She shoved a finger over his mouth because the last thing she wanted to talk about was the women he’d had. His whiskers tickled her skin and reminded her of how those same whiskers had tickled her neck and her ear and… “Z, I’m trying to make you understand that what I want and what you want are two entirely different things. So it’s better to stop this crazy train before it has a chance to go off the rails.”
“What happened to Dagan?”
“Huh?”
“Since we came down here, you’ve been calling me Dagan. But just now you went back to calling me Z. Why?”
She sat up and frowned at him. “I didn’t realize I was doing it, I guess. Dagan or Z, it’s all the same to me. Both areyou.” Although that wasn’t quite true. Calling him Dagan had always felt so…intimate. Too intimate. “Why? You have a preference?”
“I like the way my name sounds on your lips,” he said. “With just the hint of that Southern drawl.”
The words themselves were innocuous, taken one by one. But put them together and combine them with his deep, moonshine voice, and they were an invitation to sin. Her mouth went bone-dry.
Funny, considering other parts of me are the opposite.
“Stop trying to change the subject,” she scolded him.
“Is that what I’m doing?” She felt his smile in her bones. Deeper. In hersoul.
“Yes.You’re doing everything in your power to detour this conversation straight toward Sexy Town.”
“But it’s such a nice destination, don’t you think?”
Oh, how easy it would be to just let him have his way! But…then what?
“Look, I know Little Z is calling the shots right now, but just for a couple of seconds would it be possible for me to talk to Big Z?”
To ensureboththeir minds were focused on the conversation, she crawled off him. Sitting on the cold floor she immediately missed his fiery warmth. She tried to generate her own heat by pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around her shins. A glint of purple from her discarded glasses caught her eye and had her reaching for them. Sliding them on, the world around her went from soft, fuzzy shapes to hard, sharp edges—including Dagan.
He was the human equivalent of a hard, sharp edge. And she studiously avoided looking at the fly of his jeans when he sighed and pushed into a seated position. His legs looked a mile long as he stretched them out and crossed them at the ankles. “First of all, I call a permanent moratorium on the phraseLittle Z. And second of all, do you realize the expression on your face makes you look like you’re about to give birth to an oversized, ill-tempered hedgehog?”
“Nice.” Chelsea frowned at him. “Very nice.”
He curled a big, warm hand around her ankle, all trace of humor gone. “Okay, babe, I give.”Babe.A simple endearment. But it hit her so hard that she lost her breath. “Say whatever it is you need to say. Big Z is all ears.”
Chapter 13
Chelsea pursed her bee-stung lips, and Dagan was sorely tempted to lean forward and take her up on the invitation she’d unwittingly sent him. But something was…offwith her. So he remained where he was, satisfying himself with simply touching her, watching as her big, expressive eyes searched his face.
The longer she looked at him, the more he felt his chances of being with her slipping through his fingers. It reminded him of the mist that had crept over Lake Erie in the springtime. Or his brother’s sobriety in those early years. Here one minute, gone the next. Impossible to hold on to.
His heart beat sickly. Maybe he had been wrong to hope. Maybe there reallywasno way a woman like her could—
“I’m done playing the field,” she told him in a rush. That sounded fine by him. Just theideaof her with another man… Uh,no.Negative. No fuckin’ way. “I want a man who’s ready to take the next steps in life. Who’s ready for marriage. Who wants children.”
Marriage? Children?Seriously?
With Black Knights Inc. going civilian, he didn’t know where he’d be in a year,whohe’d be in a year. He was no mechanic, so there’d be nothing for him to do for the shop. Not to mention there was Avan.
Always, there is Avan.
His mind was ripped back to the day of his father’s aneurysm. Dagan had been home on spring break from graduate school, and Avan was about to finish his freshman year at Ohio State University. They had all been in the kitchen, laughing over some ridiculous thing involving their batty neighbor who kept potbellied pigs. And then their father had suddenly stopped and sat down on the linoleum floor right beside the kitchen table.
Dagan remembered exchanging a look with Avan before squatting beside his father…
“Dad?” He squeezed his old man’s knee. “What’s up?”
His father looked up at him, and there was something funny going on with his eyes. “Head,” his father said, sounding breathless, blinking quickly. “Pop.”
