Free Getting His Way: Sapphire Falls Book Seven by Erin Nicholas

intend to spend the rest of my life with. You know that.” Everyone knew that. Bryan wasn’t a shy, private kind of guy. He’d grown up in Sapphire Falls. Being shy and private was pretty much a losing battle around here anyway, and the sooner a guy accepted that, the less stress he had in his life. It also worked for his general nature. He shared. Sometimes overly. But he wasn’t embarrassed by his feelings, his thoughts, his dreams, and he was very open about them all.
    “Yeah, I know,” Derek said, turning back to the cleaning he was doing behind the bar. “It’s just that Tess is different than your usual girls. And you’ve been gone for a while. I just wanted to be sure you realized that.”
    Bryan felt a stupid surge of jealousy. Was Derek insinuating he knew Tess better than Bryan did? Why did Derek feel protective of her? “I’ve known Tess all my life. And on some level I’ve loved her as long as I’ve known her. She’s loved me too.”
    Derek nodded as he wiped down a bottle of Jack. “Oh, I know. Everyone knows that Tess has been waiting for you. That’s why it’s been funny having you warn guys off.”
    “Funny how?” Bryan asked.
    “The only guys who would actually ask her out are from out of town. Everyone around here knows they wouldn’t get anywhere with her.” Derek replaced the Jack on the middle shelf in front of the mirror that covered the wall behind the bar. He pulled a bottle of Jose Cuervo down next.
    “Meaning she would say no?” Bryan asked, wanting that clarification for some reason.
    “Meaning they wouldn’t get anything more than a goodnight kiss,” Derek said, wiping the shelf and setting Jose back up there.
    Something prickled along the back of his neck. An awareness, or a realization, or something. “You mean on the first date?” Bryan asked.
    Derek finally turned to face him. “Ever,” he said. Then he peered closer at Bryan. “Do you not know?”
    “Not know what?” Bryan asked, a prickling awareness dancing down his spine.
    “Tessa’s a virgin.”
    Bryan leaned his butt back against the cooler behind him. Shock, and maybe even a very teeny tiny bit of guilt went through him. But the absolute pleasure and fuck yeah feeling that followed immediately wiped anything out.
    Tessa was a virgin. She’d never been with another guy.
    “She’s been saving herself for you,” Derek said.
    Again, a teeny tiny thread of guilt went through his mind. But the damn right obliterated it a millisecond later.
    Tessa was his .
    No matter what she was telling him—and herself—for whatever reason, she was his. She always had been.
    “She told all these guys she was saving herself for me?” Bryan could admit he was reeling a bit. She was a virgin . It fit, he couldn’t lie. But he’d always assumed she was just inexperienced and didn’t go out much. He knew she didn’t date a lot and the guys she had gone out with hadn’t gotten serious or lasted long. But he wasn’t sure Hailey knew Tess was a virgin. Surely that would have come up at some point when he had asked Hailey about her over the years Hailey had been coming to Denver to see Ty.
    Derek chuckled. “I don’t think she’s put it quite that way,” he said. “But everyone just kind of knows it.”
    “How?” Bryan’s ego had taken a beating when he’d been hospitalized and needed people to help him with everything for a while there. But it was quickly reflating being around Tessa, the woman who’d put him on a pedestal so long ago. And now to find out that not only had she been waiting for him, in every way, but everyone knew it… Yeah, this was definitely healing a few ego bruises.
    “Well, the girls know,” Derek said, wiping at a nonexistent spot on the bar top suddenly.
    “The girls? Her friends?”
    Derek nodded.
    Bryan knew she hung out with Kate Spencer and Delaney and Hope Bennett now, but all those women were newcomers to Sapphire Falls. He tried to remember who she’d been close to in high