1. Cash
Chapter One
Cash
It’s sundress season in Dragonfly Creek, and the pretty new librarian—new to the job, if not the town—is respecting the fuck out of it.
Which is a problem, because my garage is right across the road from the library, and I have eyes.
Despite my best efforts to contain myself, my appreciation for Haven Bingham’s modest sundresses is deeply inappropriate. In my defence, even the most modest dress wouldn’t be able to contain her lush cleavage.
For three weeks in a row, I’ve been treated to an unbearably hot parade of incredibly touchable cotton.
Which I can’t touch, of course.
For one thing, If I get too close to Haven, she flinches.
For another, I told her ten years ago she could do a hell of a lot better than a creepy minister, and I meant it.
An ex-con mechanic might rate slightly better than a creep, because I do know how to keep my hands to my fucking self, but I’m so far from good enough for her it’s not funny.
“Are you listening?”
I tear my eyes off Haven, who is putting a folding placard outside the library, and re-focus on the voice in my ear. “Sorry, Zane, say that again? It’s loud in the garage.”
“Family dinner next week. Dax is coming into town, Mom wants everyone there, no excuses. But if you want to bring a date, that’s fine.”
Across the street, a gust of warm, midsummer wind catches the hem of Haven’s sundress, and she spins around, her dark red hair gleaming like rubbed bronze in the sun.
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “No, it’ll just be me.”
Even before Haven moved back to town six months ago, I wasn’t interested in dating anyone.
Doesn’t stop gossips from making up all sorts of stories about me, and that reputation has its advantages.
But there’s a zero percent chance of me having a date for a family dinner. Less than zero. Negative a million.
Because the only woman I want is the one woman I need to keep my careful distance from.
And other than immediately establishing a weekly visit to the library for literacy reasons, I’ve managed to do that since her return.
Once a week is the right balance point between restraint and indulgence.
On the one hand, I could go every day and it wouldn’t fully satisfy my cravings.
On the other, if I don’t get a chance to be up close and semi-personal with Haven at least once every seven, I think I might actually lose my mind.
And that pulsing desire has only gotten stronger lately. The sundresses aren’t to blame. Her dark red hair that looks like sin isn’t to blame, and neither is her bossy mouth. This attraction goes back years. And recent events have sharpened my awareness of her to a finely honed point.
She’s always been that girl for me. The one who captures my eye, who holds my attention. Who haunts my dreams, because I’ll never be good enough for her.
And before I could name all of that, I thought she annoyed me.
In elementary school, it was because she was smart and kind. In high school, she annoyed me because she was smart, kind, and suddenly very religious.
As an adult, it got worse because she was still smart, still kind, still very religious, but also suddenly very hot.
And then I was arrested.
Aggravated assault, they said.
Reasonable interference in a domestic violence situation, I said.
Turns out, their voices carried more weight than mine did.
Haven Bingham was the only person in that courtroom, other than my flesh and blood, who looked like she agreed with me.
Something changed the day I was convicted. She stopped annoying me, and started occupying my thoughts in different, more complicated ways.
I didn’t see her again for six years.
And then six months ago, she moved back to Dragonfly Creek with a shiny new degree in library science or some shit like that.
And now she works across the street for me. She’s still smart, probably still religious…and still fucking hot.
So yeah, I go to the library once a week. Take out some books. Return the ones I read. Talk to the pretty librarian about them, because that’s allowed, even if it gets some side-eye from the Dragonfly Creek gossips.
Don’t stare at her tits too much.
What is the acceptable amount of time to stare at a librarian’s cleavage? Ten seconds? Only one?
I couldn’t survive on only a single second, I think.
This week, she’s wearing a new bra. I can tell, because her breasts have a new wobble to them. That required a few extra seconds just to be sure.
But when she lifts her face to greet me, all thoughts of how lush her breasts are vanish, because her face is blotchy and she looks fucking scared.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “Returning books?”
I set the two novels I read last week on the counter and vault over it so I can take a closer look at her face. “Did someone hurt you?”
“Cash!” She lets out a nervous little laugh. “What are you doing?”
“You were crying.”
“No.”
“And now you’re lying to me.”
“You can’t be behind the counter. You’re a patron.”
“I’m a cowboy.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m an outlaw.”
She laughs. “Oh, Cash.”
“All cops are bad, Haven. Including library cops.”
Now the laugh reaches her eyes. “I’m fine, really.
Just cranky library patrons sometimes get under my skin.
It’s a part of the job. People lie about damaging books, they take out their rage at the world on me, and—” She pokes her finger in the air in my general direction.
“They refuse to follow the rules of the library.”
“But I’ve never made you cry.”
“You don’t send me nasty emails about our Pride display.”
“What the fuck?” I sit in her chair and reach for her computer. “Show me this message.”
“I purged it already. We have a zero tolerance policy for abuse of staff, so I deleted it without reading it fully.”
I don’t bother to point out that a more effective zero tolerance policy would be saving the emails so people can be properly named and shamed for such bullshit. What’s done is done, and she’s right to have protected her eyeballs from reading that kind of hate.
I spin around on her surprisingly comfortable work chair. “You want me to have a private talk with anyone?”
Her eyes flare wide in alarm.
Despite the seriousness of the moment, I still notice the wobble of her tits again. From this vantage point, they’ve got some bounce, too. I’m so much taller than her that usually I’m looking down at her cleavage, which is real nice, but this face-on view is distractingly good, too.
Does she know how much fun could be had with her tits? How good it might feel for someone—me—to suck on her nipples as she grinds against my thigh, for example.
There are a lot of ways I could make her feel good without crossing any of her good girl boundaries.
I’ve spent most of the last seven years imagining each and every scenario, in great detail, as I maintained a very active but entirely fictional sex life.
Because Haven Bingham is the only woman who has made me come since that day in the courtroom when I was sentenced to jail, and she looked at her uncle and said, “This is wrong and you know it.”
Now, she stares at me like maybe I actually am the violent criminal everyone else thinks.
Which is for the best, but it hurts all the same.
I grin. Slowly, I stand, stretching to the full extent of my six feet, four inches. Her gaze chases me as I rise above her. I like making Haven look up at me. “You think I’d rough some people up for you?”
I look left and right, but we’re alone right now.
“Because I would,” I murmur. “Just say the word and I’ll give someone a very bad day.”
“Get on the other side of the counter,” she mutters, but she’s smiling.
I go the long way around, pausing at the new stack of books they’ve gotten in this week that haven’t yet been added to the system.
“Leave those,” she says sternly.
“But you’ll save the thriller on top for me, right?”
She doesn’t answer, but we both know that she will.
I’m grinning as I jog back across the street.
It fades when I see there’s a truck parked in front of the garage that wasn’t there when I left.
The aggressive parade of dusty but virtuous bumper stickers warn me this isn’t a friendly customer. But I’ll take money from everyone, even uptight religious weirdos like Jeb Martin.
“Here’s Cash,” Riley says as I stride into the office. She holds out the clipboard that we use when filling out an intake form.
I grab it. Part of being the boss is handling all the customers that make my mechanic uncomfortable—and sometimes telling them to get lost. This one, though…I have my reasons to not immediately go there. “What can we do for you today?”
She ducks away, muttering that she needs to finish the oil change she was working on when I went across the street to the library.
Jeb squares his shoulders. “Parking brake is stuck.”
“We can take a look at that. Riley explained we’d recommend a full brake inspection?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“As long as you’re willing to sign a waiver that we offered an inspection and you declined it, I can definitely check your parking brake.”
He scrawls something indistinct across the signature line, then hands over his keys like he’s reluctant for me to touch them.
I try not to look like I’m enjoying having him dependent on me. “Have a seat and I’ll take a quick look.”
I eyeball his wheels on the way out to his truck. He definitely needs a brake inspection, but that’s on him, not us.
I get the truck into the bay and on the lift.
There’s some corrosion on the cable, and I’d probably suggest a replacement to most customers, but for now I can see that the immediate problem is slack seized into the adjuster.
I hit it with some penetrant spray, give it a minute, then grab the cable with pliers and work it free.
Confident I can give him some choices, I head back to the office.
“I got the cable adjusted for you, but you might want to get it replaced so it doesn’t seize again.”
He hunches up his shoulders. “How long would take?”
And then he looks across the road to the library.
It’s one thing for me to indulge in a weekly visit for breast-related reasons. I will always keep my hands to my-fucking-self. It’s another for Jeb Fucking Martin to go sniffing around Haven again.
I haven’t forgotten how uncomfortable he made her in high school. There was a part of me that held my breath, worried that the day after her eighteenth birthday, he’d announce their engagement or some shit like that.
Both of us want her. Neither of us will ever have her. But only one of us is smart enough to know that.
“Don’t have time to do it today,” I lie. “But I can order the part in and fit you in…” I pretend to look at the calendar on my computer. I’m really thinking about what days Haven doesn’t work at the library. “Monday is pretty open, if that works for you.”
He jerks his shoulders up. “Might get another opinion.”
“Good idea. Wouldn’t want you to get ripped off.” I gesture to the garage bay. “No charge for just looking at it. I’ll roll that out and you can be on your way.”
He shifts again, looking uncomfortable with my kindness. He should be. It’s not fucking authentic. But I’m a businessman now. A real upstanding sort, whether his part of town likes it or not.
When he doesn’t respond, I just head back to his truck. Lower it to the ground, back it out—
And then quickly put it in park and jump down, because Haven is crossing the street.
There’s a hitch in her step when she sees Jeb standing out front, but she lifts her chin and keeps coming. Fuck, that takes balls.
“Here you go.” I shove the keys at him.
He takes them, but he doesn’t get in the truck. His gaze locks on Haven.
She has a book in her hand, that fucking thriller I asked about, and my stomach turns over at the position I’ve just put her in. Fucking selfish, Cash.
I step forward, putting my big body between them. “Hey,” I say, reaching for the book. “You didn’t need to—”
She presses it into my hands, but instead of stopping and turning around, she keeps coming, until the book is trapped between us, and her soft arms are curving up and around my neck. “Can you just—?”
And then she pulls my head down and kisses me.