“And you, sir, are a twelve-year-old in a man suit,” Ozzie was quick to come back.
“I got your twelve-year-old right here, friend.” Christian feigned an American accent and reached beneath the table to grab his unit.
“Please.” Ozzie rolled his eyes. “Is that supposed to be some sort of threat? I’ve seen earthworms bigger and scarier than anything you’ve got. Remember that big rain we had a couple of weeks ago, Becky? When all those worms crawled out of the ground and got stuck on the patio pavers?”
“Don’t drag me into this.” Becky waved her hands. “I won’t be the yardstick in your—” She glanced at Franklin. “In your johnson-measuring contest.”
“Yardstick?” Ozzie asked. He and Christian exchanged a glance. “Not ruler?”
“Just how big is Boss?” Christian demanded, blinking rapidly and fighting a grin. “Oh, you poor dear. I should think you need to visit your physician. And soon.”
Becky blushed. “Both of you can shut up now.”
“Who’s Johnson?” Franklin asked.
“That’s it!” Michelle threw her napkin on the table. “This meal is officially over!”
Chapter 14
“I can’t understand why we’re knocking about teaching him baseball when we could be schooling him on a real game,” Christian said as Samantha sat comfortably ensconced on a chaise longue along with the rest of the women who had hunkered down onto various pieces of patio furniture to watch Ozzie, Christian, and little Franklin toss around a baseball.
Thanks to Christian, the dishes had been cleared away and piled into the dishwasher. He had complained the whole time, but apparently, he accepted the almighty power of the group vote. The sun had long since set. A local radio station crooned R & B from a set of speakers mounted on the back wall of the warehouse beneath a rolled-up cylinder of fabric that Samantha assumed provided a canopy for the courtyard when extended. With a blanket over her knees and a third glass of wine in hand, she felt ridiculously content.
She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t. There was so much left unresolved. So much left to do. But she couldn’t shake a warm feeling of comfort.
It’s just the wine, she assured herself, but a little voice piped up, insisting it was more than that.
“And what is a real game?” Ozzie asked, his hair glinting in the glow of the artificial lights bolted atop the brick wall surrounding the courtyard and outbuildings. He carefully tossed the ball into Franklin’s outstretched baseball mitt so the little boy didn’t have to do more than curl his glove around it to catch it.
“Why, cricket, of course,” Christian declared, leaping into the air to snatch the wild throw Franklin sent whizzing above his head. The move caused his shirt to ride up, revealing his muscle-packed stomach and the trail of dark hair that started at his belly button and disappeared into his jeans.
Beside Samantha, Emily sucked in a startled breath.
Samantha couldn’t fault the woman. For the last hour, she herself had been mesmerized by the flex of the muscles in Ozzie’s broad back. By the shift of his round butt cheeks inside the denim of his jeans. Separate, the two men were delectable. Taken together, they were almost too much to bear. Their differences seemed to highlight the unique appeal of each. Where Christian was dark, Ozzie was golden. Where Christian was perfectly put together, Ozzie was unkempt and wild and all the sexier for it.
The dynamic duo. And their superpower is flat-out, panties-on-the-floor sex appeal.
“If we charged admission,” she whispered to Emily, “we’d be millionaires by next week.”
“I like the way your mind works.” Emily nodded, taking a sip of wine. “But you’re thinking too small. If we charged admission, sold T-shirts with their faces on them, and added a Win a Date with the Hunks contest, we’d be millionaires in forty-eight hours.”
Samantha laughed. She didn’t know Emily well, but the woman seemed like someone she might call a friend. Judging by the way she talked, they were both South Siders. That alone was enough to warrant instant sisterhood. “Yeah, but we’d have to share them. Not sure how I’d feel about that.”
Emily turned to her, eyes narrowed. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
Samantha tensed. An inquiry preceded by Mind if I ask you a question was almost always of a personal nature. “If I said no, would that stop you?”
“Nope.” Emily shrugged, plowing right ahead with “What are your intentions?”
A windy breath left Samantha’s lungs. She had a strange sense of déjà vu. Wasn’t that the exact question Donny had asked Ozzie? “What do you mean?”
“Toward Ozzie. What do you want from him?”
“Wouldn’t the better question be what does he want from me? After all, he’s the hot-rod bed-hopper extraordinaire.” The hot-rod bed-hopper extraordinaire who seemed to be having second thoughts about taking their relationship to the next level. Ugh!
“That he may be, but he’s also an amazing person. Crazy smart, fiercely loyal, and handsome as the devil himself. If you’re trying to—”
