Rescuing the Bad Boy (Second Chance #2)(47)

“Are you testing my boundaries?” she asked, her tone teasing.

“Mine,” he corrected.

She bit her lip. “I don’t date much.”

“Me either.”

At all, actually.

She hummed, more in thought than in argument. “I don’t think I have any boundaries with you.”

He was beginning to think he had none with her, either. So far since he’d been back in the Cove, he’d stormed into her office, backed her against his kitchen counter, bullied her date out of a restaurant, and was now holding her ass in both hands and refusing to let go.

Keeping his palms where they were, he tugged her closer until her breasts were smashed against his chest again.

“You know the best way through a bad situation, Scampi?”

She shook her head.

“Straight through. Straight through all the crap.”

Slender brows met over her nose. “Is that what you’re doing? Going straight through?”

“Yes.”

She raised a hand, playing painted fingers along his collar. “Is that what I should do?”

For a second, he didn’t get her meaning. Then he did.

She means me.

He was her straight through. He was her bad memory. He was the one who had robbed her of something precious.

Donovan knew that. He’d known that. This… kissing her, and if he could get lucky enough to have her under him again, would relieve the simmering ache throbbing in his dick now but wasn’t going to make anything better for her.

He hadn’t earned her the first time, and he sure as hell hadn’t earned her this time. But that’s what penance was. Paying for the past and not getting what he wanted.

One good thing about practicing penance, he’d gotten good at not getting what he wanted. Practically a pro.

He let go of her and promptly backed away.

Drying paint tangled in the hair on his arm. That, he could focus on. That was a mess he could clean up. A goal with a finite timeline.

“Gonna wash this off,” he told her, ducking his head and pointing for the kitchen. “Try not to kill yourself while I’m gone.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN




That was intense.

Sofie stared blankly at her sleeve, covered in Pale Walnut Mousse paint. She wiped her fingers on her jeans, but instead of getting paint off her hand, it came back covered.

Covered in paint because she’d been covered in Donovan a few short moments ago.

How had it happened? One minute she’d been falling, the next being rescued, the next being kissed.

Maybe the better question was, how could it not happen? Where they were concerned, neither of them was very successful at avoiding the other.

Then he confessed a past she’d begun to suspect. Abuse. At the hands of his father. Donovan had told her one story. One. How many more were there?

He… he hit you.

More than once. But that’s not the point.

Sadness left a residue on her skin, a film on the roof of her mouth. A similar film coated the walls. No, not the walls. The molding. Her eyes went to it now, to the paint drying in the grooves.

She pictured a nine-year-old Donovan with his toy car. His father, large and angry, bearing down on him. She shut her eyes and bristled.

When she opened them her vision narrowed at the paint smudge on the door frame.

He was right. Who cared? Who cared about preserving what he was beaten for when he was a child? Right about now she wanted to get a crowbar and pry every damn piece of antique molding from the wall.

This house was possibly the worst location to host a charity dinner for abused children. What had Gertrude been thinking? Was this her way of apologizing to a grandson she should have stood up for? By extending an olive branch alongside this dinner, which was nothing less than an example of utter hypocrisy?

Sofie thought back to how angry Donovan used to be when they worked at the Wharf. Or so she’d thought.

Beneath that veil of anger was sadness. So much sadness, in him, in this room, she could feel the emotion clotting in her throat.

But there was also something else. The confusing spark of electricity between them. Inescapable. Palpable. Electricity they were powerless to resist.

Why were they trying? Maybe one more night together would be cleansing. Straight through, right? That’s what he said. Maybe lying skin-to-skin with him would help him. Would help her. Would give them another chance to be together without any secrets between them.

Thinking back to that night, she realized how prematurely they’d acted—as if sex required nothing more than two people and a wild amount of attraction. But she hadn’t truly known him—at all, as it turned out. And he’d been so angry with her… she thought because she was a virgin. But maybe there was something else? Some hint of self-loathing. Because he believed he’d taken something from her? The only thing she’d been able to see or feel that night were her own haphazard emotions. By the time the Jeep ride ended at the restaurant, she’d built enough steam to—

My God.

She’d hit him. Like his father had before her, she’d slapped Donny right in the face.

She dragged her nails over her palm, paint rolling under her fingernails in the present, but a shadow from the past causing her palm to tingle.

Donovan found a way to blame himself. Because that’s what kids who were abused did.