“You smell like chocolate,” he remarked, placing Clara back on the counter.
“We’re making brownies.” She resumed mixing the last of the ingredients together as I prepared the pan.
Beau’s lips pressed together. “I can see that.”
“Every single ingredient is on your approved list,” I told him quickly, ready for his wrath. “Not a processed item to be found, and I used coconut sugar, even if it goes against basic laws of nature.” I was babbling because I was nervous. Either I was a shy, mute mess around Beau or … this. I didn’t know which was worse.
Beau contemplated me. More accurately, he stared at the corner of my mouth.
I must’ve had chocolate on my face. Embarrassing. “Even with the lack of bad—therefore, good—ingredients, it’s still a requirement of baking to lick the spoon so I?—”
I was talking while raising my hand up to wipe my mouth when Beau took my breath away. Or perhaps I crossed into some coconut sugar-induced hallucination.
He leaned forward, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth where a smear of brownie batter must’ve been glaring at him.
The contact was unexpected and intimate.
He did it because he was a father, and it was a reflex to wipe chocolate mouths.
That was what I told myself until he lifted his thumb to his mouth, sucking off the chocolate while maintaining eye contact with me.
The moment happened in slow motion, a hushed rumble in my ears as I tried to fathom what just happened.
Clara continued speaking, as if her father didn’t just rip a hole in the time-space continuum.
“Our plan for the day is brownies then movies on the couch!” Clara proclaimed with glee.
“That sounds like the perfect plan, Bug,” Beau murmured, tearing his eyes from me to push hair from his daughter’s face.
The gesture itself was casual, normal for Beau. On the surface, he seemed relaxed.
Maybe what he just did was no big deal to him.
I was sure I was having some kind of stroke.
“Can you watch movies and eat brownies with us?” Clara asked, happily oblivious.
When Beau’s eyes darted to me, I felt as if I’d been shocked by the force of his gaze. On the surface, he was as he always was. But his eyes were shadowed with desire that I definitely wasn’t imagining. “I have to get some work done, but I’ll definitely have a brownie and catch as much of the movie as I can.”
Robotically, I poured the brownie mix into the pan, unable to fathom anything that just happened. The rapid change in our uncomfortable, insufferable yet predictable dynamic.
Though had it really been that rapid? Over the course of the past few weeks, there had been small changes in Beau’s actions toward me. Less outright hostility. More lingering looks that made me need to rub my thighs together.
But it wasn’t just the looks. It was him getting angry over a rideshare, him asking me if I had fun when I went out, him giving me water, pills, and making me breakfast. Maybe if I calculated all those small moments, it could add to a halfway decent person.
Maybe I needed to stop analyzing things so intensely.
“Banana?”
I peered up.
Both Beau and Clara were looking at me. I’d lapsed into a glazed-over silence and was holding a now empty bowl, hovering over the brownie pan.
“Sorry, I was on another planet.” I smiled even though the weight of Beau’s presence had my knees shaking.
“Which one?” Clara asked seriously.
I pretended to think for a moment. “Neptune.”
