Okay. On the plus side, it wasn’t Tommy or one of his goons out there. But it wasn’t Sly, either.
She flung the front door open, and when she caught sight of the big beast of a man standing on Ophelia’s porch, she stared. Just… just stared.
His neck reddened under the intensity of her gaze. He didn’t smile, or even nod. In fact, he looked like he was regretting having knocked.
It took him a second before he spoke. “Hi. I’m here to teach someone a little something about self-defense. Name’s Rick Hart. Think you might be expecting me.”
Yeah. Not quite. And should she tell him that she already knew who he was? Considering how she couldn’t stop staring at him, that might give him another reason to weasel out of these lessons. He was clearly as uncomfortable as she was.
At least he knew what to expect. Find him there—that was a complete surprise for Grace.
Stop staring, Gracey.
Because she was. She totally was. Jesus, why couldn’t she take her eyes off of this man?
She tried, but all that happened when she dipped her chin, tearing her gaze from his striking face, was that she was now staring at his massive chest. Even beneath the heavy hoodie, she was willing to bet that he was jacked. And not in that steroid, bodybuilder way that so many of the guys Tommy hired were. He looked like he earned his physique honestly.
Trouble. She was in big, big trouble.
“Grace. Delaney,” she added. “I’m sorry. I thought Maria said her boyfriend was going to be teaching me.”
Grace was expecting Sylvester. Maria said it would be Sylvester.
Where the heck was Sylvester?
“He was? Oh. Uh. Yeah. I mean, he was.” The big man nodded, reaching up behind him to scratch at his thick neck. His hair was longer than she remembered, a stray curl falling forward into his face as he dipped his chin. “I guess something must have come up, though, and Sly asked me for a favor. Here I am. If you’d rather wait for Sly… I get it. No problem.”
And that, she realized, was the problem. Because one part of her was screaming at her to get away. Her attraction to the deputy would only come back to bite her in the ass later on. But the other part? The part Grace had to bury when it became clear that Tommy was a danger?
It said: yes, please.
The night he stopped to give her directions hadn’t been a fluke. Now that she’d come face to face with him again, she decided her memories didn’t do him justice. It had been dark the night they met, and Grace was tired. If she thought he was attractive then, that was nothing compared to how she was torn between being intimidated by her reaction to him and way too excited by the prospect of getting up close and personal with him.
For training, she reminded herself. Self-defense. That’s why he was there.
Because Tommy would be looking for her. And if he found her drooling over the deputy? It wouldn’t end well for any of them. She couldn’t risk it, even if she wanted to. And she did. God help her, she did.
When she didn’t say anything, the deputy shifted his weight to one side. His hand strayed from the back of his neck to his scalp, scratching behind his ear, running his fingers through his hair. The curls were wild and messy and, damn it, she still couldn’t shake the urge to stroke them herself.
In the last few days, Grace had heard enough of the local gossip to learn who the mystery man who helped her find Opheli
a was. She didn’t have to be a Sherlock to figure it out.
There were only a handful of people who worked under Sylvester. Maria’s man was the sheriff, and he had four deputies underneath him: two men and two women. Since Ethan was a freckle-faced redhead she met last week when she was leaving the boutique, she didn’t need to ask too many questions to learn that the man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about was a Marine buddy of Sly’s—and a Hamlet local—named Rick.
Somehow, she should’ve expected this. She might not have had to ask too many questions but, well, that didn’t mean she was able to hide it all that well. The third or fourth time she perked up when Maria mentioned his name might have clued her hostess in to the fact that Grace was interested.
Didn’t mean that she wanted to come face to face with him again. Since she’d been in Hamlet, she’d spent most of her time deluding herself that she was untouchable now. Hearing from the Jeffersons that there were other outsiders—they had to be Tommy’s men—in town had shot that certainty to hell.
Grace had also worked hard to convince herself that her intense reaction to seeing the Hamlet deputy had everything to do with the relief she felt at finding another person after all those long hours on the road. Add that to a caffeine buzz, an empty stomach, and the exhaustion that weighed her down, and there was no way the attraction was as strong as she remembered.
Worse, she accepted. It was so much worse.
It wasn’t even that he was Tommy’s opposite in every way. Dark where Tommy was light, muscular and bulky rather than slender. How he hesitated, waiting for her response, instead of just telling her what she was expected to do.
And it wasn’t that she was being contrary, lusting after a guy who wouldn’t remind her of Tommy. Something about Rick Hart really got to her.
It would be a bad idea to let him stay. To let him take over in these lessons that promised to be hand-to-hand? It would be terrible.