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9

STEPHANIE

Three drinks in, and Steph had learned the following: Criss Holt had been a bartender in Savannah (he said manager, she said sure), he'd been sent to Hollow Oak by a mother who loved him enough to meddle, and he had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do with his life, though he'd never admit that last part out loud. He talked around it the way skilled liars talk around the truth, with just enough detail to seem honest and just enough deflection to avoid the uncomfortable center.

She should have found that annoying. Instead, she found herself leaning closer to hear him over the rain and the jukebox, close enough to catch the warmth of him that clung to his skin like it had been baked in. The fire had dried her clothes to the point of merely damp, and the beer had softened the hard edges of two miserable days of washed-out excavation into something manageable. Warm. Almost pleasant.

"So you've never had an actual career plan," she said, and it came out less like an accusation and more like an antagonizing flirt, despite herself.

"I've had several. They just didn't stick." He was sitting closer than he'd started, his chair angled toward her, one arm draped across the back of it. His shirt pulled across his chest when he moved, and the firelight turned his amber eyes into something molten. "The problem with plans is they assume you know who you're going to be in five years. I don't even know who I'm going to be next Tuesday."

"That's not charming. That's avoidant."

"It can be both." He grinned, and it was different from the cocky, calculated version she'd seen at the Griddle & Grind. Less polished. Like the whiskey had filed down whatever performance he usually put on and left something closer to the real architecture underneath. "What about you? Always wanted to dig things up?"

"Since I was six. My mom took me to a museum in D.C. and I spent three hours in the geology wing refusing to leave. She had to bribe me with ice cream."

"What flavor?"

"Mint chocolate chip. Why does that matter?"

"It tells me everything I need to know about a person." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and the distance between them halved. "Mint chocolate chip people are secretly wild under all that composure. It's a scientific fact."

"That is not a scientific fact."

"It's a Criss Holt fact, which is almost the same thing."

She laughed. She didn't mean to, and the sound surprised her enough that she pressed her lips together to stop it. But he'd already heard it, and the look on his face said he just won a prize. And that feeling alone spread more warmth than any drink could through her entire body.

The rain had been steady all night, but in the last twenty minutes it had picked up again, hammering the tin roof so hard that conversation required leaning in, and leaning in meant she could see the thin scar bisecting his left eyebrow and the way his jaw tightened just slightly when he was thinking about whether to say something honest or something clever.

His knee pressed against hers under the table. Light. Casual. The kind of contact that could be accidental if either of them wanted to pretend.

Neither of them moved away.

"I should go," she said, not moving, even though her mouth was urging her to go, her legs leaned in instead.

He stayed just as still. "Probably."

The fire popped as someone across the tavern laughed.

Steph finished her beer and set the glass down. She’d already made the decision an hour ago how she wanted to end this night, but she had really hoped she could talk herself down.

And maybe she could, but she didn’t want to. Not since he slid in next to her, if she was being honest with herself.

So, she stood up and pulled her jacket off the back of the chair. Looked down at him where he sat by the fire with the light playing across his face and his eyes watching her like she was his prey. The thought pushed the next words out of her mouth. "You wanna get out of here or what?"

This left eyebrow shot up in surprise, but then his mouth curved into a smile and he was on his feet before she could change her mind.

They didn't go out the front. Criss led her through a narrow hallway past the kitchen and out a side door that opened into the alley behind the tavern, where the rain came down in curtains and the eaves offered about six inches of shelter that neither of them used.

She made it three steps into the alley before he caught her wrist.

His hand was warm and calloused and firm without squeezing, and when she turned, he was right there, close enough that the rain ran between them like it couldn't decide which body to cling to. His eyes were darker than she'd seen them, reflecting his tiger with his pupil-blown and intent throbbing behind it. The playful ease from the fireside was gone, replaced by something focused and raw. She pulled him down to her lips.

The kiss was not gentle. It was not careful or exploratory or any of the soft, tentative things a first kiss was supposed to be. It was his mouth on hers, hot and demanding and tasting like whiskey, and her back against the wet brick wall of the tavern with rain streaming down both of them. His hands found her waist and pulled her in, and she felt the full solid length of him against her, chest and hips and thighs, warm even through the soaked layers of their clothes.

She bit his lower lip and he made a sound, low and rough, that vibrated through her sternum. His mouth moved to her jaw, her throat, teeth grazing the tendon of her neck while his hands slid under her jacket and found the curve of her waist through the damp thermal. His fingers were hot against her skin where the shirt had ridden up, and she arched into the contact, one hand gripping the back of his neck, pulling him closer.