Free All Wrapped Up (A Pine Mountain Novel) by Kimberly Kincaid Page B

want certain things in your rearview. But one of them damn near got seriously hurt in my restaurant tonight. I may not know the details, but between this fire at Joe’s, the roomful of reporters downstairs, and the woman sitting behind that door, it looks like your past is coming foryou whether you like it or not.”
    Brennan silently bit out every curse word in the book. Seeing Ava again might sting, but he could manage that well enough.
    The rest of his past was a different story. He’d barely lived through it the first time, and he’d been the lucky one. No way was he letting what had happened that night—and everything that followed—back under his skin.
    He wouldn’t surviveit twice.
    “I’m straight, Teagan. A scuffle like this won’t come back into the bar again,” Brennan promised, clenching his fists hard enough to make his knuckles throb.
    “It’s not the bar I’m worried about,” she said, her tone softening. “Now do me a favor and take care of Ava, would you? I meant it when I said she’ll be fine, but if she thinks she’s driving herself home after taking a slap-shotto the chest like that, she’s out of her mind.”
    Brennan nodded, and Teagan gave his forearm a comforting squeeze before heading downstairs to deal with the crowd. He stood in the hallway, digging for a solution and coming up woefully short.
    Teagan was right. His past was coming back to haunt him. Only this time, he could control it. He would control it.
    There was no alternative.
    Palmingthe handle to the office door, Brennan moved back inside the comfortably cluttered space. Ava sat against the bright cushions, watching carefully as he parked himself on the other end of the couch.
    “Hey. How are you doing?” Zero points for originality, but Brennan really did want to know, and anyway, he couldn’t exactly avoid being a point-A-to-point-B kind of guy.
    “Fine.” Ava slumped againstthe back of the couch just a little too much for the sentiment to stick, and something twisted deep in Brennan’s chest.
    “Yeah. I know that feeling.”
    “Really?” One dark eyebrow went up. “You’ve been knocked flat on your ass in front of all your colleagues recently?”
    A puff of humorless laughter escaped his lips. “In a manner of speaking. If it makes you feel any better, I’m certain Adrianwasn’t gentle about showing Trotter the door.”
    “I’m sure I’ll go to hell for this, but it kind of does. Guys like Mike Trotter make the rest of us look bad.” She paused, her tiny smile fading as she ghosted her fingers over the front of her shirt. “Anyway, I know you’re busy. I don’t want to keep you.”
    Brennan’s heart took a swipe at his rib cage, but damn it, he really had no choice. Tonighthad come within inches of wrecking him, and things were only getting worse every time he said no comment .
    These reporters weren’t going to leave until he gave them a damn good reason to go, and that reason was sitting right in front of him.
    “I thought you wanted a story.”
    Ava’s eyes went perfectly round. “I thought you didn’t want to tell it.”
    Understatement of the freaking century. “Consideringwhat just happened downstairs, it doesn’t look like I get much say. If I give you the story, the rest of those reporters will go away, right?”
    “It depends,” Ava said, and he had to hand it to her. She was treading just as carefully as he was. “Reporters won’t infringe on each other under certain circumstances. If you really want them to back off, you’d have to offer me the story as an exclusive.”
    “You’d have to make me a few promises,” Brennan countered. The resulting flash of steel-tipped determination in her eyes jabbed at his resolve, but he turned toward her in an effort to hammer the words into place. “They’re not negotiable.”
    “Such as?”
    “I’ll tell you—and only you—what happened the other day at Joe’s. But no printing the boy’s name, no sensationalizing what really