In her . . .

She blew out a shaky breath. Dangerous thoughts. Because it was her being selfish, and she wasn’t going to do that again.

Absolutely not.

Or, you know, as much as she could.

Ugh. She slapped herself in the forehead. Go back to your plan, she ordered herself, not giving her inner smart-ass a chance to chime in. No more sexy times, no matter how deliciously demanding he was in bed. And this time, she meant it. One hundred percent. Or at the very least, seventy-five percent.

Certainly no less than fifty percent . . .

Luckily, work was crazy busy and helped keep her mind off all things Finn-related. The weather was warm, which meant that everyone and their mama wanted to get outside. They wanted to be on the water, see Alcatraz, Treasure Island, the Pier 39 sea lions . . .

She was on her second tour of the day when a guy tried to propose to his girlfriend. Unfortunately for him, he apparently hadn’t checked out her Pinterest page where she’d pinned pictures of acceptable rings. The proposal went fine until she opened the little black box. It didn’t end well, especially since he’d done it in the first five minutes of the two-hour tour, and then had to endure the rest of the ride in frosty silence.

On her last tour, Pru had a bunch of frat boys who kept making jokes, wanting to know if she’d be their captain below deck as well, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, if she’d ever played pirates with her passengers, because they wouldn’t mind pillaging and plundering. At that she’d pulled out the baseball bat she kept beneath her captain’s chair and asked if anyone needed their balls rearranged or if they wanted to sit down and shut up for the rest of the tour.

They’d gone with sitting down and shutting up.

She’d gotten a call from Jake the second the last of her passengers debarked.

“You have problems with passengers, you let me kick their ass, you don’t need to do it,” he said. “You’re not alone out there, I’m always in your ear.”

Literally. They were in constant communication when she was on the water via comms. “Maybe sometimes I want to do my own ass kicking,” she said.

“My point is that you don’t have to.”

“It’s a good stress reliever,” she said.

“Uh huh. As good as sleeping with the guy you haven’t been honest with and then shoving him bare-ass naked into your dumbwaiter to avoid your ex, your boss, and your best friend?”

The air left her lungs in one big whoosh. “Who told you?”

“Eddie would snitch on his mama for food or cash, you know that.”

“And how did Eddie know?” she demanded. “I didn’t tell anyone!”

“Didn’t have to. Eddie was in the basement at a very intense poker game with a select few when the dumbwaiter opened and out stumbled your boy, pants in hand.”

“Shirt!” she yelled. “He had his shirt in hand. He was wearing his pants!”

“Just tell me you told him.”

“I’m working on that.”

“Dammit, Pru, it’s like you want to self-implode your own happiness. Promise me you won’t do anything that stupid again until you tell him.”

She closed her eyes, knowing he was right. Hating that he was right.

“Pru—”

“—I hear you,” she said.

“Promise me. I know you would never break a promise, so right here and now, promise me that—”

“I promise,” she said. “I’ve always intended to tell him and I will. I get that it’s been two weeks but I’m working up to it, okay? I’m going to tell him soon as the time is right.”

“Just don’t miss your window of opportunity, chica, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I hear you.”

They disconnected and Pru closed her eyes. Hard to pretend something hadn’t happened when everyone in the free world knew.

She didn’t linger after work like she usually did. Instead she hightailed it out of there. Needing to clear her head, she and Thor walked. Well, she walked. Thor got tired about halfway and stopped. He planted his little butt on the sidewalk and steadfastly refused to walk another step.

“You’re going to get fat,” she told him.

Thor turned his head away from her.

“Come on,” she cajoled. “I want to walk out the Aquatic Park Pier and watch the sky change colors as the sun sets.”

Thor sneezed and she could have sworn she heard “bullshit” in the sound. And the sad thing was that her dog had more brain cells than she did because he was right.