SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,63
Beach and he was glad for that. It gave him quiet time to get his pulse under control and his brain to settle. Because realizing he’d fallen in love with her had knocked him on his ass, and then she’d been knocked on her ass. There’d been no time to figure out what the hell he should do now.
So…what the hell should he do now?
No answer presented itself by the time he pulled into the gravel drive at her family’s house. She roused as he braked, but he jogged around the front of the car so he could open the passenger door and help her out. He was prepared to carry her inside, but she slid to her feet and walked on her own, though she didn’t object or pull away when he put an arm around her waist.
In the family room, she settled on the cushions of the soft-looking couch and he breathed easy for the first time in over an hour. With his shoulder against a wall, he watched over her as her mother arrived, expressing concern and sympathy. When Rebecca brought her daughter a cup of hot tea and opened a first aid kit, he was gratified the older woman asked the question plaguing him.
“Honey, what happened?”
Then Harper came out with the story. She’d seen two teenagers and a red wagon filled with herb bundles that had gone missing from the Sunnybird Farm booth the day before. Suspecting them to be the thieves, she’d gone after them, intending a confrontation.
The girls had shoved their wagon at Harper as she ran at them, causing her to take a header onto the dirt parking lot.
Rebecca grimaced.
Mad bellowed, his voice pressing against the walls of the room. “Someone was intentionally trying to hurt you?” He’d been upset when he’d encountered her on the beach, trapped with those two lame-ass hoodlums. Now he thought the top of his head would blow off. “Why didn’t you say so immediately?”
“Busy fainting.”
The answer didn’t cool him. “And why did you go off on your own like that anyway?”
“I told you I was going to explore.”
“But—”
“You didn’t ask me to stay.”
“That’s…that’s not a good answer.”
She looked at him like his head had blown off. “Mad, I can take care of myself.”
This had to be what a heart attack felt like, he decided, and gestured at her bruises and scrapes. “Obviously.”
“Mad—”
“Why didn’t you tell me your mom had herbs stolen yesterday? Why didn’t you get me when you saw those girls at the farmers market and let me handle it?”
“I didn’t tell you about the missing herbs because…because I don’t know, we were having a nice day and it didn’t occur to me.” Her brows drew together. “Then it all happened so quickly. You were talking to Raf, I saw the herbs, I went after the girls.”
The look on her face made it clear she thought him unreasonable.
Was he being unreasonable? This whole damn thing felt unreasonable! How could he have fallen in love, how could she have gotten so bruised and banged up on his watch, how could she not understand it was important that he be the person she came to when trouble happened?
Because you’ve never told her how you feel, dumbshit, a voice said in his head. Not before. Not since she arrived back in Sawyer Beach. And not when you realized you were in love with her again, which was not an entirely new revelation to you today. You should have told her while you were changing her stupid tire. Because deep down you knew then, too.
“After her unsatisfying explanation I left the house,” he told Shane, as they sat in the other man’s van, parked at the beach. “Because I thought strangling her in front of her mother was in bad taste.”
“And it would have put your mother, the mayor, in a difficult position too.”
“Right.”
They stared out at the ocean. His buddy had called, saying he was taking a rare morning off, and invited Mad along to determine if the waves made it worth getting wet.
Their boards were stowed in the back, but the surf was flat. “We should have saved time and paid attention to the local report,” Mad said.
“I never trust the local report,” Shane said. “And I had a feeling about coming here today.”
“You going back to work now?”
Shane shook his head. “My crew can do without me for a couple of hours.”
“You likely have someone you want to spend time with more than me if we’re not