Her head snapped up at that, those eyes going wide with surprise, that kissable mouth dropping into an O.
Sean offered a rueful smile. “I guess inviting you out tonight was not as obvious a clue in that direction as I’d originally thought.” He’d played things so slow and close to the vest, apparently she hadn’t even realized. Great job, Murphy.
The blush got deeper. “I didn’t want to make assumptions. I…months? Really?” A timid, hopeful smile curved her lips.
Sean relaxed. He hadn’t blown it. “Really. Let me buy you that drink and I’ll tell you about it.”
He hunted up a table in the corner, one where she could sit largely out of view. Over the months he’d hung out with her, he’d learned she was pretty uncomfortable in public. He’d never asked why and wasn’t sure if it was some kind of social anxiety or something else. But he didn’t want her to be any more nervous than she already was.
Once they’d put in an order for their drinks and an appetizer sampler, Sean leaned forward in his seat, lacing his hands together on the tabletop. “I have a confession to make.”
One delicate brow winged up. “Another one?”
“Well, it’s part of the first. I didn’t actually have to take the EMT course.”
Delaney frowned. “But I thought you had to be recertified.”
“I did. But recert courses tend to be much shorter. They’re refreshers, not the whole enchilada. I took the whole thing over again to hang out with you.”
“That seems…kind of extreme.”
Too late, Sean wondered if that made him look like some kind of stalker. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. “I didn’t mean it in a creepy way.”
She laughed. “No, I mean, that seems like an expensive and time consuming option. Why didn’t you just ask?”
“Oh. Well, honestly, I thought you might bolt. You’re shy. Getting to know you in a group context through school stuff seemed like it’d be less threatening.”
Something that might’ve been consternation flickered over her face and was gone. “God, you’re a sweetheart. I’ve never felt threatened by you, Sean.” In a tone so low he could barely hear it, she muttered, “I know what it is to be threatened.”
Yeah, he’d been afraid of that.
When he’d been a kid, he and his brother, Collin, had found a dog out at the baseball field a couple miles from their house. It had been skinny as a rail, with a thin, whip of a tail, and ears that seemed permanently lowered. After begging and pleading with their parents, they finally got permission to bring the dog home. But it had taken weeks to coax it close enough. And even years later, Flash had been skittish around strangers, hunching into shadows and hiding whenever somebody came over. Delaney reminded him of that dog. There was a deliberation to her attempts to be invisible, and he wondered what she was hiding from. But tonight wasn’t the time for asking about it, so he let the comment slide.
“While we’re in confession mode, I have one to make myself.” Delaney dropped her gaze again, rubbing a finger up and down, through the condensation on her glass.
Sean couldn’t stop thinking about what that would feel like on him. Shifting in his seat, he dragged his attention firmly to her face. “Oh yeah?”
“I took that bowhunter safety course back in January to spend time with you.”
“Really? How did you even know I was taking it?”
She jerked her shoulders, still not meeting his eyes. “That day you were at the clinic for your physical, I overheard you talking to Eli about it.”
“We’d just met. You didn’t even know me yet.”
The color was up in her cheeks again. “You kinda rescued me that day, when I almost dropped the vials from that bloodwork in the hall. Our patient has terrible veins and bloodwork is always hard on her.” The look on her face was far more serious than a simple catch seemed to warrant. Then she banished it with a smile that skated the edge of flirty. “Besides, have you looked in a mirror?”
He flashed a grin. “I was too busy looking at you that day.” At her look of skepticism, he added, “No, really. You had your hair all twisted up with those stick things, and they slipped when you dropped the vials. Your hair came half down around your shoulders.”
She snorted in self-derision. “I was a mess that day.”
“You were gorgeous.” He’d spent the rest of that week wondering what she’d look like with all that red hair loose and mussed from his hands. He hadn’t known her then. The desire had only grown stronger over the months he’d spent working his way under that careful shell.
She was still blushing, but now it seemed underscored with a glow of pleasure. Sean vowed to make it a priority to elicit that glow on a regular basis. He lifted his glass. “To confessions. And getting out of our own way.”
Did he imagine that shadow crossing her face? Surely it was a trick of the light.
With her first truly honest smile of the night, Delaney lifted her glass and clinked it to his. “Cheers.”
Get your copy of Burn For You today!
Sneak Peek You Were Meant For Me
Wishful Romance Book #10
"Just a fling," she said…
Tess Peyton wanted to do something fun and reckless and wholly out of character. A steamy weekend with a Scotsman seems like a plan. When her Scotsman turns out to be a good Southern boy, that's a minor deviation. Then one night turns to two, two turns to more, and suddenly she knows she's in way over her head. This is why one should always stick to the plan.
"Bachelor for life," he said...
But that was before all of Mitch Campbell's friends, cousins, and even his little sister started pairing off like someone was building an ark. No wonder he fell, and fell hard, for his "no attachments, no last names" European fling. And just when he's ready to tell the woman of his dreams that he wants to change that arrangement, she disappears, leaving him with no means of tracking her down, and a big ol' hole in his heart.
And then Fate stepped in...
Because, guess what? The guy Tess ran out on in Edinburgh shows up at family dinner. He's her dad's new wife's brother's son. What does that make them? It makes them "on again," according to Mitch and the explosive chemistry between them. Tess feels it too, along with a side of awkward, continued uncertainty, and some kind of stomach virus that seems to bother her most in the mornings…
Chapter One
“Please fasten your seatbelt, Miss Peyton. We’re heading into some turbulence.”
Tess’s French-manicured fingers clenched the arms of the leather seat as the plane shuddered and bucked. Not because she was afraid of flying—her father’s pilot was ex-Air Force and could fly anything—but because the Indian food she’d gotten from that sketchy takeaway on the drive to Heathrow was making a bid to come back up.
You will not throw up. You do not have time for food poisoning.
The evidence of her packed schedule was laid out on the table before her, in all its painstakingly bullet-journaled glory, in the pages of the planner that dictated her life. If it wasn’t in the planner, it simply didn’t happen. Puking her guts up somewhere over Alabama wasn’t in it. Ergo, she would not be sick. End of story. And what Peytons wanted, they usually got if they worked hard enough.