Free Stone Deep: An Alpha Bad Boy Romance (Stone Brothers Book 3) by Tess Oliver, Anna Hart

my shoulders and back. A long yawn erupted from my mouth. “I’m one heck of a traveling buddy, aren’t I? How long was I asleep?”
    Slade looked at the clock. “About an hour, I think.”
    I sat up straighter and reached for the bag of pretzels at my feet. “Sorry about that. I haven’t been sleeping too well.”
    “You mentioned something about being between places.”
    “Yeah, I’ve been staying at one of those pay by the week motels near work. I’m pretty sure the bed mattress is stuffed with old rags and rocks. But I guess you managed to stay awake without my riveting company.” I held the bag of pretzels up for him, and he reached in to grab a few.
    “That’s mostly because your dress was distracting me. It kept inching up as you were sleeping, making it impossible for me to get drowsy.”
    “Is that right?” I raised a brow at him. “And just how high did my hem go?”
    “High enough to let me know that you’re wearing lavender panties.” He looked at me. “A nice color by the way.” He pushed a pretzel into his mouth.
    I made a show of pushing my dress down farther. “A gentleman would have looked the other way.”
    He nodded as he swallowed the pretzel. “Yep, I guess a gentleman would have.”
    I laughed and reached forward to turn up the music. We were traveling along the Oregon coast. Most of the highway ran along the edge of cliffs, giving a wide and never ending view of the Pacific. At night the water was an invisible black with only the white frothy wave tips to assure you it was still out there. The massive, jutting rocks so common to the western coastline looked like the humps of a giant gray sea monster. During the day, the outline of the giant outcroppings would look almost furry from the shroud of sea life lounging on their surfaces. But at night, the rocks looked lonely and quiet.
    I relaxed back. “When I was a kid, I only got to see the ocean twice, on family vacations. I always knew I wanted to live near the coast just so I could see it all the time. Love that salty tang that never leaves and the pungent smell of green, turbid water.”
    “Can’t imagine not being near the ocean. I’ve lived just a few steps from the beach my whole life. I’ll have to take you out on our boat sometime.”
    “I would love that.” I put the pretzels back down. “How did Hunter and Amy meet? They seem like they’re perfect for each other.”
    “Those two have been destined to be together since we were kids. It was a like a weird, prearranged marriage that nobody actually arranged. We just knew that they’d be together. Amy, or Street, as we call her, grew up next door to us. She was always around. Like us, she had it pretty rough, so I guess you could say we all survived childhood together. She’s like a sister to Colt and me, but there was always this unspoken connection between Hunter and her. It just took my thickheaded brother awhile to see it.”
    “Street?”
    Slade laughed. It was the kind of smooth, deep laugh that you wanted to record on your phone so you could listen to it when you were feeling blue.
    “When Amy was twelve or something like that, she’d decided to start a lemonade stand on the street corner. Didn’t go too well. Then she got the idea to sell kisses—just to the boys we went to school with, you know, neighbor kids. We were her best customers, my brothers and me. Somehow, we got into the habit of calling her Street Corner Girl like in the Led Zeppelin song and it stuck.”
    “How cool. Damn. I want a nickname like that.”
    “Is Tink not cool enough?”
    “I guess it’s all right, but it didn’t come from Led Zeppelin.” I pointed at him. “And you are the only person who gets to call me that.”
    “See, that makes it even better.” He handed me his phone. “I put in the address of the motel. What off-ramp are we looking for?”
    “We’ve got about ten miles to go.”
    “Shit, ten more miles to think about those damn lavender panties.”
    I