Page 16 of Only One I Ever Wanted

I strode down the hall, using every inch of my long legs to get away from her before I did something stupid.

Like ask to stay for dinner. And maybe dessert.

Chapter6

Nora

My heart ratelowered as Sully strode away from me.

Well, that was weird. It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d been around him half naked. We hung out most summers when we were teens and I’d never had that kind of a reaction to him. Well, not raw attraction.

I certainly had noticed how he filled out his uniform and how he looked in a bathing suit on the lake.

But not like…that. And now twice in a handful of days.

Shaking it off, I looked down at my phone and rewatched the raw footage of him singing under the sink. There was no doubt that Sullivan Murdock took care of his body. I figured I was immune to superior male bodies after being around the locker room, thanks to Booker.

Not that I’d been in the locker room much in the last few years.

We’d led very separate lives.

But working in Los Angeles there was no shortage of prime male specimens around. And yet Sully, with his work-rough body, had given me the first flutter of...somethingin a long time.

“Attraction. You can say it,” I muttered. I hadn’t been with anyone other than Booker in the whole of my life. Even when the divorce had dragged on for nearly a year, I’d been too focused on wrapping up things with my work.

I shook my head. Sullivan Murdock—not sure that was a good idea.

Still shaking my head, I wandered into the secondary bedroom I’d set up with my laptop and monitor for editing purposes. I loaded in the short video and started tweaking. Handily, the song was just off-trend enough to make for a different video.

By the time music was trendy, it was being oversaturated on the social media platforms.

The older song from the late 2000s might just hit the right notes. Especially when most of us in our mid thirties were doing the first home buy or remodel. At least those of us who could afford it.

I had a sizable settlement from my divorce. I was pretty sure most of it was related to guilt on Booker’s end, but I wasn’t stupid or prideful enough not to take it. Especially when the lure for a home had been overwhelming.

I worked on researching the other videos out there for remodeling. So many of them were stiff and formal. I made some tweaks to the video and somehow an hour had passed. I usually made much more professional videos, but I had a feeling that rawness of it would work in Sullivan’s favor.

I dug through his social media, wincing at the shitty photos.

Even if he didn’t want to be my first client, I was going to help him. It was the least I could do for an old friend.

I put up the short video under my personal account and tagged his company. At worst, even if it flopped, it couldn’t hurt.

And most of my high school friends that I’d kept in touch with still followed my personal account. At the very least Indigo Falls would get a kick out of seeing the ever-sturdy and stable Sully rocking out to some old school music.

Since I was already on the laptop, I buzzed through my emails quickly before I went back out to the kitchen. Sully was putting dishes from my sink into the dishwasher.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I told him, rushing in.

“Just want to start a load so I can check and make sure—jeez.” He pulled out his phone from his pocket. “This thing is going crazy.”

I peeked around his arm to see his notifications. I gave a delighted squeak.

“What?” He looked down at me. Unfortunately, he’d gone out to his truck for a new shirt. This one smelled like it came fresh out of the dryer, without his usual cedar layer of scent. Guess most of that had been washed off from his battle with the water lines.

I cleared my throat. “Oh, nothing.”

He eased me out from behind him. “What did you do?”

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