“I will.”Grinning, Chloe pulled out her phone, fired off a text—Call me ASAP, good news—then tucked it away.
“All right, that’s settled.”Her plate clear but for a few smears of sauce, Carrie boosted herself off the stool.“I’m going back to work.Unlock the front door so we can make some damn money to pay for all this construction.”
Chloe made her way out from behind the bar.“Yes, ma’am.”
“Special tonight is pasta pomodoro with garlic bread and a house salad, and I made lemon raspberry tarts.When they’re gone, they’re gone.”
Chloe paused halfway across the room.“Save me one?”
“When they’re gone, they’re gone,” Carrie repeated and swung into the kitchen.
“I already hid two in my office fridge,” Mo told her.
“You’re my favorite aunt.”
“I heard that,” Carrie shouted from the kitchen.
Laughing, Chloe flipped the locks open on the front door, flipped the switch to light the OPEN sign in the window, then leapt back with a squeak when the door nearly hit her in the face.
“Shit!”Brown eyes wide under the flop of his chestnut hair, Jesse Colson reached out, lightning quick, and grabbed her shoulders.“Are you okay?Did I hit you?”
Staggering backward, she would’ve fallen if he hadn’t tightened his grip.His hands were bare, the cold seeping quickly through the thin cotton of her shirt, but she barely felt it through the flush of heat.Embarrassment, excitement, and a level of arousal that she might have found baffling if she hadn’t been living with it for almost two months.
God, he was pretty.That tumble of rich brown hair, threads of red and gold gleaming.He had the face of a Renaissance angel, carved by one of the masters she’d studied in her art classes.Full, wide mouth, thickly lashed eyes the color of good chocolate, the kind she kept in the bottom drawer of her fridge for emergencies.He wore his habitual layer of scruff on his jaw, making her palms itch to stroke.And when he smiled, the dimples went deep.
“Chloe?”he said, jolting her back to reality.“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”Cheeks hot, she cleared her throat.“I’m fine.It didn’t hit me.”
“Good.Good.”His breath soughed out in relief and his grip eased, his hands sliding down her arms before falling away.He grinned, making the dimples pop.“Scared the shit out of me.”
“Me too,” she admitted.Her arms were tingling where his hands, rough with calluses, had made contact—and they weren’t the only things tingling.
“Jesse?Why are you standing in the doorway?”
“Sorry.”Stepping to the side, Jesse turned his grin on his husband.“I almost knocked Chloe on her ass.”
“Klutz,” Knox accused mildly, but his smokey hazel eyes were locked on Chloe.“You’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” she repeated, pleased that her voice didn’t waver.Considered it a minor miracle she was able to smile.He was just as pretty as Jesse.More dignified, with his mane of silver hair and neatly trimmed beard, the suit she could see peeking out from under the elegant black overcoat.But no less striking, no less compelling.No less knee-knocking, panty-melting sexy.“Just knocked me back a step is all.I was unlocking the door.”
“I should’ve been more careful,” Jesse claimed.
“I should’ve remembered the door was open,” she corrected.
Knox smiled.“He should’ve been more careful.”
She felt as though she’d been knocked back again.
She was used to seeing Jesse smile—he walked around with a perpetual grin, those dimples playing peekaboo with his scruff, those rich chocolate eyes dancing with humor and good cheer.It was infectious, that smile—an invitation to join in the joke, to laugh along, even as it sent the butterflies spinning in her belly.
But this smile, Knox’s smile, it invited something completely different.
It made her think not of laughing but of sighs in the dark, of deep kisses and the slick glide of bodies under soft sheets.
It made her ache.
“He’s always barging into places without looking,” Knox was saying, his smile deepening as he stepped inside and let the door shut at his back.It cut off the light from the street outside, leaving only the soft glow of the pub lights.She could only be grateful as it put Knox’s face in shadow, and let her breathe again.
