Page 25 of More Than My Hometown

8

EWAN

I think Maisey forgot that going fishing means being up before the sun.

Giving her credit where it’s due, she’s up and at ’em when I knock on her door at o’dark-thirty. She just doesn’t look very happy with me about it. Add that to the unchanged column—Maisey is still not a morning person.

“There’s coffee, right?” she grumbles, climbing up into my truck.

Is there coffee? Of course there’s coffee…I’m not a monster…

I lean over her, reaching for the center console and grabbing the to-go cup I prepared special for her. My arm brushes against her breasts, and my insides tense, suddenly on high alert as we make contact, wanting more. Wondering what is going through her mind right now, and if this brief, barely there touch is messing with her as much as it is me. It’s taking everything in me to think of something other than that kiss. The damn good kiss.

And how I want to do it again.

“Hazelnut creamer and two sugars,” I say, handing her the cup. Panic briefly washes over me, my brain suddenly second-guessing if this is still how she takes her morning caffeine jolt. Right behind it is the realization that all the things I think I know about her, I’m going to have to learn all over again.

But then she smiles.

Instantly, heat spreads through me, that smile just as magical now as it was when we were kids. Even more powerful than it has been in my dreams these last ten years. It about knocks me on my ass, but then Maisey slips her hands around mine, holding both it and the cup, grounding me to her.

“Please tell me you didn’t go out and buy hazelnut creamer just so you could make me coffee?”

“No, I already had it.” Heat rushes up the back of my neck, giving me away. “I still use it.”

I pull back from her, still fighting the urge to kiss her, and close her door. I’m around the truck and climbing behind the wheel in no time, greeted by that same disarming smile.

“Still?” she prods. A cute little yawn escapes, prompting her to take a sip.

“Picked up the habit from you.” I shrug, as if it’s nothing. “When you left, there was a mostly full thing in the fridge, and I wasn’t about to waste it. Found I missed it when I tried to switch back.”

It was how I imagined you tasted…

Turns out, I was wrong.

Her kiss tastes nothing like the sweetened creamer she loves so much. It’s better. Sweeter. Fuller. A whole lot more satisfying.

“Still a man of mystery, Ewan Hayes,” she coos, taking another sip.

I shake my head—I am anything but. Truth be told, I’m pretty damn simple when it all comes down to it. I’ll take her thinking that though.

We make the rest of the short drive over to Silver Lake in silence, the early morning darkness feeling like a blanket surrounding us. Nothing about it awkward, just two people still in the process of waking up, listening to the radio as the gravel crunches under the tires.

Twenty minutes later, we’re in the water, nothing but the early morning quiet surrounding us. The Hooked on a Reeling gently moves along with the waves, the soft, easy movement threatening to lull me back to sleep.

“Do we really have to use live bait?” Maisey scrunches her nose, not bothering to hide her borderline disgust. “It’s just so…”

Raising an eyebrow, I wait for her to finish. The nightcrawler precariously held in between her thumb and forefinger wriggles like the metaphorical worm on a hook—errr, well, almost on a hook in this case—as if it knows its moments are numbered.

“Yucky,” she finishes, her blue eyes pleading with me to give her an out.

I chuckle, unable to hold back. The woman is a trauma nurse and sees all sorts of God knows what when it comes to blood and guts, broken bones, and other injuries. But putting a worm on a barbed piece of metal is what pushes her over the edge.

“Do I need to bait your hook?”

It’s a simple question. Two possible answers—yes or no. Maybe a please thrown in there. But the sly smile and the fiery flash in Maisey’s eyes betray her thought process. And it’s anything but simple.

“Even after all these years, that still sounds dirty,” she giggles, the sound echoing out over the open water, vibrating through the air and settling right in my chest.