Lizbeth: Sorry! It's just been so busy.
Mark: It's all good.
The casual sis was a mental tactic I employed the moment after I found out JJ had proposed and she accepted. My reasoning at the time had been sound. If I thought of her as a sister, I couldn't crash hard into the deepening attraction that felt like a freight train. It hadn't worked, but I kept at it so long it was second habit now.
Tonight, with the smell of Stella's shampoo in the air, Lizbeth was the last thing on my mind.
A stretch of silence seemed to make the air hum. I looked up, shocked at the strange quiet in the aftermath of hours of rock music. Were they done?
Were they leaving?
Another tap tap tap came on the door. This time, it was Seiko. She grinned at me, though she appeared tired. When she spoke, her voice sounded hoarse.
“Hey Mark, thanks again. We're all done here. It'll take a while to get the equipment broken down and moved out, probably just a few hours, but the guys and I have to head out to some other things.”
With a quick hug and a wave to the other band members behind her, I shut the door. Justin let out a heavy sigh and rested his head back against the couch. Stella emerged from a steamy shower, her hair wet in sexy strands of blonde and a deeper brown. I blinked.
Stella.
Shower.
Stop.
Before my brain went any further, I shook myself out of it. “They're gone.” I averted my gaze from her. “Well, the music is gone. Her crew is still cleaning up.”
“Great.”
Stella peered out the window as she pulled a comb through her hair. A new problem occurred to me—how did I diplomatically get Justin out of here so I could get my arms around Stella?
A nanosecond before I barked at him to get the hell out, his phone rang with an irritating Dave Matthews cover song, and he grinned. Seconds later, he'd bounded off the couch and said, “Hey Meg” on his way out the back door.
One problem solved.
4,000 to go.
Instead of moving onto the next issue, I drew closer to the siren song reeling me in and stepped behind Stella. She paused as I trapped her wrist, stole her comb, and sank the teeth into her hair. When I pulled it through, the hair gave way like strands of silk.
Stella sighed.
I wanted to trap that sigh on my lips and kiss the rest of it out of her, but settled for the rhythmic whisper of the comb through her wet strands of hair. The motion soothed even me, and not even the HomeBnB zoning question could concern me. Stella watched Seiko's team packing up from the dining hall, winding cords around their arms and hauling amps into the back of a rental van. But I had a feeling her attention wasn't even out of these four walls.
“I just texted Lizbeth.”
The words rushed out of me. She didn't respond but made a little noise in the back of her throat. The expected tightness of her neck had come, however. For some reason, she didn't seem all that comfortable when I spoke about Lizbeth.
Might be the raging crush I had once admitted to that seemed so silly in comparison to Stella.
“I asked her to send me everything she has done for the HomeBnB and to turn the whole thing over to us.”
She turned around, strands of hair dropping out of the comb as she spun to face me. Her face had a faint blush from the warm water. Stella hardly ever wore makeup. Tonight, her skin was scrubbed clean, tinted with the faintest scent of apricot. I took a step back before her warmth could draw me right onto those lips and out of my train of thought.
She smirked. She was onto me these days.
“Why?” she asked.
“I think this is something you and I need to control. Lizbeth is busy and it's not fair to ask her to do so much of it without getting paid.”
The desire to say I told you so seemed to burn right out of her eyes, but I ignored it. She'd mentioned once (or twenty times) over the years we'd worked together that I couldn't run a successful business on free labor from family. I had, at least for a while, but saw her point now.
“Besides.” My hands found their way to her arms. I wanted to put my palms on her face and draw her into me but settled for this instead. “You've been asking a lot of questions that only Lizbeth could answer, and I think it may cripple us. So if you're willing, maybe we can work on it together?”
The slow smile that crossed her lips was all the answer I needed. Since she'd said (or smiled) all she needed to say, I finally crushed her against me and got lost in the feel of her mouth on mine. When she pulled away, I tried to follow, but she laughed and put a hand on my chest to stop me.
“First of all,” she murmured, eyes bright, “yes, it will be much easier for us to do it and I'm happy to help. I need to earn that free rent, right?”
“Right,” I growled, but she wasn't fooled. Her fingers dropped to the top of my collar, where she played with a little tuft of hair that had appeared there. It sent all my thoughts barreling away from Adventura and right back onto her.
“Secondly, we need to—”
“Get another booking.”
She sighed. “Yes.”
I groaned and ran a hand through my hair, her spell broken by the stench of reality. When I forced myself to back away from her, she wisely didn't follow. “I know! None of my leads have come back so . . . we're just going to have to see what we can do on social media. Maybe I'll go into town and accidentally run into people.”
She snorted and glanced outside. Night threatened on the distant horizon. The sun went below the mountains long
