“But not me,” she said, trying to turn again, and this time he allowed her. Her hands were on his cheeks, but he kept looking out the glass door at the snow falling. The flakes, so tiny, were accumulating and would be a good few inches in the morning. Just like these little emotions that Ava stirred in him.
He liked her smile.
No big deal.
She sassed him and made him hard with just a flick of her hair over her shoulder.
Also a tiny detail.
She was competitive.
She teased him aboutBad Boys.
All these tiny snowflakes falling around him. A man who’d been used to a barren landscape and coping with it the only way he knew how. Building his house far from town. Making a life for himself where he couldn’t really get too chummy with the other residents of the Navajo Nation because he might have to arrest someone or give them a ticket.
Until Ava.
Falling around him and surrounding him while he wasn’t paying attention. It was easy for him to pretend that he could ignore the feelings she stirred in him, but he hated to lie to himself.
He could no more ignore her than he would be able to drive to work in the morning without first shoveling out his truck.
He was busy trying to debate rational thought and emotions, but it was too late. Once emotion took hold, it was all over. Something that he wasn’t sure how to proceed with.
Tension swirled around her like the snow outside Chay’s home. He was so brutally honest that she couldn’t help falling for him that little bit more, which was dangerous. He wasn’t like Greg, who she’d loved when she’d been young and had just the smallest bit of damage.
At almost thirty she had baggage. Lots of it. Chay did, too. They were both coming to each other battle hardened from their twenties, as most people did. Life wasn’t all sunshine and happiness. She got that. She’d known it for a while now. But somewhere in the back of her mind was the belief that it should be.
Now she wasn’t sure.
She wouldn’t change one thing about Chay…maybe his stubbornness when it came to thinking of himself as a father to Gracie, but even that she knew was deeply rooted in his childhood, and she couldn’t blame him for his reluctance.
No one wanted to be responsible for screwing up a little person’s life…well, any person, really.
She got that more than he’d understand. She’d felt that way when she’d first been approached to foster.
But fostering was temporary. A nice, sweet spot where she could allow herself all the feels knowing that one day the baby or child would be in their forever home and she’d be a memory of a transition.
“That promise is one I know you can keep,” she said to Chay. “You aren’t your mom.”
“Obvious, right? But there’s still a part of me that can’t shake the feeling that it’s only because I haven’t been around kids, haven’t tried to have a long-term partner that I’m not.”
“Oh, Chay. If only you could…” An idea popped into her head. “Turn and face the glass door again. Can you see yourself in the reflection?”
“I’d rather look at you.”
She shook her head to keep from being distracted by that low, rumbly, seductive tone he used.
“First let’s look at you.”
“Are you therapy-ing me?”
“Maybe. Trust me?”
He nodded and then turned until he faced the glass door. She went to turn off one of the larger living room lights so they were bathed in a small pool of illumination. His reflection was clearer this way. He held himself still.
His jaw was tight, his muscles tense and his expression that serious, I-mean-business look that she knew so well.
“What do you see?”
