And she didn’t …
Well, for heaven’s sake, if she finally had, she would remember.
But no, there were no memories of anything sultry. Of course, then the real memories came back. Her leaving The Watering Hole with Flynn.
An immediate shiver went through her entire body.
Flynn Wilder.
What a problem.
But he had agreed to help her.Andshe had gone home with him. For the express purpose of starting some rumors.
She got out of bed, still dressed from the night before, because the idea of taking her clothes off in Flynn’s house had been unthinkable.
In fact, walking out of the bedroom felt a little bit impossible too. But she managed to do it anyway. Because that was what she did. She didn’t do shame; she didn’t do embarrassment. She did the hard things, the kick-ass things, the things other people were too afraid to do.
Because she was Jessie Jane Hancock, dammit. Descendent of Butch Hancock the Traitor.
Yippy-ki-yay.
“Morning,” she called out. “I don’t want to go catching you in a state of undress.”
“No worries.”
The voice that came up the stairs was still gravelly from sleep, and she shivered just slightly. It was so weird to see him in this totally different context. To be alone with him. No, she wasn’t going to think of it that way. They were business partners. That was the thing.
“Should I pay you for this?”
She spoke as she was going down the stairs, and when the words exited her mouth, Flynn stepped in front of the landing. He was wearing blue jeans and a tight black T-shirt, and she almost would have preferred if he were in a state of undress, because then she could have at least been annoyed. Instead, he just had bare feet. And for some reason that was … intimate in a way she didn’t want to think about.
“Excuse me?” He sounded like a scandalized maiden.
“I just realized that maybevengeanceisn’t appropriate compensation,” she said.
“Oh no,” he said, smiling slowly. “It is. I’ve had time to think about it.”
“Have you?”
“I sure as hell didn’t sleep. Not pondering the implications of all of this. Come and grab some coffee.”
“I thought we were going to have coffee in town.”
“I need a pre-coffee before we get to the performative coffee.”
She shrugged. But she stayed where she was in the middle of the staircase.
“I’m not going to bite you,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
She blinked. “I know that.”
Then she began to make her way down the stairs, careful to skirthim like a particularly skittish cat as she walked into the room that he had just come out of.
The kitchen was nice. Natural stone and raw wood cabinets. It was very upscale, but very Flynn all at the same time.
“Wow,” she said.
“You like it?”
