Sweetly Isolated (The Swallow Barn Cottage Series, Book 1)

Pay Back and Pay Up

What–

What?

What?!

Oh...

That Jack Richards' launch.

The launch of Jack Richards' latest novel when she, being intolerant to alcohol, had accidentally been served a flute of prosecco instead of her Nosecco. And then there was a very long chunk of time when she wasn't sure what she'd been doing - no, no, don't say it! Or whom. Shut up! - and then Liv had brought her home, and the next day Tina had been feeling the worst she'd ever felt in her life. Yeah, that Jack Richards' launch.

Tina slowly lowered the coffee mug.

"In a closet?" she asked, not entirely sure why this was what she was mostly shocked by.

He lifted one eyebrow and nodded.

"You and me?"

He nodded again.

"So, what was it then?" he asked, his voice warm and rumbly. "Were you drunk? High? You didn't seem either, but seeing what you're like, you weren't yourself, that's for sure."

And of course, that would be the one part of his statement she had to hang up on.

"What do you mean by 'what you're like?'" she asked, frowning. "What exactly am I like?"

"Skittish," he said with a short throaty laugh.

"I'm not!" she gasped.

"Clementine, you chickened out of a kiss."

Oh bugger, he's right.

He took a step closer to her.

"So, I doubt it's your normal behaviour to pull a man into a closet by his tie, and to stick your hand down his pants."

Oh no. Oh Lord.

"Um... I'm alcohol intolerant, and they mixed up my drink," she muttered.

"Ah," he said.

Firstly, the 'ah' sounded just like a low coarse rumble in his throat. Oh, be still Tina's... ovaries. Secondly, he was once again standing right in front of her.

"So, no, I don't remember pulling you into a closet by your tie and– and other things," she whispered, staring at his chest.

"And trying to seduce me into publishing your novel," he added, and Tina's eyes flew up to his face.

"What?!"

What?!

He chuckled. "You said you had a novel that I could publish, were I a decent bloke, and when I refused, you said you'd be right back, fell out of the closet, and never came back," he drew out teasingly. "Way to send mixed signals to a bloke."

"What?!"

Oh, so he thinks that you, Tina Popplewell, are a gold-digger. Well, a publishing-deal-digger. And that you - oh horror! - stuck your hand down his pants to manipulate him into it. No wonder he'd been a tad standoffish with her! And assumed she'd somehow set up him getting stuck in her cottage! People were known to have done much worse for a publishing contract!

"I would never!" she exhaled.

He thinks she's a double-faced... novice writer!

"Clementine, I'm not an idiot," he said and picked up her chin with a curled up index finger.

Oh Lord.

"I've spent three days with you. And I'm rarely wrong about what people are capable of."