His to Protect: A Fireside Novel(17)

“I’m attracted to you, Trina, and I like you. I also know you had a lot of emotional stuff to deal with last night, and you have to deal with your husband, too. I’m not pushing anything”I paused and grinned“yet. But I want you to know that I want to explore something with you, and lying next to you all night, your warm, tight body against mine, not pushing you into something you might not want, or might not be ready for, had my self-control at its limit.”

She blinked several times and her lips parted.

She looked so damn cute, so utterly confused. I had the urge to kiss her. Here. Now.

But I didn’t.

I took a step back and then another before I turned and reached for my coffee. When I looked back at her, she was finally snapping her mouth closed.

I shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “Just think about it. Let me know what you decide. No pressure.”

A bit of gentle nudging in the right directionmy directionmight occur, though.

After several beats of silence, she muttered, “I need to shower.”

She walked away and I couldn’t help chuckling while she did.

“Woof!”

I looked down at Boomer sitting at my heels. His tail flopped against a wooden chair leg and his big dopey eyes were fixed on mine. He almost looked like he was smiling.

“Yeah, I know, boy. I think she likes me, too.”





Chapter 10


Trina


“It’s completely packed out there,” I said, brushing stray hairs off my sticky forehead. With the sudden rush of afternoon customersmost of them men drinking beer as if Prohibition began at midnightand the heat from the kitchen, my black Fireside Grill shirt was sticking to my back and my makeup was smearing more every minute.

I looked like a wreck.

I felt even worse, in that bone-numbing sort of way.

I was exhausted.

“It’s football Sunday,” Declan said, shaking his head even though he was smiling.

He’d been doing that all day.

Flashing me an impish grin whenever he caught me looking at him. Which, admittedly, had been a lot. I was still trying to figure him out, flesh out his motives, or a fuller understanding of what he meant this morning.

I had felt so flustered as I walked away from him, and so distracted in my shower, that I nearly forgot to wash my hair. Fortunately, since we’d opened this morning, the crowd had been nonstop, coming and going and needy. These football fans were so very stinking needy. All of the activity kept my mind from lingering on the tender way Declan brushed my hair behind my ear this morning, or the simple way he stated that he was attracted to me.

Me? The woman who was not only still healing from physical bruises but was an emotional basket case?

If he was attracted to someone like me, he had a few screws loose, as my nana used to say.

“People should be at church and brunch,” I muttered, letting my southern accent flow nice and strong. “It’s the Lord’s day. Don’t you Yankees know that?”

Declan threw his head back and laughed, taking a quick break from flipping beef patties on a full grill.

These football fans could eat and drink in serious quantities.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said and punched in another order for nachos and buffalo burgers. There were three computers in the restaurant where we could make our orders, but I was using the one in the kitchen. I needed a quiet place to get some space, away from all the mayhem going on out front.

No one had complained, either, even though I didn’t think it was common for servers to use it.

“Wait until hockey season strikes,” Declan replied, “You haven’t seen rabid fans until we have a bar full of Red Wings fans.”

My nose scrunched up. Hockey wasn’t my thing. At all. It always seemed so unnecessarily violent, what with men being tossed into walls and beaten with sticks.

“Yeah. We’ll see,” I whispered, more to myself than Declan. Come hockey season, I might be in another state. Or another country.

Despite my agreement not to do anything rash last night, after Tyson assured me that he would spend some time looking into Kevin and see what he could find out about him looking for me, I hadn’t altogether dismissed the idea of just taking off.

My cellphone seemed to burn inside my back pocket. I tried not to check it to see if Kevin had tried calling again, but I couldn’t help myself. His phone call last night reminded me that there really was a risk to staying.

Now I wasn’t only risking myself, but Declan.

Yet seeing Declan this morning, admitting that the reason he left my bed last night was because it was too hard for him to not touch me, lit a small spark inside me.

Desire.

That was what I felt when I looked at him. I couldn’t remember feeling anything like that since perhaps my wedding night with Kevin, when I still thought I was Cinderella and my Prince Charming had just slipped the glass slipper onto my foot.

I certainly quit desiring anything to do with Kevin weeks later, when he hit me for the first time. Not that his physical desire for me waned any.

I shuddered at the thought, and then jumped when Declan’s hand reached out and slid along my shoulder.

“What just happened?”

“What?” I asked, turning to face him. At the same time, I took a step back, moving away from him. His hand hovered in the air before he crossed both arms over his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you just turned white as a ghost.” His eyes narrowed and I felt my pulse kick up in my throat.

I swallowed and squeezed my eyes closed. “Nothing. I was just thinking.”

His lips pressed together, forming a tense, straight line as he evaluated my truthfulness. “About?”

“Nothing, Declan. I swear.” I lifted up my order pad and nodded toward the kitchen door. We were too busy for either of us to be standing around chatting. Plus, I wanted to avoid this particular conversation for as long as humanly possible. “I need to get back out there and help Katie.”

“You’ll tell me later.”

“Let it go,” I said, pleading with my eyes. He wouldn’t. I already knew it. If there was one thing I was beginning to learn about Declan, it was that he took protecting someone to extremes.

He nodded once and his arms dropped to his sides. “For now, I will. But you’ll tell me, once I’ve earned your trust.”

That small, impish grin came back, along with a sparkle in his rich-brown eyes, like he’d already decided he knew he was going to get it, and he didn’t care how long it took.

The fact that he was probably right, that he already did have my trust, wasn’t something I felt like sharing at the moment.

But as my cheeks heated under the weight of his knowing gaze, I couldn’t help but feel another shudder run through me as I headed out through the kitchen doors. Except that time, the shudder was much more pleasurable. And it made me think it wouldn’t be dangerous at all to toss caution to the wind and admit to Declan that I wanted him, too.



“I still can’t get over how busy today was,” I told Declan as I helped him close out the cash registers in the bar. It’d become our nightly ritual when he was letting me fill in or work the floor. He sent the bartenders home early and then he and I stayed behind to close out the tills.

“Yeah. I needed this football season more than ever to hit as hard as it did.”

I frowned and lost track of the twenties I’d been counting. I’d seen his accounts and he wasn’t lying. The Fireside Grill was struggling to stay in business. Although that day had been busy, the rest of the week had been pretty slow. From what I’d seen in his computer reports, the last several months had been slow.

“Does it typically slow down in the summer?”

“Some. Most people head north to their weekend places and go on vacation, but this summer was worse than any other I’ve seen.”

“What have you done with advertising?” I asked and turned my back to the register.

I hadn’t worked for years, and the work I did do was more public relations than advertising, but ideas began slowly rolling through my mind.

He shrugged and slid a rubber band around a stack of tens. “Ad in the paper. That sort of thing. We get enough foot traffic that I haven’t done too much more.”

My lips twisted to one side as I fought to not tell him how wrong he was with that kind of thinking. As far as I could tell, the businesses in Latham Hills would all prosper if they banded together and marketed themselves as a whole. Detroit was a huge metropolis with lots to do and even more places to eat, but a lot of those places were downtown, where the tourists went to watch the professional games, see the theater shows, or visit the museums. Out in Latham Hills, they needed to be louder.

“What is it?” he asked, turning to look at me. One thick black brow arched over his eye. “You’re thinking of something.”

“Again?” I smirked. “Heaven forbid I get caught doing that twice in one day.”

A flash of concern radiated from his eyes before they crinkled at the outer edges and his lips pulled into a smile. “Teasing me? I didn’t think you had it in you.”

My smile faltered. “I haven’t had much to joke about lately.”

“Shit.” He tossed the money he was counting onto the counter and walked toward me. I threw up a hand and stopped him, shaking my head.

“I didn’t mean that, Declan. But I do have some ideas for you, a few that might help get attention, some that won’t cost you anything.”