We both gasp as his arms wrap around my waist and my chest hits his. It takes a second to get my head together. I can feel his heart beat against my cheek. His cologne hangs in the air, but being so close, I can smell him—the oils on his skin. The sweetness of his breath. The scent that’s strongest in the crook of his neck.
He grins as I look up, trying to catch my breath.
“Good thing I warned you,” he teases.
“Yeah,” I pant. “Good thing.”
His palms lie flat against the small of my back. His fingers flex against my shirt. Our eyes stay locked together, a grin tickling the corner of his lips.
Whether it’s too much contact or the sweet summer air, all my sense of reality is lost. I fall happily into his gaze. My lungs fill, my heart skips as he begins to lower his head to mine.
He pulls me closer to him. I lock my hands around his waist. We fit together like a puzzle in the middle of this little forest.
Just as his lips dip toward mine, his eyes sparkling like a million stars in the sky, Mia shouts, “Dad! Are you coming or what?”
I sag, unable to catch myself from laughing. A deflated balloon, I blow out the rest of the air I’ve been holding.
“Damn kid.” He chuckles, flexing his fingers against me. “Coming, Mia, darling.”
“Hurry up. We want to play in the water,” she calls back.
He holds me for a moment longer. I soak up the sturdiness of his body and the way his arms feel around me. I breathe him in one final time before planting my hands on his chest and pressing gently away.
His head bows as he turns toward the creek.
The rest of the walk is quiet. The logical part of my brain chastises me for caving. The human side declares it’s only that—human. How was I to resist being in his arms when it feels like I was just there? Like, somehow, being nestled against him is as natural as being on a balance beam?
The girls see us coming and waste no time getting closer to the water. They toss in rocks and limbs and find a frog on the other bank, but Dane won’t let them that far out to grab it.
I pick out a spot of grass beneath a tree and plop down. Dane teaches the girls how to skip rocks across the water. He doesn’t get frustrated when they ask the same questions over and over, nor does he become irritated when they do exactly the opposite of what he tells them. He just smiles and repeats himself or shows them again.
They play at the water’s edge for a long time. I join them as they attempt to build a dam. When it washes out, so does their excitement.
“Can we head back to the church now?” Keyarah asks. “I’m thirsty.”
“Me too,” Madison agrees.
“Yeah. Go on,” Dane says. “Stay on the path. We’ll be behind you shortly.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Keyarah giggles. “Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?”
My eyes whip to Mia. She’s biting her bottom lip just like her dad does when he’s nervous. She looks at me for an answer.
“No,” I say as cheerily as I can. “Dane and I are friends. We grew up together.”
“My mom said you two used to be boyfriend and girlfriend,” Keyarah says. “We were looking through her old yearbooks, and I saw a picture of you together.”
“Like I said, we grew up together.” I look at Dane for support. “That’s all it is.”
“That’s all it is.” He casts a somber look at me before turning back to the girls. “Stay together and go straight to the church. Got it?”
“Got it,” Mia says. She flashes us a peace sign before they trample off the way we came.
Dane sits next to me. He stretches out, propping up on his elbows. He joins me in glancing across the water.
We don’t say anything for a long time. I wonder if he’s replaying the trip down here like I am. Just as I get to the part where he almost kisses me, he chuckles.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t remember being their age and knowing what a girlfriend and boyfriend even were. Girls were gross.”
“I wasn’t a fan of boys until a green-eyed brother of a little punk in my class showed up at my front door,” I say. “That sort of changed things for me.”
He laughs, looking up at the clouds. “I remember going home that night and trying to get all the information I could about you from Matt. Of course, being the idiot he is, he knew nothing. He was like, ‘Uh, I think she brings her lunch and doesn’t get a tray in the cafeteria.’”
“Well, that was true.” I laugh. “You were the first boy I ever had a crush on. My first kiss. My first . . . everything.”
The clouds shift overhead, allowing the sun to break free. It glimmers off the trickling water below us.
“I don’t regret dating you anymore,” I say softly.
“You mean you used to?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ve spent a lot of nights in a shitty apartment in the city wondering what your little family life was like down here. I felt shafted, to be honest.”
“And I spent a lot of nights home alone with a baby, wondering what you were doing in the big city. I felt, like, jealous sometimes, to be honest.” He moves his neck back and forth. “This shirt is killing me.”
My fingers dig into the grass in a futile attempt to keep from reaching over to him. But the longer I look at the way the sun kisses his skin, noticing the way my heart feels full as he looks at me and smiles, the more the resistance wanes.
“Here. Let me help you,” I say. Stretching across the space between us, I unfasten a button. My fingers tremble as they brush against his skin, freeing the top two spots.
He watches me closely, the warmth of his body washing over me. I wonder if he’s thinking about the possibilities of undoing all the buttons, of shedding his shirt. Of removing my dress.
Before I pull away, he sits up. We’re inches apart. My heart races as my mouth goes dry.
His eyes shine, the gold flecks brighter than even the greens. “For the record,” he whispers, “I haven’t regretted kissing you once.”
“For the record,” I say, forcing a swallow, “if I lived around here, I’d have a hard time not kissing you more.”
That’s all it takes. My stomach whirls like a banshee as he leans up and touches his lips to mine. I don’t close my eyes; I want to see and feel everything.
His lips are soft, his breath hot against my mouth. His lashes full as they lie splayed against his cheeks. Just as we pull apart, a flurry of giggles rings out from behind a shrub above us.
I cover my face with my hands and try to quiet the racket in my body. I want to shriek, to fist pump, to call Grace and tell her right freaking now like a juvenile that Dane kissed me. But none of those options are appropriate for a woman nearing thirty—especially a woman nearing thirty who will most likely be regretting this decision shortly.
“Get back to the church,” he shouts, although it’s laced with a laugh. He gets to his feet, offering me a hand. “We better get back before those three start telling people all kinds of stories.”
He helps me up, and I follow him along the trail toward the church. We stop at the trench and he turns to me. “For the record, I don’t regret that kiss either.” He then flashes me the widest smile and hops to the other side.
I take his hand and make it across more gracefully this time. “For the record,” I say, looking at his handsome face, “I don’t either.”
I leave him standing behind me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DANE
A drill rips through the air behind me. Close. Too close. I jump a mile.
“Damn it, Penn,” I say. The set of plans in my hand ripple as I wipe my brow. “It’s too early for your bullshit.”
“It’s almost noon,” he cracks. “Besides, when did you get so jumpy?”
I ignore his question, mostly because I don’t have an answer, and lay the plans out on the floor instead. “Come here,” I say, motioning for him to crouch with me. “We can’t finish this trim until the concrete guy comes in and works his magic on the floors.”
Penn lowers himself. “Yeah, but that’s the general contractor’s problem. Not ours.”
“We’re ahead of schedule. I called the contractor, and they’re going to see if the concrete guy can get up here in the next week or so. In the meantime, let’s jump to the pergola in the back tomorrow and see if we can wrap up what we can.”
“Sounds good.”
The rumble of tires on gravel catches our attention. We stand and wait for the car to appear. Penn’s face lights up when he sees it’s Haley.
“Can you not hump her leg?” I mutter.
“Her leg isn’t what I want to hump.”
Sighing in exasperation, I head across the grass. Haley is out of the car, and Mia’s right behind her.
“Hey, Dad!” My daughter heads toward me with a book tucked under her arm. She beams. “We’ve been to the library today. I know you’re over the whole bedtime story thing—”
“Because you’re old enough to read to me at this point.”
“You’ll miss it one day.” She shrugs as if she’s challenging me to argue that. I can’t. “Anyway, I got a couple of new books. I think you’re going to love them.”
I look at Haley. “Did you have her get something about baseball? Grilling? Camping?”
“No,” Mia says. “But I did have to check out one about a boy that gets lost in the woods. He lives in a tree or something. That’s right up your alley. Not really mine, but . . .”
“It’s called expanding your horizons,” Haley insists, coming up next to us. “I’m all for princesses, but it’s time for a change.”
“Uncle Matt!” Mia abandons us in favor of my brother. Once she’s out of earshot, I know I’m in trouble. Haley’s shit-eating grin is legendary.
“So . . . ,” she says.
“So, what?”