Sweet Little Lies: Heartbreaker Bay Book 1 by Jill Shalvis Read Free Book Online Page A

pleasure of making him laugh.
    His laugh did things to her. So did the fact that he was still shirtless. “Do you have another shirt?” she asked.
    “One without a hole in it, you mean?”
    She groaned. “Yes! And without blood all over it.” She bent and scooped up his fallen shirt. “I’m going to buy you a new one—” she started as she rose back up and . . . bumped into him.
    And his bare chest.
    “Stop,” he said kindly but firmly as his hands came up to her shoulders. “I’m not all that hurt and you’ve already apologized. It wasn’t even your fault. My idiot brother should never have allowed blindfolded darts. If our insurance company got a whiff of that, we’d be dumped.”
    But Pru had a long habit of taking on the blame. It was what she did, and she did it well. Besides, in this case, her guilt came from something else, somethingmuch, much worse than stabbing him with a dart and she didn’t know how to handle it. Especially now that they were standing toe to toe with his hands on her.
    Tell him
, a voice deep inside her said.
    But she was having trouble focusing. All she could think about was pressing her mouth to the Band-Aid. Above the Band-Aid. Below the Band-Aid. Wayyyyy below the Band-Aid . . .
    She didn’t understand it. He wasn’t even her usual type. Okay, so she wasn’t sure what her type was exactly. She hadn’t been around the block all that many times but she’d always figured she’d know it when she saw it.
    But she was having the terrible, no-good, frightening feeling that she’d seen it in the impenetrable, unshakeable, unflappable, decidedly sexy Finn O’Riley.
    Which of course made everything,
everything
, far worse so she closed her eyes. “Oh God. I could have killed you.”
    Just as her parents had killed his dad . . .
    And at
that
thought, the one she’d been trying like hell to keep at bay, the horror of it all reached up and choked her, making it impossible to breathe, impossible to do anything but panic.
    “Hey.
Hey
,” Finn said with devastating gentleness as he maneuvered her back to sitting on the couch. “It’s all okay, Pru.”
    She could only shake her head and try to pull free. She didn’t deserve his sympathy, didn’t deserve—
    “Pru. Babe, you’ve got to breathe for me.”
    She sucked in some air.
    “Good,” he said firmly. “Again.”
    She drew in another breath and the spots once again dancing in front of her eyes began to fade away, leaving her view of Finn, on his knees before her, steady as a rock. “I’m okay now,” she said. And to prove it she stood on her own. To gain some desperately needed space, she walked away from him and walked around his office.
    His big wood desk wasn’t messy but wasn’t exactly neat either, a wall lined with shelves on which sat everything from a crate of pub giveaways like beer cozies and mouse pads, to a big ball of Christmas lights.
    Pictures covering one wall. His brother. His friends. A group shot of them on the roof of the building, where people went for star gazing, hot summer night picnicking, or just to be alone on top of the world.
    There were a few pics of Finn too, although not many, she saw as she moved slowly along the wall, realizing the pics got progressively older.
    There were several from many years ago. Finn in a high school baseball uniform. And then a college uniform. He’d played ball for a scholarship and had been destined for the pros—until he’d quit school abruptly at age twenty-one when he’d had to give everything up to care for his younger brother after the death of his father.
    She sucked in a breath and kept looking at the pictures. There was one of Finn and a group of guys wearing no shirts and backpacks standing on a mountaintop, and if she wasn’t mistaken, one of them was Archer.
    Another of Finn sitting in a souped-up classic-looking Chevelle next to a GTO, a pretty girl standing between the cars waving a flag. Clearly a pre-street-race photo.
    Onceupon a time,