Page 17 of Love at First Write

I laugh because I just can’t help it. “I’m sorry. They’re lunatics.”

“I just want to know if you think I’m stupid hot? Also, if that’s a good thing? It seems like it would be.”

Again with the lopsided smile. I think it might have incinerated my panties. Just poof, with one little grin.

“Copper, like your hair,” he says.

“What?”

“Your eyes. I didn’t know what color your eyes were. Are. You’re so beautiful. A siren sent to distract this sailor. My very own selkie.”

Okay, I don’t know if he rehearsed that—it didn’t sound rehearsed—but damn that was good. Got me right in the feels.

I fake a cough to try to hide how shaky my breath is. “Let’s get your incision cleaned up.” I know my way around a first aid kit. You learn really quick how to do basic wound care when you grow up on a cattle ranch. People get hurt, cut on barbed wire, gored with an occasional horn—especially from our longhorns. Sometimes it’s just hard to avoid them.

Ethan laughs and the warm sound engulfs me like a hug. There is definitely something about this man. “I didn’t know your family had longhorns.”

I pause and look up at him. “I said all of that out loud, didn’t I?”

He grins. “I thought you were just telling me about your life. You know I used think longhorns were a completely made-up animal.”

“Have I said anything else?”

One of his brows cocks. “Why? You have some thoughts you want to keep hidden from me?”

“Maybe.” After cleaning all the blood off I can clearly see that the stitches aren’t actually popped. “It’s just breakthrough bleeding. Stitches are still intact.” I use the wound closure strips to add some extra protection with the stitches.

I ask him what happened and he tells me a story of a mission gone wrong and shrapnel and surgeries. Plural. While he talks, I wrap his wound in gauze to give it a little more protection.

I look up at him, meeting his brown eyes. “And that’s why you didn’t come right away?”

“That’s why.” He reaches up and cups my face. “Oh my beautiful girl, my selkie, I would have swam across that gulf out there to get to you sooner.”

Without a thought as to what I’m doing, I lean forward and close the distance between us. Our lips brush gently, almost reverently at first. Pent-up desire crackles between us and suddenly we’re devouring each other.

Our tongues tangle and his fingers thread through my hair. But then suddenly he’s gone.

“Wait,” he says, leaning back from me.

“Oh, I⁠—”

He shakes his head. “No, whatever you’re thinking, that’s not what I’m going to say. This position is just weird. Normally it’s the girl on the counter when the kissing starts.”

“Is that how it usually goes when you have your first kiss with all your pen pals?”

“Getting cheeky, I see.” He jumps off the counter, landing on his good leg to nor further jar his injury. “How about we sit somewhere more comfortable. And I want to make sure I answer any and all of your questions before you—what was it your friend said—oh, ride me like a show pony.”

I squeeze my eyes closed and my cheeks heat. “I’m going to kill her.”

“For the record, we can just talk. I just want to be with you.” He takes a breath.

He stops talking but it feels like something goes unsaid. “What?”

“I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

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