“Sounds good,” he said. “Then what?”
“Then we’ll arrange another meeting.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, extending his hand.
He shouldn’t touch her again. When her soft fingers had closed around his he had felt that around his cock.
But he wanted to touch her again.
Pink colored her cheeks. A blush.
Dammit all, the woman had blushed.
Women who blushed were not for men like him.
That he had a sense of that at all was a reminder. A reminder that he wasn’t an animal. Wasn’t a monster.
Or at least that he still had enough man in him to control himself.
“I’ll see you then.”
Three
Faith was not hugely conversant in the whole girls’-night-out thing. Mia, her best friend from school, was not big on going out, and never had been, and usually, that had suited Faith just fine.
Faith had been a scholarship student at a boarding school that would have been entirely out of her family’s reach if the school hadn’t been interested in her artistic talents. And she’d been so invested in making the most of those talents, and then making the most of her scholarships in college, that she’d never really made time to go out.
And Mia had always been much the same, so there had been no one to encourage the other one to go out.
After school it had been work. Work and more work, and riding the massive wave Faith had somehow managed to catch that had buoyed her career to nearly absurd levels as soon as she’d graduated.
But since coming to Copper Ridge, things had somehow managed to pick up and slow down at the same time. There was something about living in a small town, with its slower pace, clean streets and wide-open spaces all around, that seemed to create more time.
Not having to commute through Seattle traffic helped, and it might actually be the sum total of where she had found all that extra time, if she was honest.
She had also begun to make friends with Hayley Bear, formerly Thompson, now wife of Jonathan. When Faith and her brothers had moved their headquarters to Copper Ridge, closer to their parents, Joshua had decided it would be a good idea to find a local builder to partner with, and that was how they’d met Jonathan and merged their businesses.
And tonight, Faith and Hayley were out for drinks.
Of course, Hayley didn’t really drink, and Faith was a lightweight at best, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have fun.
They were also in Hayley’s brother’s bar.
They couldn’t have been supervised any better if they’d tried. Though, the protectiveness was going to be directed more at Hayley than Faith.
Faith stuck her straw down deep into her rum and Coke and fished out a cherry, lifting it up and chewing it thoughtfully as she surveyed the room.
The revelers were out in force, whole groups of cheering friends standing by Ferdinand, the mechanical bull, and watching as people stepped up to the plate—both drunk and sober—to get thrown off his back and onto the mats below.
It looked entirely objectionable to Faith. She couldn’t imagine submitting herself to something like that. A ride you couldn’t control, couldn’t anticipate. Where the only way off was to weather the bucking or get thrown to the mats below.
No, thanks.
“You seem quiet,” Hayley pointed out.
“Do I?” Faith mused.
“Yes,” Hayley said. “You seem like you have something on your mind.”
