Page 18 of The Detour

8

Saint

“You purposely trying to be the last one here tonight so no one sees you sneak off to your love shack?”

“You mean to my house?” I ask and play it off because I love Vix to death, but she is such a hopeless romantic that I know she’s already mentally planning a happily ever after for me.

One I’ll never find or have.

One that is case in point with Harley’s reaction to Saint Nick’s Hollow. A joke. A tourist trap. A dot on a map that will be forgotten as soon as she drives across its boundary line tomorrow.

And it’s a place I’ll never leave. Can’t. It’s part of who I am and my family history.

So why did I kiss her then?

Why did I give in to the urge?

Because it was more than sexy to read her words and picture her as the heroine.

And to want something like that.

To think maybe someday someone who stops by might come back, just for me.

Quit being a goddamn sap.

Go home.

“Yeah. Sure. Your house. The one next door to a woman you kissed senseless. That one.”

“That was nothing.”

She throws her head back and laughs dramatically as she stuffs her apron into the dirty clothes bin we have in the back. “Sure. Yeah. That was nothing. But don’t worry, I’m leaving now so that you’re free to move about her cabin any way you see fit.”

I roll my eyes. “Go to sleep, Vix.”

“Go home, Saint.”

Go home.

Question is, which door of the property that I own am I going to walk through?

Hers or mine?

9

Harley

“Stop looking at the door.”

It’s been the same comment that’s been on my lips for the past hour. Well after I finished the scene that I never thought I’d get through. The same scene that has stumped me for months. The one that is now completed, promise all but fulfilled to myself . . .

The promise that said sex was on the menu for me.

And of course, how can I stop thinking about that sex when the man I have fantasized having it with—over the past few hours, vicariously through my characters, standing here staring at the wall—is just outside that door?

Maybe it’s because I’m going crazy. Maybe it’s because I’ve already played out exactly how it would happen, as if it were a scene between Sophie and Luke.

There would be no sweet talk, no tender words. Just his needs and my wants and a whole lot of skin in between.