by Jill Shalvis
But she’d never seen naked tickling before . . .
Later when Pru had been a teenager, she’d come home from school to find her parents at the table with their neighbor, Mr. Snyder, who was also their accountant, talking about something called bankruptcy. Her mom had been crying, her dad looking shell-shocked.
And then there’d been the night her grandpa had shown up where she’d been spending the night at a friend’s. Weird, since she’d called her mom and dad for a ride, not her grandpa. She’d wanted to go home because her friends had decided to sneak in some boys and she hadn’t felt comfortable with the attention she’d been getting from one of them. He’d been in her math class, and was always leaning over her shoulder pretending to stare at her work when he was really just staring at her breasts.
The other reason it’d been weird for her grandpa to show up was because she hadn’t seen him in years. Not since he and her dad had been estranged for reasons she’d never known. And her dad and her grandpa being estranged meant that Pru was estranged by default.
So why was he at her friend’s house?
The night had gone on to become a real-life nightmare, the kind you never woke up from because she’d listened to her grandpa explain to her friend’s mom that he’d come to tell his granddaughter that her parents were dead, that her father had been past the legal drinking limit. He’d crossed the center median in the road and had hit another car head on, clipping a second along with the people on the sidewalk.
Pru did her best not to think about that moment, but it crept in at the most unexpected times. Like when she was in the mall and passed by a department store in front of the perfume aisle and caught a whiff of the scent her mom had always worn. Or when sometimes late at night if there was a storm and she got unnerved, she’d wish for her dad to come into her room like he always had, sit on the bed and pull her into his arms and sing silly made-up songs at the top of his lungs to drown out the wind.
Nope . . . eavesdropping had never worked out for her. And when she’d heard Sean and Finn yelling at each other through Finn’s open office window, she honestly hadn’t meant to listen in. Now she couldn’t un-hear what she’d heard. What she could do was be there for them. Because this whole thing, their fight, their being parentless, Finn having to raise Sean, all of it, was her family’s doing. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Finn.”
He just shook his head, clearly still pissed off. “Not your fault.”
Maybe not directly but she felt guilty all the same. But telling him the truth now when he was already lit up with temper wouldn’t help him. It would hurt him.
And that’s the last thing she’d ever do.
At her silence, he focused in on her. “How are you doing, are you—”
“Totally fine,” she said. “The road rash is healing up already.”
Something in his eyes lit with amusement. “Good, but this time I actually meant from when we—”
“That’s fine too,” she said quickly and huffed out a sigh when he laughed. She looked around for a distraction and saw a couple of women talking about throwing some coins into the fountain. Pru nodded her head over there. “You know about the legend?”
“Of course. That myth brings us more foot traffic than our daily specials.”
“You ever . . .?”
“Hell no,” he said emphatically.
She managed a smile. “What’s the matter, you don’t believe in true love?”
His gaze held hers for a beat. “I try not to mess with stuff that isn’t for me.”
She couldn’t imagine what his growing-up years had been like or the hell he’d been through but she managed a small smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t knock something unless you’ve tried it.”
“And you’ve tried it?” he challenged.
“Oh . . .” She let out a little laugh. “Not exactly. I’m pretty sure that stuff isn’t for me either.”
His gaze went serious again and before he began a conversation she didn’t want to have, she spoke quickly. “I really didn’t mean to overhear your fight with Sean. I was just wondering if I could help with whatever was wrong before I went to work.”
“What’s wrong is that he’s an idiot.”
“If it helps, I think he feels really bad,” she said.
“He always does.”
Her heart ached for him as she took in the tension in every line of his body. “You guys do that a lot?” she asked. “Fight like that?”
He slid his hands into his pockets. “Sometimes. We’re not all that good with holding back. We sure as hell never did master the art of the silent treatment.”
“My family never did either,” she said. “Silence in my house meant someone had stopped breathing—thanks to a pillow being held over their face.”
Finn gave her a barely there smile, definitely devoid of its usual wattage. “Was there a lot of fighting?” he asked.
“My parents were high school sweethearts. They were together twenty years, most of them spent in a very tiny but homey Santa Cruz bungalow house, where we were practically on top of each other all the time.” She sighed wistfully, missing that house so much. “Great house. But seriously, half the time my mom and dad were like siblings, at each other over every little thing. And the other half of the time, they were more in love with each other every day.” The ache of losing them had faded but it still could stab at her with a white hot poker of pain out of the blue when she least expected it, like now.
“Sounds pretty good, he said.
“It was.” He’d beaten the shit out of you . . . The words were haunting her and her gaze ran over Finn’s tough, rugged features. It hurt to picture him as a helpless kid standing between a grown man and his little brother, taking whatever punishment had been meant for Sean to spare him the pain of it, and she had to close her eyes against the images that brought.
A hand closed around hers. She opened her eyes as Finn tugged her into him. He stroked the hair from her face and looked down into her eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”
He’d just had a huge blowout with Sean and he was asking about her. She swallowed hard and nodded. “It’s you—”
He set a finger to her lips. “I’m fine.”
The two women at the fountain were laughing and chatting. “Think it’s really true?” one of them asked. “If we wish for true love, it’ll happen?”
“Well, not with a penny,” the other one said, eyeing the change her friend was about to toss in. “How many times have I told you, you can’t be cheap about the important stuff.”
Her friend rolled her eyes and fished through her purse. “I’ve got a quarter. Is that better?”
“This is for love, Izzy. Love! Would you buy a guy on the clearance rack? No, you would not.”
“Um, I wouldn’t buy a guy at all.”
“It’s a metaphor! You want him new and shiny and expensive.”
Izzy went back into her purse. “A buck fifty in change,” she muttered. “That’s all I’ve got. It’s going to have to be enough.” She closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration, then she opened her eyes and tossed in the money.
Both women held still a beat.
“Nothing,” Izzy said in disappointment. “Told you.” She turned away from her friend to stalk off and ran smack into Sean, who’d come out of the pub.
His hands went to her arms to catch from falling to her ass. He looked down into her face with concern. “You all right, darlin’?”
Izzy blinked up at him looking dazed. “Um . . .”
Her friend stuck her head in between them. “Yes,” she told Sean. “She’s okay. She just can’t talk in the presence of a hot guy. Especially one she wished for.”
He smiled, though it was muted. “You work at the flower shop, right?” he asked Izzy.
She nodded emphatically.
“Well come into the pub and have a drink any time,” he said.
Izzy gave another emphatic nod.
“That means yes. And thank y
ou,” her friend translated and dragged Izzy away. “Oh-em-gee, the fountain totally works!”
Pru watched them go and had to laugh. Luck was where you made it for yourself and she knew that. She’d wished for love for Finn, and she still wanted that for him but she was realizing that would mean letting him go.
She had to let him go.
Sean looked at Finn. “Need to talk to you,” he said.
Finn, face blank, nodded.
“I’ll meet you inside,” Sean said.
Finn nodded again.
When Sean walked way, Finn turned to Pru.
“Work calls,” she said with a small smile.
“Story of my life,” he said. “About last night.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
“We were onto something.”
Her nipples went hard. “Were we?”
“Yeah. And you liked it too.”
She felt herself blush a little. “Maybe a little.”
“Just a little, huh? Because I still have your fingernail imprints in my scalp.” He was out-and-out smiling now, a naughty sort of smile that made her thighs quiver. “I wasn’t finished with you, Pru,” he said softly. “I had plans.”
Oh boy. “Maybe I had plans, too.”
“Yeah?” Closing the gap between them, one of his hands went to her hip, the other slid up her back to anchor her to him. “Tell me. Tell me slowly and in great detail.”
She laughed and fisted her hands in his shirt, but just before her lips touched his, someone cleared their throat behind them.
“Dammit,” she whispered, her lips ghosting against Finn’s. “Why do we keep getting interrupted?”
“That is the question,” he murmured.
With a sigh she pulled free and turned. “Jake,” she said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
In Jake’s lap was a box and on top of that box sat Thor, one ear up, one ear down, his scruffy hair looking even more thin and scruffy than usual, sticking up in tufts on his head.
“Brought you the last box,” Jake said. “Never seen anyone stretch a move out so long.”
“Yes, well, hiring movers was cut from the budget.” Pru scooped up her Thor, kissing him right on the snout. He panted happily, wriggling to get closer, bicycling his front paws in the air, making her laugh and hug him.
“I’m taking him for a grooming at South Bark,” Jake said. “He’s past due.”
“Also cut from the budget,” Pru said. But she traded Thor for the box. “Thanks.”
“I’ll bring him to work when he’s finished,” Jake said.
And then he didn’t roll away.
Pru gave him a long look, but Jake’s picture was in the dictionary under pig-headed so he didn’t budge. “You’re going to be late,” he told Pru in his boss voice.
With a sigh, she turned to Finn. “I picked up an extra Sunday shift today. I’ve got to go. Hope you have a good day.”
“In case it’s our last you mean?”
“You don’t think Sean will get the license paid tomorrow?” she asked.
“If he wants to live, he will.” But Finn’s attention was on Jake.
Pru forced a smile. “Okay, so we’re all going off to our own corners now, yes?”
“Go to work, Pru,” Jake said.
“Um—”
“It’s okay.” Finn gave her hand a squeeze. “Knock ’em dead today,” he said.
Right. Dammit. With nothing else she could do, she lifted the box of her stuff and walked away from the only two men to have ever earned a spot in her heart. She just hoped they didn’t kill one another.
Chapter 18
#BeamMeUpScotty
Finn watched Pru make her way toward the elevator with her box before he turned back to Jake.
Both he and Thor were watching him watch Pru.
Jake was brows up, the picture of nonchalance. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing much,” Finn said.
Jake took that in and nodded. “You’ve got an arm on you. The other night at the game you nearly saved our asses—not that anyone could’ve actually saved our asses.”
Finn shrugged. “I played some in college.”
“You going to keep playing for us?”
“Depends.”
“On what?” Jake asked.
“On if this sudden interest in my ball-playing abilities is in any way related to the woman we both just watched walk away,” he said.
“About ninety-nine percent of it, yeah,” Jake said.
Okay, so the guy got brownie points for honesty. “Why don’t you tell me what you really want to know,” Finn suggested.
“I don’t want to know anything,” Jake said. “I want you to know that if you make her so much as shed a single tear, I’ll break every bone in your body and then feed your organs to the pigeons. I mean, sure, I’d have to hire it out to do it, but I’m connected so don’t think I won’t.”
Finn stared at him. “You forget your meds or something?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, then, thanks for letting me know,” he said and turned to go.
Jake rolled into his path. “I’m not shittin’ you.”
“Also good to know.” Finn cocked his head. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you already had a shot at her and you blew it.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you just threatened me with death and dismemberment. Only one reason to do that—you fucked up somehow.”
Jake stared him down for a minute. He might be in a chair but Finn got the sense he could more than handle himself.
“That might be partially true,” the guy finally said.
Finn wrestled with his conscience a moment. “I’d say something helpful here, like it’s ‘never too late’ or ‘you can fix any mistake,’ because truthfully, I like you. But—”
“—But you like her too,” Jake said.
“But I like her too,” Finn agreed firmly, not willing to back down, feeling a little bit like Thor did about his prized dog cookies. “Much more than I like you.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Jake said. “You and her.”
“That’s for me and Pru to decide.”
Thor jumped down from Jake’s lap, walked over to Finn and put his paws on his shins to be picked up—which Finn did.
Then it was apparently Jake’s turn to wrestle with his conscience. “What the hell. The damn dog likes you?”
Finn shrugged and gave Thor a quick cuddle before setting him back down on Jake’s lap.
Jake muttered something to himself that sounded like “she bit off more than she can chew this time” and turned his chair to roll off.
“Yeah,” Finn said to his back.
“Yeah what?”
“Yeah I’m going to keep playing on your team. But I want to buy new jerseys.”
Jake rolled back around to face him. “Why?”