Delaney was on her knees, curled over something on the floor in a way that spiked alarm through Ethan’s chest. He swiped the screen aside, stepping inside. “Delaney?” He was halfway to her when she straightened and glanced over her shoulder.
“What?”
He stopped, taking in the small box she’d been looking through, and let a relived breath slide from his lungs. “What are you doing? I thought you were hurt.”
She sat back on her heels and gazed up at him. “Just looking through old photos. Worst thing that could happen is a paper cut.”
Her smart-ass attitude annoyed him, but seeing her like that, looking openly, confidently up at him with that sassy spark in her eyes, flung him back to their night together. The “goddess on her knees” metaphor filled his
mind and punched heat between his legs. He’d never met a woman worthy of that title—until Delaney.
Ethan rubbed a hand over his face to force the sexual images from his mind. That wasn’t why he was here.
Delaney stood and carried the box toward the long mahogany bar. She had on ripped jeans, a tank top, and flip-flops. With her hair down and tucked behind her ears and no makeup, she looked young and fresh and just as sexy as she’d been in heels and a tight skirt.
“What brings you by, Inspector Hayes?” She slid onto a stool and pulled one foot to the padded top, hugging her knee close to her chest. “Checking up on me?”
He wasn’t going to go there. “I really didn’t like the way our walk-through went.” He strolled toward the bar and leaned against it, facing her. “Can we, I don’t know, find common ground to share?”
“A Hart and a Hayes? That’s a tall order.”
She was right, which was ridiculous. This was California in the twenty-first century, not Kentucky in the 1800s.
“I want you to know that my father doesn’t have any say in how I do my job or how I run the planning department. He can ask for anything he wants, even demand anything he wants, but that doesn’t mean he gets it. I follow the laws. So if he wants something that goes against those laws, or even bends them, he’s SOL. I’m my own person, and I take a lot of pride in doing my job right.”
Her lips kicked up, and those stormy eyes of hers sparked with humor.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because you’re adorable when you’re being all ethical.”
He lifted one brow. “Why am I sure that’s not a compliment?”
She lifted one shoulder. “Maybe your conscience is whispering to you.”
He smirked. “Truce?” he asked, offering his hand.
“Why would I believe you want an honest truce?”
He heaved a frustrated sigh and picked up her hand, pressing it to his, fingertip to palm—not at all the handshake he’d offered, but a far more intimate connection. “Because I’m not my father. And you can’t deny there’s something between us. Something . . . intense.”
Ethan threaded their fingers. And when he met her gaze, he found her watching him. Assessing.
“No ulterior motive,” he said. “I’ve just been dying to touch you.”
Something flickered in her eyes. A flash of something soft and gentle, but it vanished in an instant. “Don’t you have better things to do with your night?”
“I can honestly say there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than touching you.”
“Don’t you have other women you can touch?”
“Maybe. But you are the only woman I want to touch.”
“You certainly like playing with fire.” Her smile curved a little deeper. “Definitely a change from that once-upon-a-time Boy Scout.”
“We all change.”
Her gaze lowered to his mouth. “Some do. Some don’t.” Pulling her hand from his, she tucked her box under her arm and wandered around the bar. “I’m sure you have beer to brew.”
“There’s always beer to brew.”
When she just smiled, he leaned his forearms on the wood and looked around the space. She’d swept and mopped the old floor, moved the tables, piled chairs in one corner, and wiped the grime from the windowpanes.
His joy at seeing Delaney took a hit from the fear she may have decided to actually renovate. “You’ve cleaned up. Have you made any decisions? Since you’ve been back, I haven’t seen anything come across my desk with your name on it.”
“That doesn’t sound like the beginnings of a truce.”
“Just making conversation.”
She flicked a look at him that said she knew different, then refocused on the contents of her little box. “I’m meeting with a friend tomorrow. We’re going to see if salvage is feasible.”
Fuck. That stabbed his little bubble of hope. “Who’s the friend? How will he know if salvage is feasible? And why are you asking someone else when you could just ask me? I could go over every inch of this place with you if you really needed someone to tell you what it would take to renovate.”
Delaney laughed, the sound soft and tired. “Right, because that went so well the first time.”
Dammit. He’d really screwed himself. “You blindsided me. Now that I know you’re serious, I’d approach it differently.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I’ll know all I need to know after I talk with my guy. And you’ll know everything you need to know when it’s time for you to know.”
My guy. Ethan didn’t like the sound of that—for a variety of different reasons he didn’t want to think about. But he hadn’t come here to fight. Besides, the possibility of meeting the application deadline for a building permit with all the required paperwork plummeted with every day that passed. She sat on the floor, cross-legged, the box on her lap, and started rummaging again.
“Got something good in there?”
“Just the stuff my dad left. He lost our family home to foreclosure about five years before he died and moved in here, upstairs. I found a bunch of old family stuff down here under the bar.”
Ethan rounded the bar, pausing beside her. “Can I sit?”
She looked up at him, incredulous. “Seriously? You’re going to sit on the dirty floor of a bar while I go through old boxes?”
“Call me quirky.”
“I’ve got better words to describe you, but sit if you want.”
He sat, rested his back against the walls, left his knees up, and rested his forearms there. “What other words?”
“Frustrating. Maddening. Confusing.”
“Not as bad as they could be. Not as good as I’d hoped. And suspiciously similar to the way I’d describe you.” When she only smiled, Ethan decided it was a good time to shoot for more insight into this frustrating, maddening, confusing woman. “So, why’d you quit Pacific Coast’s Finest?”
Delaney’s hands stopped shuffling, and her gaze cut toward him, sharp and defensive. “Why?”
“Yeah, why?”
“No, why do you want to know?”
“Again, this is that thing called conversation.” When she returned her attention to the box, he said, “The success of their operation has fascinated me, and I’ve heard they’re an amazing company to work for. Makes me curious why you quit.”
“Let’s stick with alternate topics of conversation.”
That only made him want to know more. But judging by the frown carving Vs in Delaney’s forehead, Ethan knew she wasn’t open to negotiation.
She’d filled one hand with old, yellowed papers—receipts, business cards, notes—and started digging in the box with her other. A square slipped from the mountain of papers between her fingers—a photograph—and Ethan swept it up.
“What have we got here?” He squinted at the faded, grainy photo and immediately recognized a much younger Delaney. “Oh, man,” he laughed. “This is priceless.”
“What?” She turned to see what he had, then grabbed for the picture from one of her high school proms. But Ethan pulled it out of reach, taking in her outfit, her hair, the guy posing stiffly beside her. “Ethan, give it to me. That should have been burned.”
“Wow, that’s some dress.” He held it at arm’s length on his left and blocked Delaney’s reach with his right arm, whistling through his teeth. “And that hair. How long did it take you to get it to stay like that? But the makeup—that’s got to be the kicker. I bet it weighed more than that slip of a dress. I bet you were one of those girls who left their house in one thing, then changed into something else once you were out.”
“Ethan.” She rolled to her knees, pressed a hand to his shoulder, and lunged across him, reaching for the photo, half-amused, half-pissed. “Give it back.”
Oh, no. She wasn’t getting it back. Not as long as she was giving him full-body contact trying to reach it. “Who’s the guy? He sure wasn’t from our school. And he looks way too old for a prom.”
He tur
ned his head to meet her eyes and found her right there, within easy kissable range. But he wasn’t going to push his luck. He really wanted time with her. Time to just hang and get to know her. And if he kissed her, he was pretty sure she would kick him out on his ass.
She stopped struggling and rested her flat belly against his slanted thighs, rocking with the quick rise and fall of her breaths.
“Isn’t there an age max on proms?” Ethan teased.
“Shut up.” She dug her fingers into his side—a ticklish spot she’d found during their night together—and he jumped.
“Uh-uh,” he warned. “Remember what happened last time you started that.”
Her eyes flicked to his and held. Ethan could swear he saw the memory passing through her gaze, leaving a trail of heat. Her fingers curled into fists, the way they had when he’d pinned her arms over her head the last time she’d tickled him. But then he’d been inside her, filling her, and he’d looked into her eyes as he’d driven his cock home over and over and over. Full, long, deep, and hard. Until she’d climaxed three different times. Until her fingernails had dug five half-moons into each palm. Until he’d been dripping sweat. When he’d finally let himself come, Ethan had climaxed in a wild rush of animalistic intensity that blasted through every last cell. The mere memory had him hard. And by the way her lids grew heavy, he knew she was thinking the exact same thing. He barely resisted asking her if she was wet.
Ethan forced his brain to the present and back to the subject of her old prom date. “Did they put him through the metal detector before they let him into the dance?”
Delaney laughed and pushed away. “You ass.”
He caught her around the waist before she got too far, eased one leg wide, then trapped her between his thighs with her back to his chest. Wrapping his arms around her, he held the photo out for both of them to see. “They did, didn’t they?”
She cast a half glance over her shoulder. “What’s your point?”
Ethan laughed. He laughed long and deep, and it felt so good. Felt even better when she started laughing with him. And even better when she leaned back against him, sliding her hands over his arms.
