Showing someone you cared wasn’t always about surprise trips to Paris or spa getaways or a brand-new car with a bow on it. Sometimes it was about filling up their gas tank or making sure their favorite coffee never ran out. Sometimes it was dragging someone out of a thunderstorm, or hanging their only clothes to dry, or bringing them breakfast you’d never eat yourself, or making an appointment so they didn’t have to.
I had no idea how to convey that to him—or even if I should—so I stayed quiet as he parked us within walking distance of the festivities. Main Street had been shut down, with blockades on each end to stop traffic. The hodgepodge of old storefronts were the backdrop to the numerous white tents set up along either side of the street, strings of white lights draped between them to light the path. The vendors ranged from various food booths to crafts to paintings and handmade goods, all from Starlight Cove and the surrounding areas. A local band had set up in the large gazebo at the center of the park, and people crowded around it, dancing in the grass despite the fact that the band was only a couple steps up from awful.
“You wanna dance?” I asked, tipping my head in that direction.
“I honestly can’t think of anything I want to do less,” he said but still reached for my hand and clasped our fingers together.
I laughed, leaning into his side as we walked away from the gazebo and toward the tents. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you?”
I’d meant it as a joke, considering his complete lack of tact, but no matter my teasing tone, it didn’t make it any less true. He’d mademefeel special, and I wasn’t even sure he realized he was doing it.
Initially, I hadn’t known how to take Brady. Hadn’t known what to do with someone so utterly focused on me. I’d never doubted that my parents loved me, but they’d encouraged and cultivated my independence as a young child, and that hadn’t wavered. They’d always assumed that I could take care of myself. That they didn’t need to worry about me. And though Icouldtake care of myself, sometimes it was nice to know I had someone looking after me. Concerning themselves over my well-being as if my being okay wasn’t a foregone conclusion.
It felt nice to be looked after when I’d spent a lifetime looking after myself.
While there was no denying Brady and I had started this relationship as adversaries, somewhere along the way, things had changed between us. Shifted in a way I hadn’t expected.
I’d stopped seeing him as just the pain-in-the-ass sheriff intent on throwing up every roadblock known to man to stop me from causing trouble in his little town. Instead, I’d begun to see him as just Brady—the man who dragged me away from precarious situations, gave me a place to stay when I didn’t have one, let me crawl into his bed for a snuggle, and took me to a festival when it was very clearly not something he was normally interested in.
Whether he’d intended to or not, he’d allowed me a glimpse of the heart that lay beneath that rugged exterior, the single driving force in everything he did. And I didn’t know what it meant that I was ravenous to uncover even more.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
BRADY
I didn’t do festivals.Hell, I didn’t do yoga or skip work to find toilet water smoothies and bring them to a girl I couldn’t stop thinking about, either, yet here we were.
Starlight Cove had more festivals than were strictly necessary, and they were definitely more in Addison’s and Beck’s wheelhouses than they were in mine. I’d spent plenty of time at them throughout my life, but I hadn’t been to one in something other than an official capacity in years. It…wasn’t awful. Though I knew that had more to do with the fact that I was here with Luna than anything else. Seeing it through her eyes, her excitement and curiosity lighting her up from the inside out, was an experience in and of itself.
Normally, I spent Friday nights at home in front of the TV with a beer—or if it had been a particularly shitty week, a glass of bourbon—decompressing. Fridays were always when I dropped groceries off at Cottage Thirteen, which was, granted, not the smartest way for me to end the week. And yet I did it every Friday, without fail. Even though no one expected me to—hell, no one even knew I did—and I didn’t have to continue, it might as well have been a blood oath for the sanctity I put on it. And every week, without fail, it put me in a shitty mood.
But tonight, being here with Luna, my chest wasn’t tight, memories didn’t have me in a choke hold, and the overwhelming sense of failure didn’t swamp me like usual. Whatever magic thrummed through this woman’s veins, she’d obviously managed to imbue a bit in me, too, just by being near me.
Luna reached up with the hand that wasn’t still clasped in mine and brushed her thumb between my brows. “What’s with the scowl? Are you grumpy because they’re not making our delicious funnel cake fast enough?”
We stood off to the side, waiting for Mrs. Engles, my former third grade teacher and now blissful retiree who made funnel cakes and cotton candy as a hobby, to give Luna her one and only requirement for attending the festival.
“Just thinking about all the tickets I could write.”
Luna laughed, her eyes lighting up in a way that dropped an unpinned grenade straight into the center of my chest. “Then it’s a good thing you’re off duty. Unless, of course, you have your fun police badge with you? Peopledoseem to be having an awfully good time here, and I’m sure that’s against some sort of regulation.”
That startled a chuckle out of me, and she seemed just as surprised by it. Christ, the mouth on this woman made me want to stuff her with a ball gag and kiss her all at once.
I released her hand and wrapped an arm around her waist, cupping her ass as I tugged her in close. I didn’t care that we were out in public. Didn’t even care that no one here had ever seen me with a woman other than my sister. I needed Luna close to me. After knowing what could’ve happened last night had she not come home with me, I had this overwhelming urge to have my hands on her constantly, and I had to force myself not to just strap her on like a backpack and go about my day.
I lowered my mouth so my lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Keep it up, lawbreaker, and see what I do to that mouth of yours when we get home.”
Instead of snapping back with a snarky reply, she tipped her head back to stare up at me. She rested her hands on my chest, her lip caught between her teeth and a glint in her eye that spelled trouble. “Promise?”
Fuuuck. The things she did to me. I didn’t think it was possible to be so aggravated and aroused simultaneously, yet Luna was all about challenging me. She’d been doing it since the moment she’d stepped foot in this town and hadn’t stopped for a second. The woman drove me out of my mind, questioned me at every step. And somehow, in the weeks since she’d shown up in Starlight Cove, I’d actually begun to enjoy it. To crave it.
“Here you go, honey!” Mrs. Engles called, sliding a fried mass of definitely not organic powdered-sugar-covered dough toward us.
With a kiss to the underside of my jaw, Luna pushed away from me and turned her beaming smile on the older woman. “Thank you! It lookssogood.”
“These are normally extra,” Mrs. Engles said as she gathered up containers from a few different bins beneath the white folding table serving as a counter. “But I haven’t seen the sheriff out of his uniform at one of these festivals inyears, and I bet we have you to thank for that. Did Brady tell you I had the absolute pleasure of having him in my third-grade class?”
Luna’s eyes were filled with interest and amusement as she glanced back at me over her shoulder. “He did not, but I’dloveto hear some stories. Was he a hall monitor back then?”
