I pat the seat next to me, scooting over to make more room for her. It’s not a freezing night, but it’s definitely not warm enough to be standing outside in bare feet and a t-shirt that hits her mid-thigh.
She takes a seat beside me with a flash of bare leg, revealing a small cluster of freckles under her left thigh that requires my full focus to stop staring.
The second she’s settled, I snag the blanket from a brown basket on the floor and drape it over her. As much to keep her warm as to keep myself from touching her. Or mauling her. She leaves a tantalizing trail of blackberries and wild honey in the house, and her scent is growing stronger by the day.
Wyatt said she’d been taking heat suppressants since she was eighteen, and while everyone knows there’s no long-term risk, I have to wonder if that isn’t what’s delaying her heat. Whatever the reason, she smells so damn good that being around her is both pleasure and torture.
“Thanks,” she says, wrapping the blanket around her with a grateful smile.
Nodding, I return to my strumming as her scent envelops me.
“Florida,” she says a couple of minutes later.
I glance at her, eyebrow raised. “Florida?”
“I keep thinking that maybe I should tell you to take the Florida job.”
Head down, I ask her, “Why?”
I know. I just want to know if she does.
Out of the corner of my eye, she shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I feel out the next few notes, but the song doesn’t sound right, so I let it go and settle for more strumming instead. “You think it’ll make us happy.”
“What?”
I stop strumming to tell her, “That’s what you do when you care about someone. If you think you’re getting in the way of something that will make them happy, you move yourself out of the way while nudging them toward it.”
She tilts her head. “How do you know that?”
“My dad was a musician.”
Her eyes widen with interest, and she glances at the guitar. “A guitarist?”
I chuckle. “Absolutely not. He’d have smacked this out of my hand if he'd seen the way I was strumming. Drums. Mom is a lawyer. She pushed him to go after his dreams and flew out to see him any chance she could. He toured a bit and had a bite of real success, but that wasn’t the dream he wanted to chase anymore.”
“He missed your mom?”
I nod. “A family with her. She supported his dreams. Then he took over and worked as much as he could so she could have more time off to stay home after she had my sisters and me. A partnership—that’s what they are—in all things. That’s why I don’t settle.”
Her brows draw together. “Are you telling me you aren’t interested in me, but in a way that won’t offend me?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
What I’m saying is that I’m prepared to sit back and wait. When I’m sure of what I want, I go hard after it.
Maisie is dying to ask, biting her lip to contain her curiosity. She won’t. She’s too afraid of rejection to walk into a question that comes with an answer she might not like.
“My dad fell for my mom when she was walking down the aisle,” I explain.
Her nose wrinkles. “She was gettingmarried?”
“Not her. Her sister, my aunt. My dad was friends with the groom. They hadn’t met since he had flown into town for the wedding and nearly missed it when his flight was badly delayed. He was standing beside the groom when she walked down the aisle toward him, clutching a small purple bouquet. She smiled right at him, and he told me he’d never fallen so hard or sofast in his life.” I strum the guitar. “But she was engaged to an accountant.”
She sucks in her breath, drawn into the story of how my parents met. “No way.”
“Way. So he won her over.”
