She squeezed her eyes shut, and I decided there was only one way to fix this. Her embarrassment was over kissing me while we were both waking up, so if I kissed her while we were fully awake, it might counteract what she was feeling.
So I did.
Before she could open her eyes again or pull away, I lowered my mouth and kissed her. It took practically no coaxing to get her to open her lips so I could lick into her mouth, and almost immediately she had her arms around my neck, had raised up until she was standing on her tiptoes, and began kissing me back.
Fucking finally.
My hand slid up into her hair of its own volition, tangling my fingers up in the long dark tresses. I’d had so many dreams about that hair—some filthy, some not so dirty. In all of them, it’d been soft and silky. In reality, it was softer, and images of it trailing over my thighs while she—
A loud, deep bark made us both jump and jerk our mouths away, leaving us trying to catch our breaths. Her pupils were dilated, and her lips were swollen from the kiss, and if I could have played hooky and convinced her to do the same, I’d have done it.
Unfortunately, my job wasn’t conducive with playing hooky. We could absolutely call in sick if we weren’t well, but there was no way I’d be able to let the other guys down for no reason. And Evie had a business to run and clients to look after.
Taking advantage of how stunned she was, I gave her a soft peck on the lips, rubbing my nose gently over the tip of hers after it and making her smile.
“Have a good day, baby. Call me if you need anything at all, okay?”
“Likewise,” she breathed, and because our faces were still so close together, I felt it on my lips.
That was a sensation I was going to carry with me through the day, along with the memory of her hair and the kiss. Police work needed good memories to keep you sane, and these were mine for the day.
Winking at her, I glared over at Bernice, who was watching me with zero guilt over her ill-timed interruption.
Letting us both out, I jumped over the fence separating our front yards, one that was only roughly three feet high, and waited for her to pee on the grass.
“You could have held that in, you little cock blocker.”
I swear, if a dog could roll its eyes, mine did at that moment as she loped past me toward the front door of our house.
Unlocking it, I held it open for her. “You can look at me like that all you want, but your karma is not getting a bone before I leave.” I felt kind of like a dick for doing it, but she had it coming.
As I walked toward the stairs, I added, “And your buttons are still next door, so you can’t give me shit for it.”
I’d forgotten she still had the board with the cursing on it, though.
As I got to the top of the stairs, I heard, “Asshole—asshole—asshole.”
That night…
“Okay, so this was suggested to us by Tabitha and her awesome pink hair.” Jacinda pointed at my daughter-in-law, who was grinning from where she was watching the three women standing around what I could only describe as a hair mannequin. There was no body, just shoulders, a head, and long strawberry blonde hair.
“You’ve seen the challenge where people try to drink with these TENS machine patches on their arms, but we’re going to do hair instead.”
Moving closer to the dummy, Sayla tilted her head to look at it. “Who’s doing what job?”
“Well, you’re going to mix and apply the color,” Jacinda explained. “I’ll do the cut, and Evie’s going to do her makeup.”
“I can live with that,” Evie shrugged. “I use a tens machine for my back sometimes, so I’m fairly certain I can do this with zero issues.”
She was wrong.
Sayla’s arm jumped as she mixed the color, and on one particular muscle spasm as she was pouring something into the bowl, they all looked at each other with alarm.
“What’s the issue, ladies?” Tabitha called. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
Evie bit down on her lower lip for a moment. “If we were doing a real person’s hair, then, yes, I’d definitely be having second thoughts.”
The only way to describe what happened as Sayla applied a light blonde and a darker color to the hair was that it zigzagged. By the time she’d finished applying the dye, it looked almost like zebra stripes mixed with leopard spots.
Logan and Bex had joined me, DB, Tabby, and Sheena on the loungers next to the pool in Evie’s backyard. It wasn’t a huge pool, just big enough to play around in, but it was a pretty cool setup she had going.