Rowan’s spoon paused halfway to his mouth. “Good, right?”
She nodded, too busy savoring to speak.
He watched her for a long moment, his expression doing something strange, softening, maybe, or darkening, she couldn’t tell. Then he cleared his throat and went back to his own dessert.
Enya scraped the last of the cream from her plate, then pushed it away with a satisfied sigh. “I’m considering licking the plate. But I think we’ve given everyone enough gossip today without adding that I’m an uncultured heathen to it.”
Rowan smirked. “I dare?—”
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
Rowan chuckled and opened his mouth as if he were going to do it anyway. But he snapped it shut again when Nora-Mae appeared to clear their plates.
Her eyes twinkled as if she’d seen and heard everything. “Y’all need anything else?”
Rowan scratched his stubble. “Just the pies to take home for the boys, and the check.”
“You got it,” Nora-Mae replied, reaching for a box on the counter near the coffee maker. “I have them already boxed up for ya. You bring this one back again, you hear?”
Enya’s face heated. Rowan just chuckled. “Will do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The diner’sbell jingled overhead, its brass chime cutting through the late afternoon hum of conversation and clinking cutlery as Rowan shouldered the door open. He balanced the white box in one hand, Nora-Mae’s looping scrawl across the top in smudged blue ink:‘Two extra slices, just in case, sugar.’
She had winked when she’d slid it across the counter, her eyes flicking between him and Enya with the kind of knowing look that made Rowan’s neck itch. Damn, he wished ‘just in case’ was for the quiet moments, the ones where words weren’t needed and something sweet might fill the silence, instead of just in case they were still hungry.
Don’t be stupid.
She’s not ready for anything, and she’s not the kind of woman you just scratch an itch with.
Unless you are looking for more, then keep your hands behind your fucking back and your cock in your pants.
Did he listen to his internal warnings? No, no, he did not. His hand found Enya’s without hesitation, his fingers threadingthrough hers like they’d been designed to fit perfectly right there. She didn’t pull away, stiffen, or do any of the things that would’ve told him he was pushing for more than she wanted to give.
He suppressed a shudder as her palm pressed against his, and her thumb brushed over his knuckles in a slow, deliberate stroke that sent a jolt straight up his arm, settling somewhere dangerously close to his chest—right where his pulse was already pounding like he’d run ten miles under the desert sun. The touch was casual, almost absentminded, but it also…wasn’t. Not with the way her fingers tightened just slightly when he squeezed back. Not with the way her shoulder brushed his as they stepped off the curb, her warmth seeping into his soul as if determined to rope, brand, and keep him forever.
I should have left the truck at Hay’s.
Stupid move, driving it over here.
Dumbass.
He cursed himself for his lack of foresight. With the truck parked only half a block down, they would be there too fast. Rowan didn’t want to rush, and he didn’t want the peace that settled deep inside him to end. He should have been wary that everyone in town could see him holding Enya’s hand. But he couldn’t bring himself to care. Let Marla peer through the post office front window with her binoculars as she dialed his mother’s number. Let the old men on the bench outside the barbershop nudge each other and mutter about ‘kids these days.’ He didn’t give a damn. Not when Enya’s fingers were warm in his, not when her laughter and teasing still hummed in his ears, making his ribs ache.
The second he’d clocked the way her lips wrapped around a bite of that damn lemon meringue pie, and the sound of her happy moan of enjoyment made his cock stand to attention, he’d decided he was going to hoard the memory for the shit moments when he needed to pull himself back from the edge of oblivion that came from having to work in shitholes around the globe. He loved his job. Loved. It. And he was damn good at it, but there were times he skated a little too close to the edge of sanity, that he needed something, anything to keep him from being like one of the assholes he and his team hunted.
She’d do that.
She could be my sanity in the fuckery that is war.
He’d never forget how watching her as she’d licked a smear of filling from her thumb had made his heart race, his balls ache, and his throat go dry. She’d caught him staring, of course, and had held his gaze, her eyes dark and knowing, before she’d taken another bite, slower this time, her lips parting just enough to let him see the glisten of sugar on her tongue. It had been torture. Sweet, deliberate torture. And now, with her hand in his, the memory was a live wire under his skin, making every touch, every glance, feel like the edge of something he wasn’t sure he should want.
He unlocked the passenger side first, because that’s what his father had drilled into him, and what his momma had reinforced with a sharptskand a reminder that ‘ladies don’t climb over gear shifts, Rowan.’ But when Enya turned to hoist herself up, her hip brushing against his, he didn’t step back. The air between them had thickened into something heavy. She paused, her boot on the running board, and looked up at him, and he forgot how to breathe.
He clenched his hand to keep from reaching out and tucking that loose strand of hair behind her ear. The urge was ridiculous. Worse, he knew it would be reckless, but then she smiled, and his entire world tilted.
He pushed the bakery box past her and dropped it on the seat, ignoring how the corner crumpled slightly under the impact. His free hand found the curve of her waist, his fingers spreading over the soft fabric of her sweater, and pulled her against him with an urgency that should’ve scared him…but didn’t. Nothing about this did. He wasn’t stupid enough to lie to himself that the way her breath hitched, her hands came up to his chest, and her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt didn’t drive him crazy as his gaze locked onto her mouth for what seemed like long moments before she reached up and pressed her lips to his.
