“Felix?” I asked. I’d already figured that out, but Benji talking to me still felt precious. For the first three months after my sister—his mom—died, he’d barely said a word to anyone. Hearing him talk made me feel like maybe he’d be okay, eventually. Like I wasn’t completely screwing this up.
Benji nodded. “I think he’s sad about it,” he continued. “But maybe being here will make him happy?”
“You think?”
Benji shrugged, grabbing his last fry and swiping it through the remains of his ketchup. “It made me happy.”
I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat. “Yeah?”
Benji nodded, looking up at me with those big, earnest eyes as he licked ketchup off his fingers.
Tears pricked at my eyes as I smiled at him. It was all worth it—moving back to Otter Bay after a decade away, coming to Dad with my tail between my legs after leaving the family business to go my own way, the collapse of a four-year relationship with a man I’d thought I’d be with forever. None of that mattered when Benji looked at me like that.
“Glad to hear it, kiddo,” I said, sitting back to look at him. My whole world, sitting right across the table from me. “You like Felix, huh?”
Benji shrugged again. “He’s cool. Do you like him?”
“Uh…”
Yes, but not in a way I can explain to you.
Damn.DidI like him like that? Maybe. Okay, yes, but not desperately or anything. I’d just… noticed him. He was the first person I’dnoticedin a while. And he would have been kind of hard to miss, crashing into me like he did. That was all there was to it.
“He seems cool,” I said.
Benji grinned at me. “Maybe you could make him happy, too.”
I had to bite down on my tongue to hold back a snort. No. No, I did not think I could improve the happiness of Felix Bennet, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, who I couldn’t even bring myself totouchearlier. People like him were not made happier by people like me. I was limited to being an okayish uncle to a six-year-old who hadn’t had time to develop more refined taste.
Which was fine. Benji was more than enough to fill my whole life, and it wasn’t as though I had time for anything else around it. That’d been Aaron’s problem.
I like you but I didn’t sign up for a kid.
Benjiwasmy life now, my whole world. No one else would ever come close to being as important as this little boy.
Which was why I said, “maybe I could.” Just to get Benji to grin at me again.
I didn’t have to believe it.
5
FELIX
“Hello?”I called into the apparently unattended premises of Big Dick’s Lube and Service. I’d have to get a photo of the sign for Avery. Maybe get them a magnet or something. They’d get a kick out of that.
It was dark in the shop, which struck me as suboptimal for mechanical work—but then I wasn’t a mechanic. I didn’t know the first thing about cars, including how to drive them.
“Gimme one sec,” a familiar voice called from somewhere deeper in the shop. I stepped into the dark, following the sound, then the distinctive ring of metal being dropped on concrete and someone swearing under their breath.
Eventually, I found a pair of feet sticking out from under a people mover that had seen better days.
“Sorry about that,” their owner said, rolling out from under the van. “Couldn’t let go withou—oh.”
My eyes had adjusted well enough by now that, as Cooper’s body appeared from under the van, all I could do was stare at him.Specifically, the view I had of the V-shaped slice of his torso that was visible under his hanging-open overalls. Bare, dusted with dark curls, and his overalls were unbuttoned so far I could see his thick treasure trail disappearing into the waistband of his boxers. Which were black, but, I surmised from the glimpse of them I could see peeking out, covered in bananas.
Hot. Hot, hot,hot. My brain went to static as I took him in, the sheen of sweat on his skin, the obvious power of his core—not the lean muscle definition I’d been used to seeing in the mirror, but the body of a man who made a living moving heavy things around. I’d realized Cooper was a big guy when I ran into him, but it was only registering now that he was abig guy.
That was setting off all kinds of fireworks in my brain.
