Winter's Path: (A Seasmoke Friends Novel) by Kelly Moran

this...interest had been dormant.
    I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was huddled in one of my old sweatshirts, which dwarfed her and went past her knees. I shouldn’t be thinking about her like this, like a...female. Even if she had felt the same pull, she wasn’t the right woman for me. Not anymore.
    My gaze dipped to her inner wrist where the tattoo of a musical note peeked out from under the shirt cuff. She had at least two more I knew about—a few wavy lines of water with a seashell on her nape and a strip of sheet music very low on her back. Jenny liked to compose music. Or write lyrics. She told me once she liked to sing, too, but I’d never heard her voice.
    Last time I’d gotten involved with an inked woman, it had ended in disaster. The kind a person doesn’t walk away from. My reasoning had little to nothing to do with tattoos, but seeing a tat on Jenny only served as a reminder. Ever since Cara, I’d needed a no risk woman. One who didn’t drive motorcycles, run a bar, take chances, or have a family history of dependence. Period. And, numero uno, someone I couldn’t fall too hard for, someone I couldn’t lose myself with.
    Jenny hit every no-no on my requirement list. And yet I was still remembering the way she’d licked her lower lip and how I’d wanted to trace the same path with my tongue. That was the other thing...the swift blow of lust. I could never go all in when I felt that way. Attraction couldn’t be contained and then I’d get stupid.
    She sat back in her chair, tilting her face toward the inky sky. “Do you miss her? Summer, I mean.”
    Wonder what made her think about that? My quiet contemplation, perhaps. Inhaling, I thought it through. “No. I miss the friendship and being with someone, but that’s not target specific to her. We’ll always be close, at least every July anyway.” I glanced at her, surprised to find her steady gaze on me. “What about you? Do you miss Ian?”
    Her gaze dropped as she shook her head. “Same here. Ian was good to me at a time when I desperately needed it. But like you said, I miss the idea of being with someone, just not him.” She sighed, peering up again. “I knew the minute he got to town this year things were different. Even before he told me about Summer, I’d guessed.”
    Jenny wasn’t promiscuous and her yearly fling with Ian had been the closest thing to a relationship she’d endeavored. I knew she’d had other affairs. Brief ones. We’d discussed them, but she hadn’t taken many lovers. Fewer than me, actually. She had this rule to date tourists only, never locals, for as long as I’d known her. In the past, I’d wanted to ask why, yet didn’t. And something about her tone, the phrasing of her answer, rubbed me the wrong way. Had my hackles rising.
    I rubbed my lips with my fingers and stared at the water. “Why do you only date tourists? Don’t you want long-term someday? Marriage?”
    Her spine stiffened. “I’m not exactly the kind of girl a guy takes home to meet the family.”
    My gaze jerked to hers, anger pounding my temples. Her profile offered me no insight to that bullshit answer. “What the hell does that mean? I’ve taken you home countless times. Explain.”
    Pulling her knees to her chest, she rested her chin and wrapped her arms around her calves. Everything about her posture screamed defensive, even her avoidance of my eyes. “We never dated, though, and your view of me is skewed.”
    The hesitant, reserved tone had my stomach knotting. And how I viewed her was not skewed, distorted, or any other effing thing. “Jenny, start talking.”
    She rubbed her forehead in clear frustration. “When you grow up with next to nothing, people treat you like you’re nothing. After my mom died and I went to live with Grampy, I was in a better school in a better part of town. The location changed, people didn’t.” She shrugged as if she didn’t give a good goddamn, as if that was the end of the