His heart still pounded way too fast. He wanted to put a fist through the freshly hung drywall.
And yeah. He did know he was overreacting.
It was just, well, he couldn’t stand it if anything happened to her. The need to take care of her, to protect her, keep her safe had become an imperative.
When had that happened? He wasn’t sure.
But somehow, at some point, he’d become completely invested in her well-being.
He kept telling himself that he saw the situation realistically. He liked her a whole hell of a lot. And he wanted her safe. Add to that, he just plain wantedher. Bad. And constantly.
And as of last night, they were lovers. A man needed to protect his woman.
Even if it wasn’t meant to last.
And itwouldn’tlast, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. In a few weeks, she would return to LA, make her next movie, work things out with that pushy agent of hers and realize that being a big star wasn’t such a bad gig, after all.
All her talk about making a different kind of life was just that—talk.
If he had any sense of self-preservation at all, he ought to get some distance from her.
Yeah. Distance. Good luck with that. All she had to do was smile at him and he forgot all the reasons he shouldn’t have let her get under his skin.
“Sten.” She hooked the sunglasses in the neck opening of her T-shirt and took a step closer.
Even with the smell of fresh paint heavy in the air, he got a whiff of petunias, sweet and yet sharp. Her mouth was tipped up to him. He was aching to take it.
“Sorry,” he said. “Darby freaked me out.”
She lifted her arms and propped them on his shoulders. “You okay now?”
“Yeah.” He dared to rest his palms on the swell of her hips. Back in the day, before he’d had the bad judgment to try to find love and happiness with Ella Robson, he’d had his hands on a good number of pretty women. Not one of them—Ella included—had felt the way Maddy did, like the curve of her waist was just made for his hands.
She was smart and funny and kind and beautiful. And he wanted her. Who wouldn’t?
It’s not deathless love. Get over yourself.
He kissed her, slow and sweet and just deep enough to ease the coiling tension inside him, to reassure himself that she really had taken the encounter with that Darby kid in stride.
“So no harm done,” she said when he lifted his head. “What’s next?”
* * *
Madison was having a fabulous time.
The flip house really interested her. She’d always thought it might be kind of fun, to fix a house up to sell, to figure out cost-conscious ways to make it better, make potential buyers want to live there.
Plus, Sten had just kissed her. Kissing Sten was one of the premier experiences of her life, an experience she planned to repeat. Frequently.
They went to Larson Boatworks next.
The family business consisted of a series of hangars and a row of boat slips on the Columbia River not far from Astoria. Most of the boatbuilding was done in the larger two hangars. The smaller hangar was the office.
They stopped in at the office first. Karin was busy behind the counter. She gave them a wave and a smile.
Sten led the way to the full-size hangars and showed her the projects they were working on now, including a sixty-six-foot commercial fishing vessel called theLady Defiant. TheLadywas getting a major refit. When the work was complete, the boat would be seventy-eight feet long and six feet wider than originally, with what Sten called a bulbous bow.
Otto Larson was at work on theLady Defiant. Madison greeted him, but she also took care to keep a low profile with the guys who worked for the Larsons. She wore her hat and glasses the whole time.
