God, he couldn’t wait to make her do it again.
Flynn made long, slow passes. A little more pressure against her head, because she seemed to like it, and then a pull through the long strands to shake out the glass. It was quiet. Intimate. Something he’d never done before for any other woman. The backs of his fingers grazed her neck as he gathered her hair in his hand.
Sierra shivered.
His dick throbbed at the sight. At her whole-body shiver, and at the view of her exposed nape. Right on the spot where, if he put his lips, Flynn knew he could tease another shiver out of her.
Then he noticed how her hair looked in his fist. He flashed ahead past a million impossibilities to a scene that he could never let happen. Sierra on her knees. Naked. Looking over her shoulder at him with that shy smile while he fisted her hair and drove into her.
The ice slid off her ankle, tinkling as it tumbled out of the towel onto the floor. The moment was gone.
Although Flynn knew he’d never be able to get that image out of his mind.
Carlos reappeared in the doorway. “Flynn, will you take her home?”
“I can get myself home,” Sierra protested.
“Did you ride that bike of yours here?” At her nod, Carlos fished his keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Flynn. “Here. Take my truck. Load her bike into the back. I’ll have Jeb drive me home once we close.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
“And it’s not up for discussion.” Unbelievable. First of all, a bike? Seriously? Secondly, he had to prove to Sierra it was okay to let him help. Despite the stubbornly independent streak she had. “I’ll grab my jacket and be right back.”
Carlos shut the door to the office behind them, then rounded on Flynn. He brandished a stubby finger in his face. “Be careful with her.”
What the hell? “I always am.” He headed to his locker at the end of the hallway, right before the dry storage. Unfortunately, Carlos dogged his heels.
“No, you’re polite. To everyone. That’s not the same as being careful.”
Damn it, he bent over backward to be careful with Sierra. Flynn spun the combination on his locker. He didn’t really get into personal conversations these days. The easiest way to keep a life of lies straight was to say nothing at all. But he couldn’t blow off his boss without a reason. “I won’t give her the wrong idea.”
“What? That you’re a decent human being?”
“No. That I’m interested.”
Carlos’s swarthy features twisted into astonishment, and then humor. His laugh boomed out, echoing off the pans hanging from hooks above the prep counter. “Because you’re God’s gift to womankind? One smile and she’ll lose her common sense, her good taste, and her ability to resist you?”
“Something like that.”
“So far as I can tell, you’ve got exactly one strength. Making up weird and wonderful cocktails. People go ape-shit for them. You know what they don’t go nuts over? Your looks and barely noticeable charm. If you can squeeze out a smile, I promise that Sierra will be able to withstand it. She’s strong.”
“She’s fragile.”
“Doesn’t mean she’s not strong. People are often more than just what they look like.” Carlos cocked his head to the side. “Guessing you already know that.”
“What you see is what you get.”
“A guy with a chip on his shoulder?”
“Yeah. That’s it.” That’s all he was anymore. Flynn couldn’t risk being anything but the empty shell of a man.
This move into WITSEC had hollowed him out. Hollowed out everything he thought he was, who he was. No point filling that back up. No point deciding on a new persona.
All Flynn believed now? Was that it wouldn’t last long enough to matter. Because hope was a luxury he’d lost.
Chapter Two
Sierra Williams knew that letting Flynn take her home was a huge mistake. No, it was several mistakes compounding into a gigantic one. Being alone with Flynn was . . . a horrible idea. Because Flynn was gorgeous. Chiseled, from his knife-sharp cheekbones to his ripped physique. Dark and sexy, with a quietly brooding bad boy vibe that pushed all her buttons.
Which was exactly what got her in trouble with her last boyfriend. Rick. Who then sucked her unknowingly into an art counterfeiting ring. And that led right into bad mistake number two. Letting Flynn know where she lived.
When you were on the run, trying to be incognito, you didn’t invite someone over to your house.
Not that Flynn had waited to be invited. No, he’d just issued the edict that he was taking her home.
Which had been kind of hot, come to think of it. Rick’s reasons for everything he said, did, and made Sierra do always came back to himself. Tonight, Flynn seemed hell-bent on helping Sierra. None of it benefitted him.
She’d made him lose tips by leaving early. Given his poor brother a mess to clean up. And now his evening was hijacked by taking her home. He got nothing out of it for himself. Less than nothing.
Probably why it felt so good that he insisted on helping her . . .
On to bad mistake number three. Letting herself get distracted by Flynn. Oh, Sierra noticed him all the time. How could any woman with a pulse not notice him? If she’d still been safely back in art school, all her friends would’ve been trying to get Flynn to model nude for their life drawing class.
The way he stood, with one hip canted forward as if he was about to command a Roman battalion to ride into battle. Powerful. In control of anything and everything within his sphere. Even though he rarely asserted that power, it rolled off of him. Gave him a sense of authority that sent shivers down Sierra’s spine. On top of the stunning way his close-cropped, jet-black hair contrasted with his pale skin and almost navy blue eyes. Black Irish. That’s how her art books would’ve characterized him as a portrait subject.
Just plain dreamy is how Sierra characterized him. Height that topped six feet and made her feel tiny and feminine. Muscles that bulged in all the right places. Forearms, with those long, thick blue veins running down them that popped out even more when he sliced the garnish fruit. Sierra had become an expert at rationalizing reasons to head over to the bar whenever she heard the knife snick against the cutting board. Just to watch. Ogle. Drool. All of the above.
But tonight she’d wallowed in Flynn on a deeper level. One not based in fantasies, but reality. The reality of his touch, his strength, his heat. It all almost, almost distracted her from the throbbing in her ankle. When he’d brushed her hair? It was the singular most erotic experience of her life.
Not that she’d had copious amount of legendary sex. Or even average amounts of average sex. Aside from a few hookups, Rick had been her first real boyfriend. But neither the hookups nor the ostensibly romantic sex with the man Sierra thought she maybe could love—eventually—came anywhere close to the near-orgasmic rush she’d gotten from having Flynn Maguire brush her hair.
“You’re awfully quiet.” Flynn’s voice cut into her thoughts. Startled, her elbow slipped off where it’d been propped on the window. Because yes, she’d been half-hanging out of that open car window to keep from staring at Flynn. Watching the pine trees blur together seemed safer than indulging in stealing extra glances of him.
“So are you.” Which was actually normal.
He didn’t do small talk. Nor meaningless chitchat. Flynn was polite to customers. But he only said something above and beyond the bare minimum if it really mattered. Sierra liked that. That he didn’t spout nonsense all day. Or try to schmooze everyone in his path like a bad car salesman. Like Rick used to. No, when Flynn spoke, you knew—whether big or small—it was the truth.
Flynn’s truth was almost sexier than his forearms. Which was an extremely high bar.
In a low voice, he said, “I don’t know what to say to you.”
His honesty—although most people would probably interpret his words as an insult—merely intrigued Sierra with its strangeness. “Why not?”
/> “We work together. But now I’m driving you home. Like we’re . . . something more. Which wouldn’t be right.”
Ouch. The truth of that stung. For probably a very different reason than he had, Sierra knew that they shouldn’t expand beyond their friendship. Although Sierra didn’t really want to be just Flynn’s friend. Unless “friend” now also meant “person I’d like to take to bed and not surface again until we run out of condoms.”
With equal parts defensiveness and wishful thinking, Sierra said, “We’re already friendly.”
“We’re colleagues,” he corrected. “I’m not used to being friendly with the people who work for me.”
For him? Whoa.
Sierra darned well wouldn’t let a man walk all over her. Not again, anyway. “I don’t recall being supplied with an org chart when I got the job, but I’m pretty sure that I report to Carlos. As do you,” she said pointedly.
“Sorry.”
“That’s it?” For once, Flynn’s lack of elaboration bugged her. Maybe because this time it was personal.
“What more do you want?”
Sooo much more. Kisses. Tender touches. For Flynn to turn the same intensity that darkened his eyes when he invented a personalized cocktail on to her. To see him shirtless. To see him naked. Basically everything.
Everything that could lead to exposure and danger. So everything she couldn’t let herself have.
Sierra shifted to look at him. He didn’t sound exasperated. The eyebrow closest to her was arched up, as though Flynn genuinely wanted to know. She had nothing to lose by telling him. Well, not by telling him the naked thing. Just what more she wanted from his actual apology.
“Maybe an explanation of why you think I work for you, instead of with you. Sure, the customers wouldn’t get the drinks if you didn’t make them. But they also wouldn’t get the drinks you made unless I delivered them. If anything, we work in a perfectly synchronous balance.”
“I don’t.”
His clipped delivery could have shut her down. Sierra Williams was not known—in her other, real life, the life before—for pushing. For poking at people. No, she avoided uncomfortable situations and conflict as much as possible. Even more so now that she worked so hard to go unnoticed by everyone except this man, who seemed to be able to look straight into her.
Ergo, this dangerous man.
But if they were going to keep working together, Sierra wanted to know that Flynn valued her. At least as a colleague. “You don’t think what we do has balance?”
“I don’t think you work for me. It was a slip of the tongue.” Flynn canted his head away from her. His wrist still hung loosely over the steering wheel, but every other muscle she could see in the bright moonlight was tensed to near steel. “I ran a company, before. I got used to thinking of myself in that role. Sometimes habit takes over. I speak before remembering that everything’s changed.”
“Everything?” Now Sierra was intrigued.
Her entire life had turned upside down. As she went through that topsy-turviness, she’d realized that it was indeed rare for absolutely everything to change all at once. Rare and hard. And lonely. And had she mentioned hard? It would certainly be nice to unload some of that onto someone who’d gone through the same thing.
Not that she could tell him. Not when keeping her secret might very well be the only thing keeping her alive.
“You know.” He shrugged one massive, muscled wall of a shoulder. “Different job. Different town. It’s an adjustment.”
At the Gorse, they chatted about their jobs. Joked about quirky/difficult customers. Talking to Flynn was a way to relax, to let go of her hunched-over shoulders and endless worries for a few minutes.
But they rarely revealed anything personal. Like there was an unspoken agreement not to talk about themselves. Now that Flynn had opened that door a crack? Sierra wanted to ask a million questions.
On the other hand, she absolutely did not want any of those questions volleyed back at her. Questions like why’d she moved here, why’d she left her old home, what life she’d left behind.
In the three months she’d been in Bandon, it had been excruciatingly hard to hide all of that. People here were friendly. Inquisitive. In a good way, but one that made it difficult to sidestep without being rude. So she kept her mouth shut. Kept to herself.
And Sierra was so very tired of it.
So lonely.
This conversation with Flynn was one of the longest non-work-related talks she’d had since moving here. Heck, since fleeing Wisconsin in the middle of the night seven months ago. Sierra ached to have long, deep conversations. Especially when she was off-the-clock.
So, darn it, she’d make Flynn keep talking to her. Yes, about himself, for once. Because talking to someone who she’d had a painfully-going-nowhere crush on for weeks was the least she deserved.
Boldly, Sierra laid two fingers right at the crook of his elbow. And left them there. “Rumor has it that the best conversations happen in cars in the dark. Gotta start somewhere, right? That’s part of putting down roots in a new place.”
Flynn’s head tilted backward to beat against the headrest. Twice. “Don’t even start with that.”
“You don’t want to put down roots? You and your brothers aren’t planning to stay?” Her fingers clamped down a little. Because Flynn leaving would be the worst. He and Carlos were the only people she really talked to in this town. And only at work. Her hours outside the Gorse were painfully lonely.
“We have a, ah, friend who keeps reminding us to put down roots. Delaney can lecture on the importance of it for a solid ten minutes straight.”
It was hard to picture Flynn putting up with anyone telling him what to do. The authority that radiated off of him, the competence with which he did everything from changing kegs out to dealing with drunks did not indicate a man who sat still for a lecture. “I’m surprised you let her. Oh, turn right at the stop sign.”
“Kellan’s got the hots for her. It makes him happy to watch her lips move, so we throw the kid a bone.”
Sierra giggled. It was such a silly, big brother thing to say. Simultaneously, Flynn sucked in a sharp breath. “Hell, I’m sorry. That probably sounded sexist. Women are not objects. I know that.”
“No worries.” She patted his forearm this time, not just to reassure him, but to feel the crisp, dark hair that lightly covered the taut muscles and snaky blue veins that made her mouth water at their sheer masculinity. “See how easy that was? You’re sharing personal things.”
“About my little brother. Not the best topic.”
“Okay. Stay to the left up there.” She pointed at the fork in the road. “Well, you didn’t answer my question about staying in Bandon.”
“You’ve seen Rafe and Mollie together, right? He’d move to Siberia if it’s where she lived. They’re so in love it makes my teeth hurt. Mollie’s planted here, so Rafe’s staying here. Simple as that.”
“You and Kellan want to stay near Rafe?”
“Yeah.” Funny how . . . grim he sounded about it. “The Maguire brothers are a package deal. Family’s important to us.”
Sierra wanted to ask if he had any other family. But she didn’t dare. Not without risking him asking about her family. And that conversation wouldn’t be worth having.
#1biglie.
“You don’t sound overjoyed. Do you not like Mollie? Or is it Bandon?”
“Doc Mollie’s great.” He chuffed out a laugh. “She’s way out of Rafe’s league. He doesn’t deserve her.”
“Bandon, then?”
Silence hung in the truck. It kept puffing up, all spiky and uncomfortable and pressing in on both of them, making it hard for Sierra to draw a deep breath. Finally, Flynn said, “It’s . . . an adjustment.”
“You said that already,” she said in a singsong voice.
“Yeah, well, what about you?”
Uh-oh. Sierra straightened in her seat and looked out the window at the sprawling ranches and wide lawns
they passed. “What about me?”
“Do you like it here?”
Ahhh. A softball question that required neither lies nor sidestepping. “I like it a lot. Living by the ocean is great. Watching the fog roll in, feeling the moisture in the air, watching the light and water change literally every time I look at it. Smelling the pines whenever I step outside. Cycling past the red blur of the cranberry bogs. It’s all magical and beautiful.”
“You should join the tourist board. Get paid for spouting off like that.”
Sierra hadn’t stayed long in many other places as she zigzagged across the country. A couple of big cities, like Houston and Phoenix. Lots of smaller ones, down to stops on the highway where she was able to wash dishes in a truck stop to earn a few days’ worth of money. In a short amount of time, she’d sampled so many different parts of America.
Bandon was the first one that felt like home. Flynn didn’t get to look down on her for that. It brought out a rarely utilized feistiness.
This time Sierra didn’t tap his arm. Or almost-pet it. No, she flicked at that ropy vein. Hard. “Are you one of those people who thinks it’s uncool to gush about something? To actually say what you’re feeling?”
“I’m a guy. We don’t even think about what we feel, let alone say it out loud.”
“Now you do sound sexist. Men have feelings.” Sierra had spent almost six years at art colleges. That had to be the epicenter of men who drooped around sighing their feelings even more dramatically than the women did.
“We try to ignore them.” He pretend-scowled at her and rubbed his arm. “And ouch.”
Sierra sassed right back. “I thought the twenty-first century was the age of the enlightened male. One in touch with his feelings.”
“I’m in touch with mine. I just ignore them.”
“That’s a shame.” Although the strong, silent type did totally work on him. “Turn right at the house with the mini-lighthouse in the yard.” Bandon being right on the coast amped up lawn decorations. Rock grottos with mermaids lolling on the edge, piers that led to a duck pond, buoys around the mailboxes. It was artistic and silly and Sierra adored it all.
Never Been Good Page 3