They could sit on the couch. Or go to her room. She had nightstands. They could set their wine down...
She wasn’t all that up on seduction technique.
“It’s nice here,” Tad said, walking barefoot in his suit to the living room, taking a seat on the couch. “You’ve made it comfortable. Peaceful.”
Smiling, she hesitated a second before sitting next to him, curling her feet up on the couch as she turned to him. If she acted all virginal, she might give him the wrong impression.
“My goal is for Ethan to grow up in a healthy happy space. Apart from the rest of the world. Which is why I have so few visitors.”
As soon as the words were out, she knew they were wrong. Gave away too much. Freezing, she started to slide backward in her thinking. To...
“You’ve only been here for what, a year? Since you finished school?”
She’d told him during one of their coffee shop visits that she’d been a PA for a year. That she and Ethan had lived in an apartment building close to his school during the time she’d been in PA school, moving into their current home in Santa Raquel last year. All her hands-on clinical work had been done at the new children’s hospital in Santa Raquel. The story that she’d had help creating for herself, and that she’d given to Tad early on, was that she’d gone to high school in Portland, Oregon—a place she’d visited, so she could speak of it believably—and that she’d dropped out of school to have Ethan. After that, she’d told him, she’d moved to Santa Raquel because of the study program that allowed her to do much of her work online, since the Santa Raquel children’s hospital worked in coordination with an online PA degree program.
The truth was, she’d chosen to become a PA because she’d been in Santa Raquel due to The Lemonade Stand, though she’d never been a resident at the shelter. Then she’d heard of the PA program. With a nursing degree she couldn’t use, needing a new career, the situation had been ideal for her.
That was another time the universe had provided for her after she’d done all she could.
“Yeah we moved in last year during spring break, and most of the stuff is secondhand,” she admitted. “I’m slowly buying new as I can afford it.”
She made good money now. More than she’d ever have made as a nurse. But she put a lot of it away. Some in a bank. Some not.
If she ever had to run again, she wouldn’t be doing it destitute. She’d make it an adventure for Ethan. Taking him someplace decent. Telling him they were on vacation.
Maybe it wouldn’t ever happen. She hoped... Maybe she worried for nothing. But with her father, a man who never gave up, she had to be on alert.
“It doesn’t look secondhand...” He was holding his glass, watching her, not studying her belongings.
His gaze, so warm and intimate, fired her blood, made her wet with wanting, and...he didn’t move. Didn’t lean in as he had at the beach. They weren’t even touching.
He took a sip of wine, breaking eye contact. She sipped, too, a little taste, and when she saw how much her hand was shaking, put her glass down.
“Is there something wrong with me?” she asked. It was late. They were alone with wine. Wearing sexy clothes.
“What?” His wide-eyed glance might have been comical if she hadn’t been starting to panic. In a way that was wholly new to her. “Something wrong with you? No! Of course not.” And then, in that soft voice of his that made her feel...wanted all over again, he murmured, “Why do you ask?”
“You said you wanted to ask me out. Or you were hinting that you did. We’re...you’re...you and I, you and Ethan. You said you wanted all three of us.”
“I do.” He set his glass down, too. And somehow managed to move a little farther away as he turned toward her and took her hand. “I really do.”
“So? Why is nothing...happening?”
He didn’t say anything. Just studied her. Like he was reading a book or something.
“Ethan’s usually around.” His answer, when it came, was a huge disappointment. And a relief, too.
Only because he was confirming an excuse she’d already come up with. A reality she’d already created.
“But he isn’t here tonight.”
Her father had not taught her to be a woman who threw herself at men. On the contrary, he’d beaten her bloody the first time a boy had kissed her on her front step after a summer dance hosted by their high school—and the great chief had witnessed the unremarkable occurrence.
Buzzkill. Maybe this evening wasn’t a good idea, after all.
“I’m afraid that if I touch you, I won’t stop.”
Tad’s words brought her head up. She saw the truth in the light in his eyes. In the way his jaw clenched. And when she dared to glance lower.