He shakes his head. “Definitely not then.”
“Clearly.Panda Banandadidn’t start until a few years ago, and you’re seventy-eight, so…”
He smiles again.
This one’s a soft smile.
Filled with affection.
Shiiiiiit.
I need to tell myself this is a one-sided crush on my sister’s ex who happens to need a lot of sex right now.
That when I go home, I’ll realize this was all for fun and not emotional at all. That I’m not honestly attracted to Oliver, and he’s been humoring me because he feels bad that I will never see as much money as he’s had in his trunk ever again in my entire life, and possibly never experience another penis as good as his either.
“What’s your earliest memory?” he asks me.
“My grandma had this parakeet that would recite Shakespeare. It pecked me on the arm and I got sent to the kitchen to sit with her cook, who was this terrifying woman even older than my grandma, but she gave me fresh chocolate chip cookies after she patched up my arm.”
He shifts on the ground and skims his fingers over my biceps. “Is that why you got tattoos? To hide the scars of all the birds that have pecked you after you annoyed them?”
Oh my god, he’s funny.
I’m grinning while I nod at him. “Yep. First it was parakeets, then it was ravens, then this fat robin one time, and then a hawk…”
Dammit.
His smile’s growing too. So is the warmth in his eyes. And he’s leaning closer to me. “If you didn’t walk around wearing squirrel pelts, I’m sure the hawks would leave you alone.”
My hand flutters to my heart. “I wouldnever.”
“But the robins… What did you do to piss off a robin? Steal its worms?”
“I found its nest and wore it as a hat.”
Again, I truly would never. I’m making up stories. He’s making up stories.
This is the easy kind of fun that I have with Bea’s brothers too. Each of us trying to get more outrageous than the other, telling tales of things that never happened, occasionally slipping in something real.
But Oliver isn’t one of Bea’s brothers.
“Daphne?”
“Yes, Oliver?”
His gaze flickers over me, warm and friendly and affectionate, and I realize he’s about to say something profound.
Something intelligent and kind, probably about our trip, how much he’s needed it, how glad he is that I’ve been with him.
My pulse kicks up again, sending the barest wisp ofI have it so bad for himadrenaline faster through my veins while I watch him watching me, like he’s weighing the exact right words to use.
His chest rises on a large inhale, and then—“Are you sure I can trust you to cook me dinner over a fire tonight?”
I deflate like a freaking balloon.
I know I’m something more to him than his ex’s little sister—you don’t bang a guy senseless every night on a road trip without graduating above that title, and hedidtell me he likes me, evenif I’m not sure he meant it the way I want to take it—but I hoped I’d be more thanchef and tent-keepertoo.
“That depends on how much more crap you give me about all of the birds that have attacked me over the years.”
