Page 12 of Lucky Haven

“Who hasn’t been?” He squeezes my shoulders as he moves me away from his body.

I miss the big, hard strength of him more than I should.

He glares at me. “Tell me who’s been mean to you, Haven, and I’ll fuck their shit up.”

“Nobody,” I say, but my voice cracks and it’s an obvious lie. Everybody is an exaggeration. It’s not the entire town, just a shocking percentage. Everyone who thinks I’m a slut who seduced the youth pastor and then fled town. “Nobody who deserves the attention. That’s what bullies want, right? Attention? So I just hold my head up high and ignore them.”

His face pulls tight, a deep groove notching between his eyebrows. “You keep doing that.”

“Please don’t do anything rash.”

“I don’t do that anymore, don’t worry. But there are some people in town who need to be reminded that there are consequences for cruelty. I can enforce⁠—”

“I do not need a bodyguard.” I press my hands against his chest. His big, hard, unyielding chest. My fingers spread wide, as if in the middle of my protest, I could also maybe just grab a handful of him to keep for myself. But instead of curling my grip in and holding on tight, I just pat him and step back. “Thank you for the incredibly kind offer to protect me. I know you have encountered the worst of humanity, and I know all of this can be framed in a way that sounds very dramatic, but it’s just small-minded pettiness. I’m a big girl. I can handle some cold shoulders.”

“You need something.”

“Well it’s definitely not a bodyguard.” I laugh because the other option is crying, and I don’t want to do that. “Goodness, Cash, this is Dragonfly Creek.”

“A mad man just stalked a woman to my family’s ranch,” he points out darkly.

And his brother killed that man for trying to get to Hope.

I shiver. If anything, that’s a reason not to let Cash be any kind of protective bodyguard for me. I can’t be the reason he goes back to jail. And Zane Kincaid may have been cleared of any wrongdoing, but Cash won’t have the same luck with the sheriff’s department.

He didn’t seven years ago. And now he has a conviction on his record.

“What’s the other plan?” I say desperately. “You said there were two options to send a clear message to Jeb.”

“We can’t—” He cuts himself off. His gaze hardens, but as he sweeps it over my face, something shifts deep beneath his expression. Still tough as anything, but there’s a flash of wild recklessness. And then he softens all of that and gives me a tender smile. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?”

“Because the other option is leaning into the kiss.” He says like he’s talking to a simpleton.

Or an innocent.

Heat races to my cheeks. “Well, we wouldn’t want to have to do that again.”

“I didn’t say⁠—”

“It’s fine. Truly. I shouldn’t have— I don’t know what got into me— Anyway, let’s move on. Dinner?”

Cash stares at me for a long, confusing beat. Then he nods. “Dinner would be amazing.”

“I have pizza dough, and stuff for a salad? Or, um…”

“Pizza’s great. Can I help?”

I’d like that so much, but I need a minute to myself. So I give him an apologetic smile. “It’s a small kitchen.”

He nods. “Can I read your book while you prep, then?”

“Sure. Be my guest.”

As I pull the dough out of the fridge, he crosses to the couch and picks up the fantasy book I’m reading. But instead of sitting there, he brings it back into the kitchenette and folds himself onto one of the two chairs at the little table.

But he lets me focus on getting dinner ready, and by the time I’m pulling the pizza out of the oven an hour later, he’s probably read fifty pages or more.