Read Online Wicked: Whispering Cove, Book 3 by Nikki Duncan - Free Book Online

anticipated departure was, she enjoyed his company.
    His rage sparked her own as vitally as his touch snapped her body to attention.
    “You shouldn’t have put those flyers up.” Braydon’s sudden return to the paper he’d shoved at her earlier broke the peace of sexual aftermath she’d found from round two on the widow’s walk floor.
    Danica turned to face him and worked to keep the disappointment off her face and out of her voice. “And you claimed to know me.”
    “You’re not hard to figure out.” Derision creased the edges of his mouth.
    “And yet you believe I placed those ads around town.” She got up and went for a lightweight robe in the closet. The thin cotton wasn’t much in the way of protection, but she couldn’t make a stand in the nude. “As if I’d invite men I hardly know to barrage me with lewd phone calls when my attentions were needed by teenagers in mangled cars.”
    He followed her inside. “I—”
    She spun around and belted the soft robe. “Do you really believe I would stoop to such drastic measures to build my business through my sex life?”
    “Danica—”
    She waved him off. She’d tried to dismiss the flyers earlier with a joke about them being his, but the joke was as flat now as it had been then.
    “I’m beginning to think you plastered the town with advertisements about me to justify another visit.” She scooped his shorts off the floor with her toes and tossed them up into his face.
    “I expected better from you, Braydon.” He caught them calmly, but she continued her tirade. “I mean, hell. Even when I was an awkward geek crushing on you in school you were never cruel.”
    He tossed his shorts on the bed and moved to her. Cupping her face, he stared at her for several humming seconds. “I didn’t make the posters. I wouldn’t.”
    She hesitated more from the sincerity in his claim and his touch than the actual words. She’d given him ample reasons to make her look foolish. He never had. And he hadn’t been unkind or made fun after learning who she was a few days ago.
    “I believe you, but the facts are the same.”
    “What are those? Do I dare ask?”
    “You know nothing about me if you have such a low opinion of me for even a minute. Shit, I knew from the start of this we shared no common ground beyond sex.”
    “Not true.”
    “I want a life here. A life rooted in Whispering Cove.” She pulled away from his touch and slightly wounded-looking gaze and turned toward the window to hide the sudden swell of tears she hadn’t expected. “You want adventure on your boat with a different pair of legs in the air in each port.”
    She fisted her robe over her stomach. She’d allowed herself to be that mark here. The time for fun was over.
    “Talk about a low view of someone. Yourself included.”
    Forcing back the tears, she turned. “Maybe the word choice is harsh, but the truth is the same. You want freedom. I want permanence. You live on a boat. I want to raise a family in this house.” Just as her parents had before buying a motor home to travel. She sighed so deeply the disappointment shook her joints. “I shouldn’t have had sex with you, even once, but one good thing came from it.”
    He shifted his feet, looking more uncomfortable than a netted school of fish. “What’s that?”
    “My schoolgirl infatuation with you is cured.” Clearly, or she would never have the nerve to be so honest. “I know what I want and deserve in a man. You’re not it.”
    He opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything. A few times he repeated the move but didn’t speak.
    “Thank you for curing me, Braydon. Enjoy the rest of your visit. Maybe I’ll save you a dance at the reunion.”
    Satisfied with the cathartic cleanse of her soul, at least as far as he was concerned, Danica went onto her window’s peak and closed the door between them. She’d lied, but the necessity had been birthed in the reality of one-sided love.
     
     
    Sleep wasn’t