“But you can’t chase me on land. You can only swim.”
“I could jump really high out of the water and land on top of you. With my teeth.” Eloise snaps her teeth together to punctuate the point.
“Geez, this is getting violent.” I wince.
Avery sets down her spoon, giving this her full attention. “Then I won’t stay by the ocean. I’ll only drink out of rivers and lakes.”
Eloise nods, seemingly stumped by how to win that one.
“Why are we talking about eating Avery?” Finn wonders, glancing between the girls.
Eloise waves this off. “I don’t want to eat Avery. But if I was a shark, I wouldn’t know she was my sister, so I would eat the horse because I was hungry. Sharks are super hungry.”
Finn nods. “They don’t tend to eat many land mammals—unless you are a seal or sea lion.”
Avery shakes her head. “No, just a horse.”
“Pretty sure you’re safe, then,” I say with a giggle.
Eloise stops eating and leans to wrap an arm around Avery. “Don’t turn into a seal or a sea lion, okay? Promise?”
“Promise,” Avery confirms.
I stifle my laugh with a sip of water.
Avery scans Finn’s face. “Uncle Finn would be a wolf,” she finally decides.
He straightens his shoulders. “Because I’m strong and protective?”
“Nope. Because you sounded like a wolf when you smashed your fingers in the car door last time. You howled, remember?”
He shakes his head, but there’s a playful smile dancing across his lips. “You’re gonna get it for that one.”
Both girls drop their spoons like those are the code words to jump into action. They leap from their chairs to tickle him as he scoots back and traps them both in his arms with an evil villain laugh. Avery and Eloise squeal as they try to fight against him, and Finn scoops them up under his arms and carries them to the couch, dropping them in a fit of giggles.
When he makes it back to his chair, his cheeks are rosy, his eyes bright.
“Those girls adore you,” I tell him.
He glances over his shoulder toward the living room. “I adore the hell out of them.”
“Did they get to sleep okay after game night yesterday?”
He nods. “They didn’t even wake up when I brought them to their beds. They want to come back for another one.”
I smile. “You’re all welcome back to the next one. We had a blast.”
Finn’s gaze scans my face, drops over my shoulders, then runs across my collarbone, and I shiver at the phantom feeling of his finger there earlier. Silence stretches between us, and I wonder if he’s remembering that moment too.
A muscle pops in his jaw. “You have a date tomorrow,” he says, low and gravelly.
Heat burns in my cheeks. “I think so.”
“You think?” A crease splits his brows.
I nod, squirming in my seat. “I’m going on a date.” This feels like a lie since my “date” is with Micah, but I’m not sure how to change it at this point. My palms sweat from the intensity of his stare, and I want to simply breathe out the truth. Let the words cleanse the air between us and reduce the pressure on my lungs.
But this is a definitive reason to stay away from each other. It’s already laid out there for me because I accidentally blurted it. I can’t fall any further into his charm because I have a date. Therefore, no more fingers in mouths. Period.
