Jenny cried out when he went deeper, igniting a fire inside her. “Don’t stop,” she said, grasping his backside.

He groaned and pressed harder into her, which was all she needed.

Her cries of completion melded with his as they strained together, lost in a moment of perfect harmony.

“Holy shit,” he said as he gasped for breath.

“We’re a sweaty mess.”

“I know.” He throbbed inside her as she twitched with aftershocks. “Isn’t it awesome? Stick with me, kid. I’ll get you dirty any time you want.”

“I’m starting to want pretty much all the time.”

He raised his head off her chest and touched his lips to hers. “Is that right?”

Jenny nodded, unable to look away from the dark-chocolate gaze that had captivated her from the very beginning.

“I’m right there with you. It’s a good thing you can’t know how often I think about you while I’m working. You’d want to get a restraining order.”

His words weren’t flowery or romantic, but they went straight to her heart just the same.

She reached up to push his hair back from his sweaty forehead. “You need to get back to work.”

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “But not yet. A few more minutes in paradise, please?”

When he asked so nicely, how could she deny him anything? Despite the outrageous heat that was multiplied by his nearness, she wrapped her arms around him and held him close.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Grant McCarthy tried to meet his friend Dan Torrington at least once a week so they could read each other’s work and offer critiques. While Dan was a lawyer and not a writer by trade, he’d had some excellent suggestions for the screenplay Grant was writing about Stephanie’s efforts to free her stepfather from prison after he was wrongfully accused of abusing her.

The writing of the screenplay had been more emotionally exacting than he’d expected it to be, as he relived the horror of Stephanie’s childhood through interviews with her and her stepfather, Charlie Grandchamp. It had taken some time for Charlie to open up to Grant about the details of the abuse and neglect Stephanie had withstood at the hands of her mother, some of which he’d heard for the first time from Charlie.

That left him with a dilemma—did he tell Stephanie what he’d learned from Charlie or let her read about it in the screenplay? He was still mulling over that question when Dan came bounding into the South Harbor Diner, looking woefully out of place on Gansett with his wrinkled dress shirt and the loafers he insisted on wearing with shorts, even though he looked like a total fool.

Dan stopped to chat with Rebecca, who owned the diner, which was jammed for a weekday morning.