Book 20 Yours After Dark #5
After discussing her pain levels and adjusting her medication, David encourages Chloe to confide in a friend about her diagnosis.
She’s worried about losing business. He offers a referral to Dr. McCarthy, as in Finn’s father, the psychiatrist. She tells him she’ll think about it.
She drops her new prescription at the pharmacy and goes to the grocery store to pick up lunch.
Lost in her own thoughts, she doesn’t see the man coming toward her until she crashes into him, causing them to stumble and fall.
She lands hard on her right hip, grunting from the pain of impact.
The scent of coffee has her staring at the coffee-soaked, faded denim crotch of the man she collided with.
“We really need to stop meeting this way.”
That voice. She looks up at Finn. He smiles, but it isn’t the usual big smile that engages his startling blue eyes. This one is sad, and it kills her to know she’s done that to him.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she says softly.
“No need to apologize. But I do want you to know…” He glances around them. “Not here. Let’s go outside.”
He walks her to her car. “What I wanted to say in there is that I feel like there’s something bigger than this happening.
” He waves a hand between them. “I know we just met, and it’s none of my business, but I want you to know that if you need a friend—and only a friend—I’m here, and I want to help.
” She thanks him and tells him she has to go meet a client at her salon.
Finn heads over to the Curtis House, the new job Mac booked.
He’s curious about the house even though he plans on leaving, since it isn’t going to happen with Chloe.
While checking the place out, he answers a call from a number he doesn’t recognize.
Missy starts yelling at him. He tells her he’s at work, and he asks her not to contact him again before hanging up on her.
“What the hell was that?” Riley asks.
“Nothing.” Finn realizes his hands are shaking, so he stuffs them into the front pocket of his pullover sweatshirt.
Riley’s eyes narrow as he studies Finn. “Was that Missy again?”
“Maybe.”
“Bro, you need to call the cops.”
“I’m not calling the cops.” She’ll give up when she figures out he isn’t going to change his mind.
Mac joins them. “What’s going on?”
“Tell him, Finn.”
Sighing, Finn says, “My ex is hassling me. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Hassling you how?”
Riley answers for him. “She’s blowing up his phone and screaming at him. I just heard the latest call.”
“Did you block her?” Mac asks.
“Yeah, but she’s calling me from other people’s phones. I thought it might be Clint calling about work, so I took the call.”
“Maybe you ought to mention it to Blaine,” Mac says. “Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“In case it escalates.”
“It won’t. She’s pissed, but she’ll get over it.”
Riley crosses his arms and stares him down. “She booked a wedding venue, Finn. She’s not going to just get over it.”
Mac’s eyes bug. “She did what?”
“She booked a wedding venue for next year,” Riley says.
“Jesus. Had you talked about getting married?”
“Not once, ever.”
“Sorry, man, but that’s fucked up.”
Shane and Luke join them, the four men forming a circle around Finn.
“Sane people don’t book weddings when the other half of the relationship doesn’t know he’s getting married,” Luke says. “I don’t think you should just blow this off like it’s no big deal.”
“I agree,” Shane says. “You need to show your phone to Blaine, tell him what she did and said. See what he thinks.”
“I thought I heard Blaine was off-island.” Finn feels sick at the thought of reporting Missy to the cops. Has it really come to that?
“He’s back with his brother Deacon, who’s apparently going to be Gansett’s new harbor master,” Mac says. “I’ll go with you to talk to him.”
“Oh. Um. Okay.”
Riley wants to come with them.
They drive to the public safety building in tense silence.
“Turn your phone back on,” Mac says right before they pull into the parking lot where Blaine’s department-issued SUV sits in the spot reserved for the chief.
Finn turns on the phone, and it goes wild, beeping with texts and messages.
“She’s persistent,” Riley says. “You gotta give her that.”
“She’s harassing him,” Mac says. “Plain and simple. If a guy was doing that to a woman, it would be a big deal. It’s no less of a big deal because a woman is doing it to a guy. Harassment is harassment, and it’s not okay.”
They show Blaine the messages. Finn tells him he hasn’t read them all. “You probably should have.” Blaine’s expression grows serious as he scrolls through them. “‘If you’ve got someone else, you’d better let her know to watch her back. I’ll fucking stab her.’ That’s the most recent one.”
Alarmed, Finn immediately thinks of Chloe. “I’ve been seeing Chloe Dennis.”
“I’ll have patrol keep an eye on things at the salon, and I’ll give your friend a call and let her know what kinds of charges she might be looking at if she keeps up this behavior.”
Finn calls Missy, and Blaine explains they’ll press charges if she doesn’t stop harassing him. Blaine tells Finn to contact him if he hears anything from her, and he’ll send the Connecticut State Police after her.
Finn goes to Adam’s home to visit with him and baby Liam.
The baby is adorable, with dark hair like both his parents and gray eyes.
When he starts to fuss, Adam picks him up and hands him over to Finn.
“Go see your cousin Finny and tell him he can’t leave right when things are getting interesting around here. ”
Finn holds the baby carefully, awestruck by the responsibility. “Your daddy is very good at guilt-tripping me, buddy. Don’t let him pull that crap with you.”
Finn tells Adam about meeting Chloe and asks Adam if he thinks there’s only one person for everyone.
“No, I don’t believe that. But I do believe that when you find someone who really does it for you, who gets you on every level and who you can’t imagine living without, you should do everything you can to keep that person in your life. ”
“What if that’s not what she wants?”
Adam exhales a deep breath. “That’s a tough one.”
Abby comes running into the house and heads right to the bathroom. Adam goes to check on her and finds her pale and weak in a pool of vomit. Finn hangs with Liam while Adam gets Abby cleaned up and into bed. Adam sends Finn home in case she’s contagious.
For a minute, he thinks about skipping the fundraiser, but the opportunity to see Chloe has him pointing his truck toward the Sand & Surf Hotel and Stephanie’s Bistro.
He’s nothing if not a glutton for punishment. He sees Chloe when he walks in and is unable to look away from her.
He came, Chloe thinks. Even after she’d sent him away, he still came to her event.
The minute he walked into the room, looking sinfully handsome, everyone else disappeared from view.
He’s all she can see, and dear God, she wants him.
Despite all the reasons she should keep her distance, she wants him with her whole heart and soul.
It’s that simple. Why him? Why now? She has no idea, but her resistance has crumbled to the point of nonexistence by the time he speaks to her.
“You got a hell of a turnout.”
Stephanie’s is completely full, with people spilling into the lobby of the Surf.
Chloe forces herself to look up at him, to make eye contact, while trying not to let on how powerfully affected she is by his mere presence. “We did. I’m thrilled.”
“You look beautiful.”
She’s received compliments from other men, but none greater than those three simple words from him. “You look rather beautiful yourself.”
He unleashes the potent smile that makes her knees go weak from the flood of desire that ripples through her. “I ironed and everything.”
God, he’s adorable. And sexy. So damned sexy. And sweet. Her thoughts are focused exclusively on him at a time when she has other things to be concerned with. One of the volunteers comes to tell her she needs to start the program. “Off I go. I’ll see you later?” Please, yes. Please see me later.
He nods. “I’ll be right here when you’re finished. Come find me?”
“I will.”
Finn hangs with his cousins until Chloe gets a break. Outside, Chloe asks, “Will you hold me, Finn?”
“You don’t ever, ever have to ask.” He puts his arms around her, sliding one of them inside the coat of his that she’s wearing, and draws her into his embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head and breathing in her appealing scent.
Everything about her does it for him. They stand there, wrapped up in each other for a long time.
When they leave together, Finn says he’s never been in a situation like this.
When she asks what’s different about it, he tells her, “Everything is different. Everything.” In the parking lot, he steers her toward his truck.
“I’ll bring you back to get your car in the morning.
” He opens the passenger door, helps her in and studies her in that intent, all-consuming way of his.
Leaning in, he says, “The way I want you is different. The way I think about you is different. The way I feel when I’m with you is different.
Even the way I feel when I’m not with you is different. ”
She kisses him. “It’s different for me, too.”
When they get into the house, she reminds him that this is only one night.
“I don’t understand why it has to be that way, Chloe. There’s something between us. You feel it every bit as much as I do.”
“I’m not denying that. It’s just that there are things…”
“What things? There’s nothing you could tell me that would make me not want this or you. Nothing.”
Her laugh has a bitter edge to it. That isn’t true. He’s twenty-seven years old with his entire life ahead of him. The last thing he needs is to be saddled with what’s ahead for her.