Busted: Promise Harbor, Book 3 by Sydney Somers Page B

new custom-made window last week, but it wouldn’t arrive for another couple of weeks.
    Hayley dropped down on the old sofa by the door, her brain too tired to think about renovations or work or even Gavin.
    That kiss, on the other hand, wasn’t too tiring to think about at all. Replaying the taste and feel of Jackson’s mouth managed to reanimate the butterflies back-flipping in her stomach.
    It was really too bad she wouldn’t get to kiss him again, but she wasn’t interested in some casual fling before Jackson left town, which would probably be sooner rather than later with a coaching position in the works.
    And kissing him earlier had likely cost her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if that picture taken at the inn started circulating the Net. If she’d ticked off half the town arresting him, she couldn’t imagine what people would say behind her back with a picture like that going around.
    Once upon a time she wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought, but all that had changed when she’d turned her life around.
    Kissing him to help salvage his career was one thing—her reputation could take a minor hit, maybe—but that didn’t explain why she’d baited him at the last second about a long-ago kiss that was best left in the past.
    Exhaling slowly, she let her eyes slide shut and sank a little deeper into the sofa.
    She definitely had enough to deal with without throwing an undeniably sexy guy with a mouth hotter than sin into the mix.
     
     
    Something brought Hayley awake with a jolt. Recognizing the sewing room instantly, she leaned back against the sofa and scrubbed her hands down her face. She needed a bed and at least eight hours of undisturbed sleep.
    Sighing, she stood, making it only as far as the door when a sound outside stopped her.
    With the light off she had no trouble seeing through the window, and with the full moon and the lake reflecting the silvery glow, she easily spotted the shadow disappearing into her gramps’s shed.
    Son of a bitch.
    On the off chance it was Matt looking for more hockey stuff for the bar—an unusual time for that—she didn’t call for backup. But she did grab her Taser from her bag by the front door, just in case, and slipped out into the night.
    The dew-covered grass was wet and cool beneath her bare feet. She kept the shed in sight, but took an indirect approach.
    Ten feet away from the shed, she paused. “Matt?”
    A low oath came from inside, and she edged closer, keeping her back to the shed, then pivoting around just outside the doorway.
    Deep shadows separated her and the guy breaking into the shed. Shadows didn’t worry her, and neither did the fact that she was in the open and more easily visible.
    No, what bothered her—and dumped a gallon of adrenaline into her system—was the ax clutched in the guy’s hand. He was roughly six feet tall and had close to a hundred pounds on her. She didn’t want to think about the force he could put behind the weapon in his hand.
    “Drop it and turn around slowly.”
    The shadow turned toward her all right, taking a half step in her direction, but the bastard didn’t let go of the ax.
    And Hayley didn’t let go of the trigger on her Taser until the guy’s body went ramrod straight, the delivered electrical shock making it impossible for his brain to give the rest of his body any message beyond what the fuck ?
    But it was Hayley’s brain screaming it the loudest when she finally recognized the guy in the shed.
    Jackson.
     
     
    Five hundred pounds. Minimum. Two, maybe three guys on skates going twenty-five miles an hour and they’d just smashed him into the boards.
    He shouldn’t be standing, probably shouldn’t even be conscious. And he damn well shouldn’t be yelling like his vocal chords belonged to a kid who’d just been nailed in the balls by a puck.
    Jackson couldn’t move. Every part of him locked up, and fuck it hurt.
    His voice cracked, the high-pitched sound scraped from his