Rescuing the Bad Boy

by Jessica Lemmon

  He followed the path Mario walked to the house. Sofie was still standing at the back of the truck, gaze snapping from the boxes to the house, unsure what to do next.

  A moment later, Connor stepped in front of her.

  “I was told by the guys you’re taking over bossing them around.” He grinned. “Which means I can get back to what I was doing before you got here.”

  Her eyes scanned the expanse of dirt across the white T-shirt covering his wide chest. With his sandy-colored hair, bulging biceps, and sweat trickling down his temple, Connor was the definition of the word rugged.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Planting something?”

  “Saplings.” He stepped to the side. Once his width wasn’t obstructing her view, she saw several trees dotting the lawn, roots protected by burlap. A shovel was stabbed into a sizable pile of dirt like a claim. “Trying to get them in before the sale. Make the place look nice.”

  He grinned, and it was a little blinding. Connor looked like he belonged in a calendar featuring half-nude military guys. All for fundraising purposes, of course. Which gave her an idea… that she shelved for later.

  She had bigger fish to fillet.

  “Didn’t know you were coming over to help,” he said as he turned for the trees.

  “Oh.” She followed him, stopping short of sinking the heels of her shoes into the soft grass-covered ground. “I’m not. Not really. I’m sort of here on my own… agenda.” And Ruby’s. “What are you doing here?”

  He bent, his jeans cupping a very nice backside. “Clearing out a bunch of brush out back, planting flowers”—he gestured at the hole in the ground—“planting trees.”

  “Donny hired you?”

  He pulled on a pair of gloves and went to work wrestling a sapling into a hole. While he did, Sofie mostly stared at the muscles bunching in his arms.

  “I insisted,” he said, his voice strained from effort.

  Connor was a good guy, and though he’d only moved back last year, was already a staple around the Cove. A real-life hometown hero who had done back-to-back stints serving his country. Now home for good, he was working on making his landscaping business his full-time career. Donovan would be glad he entrusted him with the mansion.

  “Guess I’ll go inside,” she said, shuffling her feet. “With Donovan.” Apparently there was no avoiding him.

  “Who?” Connor teased, wiggling the tree standing several feet over his head to ensure it was in the ground solidly. “Oh, you mean Donny.”

  She twisted her lips. “I was told he’s Donovan now.”

  “Yeah.” He squatted and began pulling dirt over the roots. “Being unapproachable is kind of his specialty.”

  She snorted.

  “But then you probably already figured that out.” He spared her a glance.

  Which she took to mean he knew more than he let on. She had no idea what he actually knew about her and Donovan. Not that there was much to know. They’d wham-bam-thank-you-ma’amed and that had been the end of things.

  Connor dragged the next tree in line by its skinny trunk to a waiting hole. “He won’t bite, Sofe.” He winked.

  She licked her dry lips, having absolutely nothing to say to that.

  Okay. So she’d just… go in there. Apparently she had a job to do, although preventing two burly men, one of whom did not like her very much, from taking things from the mansion was not why she was here. After that task was finished, right after, she would talk to Donovan about Ruby’s idea.

  Putting one foot in front of the other, she squared her shoulders and walked into the mansion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Donovan moved the heavy boxes of china and silver to the ballroom, though Sofie insisted on helping, carrying the smaller container of candles. Mario and Jim had made things very clear—they were here to load the truck, not move boxes around. To her surprise, Donovan hadn’t pushed the issue.

  “That’s it.” He flipped the lights off in the ballroom. “Hadn’t planned on spending two hours rearranging stuff I would rather throw out.”

  Great. So he was prickly. And she had yet to bring up the campout.

  “There was something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said from the darkened shadows of the room, her voice quiet.

  He turned and pegged her with those pale, electric eyes. Being under his scrutiny always made her feel kind of small. And she wasn’t a petite girl. He also made her feel a lot turned on. Everything about his height, his attitude, and his smile—when he did smile—made her want him.

  Used to make her want him, she reminded herself. So, her body was experiencing some leftover physical reaction to him. Perfectly normal.

  “And you owe me a coffee,” she said.

  Half his face in shadow, the other half softly lit from the sunlight in the corridor, he licked his lips. It was a glorious sight. He didn’t quite smile, but he was no longer frowning.

  “All right, Scampi. Coffee.”

  She followed him from the ballroom and through the hallway, passing a series of doors she knew to be the bathroom, the great room, and a few other areas not furnished for any one use in particular. In the foyer, they passed the library, which she fervently ignored.

  Don’t you mean The Deflowering Room?

  If Donovan thought about what they had done in that room seven years ago, he didn’t show it. Just kept walking. She followed his lead, passing a curved staircase leading to the upstairs, her heels tapping along the elegant, but worn, parquet floor.

  The doorway across the foyer from the library led to a massive dining room. In here, the walls bled deep red, the carpet mud brown. The dreaded space opened to the kitchen, one of the only rooms in this place bathed in natural sunlight.

  Stepping through the murky dining hall, she followed him into the wide, welcoming kitchen. Buttercream cabinets, pale granite countertops, and a butcher’s block filled in the spaces around large, modern appliances. A solid oak kitchen table stood in one corner, eight high-backed chairs encircling it. The room was bright and open, and looked as if it belonged in a different house.

  The man standing in the kitchen looked like he belonged in the rest of it. Dark, intimidating…

  She thought of Connor’s word. Unapproachable. That was a good word.

  Donovan went to the coffeemaker. She watched his fingers grasp the silver coffee scoop, digging out grounds from a black foil bag, a brand of coffee she’d heard of but had never tried. Her eyes traveled the length of his long legs, encased in worn blue jeans, and ending in those same steel-toed black boots she’d rarely seen him without.

  “Those look like the same boots you wore at the Wharf,” she blurted before thinking maybe she shouldn’t have said that. Nothing like telling the man you slept with years ago you haven’t forgotten a single detail about him.

  “They are.”

  Surprised he answered, she asked, “Why haven’t you bought a new pair?”

  He pressed a button on the coffeemaker and turned to give her a confused expression. He should, she wasn’t really making any sense.

  “Scampi, if this is what you wanted to talk to me about, I gotta say, I’m underwhelmed.”

  She cleared her throat. “It’s about the charity dinner. Or, well, the charity in general I guess.”

  He remained silent.

  “Your grandmother hired me over a year ago to plan this dinner and raise money for Open Arms. My job is something I take very seriously,” she said, warming up to her point. “I know you don’t like this town, and you don’t like this house, I’m guessing—since you’re selling it—but I’m determined to see through my commitment.”

  He tilted his head, sending a lock of black hair over his forehead. “You have a key to the house, sweetheart. You can ‘see through’ whatever you need to.”

  Sweetheart.

  She tried not to let the endearment stir feelings so intent on pressing their way forward.

  Taking a deep breath, she thought back to the day she visited O
pen Arms. Not only did the facility need all the funds they could get, the kids she met needed a win in a big way.

  One of the children who’d snagged her heart was a four-year-old girl who bore scars from her stepfather’s cigarettes, another a twelve-year-old boy who had been beaten by his drunken mother. The boy flinched whenever Sofie talked with her hands, so she’d quickly learned to keep her gesturing at a minimum.

  Sofie hadn’t grown up in a problem-free home—who did?—but in comparison to what the children at Open Arms had survived, her childhood was utter paradise. Her parents were still married, happily so. Her sisters were healthy and alive, though they bickered like birds fighting over a French fry. Sometimes Sofie felt like the off piece around her mother and sisters, but she and her father had a special bond.

  The children at Open Arms deserved to be championed. If Sofie could improve those kids’ lives even a little, let them know someone cared, then her efforts would be worth it.

  With them in mind, she told Donovan, “I’m doing this for two reasons.”

  Her voice wavered. She took a breath and steadied it.

  “The children at Open Arms need a win. They need money, need the town’s attention, need people to stop ignoring and overlooking them.”

  His jaw had tightened since she began speaking, an unknown emotion darkening his eyes.

  “I take it you didn’t know your grandmother well. She was an amazing woman. She cared about the people in this town.”

  A dry, humorless laugh chafed his throat. “ ‘Amazing.’ You people need a new adjective.” The smile on his face wasn’t so much a smile as a grimace. “If she cared about the people in this town, Scampi, it was only because I was no longer one of them.”

  She felt a frown pull her mouth.

  “I’m not fighting you on the charity part, and you know that. I feel like there’s something else you need from me. Wanna tell me what that is, or continue practicing your Nobel Peace Prize speech?”

  Done delaying, she let him have it—told him about the campout, about Ruby’s commitment to the children. About how they would need hardly anything and would stay out of the way if he agreed to the campout. “They have their own supplies and tents. Connor is already hard at work to make the outside inhabitable. I don’t see what it would hurt if you let the kids sleep in the yard.”

  His arms were still crossed, and while he wasn’t exactly scowling, he didn’t look pleased. “You’re asking me to give a dozen homeless children free rein of the grounds at the historical Pate Mansion.”

  She lifted her chin. “Yes.”

  His lips formed one word. “No.”

  Suddenly, she was looking at his back. No?

  “Cream is in the fridge,” he announced, pouring himself a mug of coffee. “Not flavored like you prefer, but it’s all I have.”

  A fleeting thought about how surprising it was that he remembered she took flavored creamer in her coffee pushed itself forward, but she shoved it away.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Allergic to kids?”

  He leaned on the counter with one hip, the mug steaming in his hand. “I’m not going to be here for this charity thing, and you want to let kids roam around here after the house has been readied, the grounds have been cleared. And before my buyer has a last walk-through.”

  “It’s not like we’re letting loose a bunch of feral cats,” she said, suddenly figuring out this was a point she could fight. “Ruby has volunteers, assistants. I’ll be here.”

  “You’ll be here.”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, “I’ll be here.”

  He recognized that stubborn chin-tilt. She’d worn it the night she stomped from the Wharf’s kitchen to the packed-with-guests dining room and earned her nickname. She’d looked equally determined the night of the Christmas party when she’d followed him to his Jeep and let him kiss her until they steamed the windows…

  Sofie was the same now as she was then: sweet, caring. Committed. And frankly, he no longer saw the need to continue this argument.

  “Fine.” He started for the dining room, or any room where she wasn’t.

  “Fine?” she called from behind him. “Just like that?”

  He turned and paced back into the kitchen. “Just like that. That was the agreement. You stay out of my way. I’ll stay out of yours.”

  He shouldn’t want her. He didn’t want to want her. But he did. And the closer she came to him, the harder it was not to give in. Apparently, since he’d given her exactly what she wanted with hardly a fight.

  In front of him now, she said, “You don’t have to… be angry.”

  Lightly scented perfume lifted off her skin, jetting him back to the first time he kissed the soft flesh behind her ear.

  In the process of punishing himself for taking what he’d taken from her, his body and mind had also connected her to the one thing he’d been trying to forget for seven years.

  What she felt like beneath him.

  No longer was he willing to use her as his own personal sanctuary. He’d come back to the Cove to deal with his shit, not drag her into it. She should hate him for the way he’d treated her way back when and, hell, he wouldn’t blame her a bit. He hated himself for it.

  He remembered their moments in the library vividly, the way her face pinched, the way she bit down on her lip. How tight she felt, how nervous she was. The slight tremor running through her arms had radiated down his spine, mirroring the tremor that shook him to the core.

  His father was dead. And Donovan would’ve thought, after years of bad blood, after the beatings, after Robert Pate was in the ground, that he would finally be free. But Donovan hadn’t felt free that night. He felt like a part of him was missing. He felt like crying. He’d laid the confusing swirl of emotions to rest in Sofie’s pliant body. Hid them in the softness of her hair, buried them in the bend of her curves.

  Flayed open, there was no way not to feel what Sofie gave to him in that darkened library… it was something he’d barely recognized.

  Love.

  She’d shown him love. Him, a guy who could barely manage the meager scrap of a life he’d built for himself.

  Greedily he took what she’d readily given. The way he felt in her arms, all that love radiating from her, felt better than the quiet torment chasing him most days.

  She had given, he had taken. No question who profited most from that transaction.

  After he’d taken his own release he had been filled with self-loathing rivaling the self-loathing he’d felt for years under the hand of his domineering father—and that was saying something.

  Way he saw it, Donovan had ruined Sofie. Taken the sweetest, kindest, most caring woman to ever touch him and blackened the last precious part of her.

  I don’t do virgins.

  The words stung to say then. They stung him now. Unfortunately for Scampi, Donovan hadn’t known what to do with the mess of feelings he wasn’t coping with that night, so he’d latched on to the emotion that had seen him through many hard times.

  Anger.

  She was wrong when she’d said he didn’t need to be angry. He needed to be angry. Then and now, but for the same reason: to keep her away from him. The look in her eyes, the way she was taking him in. The sympathy there…

  Looked like someone had forgotten what an asshole he could be.

  Still am.

  Well. He’d remind her.

  Moving closer to her, he stepped forward as she stepped back, until she reached the countertop and bumped against it. She had to lift her chin to take him in. He was so close, her breasts brushed lightly against his shirt. Reaching past her, he gripped the edge of the countertop, his arm brushing hers. Touching her made him want to touch her more. She snatched her arm away.

  Good girl. Remember how repulsive I am.

  Someone needed to remember, because suddenly, he found himself not wanting to push her away, either.

  Dangerous. For both of them.

  She was visibly fluste
red, biting her lip, winding her fingers together, yet her steady gaze met his.

  “Second thought…” He lowered his head to her ear and breathed in more of her. “We don’t have to fight.”

  Tempting to leave it at that.

  The fragrance of her hair, slightly sweet like her, lifted and swirled in his senses. She smelled the same as he remembered. Sweet. Sweet like every inch of her tasted back when he didn’t know what she was about to give him. She’d offered every part of herself to him. She hadn’t been obligated.

  Her hand laid on his chest, now, bringing him back to the present. Her small palm warmed him on contact—a touch he hadn’t felt in forever.

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said, proving herself less susceptible to his manipulations than before.

  He backed away from her ear but maintained his closeness, letting a careless smile grace his lips. The sentiment was fake. He cared. Too much. That was why he needed her pissed at him. “If your guess is getting you to agree to another bounce on the library sofa, you’re right.”

  Her mouth gaped and she pulled in a quiet breath.

  “Wrong,” she finally managed, her voice cold and hard.

  There it was. She remembered.

  Pushing her further, he said, “Come on, Scampi. I kiss you, you melt to your knees. We both know it.”

  She shook her head, her palm pushing him away. “You’re not kissing me. Not ever again.”

  Even though it was what he wanted her to say, it cut to hear. His chest took the blow, her words denting the armor installed over his heart.

  You deserve it.

  A little more prodding, and she’d be good and pissed off. Then he could get done what he needed to do without her distracting him. He could return to New York, leaving the Cove behind permanently. And Sofie could live out the rest of her days in peace knowing he’d never see her again.

  Another blow. Another dent. His jaw tightened.

  Come on, Pate. Man up.

  Whatever emotions she’d kicked up, he didn’t get to feel them. Remorse, anger, a dab of guilt, yes. But not this. Not cared for, or liked, or her innate kindness. He didn’t get to have someone like Sofie, not after what he’d taken from her. He didn’t deserve her, and more importantly, she didn’t deserve him.