“Come on, Finn.” She pursed those red-glossed lips like she could barely tolerate his foolishness. “That is such a man plan.”
“A man plan.”
“Yes. You don’t know how to be among the living anymore so you’re going to…go live alone in a cave. Right. Good thinking. That will pop your how-to-be-human skills right back into place.”
He made a frustrated sound and pulled into the lot of the hotel to park so he could face her, make her understand. “You saw what happened today. I’m not fit to be around other people right now. I beat a guy down for taking a picture. And I was…aggressive with you last night.”
“Aggressive?” Her mouth flattened, and she put a finger to her chest. “I kissed you. I was the aggressor. You were just…complicit in the aggressiveness. And you’re lucky I haven’t gone two years’ celibate, because had I been in your shoes, I would’ve convinced you to go up to my room and used you eight ways to Sunday and back again by now. You’d be limping.”
His libido gave a hard kick and knocked the logical thoughts out of his head for a moment. “I—”
“You need to be around people.”
That snapped his attention back to where it needed to be—mostly. “No.”
“You promised your boss you’d be around friends. You made me promise your boss that I’d make sure you did that. You made me lie to the FBI. That’s got to be a federal offense or something.”
“Made is a strong word.”
“Finn.”
He groaned. “What would you have me do? You want to babysit me, Livvy? Come stay at my lake house and make sure I don’t turn into a deviant?”
She stared at him, her gaze way too sharp, and then tipped her chin up in challenge. “Is that an invitation? Because you know you shouldn’t test me. I could babysit the hell out of you, Finn Dorsey. I know who you used to be. You don’t get to become a bad guy. I will make you do slumber-party things like play charades or watch crappy nineties movies or incessant reruns of Friends. You won’t be able to fight your old goofy side. It will emerge like a freaking butterfly and smother scary Finn.”
He blinked and stared, and then he couldn’t help it—he laughed. “A freaking butterfly?”
She smiled triumphantly. “A goofy freaking butterfly.”
He let out a long breath, some of the tension from the morning draining out of him. “You’re weird.”
“So are you.”
He rubbed the spot between his eyes. “Why are you trying to help, Liv? You should be running in the other direction.”
A hand touched his shoulder. “The same reason you busted down my door last night and then took care of me when I was panicking. That’s what friends do.” She sighed and let her hand fall away. “Last night, I was mortified that y’all saw me like that. But having Kincaid and Rebecca there…you there, it ended up making it better. I didn’t have to hide or lie about it because all of you get it. I think I’d forgotten what it felt like not to be alone in that.”
She paused like she was figuring out her own feelings about it.
“I don’t know,” she continued. “I have friends. I’m sure you do, too. But maybe there’s something to be said for being around people who knew you before you were a grown-up, before everything changed. You don’t need a babysitter, but maybe you could use an old friend who knows the original color of the paint beneath all those layers life has slapped on you. Maybe I could, too.”
He lifted his head at that and found her gaze stripped down and honest. Vulnerable. Despite what she’d seen today, she wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe afraid for him, but nothing beyond that. There was trust in her eyes—something he hadn’t seen from anyone in a long damn time. No one trusted anyone in the world he’d just left. Everyone had an angle. And even his coworkers and boss were wary of him right now. So seeing Liv so open and earnest made warmth curl up the back of his neck and spread through his chest. Warmth and something else he chose to ignore. Something very, very specific to this woman.
Specific and dangerous.
He should walk away. Stick to his original plan and leave her out of it. Tell her he didn’t need her help or want her company. But the words wouldn’t come out.
He swallowed past the thickness in his throat, and a different kind of honesty came out instead. “I read your letter. You dropped it on the deck last night.”
Her expression went slack. “What?”
“I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. You had an original paint color, too. You wanted to be a photographer and artist more than anything.” He glanced down at her business wear. “You weren’t going to be a nine-to-fiver.”
Her spine stiffened, and her gaze turned guarded. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He took a breath, felt the Don’t do it anxiety well up in him, and pushed past it. “If you’re serious about this—us being in each other’s lives again—I may have an option to benefit us both.”
Her brows lifted.