“No need to come at me because you know you’re wrong. But enough about that for now.” He lifted a hand as she opened her mouth. “If you’re willing, I’d like you to tell the others your story, and see what they say. Those guys are smart, Hope. I know between us we can come up with a way to get back at him. Especially as he’s here now.”
“I don’t want them knowing about the clips.”
“They’d believe you, Hope.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Actually, I do.”
Her head tilted slightly, and suddenly the anger was gone.
“Why do you always help people?”
The question threw him. It was out of left field, and he wasn’t ready for it.
“I like you, therefore I want to help you.”
“But you always do that. Always the friend who helps. Even your job, you help failing businesses. Or buy them when they hit rock bottom. What’s with that?”
“What?” Newman said to buy himself time.
“So you want me to slice open a vein but you won’t do the same?”
“I like helping people.”
“You know what I think?”
He was fairly sure he didn’t want to know.
“I think you like being needed.”
Her words hit the bull’s-eye, but he didn’t show it in his expression.
“Whatever, and we’re talking about you.”
“Whose approval did you want as a child and never got?”
Christ.
“Don’t take up psychoanalyzing as a career,” Newman drawled, when inside his head was suddenly all over the place as he remembered snippets of his childhood. Always trying to please his father, and never quite getting there.“Why can’t you be more like that McBride boy?”or“Why can’t you throw a ball like that Griffin boy?”
Grabbing Hope’s shoulders, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Her words had cut to the heart of what had once been something very real for Newman. The need to be accepted. He’d thought he was over it, but hearing Hope’s words made him wonder if in fact he wasn’t.
“I don’t want you to kiss me,” she whispered against his lips. She then plunged her fingers into his hair and tugged his head down for more.
It was wild, sometimes savage, and probably the best make-out session he’d ever had without getting naked in his life. His hands ended up under her shirt, stroking her fine breasts, hers under his, trailing over his skin, and the entire time their mouths remained fused. Teeth clashing, tongues dancing.
“We’re ending up in bed, Hope.” He said the words as he came up for air. “You don’t have this kind of heat and not end up there.”
“But this is purely physical.”
Newman wasn’t sure about that, but as he was sure that thought would scare her, he kept it inside his head and kissed her again, because he needed it as much as his next breath.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They walked back to the Hoot side by side, both silent, and Hope was fairly sure that only a plunge in the lake would bring her body temperature back to normal. The man turned her inside out. His touch sent her spiraling out of control, and even Jay hadn’t done that. The sex had been good, but then as he was only the second man she’d been with, and the first when she lost her virginity, she didn’t have a great gauge.
She knew Newman was experienced, and was fairly sure he’d had plenty of partners, and that thought was a terrifying one, but she also knew that he’d been right when he said they’d end up in bed. They had chemistry, there was no doubting that. If Hope stayed in Howling, and kept in contact with him, then it was likely they would end up doing it. Did she want that?
