“You’re going to have to tell me about those tattoos someday,” Lydia said, pulling on her clothing. She had just en
ough time to scamper up to her room for a quick shower before her sunrise class.
Wrench shrugged. “Not a lot to do in jail. One of the guys was a good artist. Short story.”
Lydia had to chuckle. “And that scar?”
Wrench looked cagey.
“What?” Lydia asked, pulling her hair back into a quick ponytail.
“Tex said not to talk about how I got scars,” Wrench confessed.
“You’ve been talking a lot with those guys in The Den,” Lydia said suspiciously. “What else did they tell you?”
“Give you compliments,” Wrench said. “Don’t talk about work or how I got scars. Learn to dance.” He said the last with absolute dread in his voice.
“War—Wrench!” Lydia stopped gathering up herself. “You don’t have to do any of those things!”
He glowered at her in disbelief.
“You don’t have anything to prove to me,” Lydia said firmly, wishing she’d said so sooner. “You don’t have to be something you aren’t. You are everything I need, everything I never knew I wanted. If I ever gave you the impression that I wanted more, I was wrong.”
She remembered his face in the moonlight when he’d told her he loved her. He had been ashamed that he wasn’t the poetry and picnic.
“When I said we should get married—“
“I don’t want to be something you have to do,” Lydia cautioned. “Not ever.”
“You’re not,” Wrench said simply. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Lydia could not resist looking at his erection, which had not so much as stuttered in intensity while they talked. She could not doubt that he wanted her, and he was refreshingly unabashed about it. She had no idea whether he was still talking about matrimony, but she stripped her shirt back off.
She could rinse off in the shower here and still be to class on time.
Wrench was reaching for her as swiftly as she was reaching for him.
And then Lydia didn’t even care if she made it to class at all.
Chapter 21
“Got a load of roofing supplies coming on the next charter,” Travis said loudly with a smile at Wrench that lacked both secrecy and subtlety. “I’ll need your help getting it up here, Wrench.”
Wrench gave a deliberately slow glance in Scarlet’s direction, but the red-haired resort owner was frowning over her phone, oblivious to their conversation. They were gathered at the back of the bar, where outgoing guests were getting their last drinks and Wrench was carrying their luggage up to the courtesy van.
“Fine,” Wrench said gruffly, putting down the giant rolling bag he’d carried up from one of the lower cottages. He knew that neither his expression nor his tone would betray his own nervousness; this was the flight that Jenny would be returning on, his niece Ally in tow.
He hadn’t seen either Ally or his sister in months, and probably Ally’s last memory of him was promising to pay for dance classes that he’d never been able to deliver. She was eight now, so grown up compared to the adoring little niece he remembered bouncing on his knee and carrying on his shoulders.
What if she hated him? What if she blamed him for her mother being put in witness protection?
Wrench certainly blamed himself.
“It’ll be in about eleven,” Travis continued loudly as Scarlet tucked her phone away and returned her attention to her staff. “I’ll bring a load of guests and luggage up, then I’ll need your help for a second load.”
Wrench was just wondering how much more suspicious things could look when Tex came to the rescue. “Get you a drink, Scarlet?”
“I might need one,” she said unexpectedly—Wrench had never seen her with anything stronger than a glass of water. “That ass Benedict Beehag has the nerve to tell me he’s showing up tomorrow afternoon in a helicopter with some new interested buyers that his lawyer found for him.” Beehag was the owner of the island, and he had been threatening to sell it out from under Scarlet for several months now.