‘He’s fascinated. Not obsessed. There’s a difference.’
It was like a mini stand-off, but Flávia couldn’t bring herself to regret it. She told herself she was just looking out for the child. She suspected a part of her was also trying to help Jake make that connection he hadn’t been able to bring himself to outright admit to her was lacking.
‘The difference is called hyperfocus,’ he told her, his tone clipped.
She glanced at Brady, and this time it was her turn to do a little assessing. He stared right back at her with intelligent—if sad—eyes, a slightly cheeky set to his mouth and a vaguely mutinous look to his stance.
She didn’t see hyperfocus, or any other issue that she imagined people might have thrown at Jake over the past ten months. She just saw a bright little boy, grieving for his mother, possibly too bright for his own good, probably considered cheeky or disruptive in school and misunderstood by the adults around him.
She saw herself.
But where she’d had her father, always there to encourage her curiosity and teach her new experiences, she wasn’t sure Brady had the same level of support. Though, it was clear that he had an uncle trying desperately to do his best.
She could shut her mouth and stay out of it, or she could try helping both Brady and Jake, all the while knowing that she risked Jake believing she was using his nephew to wedge herself into their lives after what had been, for all intents and purposes, a one-night stand.
Finally, decision made, she turned back to Jake.
‘Maybe,’ she answered coolly, even though her heart was now threatening to beat right out of her chest. Though not necessarily for the same reasons as before. ‘But I don’t think so.’
He could see the fury in Jake, in the tight set of his jaw, and the tiny pulse flickering in his neck, though he reined it in admirably.
‘Brady,’ he addressed his nephew in an eerily calm voice. ‘Please join Patricia for a moment.’
‘But I wanted to ask Flávia some more questions.’ The boy frowned, apparently oblivious to Jake’s anger.
‘Now, Brady,’ Jake instructed. ‘Please.’
He waited until his nephew was an adequate distance away before he turned his gaze back to her. The fury in his gaze almost blistering her skin everywhere it fell, though regrettably not for the same reasons as the other night.
‘Listen—’
‘Not here,’ he cut her off harshly, leaving her no choice but to grab her bag and stand.
No sooner had he done so than he took hold of her elbow—not roughly, but not with the tenderness of the other night, either—and ushered her out of the room, down a corridor and into the first unoccupied room he could.
And Flávia steeled herself for the inevitable onslaught.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
CHAPTER SIX
HE COULD SEE the flinty look in Flávia’s eyes as he challenged her. A part of him even admired her for it.
But not when she was pulling Brady into some game.
Rage coursed through him...and something else. Something it took him a while to recognise.
Disappointment, he realised darkly. He was disappointed in Flávia.
He couldn’t explain why, since one night of sex hardly equated to a deep knowledge of another person, but that simply wasn’t the way he would ever have expected Flávia to behave.
‘I’m not playing at anything, Jake.’ Her honey-hued eyes gleamed. ‘I’m trying to look out for a little boy.’
‘You believe that I’m not?’ he barked.
‘I don’t believe I commented on you, whatsoever,’ she answered evenly, though he could see the hectic racing of her pulse at her neck.
‘You don’t know the first thing about Brady, and yet you feel you have the right to judge him. Why? Because we slept together once? I have news for you, Flávia—I have had a fair few one-night stands in my life, and they tried many things to draw more of a relationship out of it, but none of them acted so low as to bring a seven-year-old boy into it.’