Page 53 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

No, no, no. There was no way. No way she could know. Unless…unless Dean told her? Or someone saw us? Or maybe I was just so obviously reeling that I projected “I hooked up with your son and I can’t stop thinking about it” like a sandwich board sign.

I tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. “How’s the rest of the ranch? I heard the power was out clear up to the north bluff.”

“Everything is good, the storage building is the only one that doesn’t have a backup generator, so everywhere else had power,” she answered as she gave me a slow, knowing once-over that had all the subtlety of a polygraph test. She was about to say more when a knock at the door made us both turn.

And there he was. Dean Lockhart, larger than life, standing in my doorway with a file folder and a face that gave nothing away. He looked like he hadn’t slept, but in a good way, his jaw was dark with stubble and his hair was just messy enough to make my heart rattle unpleasantly against my ribs.

“Hey, Mom,” he greeted her as if this was a perfectly casual visit, as if less than twelve hours ago he hadn’t stripped me naked and been inside of me.

“Dean!” Selma exclaimed, with the kind of delight only mothers can channel. “Come in, come in. Your timing is perfect. I was just checking in on Felicity after hearing about you two getting locked inside the storage warehouse. She assured me you kept her distracted.”

If I had been drinking, I would have done a spit take. Did she know what happened between us and was just toying with me?

Dean didn’t respond, but that wasn’t uncharacteristic for him. Instead, he dipped his chin in acknowledgement while I was begging the earth to open up and swallow me whole. Then his eyes met mine for one electric second, and that was it, my internal hard drive crashed, and all I could see or hear was the memory of his mouth on mine, his hands on me, the weight of his body on top of me. For a moment, the office felt too small, the oxygen scarce.

I looked away, my heart pounding wildly against my chest.

“Just needed to drop off the revised numbers for the fall festival fundraiser.” He set the folder on my desk, careful not to touch me, but still close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his skin.

Selma watched the exchange like a hawk, her eyes narrowing. She stood, smoothed her blouse, and patted her hand on the desk twice. “Well, I’ll let you two get to it. Don’t work too hard, Felicity,” she said, and then, with a parting look at her son, “And don’t give her too much trouble, Dean.”

“I won’t,” he agreed, but he looked at me as he said it, and I had to wondered if he meant it as a promise or a dare.

The moment the door clicked shut behind Selma, the temperature in my office shot up ten degrees. All at once, the air thickened with the weight of everything we’d done—and everything we were supposed to pretend we hadn’t. I stared at the folder Dean had left on my desk as if it was a bomb ticking down. In reality, the dangerous, uncontainable thing in the room was Dean, standing there, hands in his pockets, gaze boring through me with that impossible combination of patience and predatory focus.

He didn’t speak right away. Neither did I. It was, by far, the longest stretch of silence I’d endured in my professional life. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to start narrating the events of last night, live and uncensored as they played back in my mind, because that was all I could think about. I tried to play it cool, flipping open the folder only to realize I was staring at a spreadsheet upside down. Subtle.

“Distraction, huh?” he repeated, this time with a half-smirk that made my stomach do a triple axel.

“I wasn’t…it’s not how it sounds…I was just saying…because I’m afraid of…I didn’t mean it to sound like that, I was just saying you helped distract me from my fear of the dark,” I finally was able to complete a single coherent thought.

The corners of his mouth tilted upwards. “I’ll take the compliment.”

This needed to stop before I started rating his performance on a ten-point scale. I snapped the file shut and forced myself to look him in the eye. “Listen. About last night⁠—”

He took one step closer, leaned his knuckles on the edge of my desk, and dropped his voice. “About last night, what?”

My entire body went traitorously hypersensitive. The office, which normally smelled like coffee and toner from the copy machines, now radiated whatever aftershave he’d used plus the faintest whiff of hay and wind and something uniquely him.

I scrambled for professionalism and failed. “I’ve been thinking,” I said, trying to sound brisk and in control. “This thing between us, I don’t know what it is.”

I paused, hoping he would fill in the blanks for me so I didn’t have to ask him outright. He didn’t. Dean Lockhart was perfectly comfortable in prolonged silences.

“I don’t know if it was a one-night thing or what it is to you but⁠—”

“It’s not,” he cut in.

“Not what?” I asked, thrown off from my train of thought.

“A one night thing,” he recited what I’d just said, but the words sounded like they brought a bitter taste to his mouth.

“Oh okay…” I was surprised at his response.

I’d pictured this conversation going a completely different way. I thought I’d be letting him off the hook from him having to have the it’s-not-you-it’s-me talk. The I’m-just-not-looking-for-anything-serious talk. I’d sort of expected him to stay quiet and then agree to whatever I said. From what I’d heard around town, he wasn’t really known for relationships.

But he had said things to me, that I made him want things he never had before. But those were words, and I’d heard plenty of pretty words before in my life.

Once again, I scrambled for professionalism, trying to find my footing, and failed. “We need to set some boundaries. Guidelines. If this…thing—” I gestured between us, as if this explained everything, “—is going to happen, it can’t mess with work. Or Maverick. Or my life. Or yours. Or, you know, our jobs.”