His phone rang.
A Taylor Swift song.
Instantly, he broke the kiss and sighed deeply, a frustrated sound.
“One of your fishing buddies rescuing you from the woman in a bar who won’t give her name?” Steph asked, catching her breath as she arched an eyebrow.
He shook his head and scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “My little sister. That’s her ringtone.” He swiped his thumb across the phone. “Kylie, give me five seconds,” he said into the phone, then covered the screen. He quickly scanned the bar, on the hunt for something. Steph wasn’t sure what he wanted, and she was still punch-drunk on that kiss, so her brain wasn’t fully processing. He shot out his arm, grabbed a napkin, and handed it to her.
“Give me a number. So I can call you later,” he said.
Did she want to give him her number?
A sob sounded from the phone. Her heart raced with worry. She hoped his sister was OK. She pointed in the general direction of the bar. “I’ll leave it with Marie. I have somewhere I need to be now anyway. But you can reach me later, I guess,” she said, the words coming out in a stumble, like a car sputtering to turn on. Her brain clearly needed a few seconds, maybe even minutes, to string language together again.
“I’ll be back,” he said, then he walked out in a rush.
Steph let out a breath and stared at the empty space where he’d been, then she replayed the last few minutes and knit her brow.
On the one hand, he’d asked for her number.
But on the other hand, he was . . . gone.
Little sister? Was that the new excuse? The escape hatch to jettison a man from a bad date? She had no clue because she’d been out of commission for a couple years. Was that what guys said when they didn’t like the way a woman kissed? What if little sister was an eject button or something? Absently, she raised her fingers to her lips. They still tingled. She ran the pad of a finger over her bottom lip.
“Steph!”
She swiveled around, spotting Marie behind the bar. She had been waiting on tables when Steph first walked in. “It’s been too long,” Marie said, then flashed her a naughty look. “But I see you’ve already gotten to know Jake the Fisherman. Looks like you two were going to gobble each other up.”
A huge grin spread across her face. That was all she needed. Nothing wrong with her lips. That kiss had blown her mind, and likely his, too. Mutual gobbling and all.
She wasn’t going to let self-doubt rule the day. Nope.
“Do me a favor, Marie?” she asked as she snagged a pen from the register and wrote a few words on the napkin. No number for him just yet. If Jake wanted to see her, he was going to have to follow her trail.
“Of course.”
“Actually, two favors. Tell Penny I can’t wait to see her.”
Marie nodded. “She’s camping. Should be back in a few days.”
“She’d better call me while I’m here. Then give this to the hot fisherman if he comes back in here. But don’t tell him my name, OK?”
Marie rubbed her hands together and winked. “Ooh, lover games. And I get to be the messenger. Count me in.”
Steph handed Marie the note, then took off for her first stop on her self-appointed job.
CHAPTER SIX
Pacing along the street with his cell phone pressed to his ear, Jake used his best big-brother voice to try to calm Kylie. “Everything is going to be fine. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”
Kylie gulped, like she was hyperventilating. “I don’t know what to do. I barely understand a word the physics professor says. It’s like he’s speaking a foreign language. I don’t know how on earth I’m going to finish school without this science requirement. I suck at science. I can’t do this, Jake. I can’t do this at all.”
“You’re going to do fine. If you don’t understand the subject matter, we’ll get you a tutor,” he said as he walked past a surf shop with signs in the window for adventure tours.
“But what if it doesn’t help?” His little sister’s voice shot high up into the sky. Kylie, to put it lightly, was prone to worrying. She’d always been the nervous one among the bunch, and that intensified when they lost their parents. The baby of the family, she was seven when the four of them were orphaned and went to live with an older aunt who managed a restaurant in Key Largo. Truth be told, Kate and then Jake had done most of the parenting. Despite their best efforts, Kylie had grown up a world-class worrier, and that anxiety had manifested in her schoolwork all through high school and now into college. The best way to help her through it was to give her very clear instructions. That also meant phone calls with Kylie required lots of time and patience, which was why he’d had to extract himself from the bar so he could focus on his family. They came first and always would.
The aftereffects of Ariel still lingered, though, because that had been one hot, intense kiss that was on the cusp of rocketing quickly into so much more. A tremor of lust started to roll through him with the memory, so he squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his damn brain to focus on family matters, not primal ones.
He was here for work, not personal needs. Even on a job, he still needed to look out for his little sister. Take care of her, help her. Guide her step by step.
“You’re catastrophizing, Kylie. You need to stop assuming it won’t work before we even hire one. We’ve talked about this before. You can’t get worked up over what hasn’t happened. Got it?”