I laugh then and shake my head. “Uhh, no not exactly. We kinda just sleep wherever we fall at night. We have sleeping bags.”
“And you just sleep outside on the ground?” Her eyes shoot up to mine, her blonde brows rising in surprise behind her clear rimmed glasses. Those freckles are on display again today.
“Yeah, we just sleep outside,” I answer, chuckling. Using the tongs, I pick up the steak and place it on a clean plate I’d brought out with me, then the veggie skewers. “Hasn’t Cal ever told you about his work? It’s not glamorous.”
“I guess I’ve never asked the right questions,” she laughs, shaking her head. “And I hate to admit that I probably have intentionally not asked too many questions. His job makes me anxious, and I feel like the less I know about specifics, the better I can handle it. My brain has this really great ability to imagine the worst possible scenario. When he and Scottie went missing up in the mountains last year, I was a mess. And then to lose Logan right after…”
She stops abruptly, smiling almost sadly, like she’s trying not to let the thoughts take over.
“I can understand that,” I murmur gently. Her heart is just so big, she cares so deeply for everyone, and she’s been hurt so much. I wish I could take all the hurt away, but I can’t.
I can only make it worse.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat and pushing the thoughts aside, I turn to her, then gesture toward the open slider door that leads into my side of the duplex, because I’m nothing if not a glutton for punishment. “Would you like to come in? Are you hungry?”
“Oh, no, thank you. We just went out to dinner with Colleen and Kent and then took the kids out for ice cream. It smells delicious, though.” She picks up the six pack and extends it toward me. “I wanted to thank you for mowing the lawn. You didn’t have to do that. But I appreciate it, like, a lot. Bea has been teething and neither one of us are sleeping all that great and the lawn was just one thing I didn’t have the energy to do?—”
Nodding down to the six pack in her hand, I cut off her anxious rambling as I murmur, “I’ll only accept that if you agree to have one with me.”
Her words stop, but those gray eyes narrow on me, her lips twitching with a grin. “That’s coercion,” she grumbles.
“Guilty.” I grin down at her, then gesture for her to go in ahead of me. “Besides,” I whisper teasingly, “we can’t let Colleen’s meddling go to waste.”
Teddy groans, shaking her head. “Oh my god, you heard that?!”
I chuckle. “Are you sure you’re not hungry? This is probably more food than I can eat.”
It’s not, but I’ll gladly share if she wants some. I’d love the chance to cook for her.
“No, thank you for the offer. It smells amazing, but honestly I’m so full from dinner,” she laughs, following me into thekitchen that mirrors hers, though mine is depressingly empty compared to hers. She plucks two beers out of the flimsy cardboard pack and twists the tops off of them before handing me one. “Thank you for the beer. Though admittedly, I probably don’t need it. I’m still not entirely recovered from last night.”
“Little hair of the dog,” I laugh, nodding as I plate up my food and pull the premade toss salad out of the fridge. She nods around a drink of her beer, and I can’t help but stare at the way her bottom lip pillows the ridge of the beer bottle as she tips it up.
And now I’m half hard again. This damn woman has no fucking idea how enticing she is.
The white shirt she has on is falling off one shoulder still, leaving that shoulder bare halfway down her arm. One strap of her bra is showing where it crosses her shoulder to her back. I want to press my lips to that spot where her neck and shoulder meet, to sink my teeth into it, mark her up, then soothe it with my tongue and do it again.
Fuck. Now Iamhard.
She turns to look around the living room and I take the chance to adjust myself behind the fly of my jeans. “You don’t stay here very much, do you?”
“Not during the fire season,” I admit, and she nods in understanding. Notching my chin toward the tiny table in the dining room, we sit down across from each other. I feel like an ass eating in front of her. My mom drummed manners into me, and though I’m more of a barbarian than most—living out of spike camps with half feral beasts for men will do that—I am still a gentleman. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you? I can fix you a plate?—”
She laughs, leaning her elbows on the table and wrapping both hands around the base of the bottle. My eyes track the movement, and I hate to admit that I fully imagine what those fingers would look like wrapped around my cock just like that.
“No, seriously, Xander. I’m so full. I ate my weight in pasta and breadsticks at dinner,” she laughs, then wrinkles her nose, something I’m learning is a nervous habit for her, as if she’s embarrassed again. She gestures to my salad. “I should have stuck with a salad, but the breadsticks smelled so good.”
This woman, I swear to fucking God. I’m going to change the way she sees herself.
“After a night of drinking, I’m sure you needed it to offset that hangover,” I tease instead.
She groans, laughing, as she leans back in the chair and brings the bottle to her lips for another drink. “Don’t remind me. Scottie brought a bottle of whisky. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I did shots of whisky. College, maybe? Definitely before I had Dalton.”
She bites the inside of her cheek and stares at the bottle in her hands almost guiltily. I wonder if she’s thinking about the night I drove her home, though I doubt it. I replay that night in my head sometimes, like some kind of masochist.
“I really shouldn’t be drinking this. I’m going to have to pump and dump until tomorrow before I can feed Bea again,” she murmurs, tilting her lips in a wry smile.
It's totally involuntary, the way my eyes drop to the top swell of her breasts beneath the white shirt.
