Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding) - By Sydney Somers Page 0,76

be worth the little bit of positive publicity stemming from a fake romance. It just didn’t make sense. “Is it safer to hide out here where no one can make demands of you or ask you about your accident or your plans?” Because that would make sense to her. He’d avoided anything to do with the kids and had avoided the subject of not playing hockey a few times.

“Is it so bad having me around?”

Okay. That hadn’t been the response she’d been expecting. Truthfully, she’d half expected to annoy him with the comment, maybe even piss him off and send him on his way. That she would know how to handle.

“When you’re not avoiding me, that is?” he tacked on. “I know you like me.”

“Liking you isn’t a problem.” Liking him a lot apparently wasn’t a problem either.

“Good. Now what happened earlier that upset you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she insisted.

“It does matter. You can’t let what people say get to you.”

“That’s awful easy for you to say. You do what you want while the rest of us have people depending on us. We all can’t be reckless without thinking about the consequences.”

“The only opinions that matter belong to the people who care about you.”

She shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is,” he pressed. “It has to be—otherwise you end up turning into the person everyone else is convinced you are.” He grabbed her hand. “I’m sort of an expert on these things.”

She looked around the room, looked at anything but him.

“Young Hayley may have been a hellion,” he continued, “but she understood whose opinions counted for something. Maybe you had a rough time dealing with your dad’s death, but in the end you straightened yourself out without giving a crap what people like Bernice Cabot or Eric thought of you. Are you really going to waste time worrying about it now?”

Part of her knew he was right, knew there was more to him than what the media portrayed.

“If people look at you and see only the rebel you used to be or the woman caught kissing the notorious Jackson Knight—” he wiggled his brows, “—and not the great friend or hockey coach or kick-ass police detective, then isn’t that their loss?”

She was afraid to admit he was right, afraid that if she did she wouldn’t have a reason to keep her distance. He wasn’t staying in Promise Harbor and she didn’t want to be left with any more holes in her life. She’d have a huge one to deal with soon enough with Gramps.

“Let me help you, Hayley.”

“For how long? Another day? A week?” Until Gramps dies? She kept the latter to herself, the pain of it clutching viciously at her heart.

“Hey.” He caught her hand.

She tried brushing him off, but part of her desperately needed a shoulder to lean on for just a second. The depth of that need stunned her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his chest. The scent of him—soap, sawdust, male—surrounded her as fully as the arms holding her close.

She drew in a breath, her chest catching in a shudder she barely clamped down on. Her eyes burned, but she squeezed them tight, refusing to give in to a single tear. Not now. Just a shoulder to lean on for a minute. That’s all she needed.

“Hayls?” He tipped her face up.

Tears firmly in check, she forced her eyes open, meeting his gaze. He traced the curve of her cheekbone, his touch gentle, soothing and unlacing every carefully tied knot holding her together inside.

She was good at moving forward, focusing only on the moment and not letting fear of losing another loved one break her. So why did something as simple as Jackson’s touch compromise all that? Weaken her so completely?

He ran his thumb down to her chin, sweeping across her bottom lip. Her stomach bunched, reacting to the desire that flared in his eyes. When he didn’t immediately kiss her, she pushed up on her toes, opening her mouth over his.

Sweet heat flooded her system, and she gripped the back of his neck, grazing the ends of his hair and getting as close to him as possible.

Kissing him should have been a bad idea, but she couldn’t seem to make herself care. Thoughts of flavors of the week and puck bunnies slipped away under the delicious weight of his lips slanting across hers. Who could think about anything rational with six-feet-plus of warm, hard male nudging her back