Reckless Hearts (Oak Harbor #2)(74)
“I should have someone out next week.”
My heart sinks.
“To hook up the cable. I can’t be without my TV.”
Finn’s eyes gleam with humor. He’s teasing me, dammit.
“Great!” I refuse to show I’m ruffled. “Then we’re all set.”
I turn on my heel to head back out front, but Finn pauses. “Wait a second. Don’t you want to show me the rest of the property? Upstairs, all the bedrooms?”
Me and Finn, alone in a room with a king-sized bed? I’ve had dreams like that, and I know exactly how things wind up: the both of us tangled up naked, sweaty, and gasping with pleasure. But there are consequences to the most perfect moment of release – and I learned that lesson the hard way. “Sorry,” I reply, my cheeks burning. “I can’t stay. I have to be somewhere. I’m already running late.”
“Sure thing.”
Finn drives us back to the office, still perfectly at ease. But as the miles pass, his nonchalance burns me. Since the moment he walked in he’s been behaving like everything’s fine between us, like it’s no big deal to just show up and act like nothing’s wrong. Or maybe it isn’t, to him. What happened between us may have made an indelible mark on my heart, but what if he barely gave it a second thought on his path to sold-out stadiums and number one hits?
My heart suddenly aches so much I want to cry. I need to get away, but I manage to hold it together until he pulls up outside the old carriage house, and I can climb out of the car on unsteady legs. “I’ll get the contract sent over right away,” I tell him.
“Don’t I get your number?”
I stare blankly.
Finn’s lips curl in a teasing smile. “For questions about the lease.”
“Oh. You can call the office. Delilah will be able to help you out. In fact, you probably won’t see me again. Like I said, I meanly deal with the admin.”
Finn gazes at me thoughtfully for a moment, so long I wonder if I still have frosting on my face. “I like it,” he says finally.
“Like what?”
“Your hair. You always used to hide behind it,” he says, his smile slipping through my defenses all over again. “Now I can see your eyes.”
I can hear my heart pounding in my ears.
Oh no. Not this time.
I turn away and hurry up the steps without looking back, but I feel his gaze on me with every step. This doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. Finn McKay is back in town, as gorgeous and charming as ever. But I’ve learned my lesson the hard way.
For the sake of my heart, I’m steering clear.
To be continued…
What happens next? Eva and Finn’s story is only just beginning. HEARTBREAKER is available now!
Take a trip to Beachwood Bay: the small town where passion and romance are making waves…
Each book is a stand-alone romance following a new couple, but you’ll enjoy reading the whole series and seeing familiar faces return.
THE BEACHWOOD BAY SERIES:
BOOK 1: UNTOUCHED (Emerson & Juliet’s story begins - novella)
BOOK 2: UNBROKEN (Emerson & Juliet’s story)
BOOK 3: UNTAMED HEARTS (Brit & Hunter’s story begins - novella)
BOOK 4: UNAFRAID (Brit & Hunter’s story)
BOOK 5: UNWRAPPED (Lacey & Daniel’s holiday novella)
BOOK 6: UNCONDITIONAL (Garret & Carina)
BEACHWOOD BAY: THE CALLAHANS
BOOK 7: UNREQUITED (Dex & Alicia begin – novella)
BOOK 8: UNINHIBITED (Dex & Alicia)
BOOK 9: UNSTOPPABLE (Ryland & Tegan)
BOOK 10: UNEXPECTEDLY YOURS (holiday story)
BOOK 11: UNWRITTEN (Zoey & Blake)
BOOK 12: UNMASKED (Ash & Noelle begin — novella)
BOOK 13: UNFORGETTABLE (Ash & Noelle)
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Discover the start of the epic love story. Unbroken is available now!
Prologue
My mom always said there are two kinds of love in this world: the steady breeze, and the hurricane.
The steady breeze is slow and patient. It fills the sails of the boats in the harbor, and lifts laundry on the line. It cools you on a hot summer’s day, brings the leaves of fall, like clockwork every year. You can count on a breeze, steady and sure and true.
But there’s nothing steady about a hurricane. It rips through town, reckless, sending the ocean foaming up the shore, felling trees and power lines and anyone dumb or f*cked up enough to stand in its path. Sure, it’s a thrill like nothing you’ve ever known: your pulse kicks, your body calls to it, like a spirit possessed. It’s wild and breathless and all-consuming.
But what comes next?
“You see a hurricane coming, you run,” my mom told me the summer I turned eighteen. “You shut the doors, and you bar the windows. Because come morning, there’ll be nothing but the wreckage left behind.”
Emerson Ray was my hurricane.
Looking back, I wonder if Mom saw it in my eyes: the storm clouds gathering, the dry crackle of electricity in the air. But it was already too late. No warning sirens were going to save me. I guess you never really know the danger, not until you’re the one left, huddled on the ground, surrounded by the pieces of your broken heart.