He loathed both of those options.
Sleeping together would mean potentially hurting her feelings when he couldn’t give her any more than sex. And it would be a cold day in hell before he asked this girl to be friends with benefits. If another man suggested that to her, he would deck the asshole. How could he do the same?
Or she might not be immune, but didn’t want him like this. Not enough, anyway. The lust might be there, but her willpower was strong enough to overcome it. Because ultimately she wanted someone else.
His chest lurched, a nerve starting to jump behind his eye.
“Go ahead and answer it,” he rasped, easing her against the wall and backing off, turning to shove a handful of fingers through his hair.
Better to have her take the call than deliver him that blow, right?
“Shauna,” Hannah said a second later into the phone, her breath still a touch labored. “Please tell me you have good news.”
A long pause.
She sucked in a breath and turned in a circle, patting her pockets as if looking for a pen somewhere on the rain-soaked ground. Fox opened the notes application on his phone and handed it to her, nodding when she gave him a grateful look. Hannah stopped moving abruptly, both devices lighting up her face. “Tomorrow?” She shook her head. “No way they could pull that off. No way I can pull that off. Right?”
What? Fox mouthed.
She held up a finger. “Okay, could you send me their contact info and the address of the recording studio? Thank you! Thank you so much, Shauna. I owe you.”
Hannah dropped the phone to her side, looking almost as dazed as when they were kissing. “What’s happening, Freckles?”
“The band I want for Henry’s shanties? They’re leaving on tour in two days. For six months. They’re going to be in the studio tomorrow recording some reels for Instagram and—”
“Reels. You lost me.”
“It’s not important.” She waved the phones. “They like the material I sent and can work through the night on arrangements. Lay down a demo of the tracks tomorrow. The money I offered is a lot for an indie band to pass up. So is the opportunity to be on a film soundtrack. If Sergei likes what they do, they’ll make time on tour to come back and record for real.” A few seconds went by. “I mean, I could wait and try to find an LA band. But I know the way Sergei works and he’ll lose interest in the whole idea if I don’t move fast.”
Hannah swiped her thumb over the screen of her phone, tapping. She closed her eyes when a woman’s throaty growl filled the air outside the church hall, accompanied by twin fiddles and a snare drum—hand slowly lifting to her throat, the mouth he’d so recently kissed curling into a smile.
“This is them,” she said. “I’m definitely going to Seattle.”
Fox realized he was smiling back at her, because his heart wouldn’t let him do anything else when she was happy. “No, Freckles. We’re going to Seattle.”
She brightened. Actually brightened at the news he’d be coming along. Did she really think he’d let her travel alone? “But your fishing trip . . .”
“Not until Wednesday morning. That gives us the entire day tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she breathed, shifting, then reaching out a hand for him to take. Leaving it there for a long moment, her expression vulnerable until he grabbed on, his throat in a manacle. Hannah hesitated to move back toward the bingo hall right away, and Fox sensed their earlier discussion was far from over. The same way a red sky meant rain was coming, Hannah needed every loose end tied together. And in this case, the loose ends were inside him. She wasn’t going to stop digging until she found and identified them one by one.
Part of Fox was relieved as hell that she cared enough to try. But the rest of him, the man who guarded his wounds like a junkyard dog, had his back bunched up beneath the collar. She was either going to pour salt into those wounds by rejecting him . . . or force him to suture himself. Was he even close to prepared for either one?
No.
Since college, his defense mechanism had been to bail out before he could be patronized or reminded he was only good for one thing. But bailing wasn’t going to be possible with Hannah. Not in the way he usually did it—by pulling a disappearing act. God no. He didn’t want to disappear on her. But he could put a stop to this snowballing expectation of sex between them. Now. He could do that before she pulled the rug out from under his feet. Because with Hannah? He wouldn’t survive the landing.
Chapter Eighteen