Desire streaked.
Torrid and red-hot.
“You can just set them on the counter. I’m almost finished here.”
He came closer. “I can help, Mia. According to Brendon, I don’t have anything better to do.” He attempted a joke that stalled out in the tension in the air.
Every cell in my body shivered.
I tried to pretend as if he didn’t affect me at all.
That I wasn’t tangled up in a knot of this man.
My nights had become filled with thoughts and dreams of him. What it would be like to really be touched by him. To be loved by him.
“I haven’t been doing a whole lot myself, if I’m being honest.”
He edged up beside me, barely knocking into my shoulder with his, a coy smile on his mouth. “I always want your honest.”
The air rushed from my lungs, and I let go of a choppy laugh as I scrubbed down a pot, slanting a look at the man who was undoing everything. “I don’t think I believe you. It seems to me you like hiding from the truth.”
He chuckled, and he was shoving his hands into the sudsy water, rinsing the plates that he’d carried in. “Easier that way, isn’t it?”
My head shook. “Easier? Maybe. Better? No.”
“And what truth am I hiding from?” He seemed reluctant to ask it.
I knocked him back with my shoulder. “That you’re a good guy.”
His laughter was scraping. “You think because I’m doing a few dishes it makes me a good guy?”
“I think I have good intuition.” I fought for easiness, and this time I knocked him with my hip. “Just like my son.”
Could see the smile playing around his sexy mouth. God, it was getting harder and harder not to just . . . kiss him.
He shifted a fraction, the man so close to me his nose nearly brushed my cheek. Tingles flashed. “Bet my intuition is better, Angel, and I don’t think you could handle what I would do to you.”
“Yo!”
The dish I was holding slipped out of my hand and clanked into the sink when Brendon’s shout batted from behind.
“We’re all going to the park. Game time, baby. I’m about to show you all who’s really a badass.”
Leif shifted around, a smirk pulling to those lips, the man playing off casual way too easily when my heart was thundering out of my chest. “You better not let your parents hear you talking like that,” Leif told him.
Penny popped her head in. “Mom, we want to go to the park! Come on!”
I glanced at Leif.
Timid but sure. “You should come,” I said.
He cringed but those eyes were doing that tender thing again. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
Maybe I was a fool, but I was beginning to think he was a very, very good idea.
Worth the risk.
Worth the pain.
Because he was so much more than the surface he showed. The best parts of him begging to be exposed. Pared away and revealed.
I grabbed a hand towel and dried my hands, cutting him a glance as I started for the kids.
A clear invitation.
“Yes, let’s do it!” Brendon pumped a fist in the air when I headed their way, Penny smiling soft, my girl so sweet. I returned one to her, all my pride and love and affection, and I followed the two of them back out into the fading day.
My attention moved to my son who was still floating in the pool, his Auntie Tamar and Shea watching over him, the child smiling one of his adorable smiles, splashing like crazy as Adia came gliding through the water toward him riding on her battery-powered unicorn.
Laughing maniacally, she pushed the button that made a thin stream of water shoot out of the horn, hitting her cousin square in the face.
“You gots unicorned, Greyson,” she sang as she rounded him like she was a barrel racer, leaning into the turn like she was trying to gain momentum.
“I get you! I get you!” he sang in return, kicking his feet as fast as he could under the water, spluttering and squeezing his eyes shut against the assault.
I guessed maybe he was getting some of his own medicine.
“All right, you two, out you go! Let’s take this party to the park,” Tamar said as she stood on the top step and helped Greyson out of his float.
“Yo, drummer dude. Let’s roll,” Brendon hollered from about five feet in front of me.
“Comin’.” The low rumble caught up to me from behind, the sound of it skittering across my skin. My heart stalled out. My pulse completely missing for about five beats.
Anxious anticipation.
Dreaded desperation.
Because I’d felt it.
A shift.
As if maybe he couldn’t go on denying this any more than I could.
My mouth was still tingling with the remnants of his kiss that I was afraid was never going to fade or evaporate. Fingers twitching with the need to touch.