Page 6 of The Contractor's Rose
I left my hair down, a little damp from the shower, loose around my shoulders. No makeup, just lip balm. Casual. Effortless. Like I hadn’t stood in front of the mirror for fifteen minutes wondering if Gavin would notice the curve of my neckline or the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra underneath.
I was losing it.
Totally, completely losing it.
Downstairs, the air hit me in the face—wet, stale, and thick with the smell of drowned pages. I cracked open the front and back doors, letting the morning air filter in and carry away the worst of it.
The front display was a soggy mess. Pages had warped into limp, swollen curls. Nothing looked salvageable since water had come from above from what I can now process visually was what looks like multiple points where pipes had burst, landing on any surface it could find.
It hurt. Like a betrayal. From my own shop. The very place that had always comforted me.
These books were my world—my friends, my company, my livelihood. And now they were ruined. Drenched in a storm I hadn’t seen coming.
Just like me. But my storm seemed to come in the form of a tall, older contractor …
Before I could spiral too deep into that thought, a low rumble outside made me freeze. A truck.
I turned toward the sound, heart thudding. He parked right out front in a no-parking zone like he owned the damn street, engine cutting off before the door slammed shut. And then there he was—tall, broad, the kind of man who didn’t justentera room. Hefilledit.
He wore a black T-shirt that stretched just right across his chest, with sleeves that hugged his biceps without even trying. Faded jeans worn in all the right places. Work boots. Sunglasses pushed onto his head. Toolbelt slung low on his hips like it was part of his body.
I swallowed hard.
“Morning, Rose.”
His voice scraped across my skin like velvet and smoke. Low. Rough around the edges. Like he’d smoked too many cigars in a past life and his lungs still hadn’t forgiven him for it.
“Hi,” I said, too breathless, too quick. I hated how obvious it sounded.
He looked at me, then around the store. His gaze moved slowly, steady, assessing. “Did you sleep at all?”
“A little.”
He stepped farther inside, boots heavy on the soaked wood, eyes narrowing at the worst of the damage. “I brought a Shop-Vac, two fans, and a big dehumidifier. It won’t save the books, but some of the flooring might pull through.”
“Thanks for coming back.”
His eyes met mine, steady and sure. “I said I would.”
But there was something else in his gaze now—something that lingered a beat too long on the line of my collarbone, on the slope of my mostly bare shoulder.
He noticed. Iknewhe would notice.
And it thrilled me in a way I hadn’t expected. Like I had asecret. Like I’d finally stepped into one of those dog-eared paperbacks I kept hidden in my nightstand drawer when I was younger.
And suddenly, I didn’t want to be good. Or sweet. Or careful.
I wanted to bewanted.
FOUR
GAVIN
Fuck.
She wasn’t wearing a bra.
The moment I stepped inside, it hit me like a punch to the gut. That sundress was softer, thinner, lower-cut than usual—delicate little blue flowers scattered across pale cotton like something out of a dream. And judging by the tightness in my jeans, my cock took notice. Immediately.
