there, that chemical pull that made her a little sweaty and dizzy.
She stood a little straighter. “I have to go to work. I’m glad things are going well for you and your career. Have a good life, Paddy.”
He grabbed her hand, twining his fingers with hers, and a shock of connection rang through her. She could not want this.
The heat of him sort of caressed her skin, and it wasn’t even gross and sweaty because it was a thousand degrees outside. Was he some sort of sorcerer or something?
His attention shifted from where their hands were together to her face. “Wait. Let me walk you over. You’re at the library, right?”
Using all her will, she slowly pulled her hand free, their fingers still connected until the very last.
“No. Really. I can’t. I don’t have room in my life for you and all that comes with you.”
He flinched a little, but she had to give him credit for doggedness. “You don’t even know me now. How can you know what comes with me?”
“I’m truly happy to see your success. You worked for it. But come on, I’m no dummy. I know what comes with a life like yours.” She took a step away and then another until she was far enough to get a breath that wasn’t laden with him. “Enjoy your Friday.”
She left him there on the sidewalk as she kept going until finally, after she’d turned the corner, the squeezing pressure in her belly eased and she could breathe again.
She’d made the right choice.
She liked him. It wasn’t like she could lie about that. But she’d spent years of struggle to make herself a life she wanted, too many to let her ladybits take over. Truth was, she let that fear remain. The fear that his wild life would be one cringeworthy experience after the next; the fear of all that chaos and insanity kept her steadfast.
The library beckoned, and she kept moving toward it. She had a direction, and it was forward, not back. There was room for pleasure; she certainly hadn’t left sex behind, after all. But fleeting pleasure wasn’t stable or strong. That’s what he offered, and so she needed to pass on it.
* * *
BUT WHEN SHE walked into the coffee shop on Tuesday, he was there. Natalie ignored him and once she got out to the street—and man, was she glad she’d driven that day so she could put a closed door and a bunch of steel between them—she saw he waited just on the other side of her car.
“What? God, I told you, I’m not interested.”
His smile was slow, easy and effortlessly sexy. “You’re not interested in Paddy the rock star.”
Natalie frowned. “Is that so hard to believe? Not everyone wants to latch on to you for your fame, you know. I’m happy for you and your brothers. I like your music. But I don’t party like that anymore.” Hell, she didn’t live like that anymore. “I’m not that girl.”
He leaned against her car like a cat. “Darlin’, none of us are those people anymore. If I drank like that now, I’d be seriously fucked up the next day. When I’m not on tour, I’m here in Hood River. Not exactly known as a place to do blow off a hooker’s ass now, is it?”
She groaned. “I have no idea. It could be, and there could be a huge hooker-cocaine thing going on, and I wouldn’t know it. This is my point. Why are you so set on me, anyway?”
“You’re so suspicious. It’s sort of sexy. I’m set on you because I like you. Let me take you to dinner. Somewhere low-key. Hell, I’ll make you dinner at my house. No photographers. No keg stands. Just Paddy and Natalie.”
“Patrick, just leave it be. There are a million women who would be happy to have dinner with you. I’m a librarian living in a small town. I don’t have dinner with rock stars.”
“I won’t be a rock star at dinner. I’ll be Paddy. Anyway, I love books. Come on. Give me a chance. While I’m impressed you’d think a million women would be interested in me, I’m only interested in one woman. You.”
She got in and closed the door. After she’d started the car, she opened her passenger window a little. “Look, I’m flattered, I really am. But I’m not the woman for you.”
She pulled away, and he gave her a cheeky wave.
In retrospect, it was right then that she knew she was in very big trouble when it came to Patrick Hurley.
“SO REALLY, HE’S JUST... It’s like I keep telling myself I need to lose ten pounds before my high school reunion, but he’s a dozen doughnuts. Ooooh, Natalie, you know I’m delicious. Just one bite. I’m so good with coffee.”
Tuesday, Natalie’s housemate and best friend, broke out laughing. “I know how much you love doughnuts, too. So why not eat one? Or six? My point is, who freaking cares if you get a taste of Paddy Hurley? This isn’t Little House on the Prairie. You’re not going to get fired for premarital sex by the town elders.”
“It’s not that.” She made no bones about liking sex. Natalie considered good sex as important to her life as doughnuts and coffee. Paddy came with too many complications and too much noise. He had complicated written all over him.
“Then what is it?”
That wasn’t it, either.
“It’s just...” Natalie licked her lips. “He’s messy and complicated. He’d take so much time to handle, and I’m over handling other adults. I don’t want to be a nursemaid, a psychologist, and I sure have no desire to parent him while I’m fucking him, too. Ugh. I spent years and years stepping over people passed out in my house. I had to call the paramedics more than once because some random stranger, or my dad for that matter, had overdosed. I’ve had enough cleaning up puke and pretending not to smell liquor on breath at nine in the morning.”
She’d lived a life utterly out of control until she’d finally left home at seventeen, and even then it wasn’t until college that she finally got her shit together. Control meant everything. It meant you lived a life of your own choosing and not at someone else’s mercy, and it meant not being responsible for keeping grown-ass people from driving off a cliff.
It was the leaving that had been the key. The ultimate act of taking control of her life was walking away from that house. That pretty, solidly upper-class shell that was rotting inside. Just like her childhood had been.
“He comes with too much shit that pushes my buttons. Hot in bed or not, I just don’t want to chance it.” Paddy was a walking-talking advertisement for out of control.
Tuesday was careful to keep pity out of her eyes, but she sighed heavily. “All I’m saying is that life is made from chances you take. How do you know he won’t be worth it?”
Easy for Tuesday to say. Then again, her best friend sat in the house making gorgeous jewelry or hiking instead of going out on dates for her own messed-up reasons. Still, being someone’s friend meant knowing when to call bullshit and when to leave it alone. Tuesday wasn’t ready to confront those demons yet.
“I can’t deny knowing he lived here. I found out about six months after I bought the house here.” The fact that the dudes from Sweet Hollow Ranch lived in town and were locals who continued to make the city their home was a point of pride to Hood River. The town tended to be protective of the entire Hurley family. People didn’t call the paparazzi when one of them ate in their restaurants or shopped in their stores. There weren’t pictures sold to the tabloids of them going about their daily business.
When she’d discovered it, she’d been mildly worried, but she’d already begun to put down roots. She had no plans to run off simply because some old lover was in the same area.
And then Tuesday happened upon a storefront on Oak that she’d decided to run a business