by Jill Shalvis
She took a deep breath. Be careful. Be very careful unless you’re ready to give up the fantasy right here, right now. It needed to be done. She knew that now more than ever. She’d do it tonight after work, when they had time to talk about it. And after you figure out how to make him realize you’d only meant to help.
Even if in her heart she knew that was no way to make him understand. He was smart and resourceful and sharp, and he was standing there steady as a rock.
Her rock.
Waiting for answers.
“I do tend to stick my nose into things,” she said as lightly as she could. “I’ve got to get to work . . .”
“Or you need to change the subject.”
Her smile faded. “Or that.”
“You know . . .” He stepped into her, slid his hands to her hips and ducked his head to meet her gaze. “You once told me I needed to let stuff go.”
She choked out a low laugh and stared at his Adam’s apple. “Haven’t you heard, swallowing your own medicine is the hardest thing to do?”
He wrapped her ponytail around his fist and gently tugged until she looked up at him. “What’s going on, Pru?”
“What’s going on is that I need to get ready for work—”
“In here.” He slid his free hand up and tapped a finger over her temple.
She managed another smile. “You’d be surprised by how little’s going on in there—”
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “If you don’t want to do this, you only have to say so.”
She hesitated and he took a step back. “Wow,” he said, looking like she’d sucker punched him.
“No,” she said. “I—”
He’d already turned and headed into her bedroom. She started to follow, but he came back out again, holding his shoes. Still no shirt, since she was wearing it. “Finn.”
He headed to the door.
“Finn.”
He stopped and turned to her, eyes hooded.
“Can we talk about this tonight?”
“Sure. Whatever.” He started to leave but stopped and muttered something to himself. He then came at her, hauled her into his arms and kissed her. When his tongue stroked possessively over hers, her knees wobbled, but far before she was ready, he let her go.
He stared down at her for a beat and then he turned and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
She moved to the door and put her hands on it, like she could bring him back.
But it was far too late for that.
Chapter 30
#JustTheFactsMa’am
Outside Pru’s front door, Finn stopped and shook his head. She was holding back on him, big time. But he knew something else too.
So was he.
Because as long as she wasn’t one hundred percent in, it felt . . . safe. The crazy thing was that he wanted her to be one hundred percent in. He wanted to do the same.
But he wasn’t going to beg her. He wanted her to come to him on her own terms. Until she did, he could hold back that last piece of his heart and soul and keep it safe from complete annihilation.
He was good at that.
He dropped his shoes to the floor and shoved his feet into them. He’d just bent over to tie them when Mrs. Winslow opened her door.
“Whoa, good thing my ovaries are shriveled,” she said. “Or you’d have just made me pregnant from that view alone.”
Finn straightened and gave her a look that made her laugh.
“Sorry, boy,” she said. “But you don’t scare me.”
With as much dignity as he could, he hunkered down and went back to tying his shoes, attempting to keep his ass tucked in while doing it.
When he’d finished, he stood up to his full height to find her still watching. “You’re a nice package and all,” she said, “but I like ’em more seasoned. Men are no good until they’re at least forty-five.”
“Good to know,” he muttered and started down the hall.
“Because until then,” she said to his back. “They don’t know nothing about the important things. Like forgiveness. And understanding.”
He blew out a breath and turned to face her. “You’re trying to tell me something again.”
“Now you’re thinking, genius,” she said. “If you were forty-five or older, you’d have already picked up on it.”
He went hands on hips. “Got a busy day ahead of me, Mrs. Winslow. Maybe you could come right out and tell me what it is you want me to know.”
“Well, that would be far too easy,” she said and vanished inside, shutting her door on him.
Finn divided a look between her door and Pru’s before tossing up his hands and deciding he knew nothing about women.
Finn strode into the bar. His morning crew cleaners Marie, Rosa, and Felipe all lifted their heads from their various tasks of mopping and scrubbing and blinked.
Shit. He forgot that he was making the morning walk of shame.
Shirtless.
It was Felipe who finally recovered first and gave a soft wolf whistle. “Nice,” he said with an eyelash flutter and a hand fanning the air in front of his face.
Finn rolled his eyes in tune to their laughter. Whatever. He strode to his office and—as a bonus annoyance—found Sean asleep on his damn couch.
In Finn’s damn spare shirt.
He kicked his brother’s feet and watched with grim satisfaction as Sean grunted, jerked awake, and rolled off the couch, hitting the floor with a bone-sounding crunch.
“What the fuck, man?” Sean asked with a wide yawn.
“I need my shirt.”
“I’m in it,” Sean said. Captain Obvious.
Fine. Whatever. Finn slapped his pockets for his keys. He’d just drive home real quick and—
His keys weren’t in his pockets. Probably, given his luck, they were on the floor of Pru’s bedroom. He walked out of his office and strode through the pub.
“Just as nice from the rear,” Felipe called out.
Finn flipped him off, ignored the hoots of laughter, and hit the stairs, knocking on Pru’s door.
From behind him he heard a soft gasp and a wheeze. Craning his head, he found Mrs. Winslow once again in her doorway, this time with two other ladies, mouths agog.
“You were right,” one of them whispered to Mrs. Winslow, staring at Finn. She was hooked up to a portable oxygen tank, hence the Darth Vadar–like breathing.
“I haven’t seen hipbones cut like that in sixty years,” the other said in the same stage whisper as her friend.
“You realize I can hear you, right?” Finn asked.
The women all jumped in tandem, snapping their gazes up to his. “Oh my god, he’s real,” the woman with the oxygen tank said—wheezed—in awe.
Mrs. Winslow snorted. “You’ll have to excuse them,” she said to Finn. “They probably need their hormone doses checked.”
Finn decided the hell with waiting on Pru to answer her door. He’d slept with her. He’d tasted every inch of her body. She’d done the same for him. So he checked the handle, and when it turned easily in his palm, he took that as a sign that the day had to improve from here.
When Finn had left, Pru stood there in the kitchen, shaken. She grabbed her phone because she needed advice. Since she was still wearing only Finn’s shirt, she propped her phone against the cereal box on the counter so that when the FaceTime call went through to Jake, he’d only see her from the shoulders up.
No need to set off any murder sprees this morning.
When he answered, he just looked at her.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi yourself. You think I don’t know your thoroughly fucked face?”
She did her best to keep eye contact. “Hey, I don’t point it out to you when you get lucky.”
“Yes you do. You march your ass into my office, pull out your pocketknife, and make a notch on the corner of my wood desk.”
“That’s to make a point,” she said.
“Which is?”
�
�You get lucky a lot.”
He arched a brow. “And the problem?”
Well, he had her there. “I need your advice.”
“Why now?”
“Okay, I deserve that,” she said. “But remember when you were worried that Finn was the one who would get hurt?” She felt her eyes fill. “You were off a little.”
“Ah, hell, Pru,” he said, voice softer now. “You never did know how to follow directions worth shit.”
She choked out a laugh. “I know this is a mess of my own making, I totally get that.” She closed her eyes. “And I’ve got no excuse for not finding a way over the past few weeks to tell Finn sooner.” Well, she did sort of have one—that being she was deathly afraid to lose him when she’d only just found him.
Not that Finn would take any comfort from that.
Jake sighed. “Chica, the mistake’s been made. Shit happens. Just tell him. Tell him who you are and who your parents were. Get past it. Stop hiding. You’ll feel better.”
No, she wouldn’t. Because she knew what came next.
Finn would be hurt.
She’d been so taken aback by the speed of events between the two of them, at how fast things had gotten out of her control, that she was scared. Terrified, really. Because hurting him had been the last thing she’d ever wanted. She opened her mouth to say so but at the sound of footsteps coming toward the kitchen, not hurried or rushed or trying to be stealthy, she whirled around, already knowing who she’d be facing.
Finn, of course. Still shirtless, face carefully blank, he strode to the table and picked up his forgotten keys.
Shit.
God knew how long he’d been there or how much he’d heard. It was impossible to tell by his expression since he was purposely giving nothing away.
Which really was her answer.
He’d heard everything.
“Finn,” Jake said, taking in his shirtless state with a slight brow raise.
“Jake,” Finn said, either not noticing the unspoken question from Jake or ignoring it completely.
Then they both looked at Pru, to their credit both doing so with a mix of affection and concern. With good reason, as it turned out, because she suddenly felt like she was going to be sick.
Go time, she thought.
“Pru,” Finn said quietly. Not a question really but a statement. He wanted to know what was going on.
Oh God, this was going to suck. And the worst part was she’d started all of this with the best intentions. All she’d ever wanted was to fix a wrong that had been done to him, a terrible wrong that she regretted and had carried around until she’d been able to do something about it.
And she’d righted wrongs before, successfully too. But she’d crossed the line this time and she knew it.
And now she had to face it head on.
“Trust him, chica,” Jake said from her phone. “He deserves to know and you deserve to be free of this once and for all. If he’s who you think, it’ll be okay.”
And then the rat fink bastard disconnected.
“Pru?” Finn brought up his free hand and slid his fingers along her jaw, letting them sink into her hair. His expression was wary now, but that didn’t stop him from standing in her space like they were a couple. An intimate one.
Her heart tightened. It’d been everything she’d ever wanted.
Only a few moments ago he’d been looking morning gruff and deeply satisfied. Now there was something much more to his body language and—Oh good Lord. He had a bite mark just to the side of his left nipple. She felt the heat rise up her cheeks.
“I have another on my ass,” he said, his tone not its usual amused or heated when discussing their sex life. “We’ll circle back to that. Talk to me, Pru.”
Her heart was pounding, her blood surging hard and fast through her veins, panic making her limbs weak. She looked at her phone but Jake was long gone and in the reflection of the screen she could see herself.
She hadn’t gotten away from last night unscathed either. There was a visible whisker burn on her throat and she knew she had a matching mark on her breasts.
And between her thighs.
Finn had brought her pleasure such as she’d never known, both in bed and out.
And now it was over . . . “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ve kept something from you.”
“What?” There was some wariness to his tone now, though he still spoke quietly. Willing to hear whatever she had to say.
She immediately felt her blood pressure shoot through the stratosphere.
“Just tell me, Pru.”
Well, if he was going to be all calm and logical about this . . . She inhaled a deep breath. “It’s about my parents. And their accident.”
His eyes softened with sympathy, which she didn’t deserve. “You never say much about how it happened,” he said. “I haven’t wanted to push. You don’t push me on my dad’s shit and I appreciate that, so—”
“It was a car wreck.” She licked her suddenly dry lips. “They . . . caused other injuries.” She paused. “Life-altering injuries.”
His eyes never left hers. “And?”
“And I . . . got involved.”
“You’ve been . . . helping them?”
“Yes, but only in the smallest of ways compared to the damage my parents caused.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “That’s got to be painful for you.”
“No, actually, it’s healing.”
He looked skeptical.
“I had to,” she said softly. “Finn, my parents are the ones in the car who killed your dad.”
His brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? The man driving the car that hit him was some guy by the name of Steven Dalman.”
“My dad,” she said quietly. “My mom never took his last name. Her family was against the match every bit as much as his. She gave me her name, not his . . .” She trailed off when Finn abruptly turned from her.
He shoved his fingers into his hair and didn’t say a word. She wasn’t even sure if he was breathing, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Off the sleek, leanly muscled lines of his bare back. The inch of paler skin low on his waist where his jeans had slipped.
The tension now in every line of his body.
She tried to explain. “I just wanted . . .”
Finn whipped back around. “Want what? To satiate your
