“I’m going to want to bend them.”
“I’m going to worry about keeping you safe.”
“I’m going to drive you crazy.” Her voice drops to barely a whisper. “But maybe that’s not such a bad thing?”
I look down at her—this woman who’s turned my carefully ordered world into beautiful chaos—and make another choice. The important one.
“Maybe crazy is exactly what I need,” I say, and kiss her.
She tastes like vanilla and ocean air and every risk I’ve been too afraid to take. Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I go willingly, backing her against the counter as the kiss deepens from tentative to hungry.
This is insane. We’re in her boutique where anyone could see. We barely know each other. We’ve been fighting for days.
I don’t care.
She makes a sound against my mouth—half sigh, half surrender—and I swallow it, tasting her smile. Her hands slide up my chest, around my neck, into my hair, and suddenly I’m the one surrendering.
When we finally break apart, both breathing hard, she’s looking at me like I’m her favorite disaster and she can’t wait to see what happens next.
“So,” she says, voice wrecked. “About those permit requirements?”
I laugh—actually laugh—and pull her close again. “They can wait.”
“Can they?” She arches an eyebrow, all challenge and heat.
“They really can’t,” I admit. “But I’m going to pretend they can for another few minutes.”
“Just a few minutes?”
“Jo, if I kiss you again, I’m not stopping at a few minutes.”
Her smile is pure sin. “Promise?”
Rex barks from the truck. A reminder that this is real, that tomorrow we’ll have to figure out what this means, that the whole town is probably already planning our wedding.
But tonight?
Tonight I’m holding Jo Lennox in her boutique full of dreams, and for the first time in five years, I feel alive.
“Let me take you to dinner,” I say. “Let me do this right.”
“Dinner?” She looks skeptical. “In Twin Waves? Where everyone will see us?”
“Good.” I kiss her forehead, her temple, the corner of her mouth. “Let them see. Let them know I’m falling for the woman who argues with me about fire codes and makes my heart race.”
“You really know how to sweet-talk a girl, Chief Beckett.”
“Dean,” I correct. “When I’m kissing you, I’m just Dean.”
“Then kiss me again, Just Dean.”
I do.
And this time, the permits can definitely wait.
SEVEN
JO
