Desire After Dark: A Gansett Island Novel Read Online Free

whatever he wore did the trick for her.
    He got into the truck and fired it up, blasting the heat. The frigid day was overcast and stormy, the kind of winter day she loved and the majority of sane people hated.
    Erin never used to love winter as much as she did now, but the older she got,the more she enjoyed hibernating in the winter. Although on Gansett Island, an endless array of social events kept everyone busy during the off-season, making hibernation difficult. It was probably just as well, or she’d be a total hermit by now.
    “Where to?” she asked as he pulled the truck onto the main road.
    “Now we go to find some lights and ornaments for the tree.”
    “Isaw some stuff at the pharmacy last week. Not sure if it’s still there or sold out by now.”
    “We’ll start there. If necessary, we’ll go beachcombing for ornaments.”
    Erin liked the way he operated, how he didn’t sweat the small stuff and made the most mundane things, like eating breakfast, fun. In that way, he was her polar opposite. She sweated everything—big stuff and small. Shewas an obsessive over-thinker, which was why she’d shocked not only him but herself with the spontaneous invitation to stay with her.
    For once, she hadn’t taken the time to think the plan through from every possible angle and outcome. She’d just acted, and the look on his face had been priceless and well worth the lack of dithering that would normally precede such a decision.
    Shehadn’t always been this way. At one time, she’d driven her parents insane with the number of times she’d changed her major before settling on pre-law. Her spontaneity had gotten her in trouble on more than one occasion, never more so than when perpetrating pranks with her equally mischievous twin. That side of her had died with him.
    She’d read once about a man who’d detested chocolate untilhe had surgery and awoke from the anesthesia craving chocolate. Similarly, Erin had emerged on the other side of her tremendous loss a completely different person. Even all these years later, she was still getting to know that new person—and new Erin was someone else altogether when Slim Jackson was around.
    Rediscovering the lighthearted girl she used to be had been an interesting sideeffect of her friendship with him. She’d nearly forgotten that girl had once resided inside her, but finding her again after all this time was like a revelation in and of itself. And that, more than anything, was why she’d asked him to stay. She liked how she felt when he was around—unburdened, hopeful, giddy, aroused, breathless, off-balance.
    Those feelings also made her nervous for whatwould happen after he left again. His invitation to join him in Florida had stunned her. But what had stunned her even more was how much she wanted to take him up on it.
    He was slowly but surely dragging her out of the shell she’d crawled into long ago, hiding from the parts of life she found too painful to deal with. Inside that shell, she was safe and protected from things that couldhurt her. The thought of a life outside the shell made her shudder in fear of what happened when you loved someone too much and they were ripped from your life suddenly and without warning.
    “Are you cold?” Slim asked, turning up the heat.
    “Little bit,” she said, rather than confess to the fears that had her shuddering.
    Being on the island had helped to crack the shell somewhat.It was impossible to be around the people who lived here and not engage in meaningful relationships and new friendships. They simply wouldn’t allow anyone to wallow by themselves for too long, and now there was a man who wasn’t going to allow her to wallow either. At some point, she’d have to decide how far out of the shell she was willing to venture.
    Slim parked the truck at the pharmacyand turned off the engine. “You okay over there? You’re awfully quiet.”
    “Just thinking.”
    “What I wouldn’t give to know what goes on inside that