Duval covered her hand with his and lifted it away from his face. He pulled back and looked down at Ciela.
She was still fast asleep based on the slow, deep breaths she was taking. He held her hand gently and turned it over to look at her palm.
Her hands were scraped up with bits of dried blood across her skin. Before he realized it, a word fell from his lips.
“Shit.”
Startled, he looked up and met Noelle’s gaze.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” She was giggling, silently, but her movements shook Ciela a little and the little girl shifted against her mother’s chest.
Noelle lifted her free hand and rubbed it gently against her daughter’s back.
“Sorry for the slip of the tongue right then.”
She looked up at him with an element of surprise and her cheeks heated in a blush. She laughed more and Ciela woke, lifting her head from her mother’s chest. “Sorry, baby.”
Ciela murmured a soft sound, but she was likely as exhausted as they were and laid her head back down and fell back asleep.
“It’s hard to imagine that I’d fall in love and end up with a whole family like this.”
* * *
NOELLE
Noelle looked up at him with what she felt was her whole heart in her eyes.
“Both of us?” The question fell from her lips before she thought about it.
She felt the welcome weight of Ciela against her chest as she dragged in a breath, wondering how to take it back.
“Of course,bothof you.” McCrae smiled at her and the whole world settled into place. “When I said you’re my family, it’s the whole thing. I just wonder if you want to be a part of my crazy family.”
“I love your family!” she whispered in a rush.
The words had escaped her again and she shook her head, feeling like she’d put her foot in it, but when she focused her gaze on his face, he didn’t look upset.
He was smiling.
On any given day, McCrae King was handsome, devastatingly so.
But at that moment, exhausted, with his face rough with unshaved scruff, he was gorgeous. Her heart ached and her body?
Well, her body reacted like it always did when she was close to him.
She wished that they were alone, but it was likely the only thing that saved her that they weren’t.
Otherwise, she might have crawled over and…
“What are you thinking?”
She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to tell him what she felt without dissolving into a puddle of nerves.
He smiled. “I think I know what’s in your head. It’s in mine, too.”
She saw the heat in his gaze and knew that he did understand.
