Page 203 of One Wild Wish

He hadn’t agreed to investigate with me today, only to join my friends for a drink. The possibility of combing the city with him sounded too good to be true, grinding on his pole sounded even better, but we’d spent the last nine years ignoring each other, angry and hurt. Me ashamed and pissed at myself. August furious with me . Not the kind of history suited to unearthing parental information that could trigger my own personal earthquake.

That didn’t lessen my internal tug-of-war: I wanted him with me for this daunting scavenger hunt. I wanted him playing me songs, flirting with me, possibly thrusting his pole inside me . An electrifying and petrifying prospect.

Which meant I needed to focus on one sure thing: August and I were friends. We had been, at least. A relationship I wanted back. A fling might calm the fire one look from him stirred, but he could never be a one-night stand, and we’d never be more, certainly not today, with this journal and the challenging hours ahead of me.

Finding my father was priority one.

August trailed me from the kitchen. He wasn’t even close, but I could barely breathe through the feverish grip on my lungs.

“So, we’ll meet in a couple hours?” he asked.

Hopefully long enough to get these hot flashes under control. “Five thirty. I’ll text you.”

He opened the front door and reached toward me. “Give that to me.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?” My heart? My soul? He owned both already.

“The box. So you can lock up.”

Right. The box I was holding. So I could lock up.

Even his simple gesture had me picking apart his intentions. The action also had me all thumbs.

What should have been a simple handoff of a small box went haywire when his hand brushed my arm. I squeaked and fell into him. The box tumbled to the ground, his arm came around my waist, and my hand grazed his pole .

He grunted, short and harsh. I should have moved my hand. A normal person who needed to be only platonic with her ex-best friend while she chased down leads on her ghosted father should have moved her hand. I did move my hand, but it was more of a needy slide.

Air hissed through his teeth. “Do that again, Gwen, and I’ll toss you over my shoulder, take you up to your childhood bedroom, and live out the dirty fantasies that kept me up for most of high school.”

Good Lord.

I jumped back and smacked my shoulder into the doorframe. My lungs had practically incinerated, burned up with my unquenched desire. Still, I managed to say, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He was breathing hard, too, and he smirked.

He wasn’t a smirker. He was a hate-song writer. I couldn’t get my head around it all. “What are we doing?”

“Honestly?”

“No, August. I’d like you to lie to me so I can continue acting like a moron. I don’t even know why you came by or why you’re in town.” Most of his family lived in Chicago now. He didn’t have a house here.

His lips tipped into a frown. “I’m not really sure anymore.”

“Why you’re in town, or what we’re doing?”

He dragged a hand through his dark hair. The strands were shorter than they used to be, but they still had a slight curl, that one lick up top defying gravity. I itched to smooth it down. Touching him wasn’t smart, and I was a smart girl. A together girl. A girl who needed to focus.

“I came home to take care of some personal business,” he said cryptically. “As for us, I’d like to hang out this afternoon. We’ll take it from there.”

A loony laugh escaped me. “We’ll take it from there?”

“Now who’s repeating who?”

“You do know how weird this is, right? You and me hanging out and…” I glanced at his crotch, the loose fabric tented slightly. For a second, I wondered if that personal business had to do specifically with me, but the possibility was laughable. His brother lived here. He likely had music contacts in the area, too. Still, he’d shown up at my mother’s door, looking for me.

He shrugged an unaffected shoulder, like our flirting didn’t mock the laws of nature. “I’ve decided to stop analyzing it.”

He bent to gather the few things that had tumbled from my box, and I froze. It was one thing to give him his Badass PI badge, but each memento littering the walkway—the only keepsakes I’d saved from my childhood—were all linked to the man bent over them. Every last one.