Chapter 17

Sean’s dart sailed through the air, neatly closing out 20s when it hit.

Brody jumped off his chair, pumping his fist in the air a few times. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Wyse. This is why I love your ass.”

Sean grinned, bumping knuckles with his teammate and taking the grudging congrats from Emily and Jase for the victories they were. Sarah and Max hadn’t bothered looking up from the paint samples they’d been discussing since they arrived, which meant the timing was perfect. Sean signaled their waitress for another round and then headed up to the front of the bar where Molly was just finishing helping one of the girls.

Her head came up and, damn, that smile. Had she always looked at him that way and he’d just been too blind to see it, or was the smile that caught him right in the center of his chest something new? Something the guys—or more likely the girls—might notice?

“Nice toss. Way to close out the game.”

“Saw that, did you?” he asked, leaning against the bar instead of wrapping his hand around her waist and pulling her into his arms like he wanted.

“I did. Emily looked like someone shot her puppy.”

Sean leaned a little closer, pitching his words for her ears only. “You look like someone who needs to be kissed.”

He’d been careful, checking first to make sure Jill or one of the other Belfast staff weren’t within earshot. He wanted their relationship to be out in the open, but more than that, he wanted Molly to be good with it first. He wanted her to be confident and feel secure.

Much as he’d like to pretend he didn’t, he knew exactly what was holding her back. It was him. Everything he’d been saying, planning, working toward for the past ten years. She didn’t completely trust that his change of heart was going to stick. That he’d realized what a fool he’d been, trying to emulate the behavior and choices of a man who had betrayed everything he’d claimed to have valued. And Sean couldn’t blame her.

Molly blushed, ducking her head so that fall of silky blond and hot pink shielded her face.

“You need some help bringing up another case of longnecks or anything?” Sean asked.

Her lips pressed together in a tight line as she nodded once.

“Cool, I’ll meet you in back.”

Cutting through the crowd, he headed around the corner to the back hall that led to the bathrooms, offices, and storeroom. None of them visible from the main seating area.

The seconds ticked past, and he propped a shoulder against the wall. Totally casual. Sure, his heart rate might have kicked up a notch or two once she’d agreed to meet him. But he was chill.

He checked his watch, as if it was going to tell him how long he’d been waiting, even though he hadn’t checked it before he set up shop like some junior high chump trying to play it cool waiting for the chick he liked at her locker.

Just then, Molly rounded the corner, that sweet blush still hot on her cheeks as she cast a furtive glance behind her.

Sean caught her arm and pulled her in to him, turning them around so she was against the wall and he was standing over her, one arm braced above her head.

“You’re killing me, Molly,” he ground out before taking the kiss he’d been thinking about since he woke up hard as a spike, fucking alone in his bed that morning. She was so sweet that the single taste he’d been promising himself suddenly wasn’t even close to enough. “Making me blow every bit of game I ever had straight to hell.”

She bit the tender pad of her bottom lip and peered up at him, one brow raised like she thought this was funny or something. “Me? Really? And this loss of game—alleged loss of game—is my fault?”

Damn, when she looked at him like that, he couldn’t think. Rocking into the space between them, he nodded. “Hell yes, it is. You keep walking past our table, stopping next to me and asking if there’s anything I want, lingering just long enough for me to get a hit of that coconut, and then leaving me stuck at a table across from your brother, ready to bust through my fly.”

Her brows pulled together, and she bit her lip again, looking significantly more amused than he felt. “Did I really make you hard?”

The whole breathless thing when she said hard—damn, that worked for him.

“When do you get out of here?” he asked, forcing himself to take a step back and check around the corner. No one was coming, so he took her hand in his and pulled it against his chest.

“Past your bedtime, I’m afraid.” Then, snaking her hand into his jeans pocket, she pulled out his phone and checked the time. “But I’ve got a break coming up in about twenty minutes.”

“Is that so?” He did the math. “Shit, not enough time for me to get my car.”

“Your car?”

“You know, the one with the tinted windows and spacious second-row seating. I was thinking I could park in the alley—”

“Another alley?” She shoved off his chest with a teasing laugh. “Wow, Sean, you take me to the nicest places.”

Uh-oh. Grabbing her wrist, he reeled her back in. She’d been joking…but he didn’t like the idea that there might be any hint of truth there. Looking down into her eyes so there was no way she could miss his meaning, he spelled out just exactly what he thought.

“Baby, just say the word, and I’ll take you any place you can imagine. There is nothing I want more in this world than to show you off to everyone as my girl. But since you won’t even let me hold your hand on the street because someone we know might see it, yeah, I’m looking for any way, any place that I’ll be able to get you alone for a few minutes. I want to be able to put my arms around you. I want to feel your head on my shoulder and your smile against my chest.

“I want to do that thing where our fingers are all tangled up when we talk like they were Monday night. I want a few minutes where you can be my girlfriend and not just my buddy.” And because this was Molly and she knew him better than anyone, he added, “Plus, there are about a million dirty things I want to do to you too, and FYI, you really would have liked where my head was at tonight—feel free to read into the wording as much as you like on that.”

Molly smiled up at him, her eyes suspiciously shiny. “I liked that finger-tangly thing too.”

His heart turned over, thudding hard enough that it would have hurt if it didn’t feel so good. He pressed his brow to hers. “All we have to do is tell them, and we can hold hands like that any time we want.”

The silence stretched, and for a minute, Sean thought she might be considering it. Hell, maybe she had been. Then she cleared her throat and, smoothing her hand over his chest, sidestepped his hold. Heading back toward the bar, she cast him a quick glance over her shoulder. “I’m pushing my break back to start in thirty. Get your car.”

* * *

The next week was brutal. It wasn’t that her workload was any worse than normal; it was more that her mind was on other things. Fine, her mind was on Sean and how badly she wanted to see him.

“Molly, do you want to check the bathroom?” Cecilia asked, setting a caddy of cleaning supplies down beside the granite-topped island where Molly was checking off her list for the Paulaski house.

“Let’s have a look,” she said, following her newest employee back to the white marble master bath, confident she’d find as thorough a job there as she had everywhere else. Cecilia was a keeper for sure with a stellar work ethic Molly had witnessed up close and personally when they’d met on a catering gig a few summers ago. This was the second house they’d cleaned together, basically working side by side so Molly could make sure Cecelia was as thorough as Molly needed her employees to be. Cecelia would do the next job on her own, with Molly just stopping in for a quick check at the end, and then the week after, she’d be taking the Paulaski and Delfey jobs on herself. And not a second too soon, because while Molly appreciated all the new business she could get, she’d been pushing herself and her crew to the limit.

Good for the down-payment account, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was living on borrowed time when it came to her relationship with Sean…and she didn’t want to miss out on seeing him.

As if that quiet, betraying thought had somehow summoned him, her phone pinged with a text.

Sean: I miss my girlfriend. Let’s get out of town and do the tangled fingers thing the whole weekend.

Molly stumbled, smacking her hip into the corner of the island. She fumbled the phone, juggling it a few times before she grasped it tightly between her hands and pulled it close to her chest.

Cecelia popped her head back out of the bathroom with a questioning look. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen a smile that bright out of you…maybe ever. What’s his name?”

“Sean,” Molly replied without thinking. Popping her head up in horror, she saw Cecelia was ducking back into the bathroom.

“For a second there, you got my hopes up, but if it’s just Sean, least that explains the grin. What a goof. Tell him I said hi, will you?”

Heart racing over the close call, Molly nodded and followed Cecelia back to check her work. But her mind was on the weekend and the finger tangling goodness she couldn’t wait to get her hands into.

* * *

“Not exactly what I was expecting when you said you wanted to stop and pick up some beer,” Molly remarked, leaning back on her arms and stretching her legs out along the bench.

Damn, she was gorgeous wearing that contented smile with her face tilted up to the sun.

“But worth the detour, right?” He snapped a photo and then thumbed through the others he’d taken during the New Glarus brewery tour. The one he’d gotten of Molly examining a huge copper brewing unit, her white hard hat tilted at a jaunty angle, was going on his computer’s screen saver. Or it would once she let him tell her brother about them being together. This one though, this one was going on his phone along with a lock code.

No way was he going to be able to keep things under wraps much longer.

Not when having a damned picnic table between them was making him itch.

Molly drew a deep breath. “Brody’s going to be fuming if he finds out we came up here without him.”

If. Hmm. “Brody can bring his own date up here any time he likes.”

Her eyes cut away, but not before another pretty pink warmed her cheeks. “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” she asked, staring out to the surrounding fields. “I mean, calling this a date.”

“That’s what it is.”

She nodded, a pretty curve touching her lips. “But still, being here…alone. It’s never just you and me. I mean, not out of town like this.”

She was right. They’d been on countless trips together, but always as part of a bigger group. Even after their friendship had begun to set them apart, they’d never taken a weekend just the two of them. Right then, he couldn’t help but wonder why.

Maybe the answer was in front of him…in the way he couldn’t take his eyes off her, in how even these few feet of distance between them were too much, in how fucking good it felt to have her alone.

He’d been working his ass off not to think about Molly like that from about when she turned twenty. But now that he’d let himself? There was no going back.

“Worried we’re going to run out of things to talk about?” he teased. Then he grinned when she shook her head and laughed. Because even in this new territory, that was one thing neither of them would ever have to fear. Since that first day he’d gotten her to smile, conversation between them had always come easily.

“I wouldn’t say worried.” Pushing a few streaks of pink from her brow, she met his eyes. “I mean, I’m sure we can find something to fill the time…even if we did run out of conversation.”

Sean swallowed hard. He knew that look she was giving him. He loved that look.

Pushing up from the bench, he grabbed her hand. “Time to get back on the road, babe.”

* * *

“Oh dear,” Molly muttered, frowning deeply as she sorted through her cards early Saturday evening. “This can’t be right.”

Sean rubbed a hand across his bare chest and scowled at her from where he was leaning against the side of the couch, a sheet the only thing keeping him decent.

“Again?” He laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

She clucked her tongue. “I keep counting and…yeah, looks like gin. Again.” Letting the bedding she was draped in droop a bit more, Molly laid out one set of cards after another before peering up at Sean from beneath her lashes. “It’s almost like you’re distracted or something.”

“Or something,” he conceded, his eyes going dark as his focus got lost in the vicinity of her modest cleavage.

It was crazy. They’d played cards like this probably a hundred times. Kicked back on the floor, a bottle of wine or handful of beers between them, talking the hours away. But it had never been quite like this. She’d never sat nearly naked across from him, her body still singing from the hours of attention he’d paid it, her heart still racing from the way he was looking at her. She’d never known that, no matter when they finished playing, she’d sleep in Sean’s arms and wake in his bed.

Sean bent one knee and sat a little straighter…which made his sheet fall a little lower. And wow. Even with him sitting on the floor, his stomach was a work of art. Bands of muscles stacked one above the next, bisected by that fine line of golden hair that ended just beneath the hard slabs of his pecs. He’d always had a beautiful body, cut with a natural athlete’s definition…and at last, she could sit and look her fill.

Touch.

Taste.

Gathering the cards, he shot her a knowing look. “Pretty sure I’m not the only one distracted.”

“Maybe not.” Going to her knees, she crossed the small space between them.

Sean set the cards aside and pulled her into his lap.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, running the tip of one finger across her collarbone.

Such a small touch, and yet it set off a chain reaction within her. Made her ache for more.

“That I could get used to this,” she admitted quietly, knowing deep down that, no matter how right this weekend felt, she shouldn’t.

Looking out the picture window to the woods and the bay beyond, Sean nodded. “It’s nice up here. The private lane, the house tucked deep enough into the woods so it’s not visible from the road or the water. I can see the appeal.”

She hadn’t been thinking about the Door County cabin his friend had offered them for the weekend, but it was probably better that Sean was. Sifting her fingers through the golden-blond strands falling in her favorite kind of sexy disarray, she asked, “What did you tell the guys about this weekend?”

His brows furrowed, a frown threatening at the corners of his mouth. “That I had some business to take care of with one of the other hotels.”

Which explained why when she’d woken that morning, it had been to Sean working on his laptop beside her in bed. She’d told him he didn’t need to stop on her account, but he’d practically tossed the thing aside, assuring her he’d gotten all the work he needed done already. In other words, enough so he hadn’t actually lied to his friends. Not about work anyway.

Drawing her hands out of his hair, he dropped light kisses across each finger. “What about you?”

“Weekend up north with a friend,” she whispered, her words breaking when Sean licked between her knuckles.

“A friend.” He seemed to be weighing the word in his mind. His mouth pulled to the side in that cocky smile. “I am feeling pretty friendly all of the sudden.”

Lowering his head, he caught her mouth with his kiss. Teasing, taking more and more until he was on top of her, the sheets tugged free. Her knees slid up his thighs, the contact of skin against bare skin driving her as wild as the promises he was making with his mouth.

“Mmm.” He braced above her, rocking into the cradle of her hips. “You feel pretty friendly too.”

She laughed and then caught her breath when he rocked into her again, the steely length of him sliding against her most sensitive part. “Very friendly,” she agreed.

Tipping her hips into the contact, she moaned when on the next slow rock, Sean pushed inside her. “Sean.”

Braced on one arm, he cupped her hip, drawing her into each slow, sinking thrust, taking her deep and deeper, hard and harder, all the while keeping those dark eyes locked with hers. This was what she’d dreamed of…only the reality was so much more.

And God, the way he was looking at her.

What if she could really have this? What if she could keep him?

What if—

He sank deep, hitting that spot inside her just right, and her mind blanked of anything beyond what he was doing to her in that moment.

“Baby, not yet,” he groaned, shafting into her one last time before pulling out. She wanted to grab him by the hair and pull him back, beg him to take her again—but they weren’t protected. And when he backed down her body, burning a path with his mouth as he went, she really couldn’t complain.

“Your mouth…is…so… Oh yes, Sean!” she gasped after he’d hooked her knees over his shoulders and sank into devouring her like a starving man. And when she’d barely finished, he pulled her from the floor and carried her through the bedroom and into the master bath.

“Like this, baby,” he growled against her ear as he positioned her hands on the counter in front of the mirror. He rolled on a condom and then, watching their reflection, took her from behind.

He was slow. Thorough.

The possessive look in his eyes and rough scrape of his jaw at the back of her neck were as powerfully sexy as watching his fingers playing between her legs and his big hand kneading her breast. She was already there, pressing back into his every stroke, rocking into his touch, begging and moaning and promising everything and anything to the man shaking her world to its very foundation.

When she tipped over the edge, tumbling into her release, Sean held her in his arms, telling her how perfect she was for him, how beautiful, how sexy. Telling her all the things she could only ever truly believe in that flawless moment.