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He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth. She felt that nip in her core.
“Trust me, Gretch.” He said it so easily, as if trusting him should be her natural inclination.
Unfortunately, it was. She nodded. “Follow me to my place, so I can drop my Jeep off and get a change of clothes.”
He pushed his full lips out into a pout.
“What?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t need clothes.” He raised his brows, sending heat climbing up her chest.
~ ~ ~
Gretchen sat up in her seat as Finn pulled his giant truck off the asphalt and into the woods. When he’d followed her to her apartment earlier, she’d expected his shiny black Porsche, not the 4 x 4 truck he’d had to help her climb into. As she looked around, trying to pick out a road in the dense undergrowth, she realized how useless the little car would’ve been.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” She slid him a look out of the corner of her eye.
Finn’s lips turned up. “I always know where I’m going.”
“Yeah, but we’re in the woods.” A limb screeched over the roof of the truck and she jumped.
Beside her, he laughed softly.
“What?” She slid her knee onto the bench seat as she turned.
“Nothing.” He tried unsuccessfully to bite back another snicker.
“No. Not nothing. Why are you chuckling?”
That wiped the smile from his face. “I’m notchuckling.” The grin that crept back belied his words. “I don’t chuckle.”
Her own smile bloomed, and she scooted across the seat, sliding her hand over the hard ridges of his abdomen to his ribs, where he was most ticklish.
“You, Finn James, are a chuckler.” Her fingers danced across his skin, making him squirm underneath her touch. “And I love it.”
He tensed. Before she could falsely assure him she loved his laugh and not him, he pulled the truck into a clearing.
He shifted into park and stared ahead. “So, what do you think?”
What did she think? Whatcouldshe think? They were parked in a tiny clearing, encircled by towering trees. In front of them sat a small, rustic cottage. Wildflowers carpeted the ground between them and the house. It looked like something out of a fairytale, only more magical. She pushed out of the truck, almost afraid to step on the tiny buds beneath her.
“Wh . . . how?” She shook her head. How had he known she needed this? After her uncertainty over their relationship, after Neil’s disapproval, this place served as a balm for all her emotional wounds.
“It’s so tiny. So.” Words failed. “How did you find it?”
He watched her through narrowed eyes as he chewed his bottom lip. “I built it.”
She’d turned back to look at the cabin, and now her head swung to him again. “You built it?”
Woodworking had always come so easily to him. As a teen, he’d always been building something: forts, furniture. But a house?
He nodded and rubbed a large hand over his chin. The callouses made a soft scratching sound as they ran over the shadow of his beard.
Her lips quirked up, and she skipped to him, slipping her arms around his waist to pull him close. Of course, he’d built the perfect little cottage in the middle of nowhere. The man was a walking contrast. Poor boy from the wrong part of town, powerful enforcer with a sleek apartment, raw masculinity in a rustic wood cabin.
She’d convinced herself over the past few weeks that she’d fallen in love as Jay and Lilah slept together. She’d been wrong. She’d fallen in love with Finn James over a decade ago. She opened her mouth, the confession bubbling on her tongue, but he interrupted her.
“You said I hide out as Jay, that I don’t go back and forth like you.”
