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“Oh, man!” Perry whined. “How am I supposed to be on a diet with donuts like that? Now I have to know if they’re good or not.”
“You live here,” Banner said. “How do you not know if they’re good or not?”
“Because we’re on a fixed income, I don’t work, I’m going to school-full time and we’re paying for my masters out of our own pocket. Do you seriously think that we can afford donuts all willy nilly?” Perry asked as she got up and headed our way.
I offered her the box, then said, “There are also breakfast sandwiches in this bag,” I said around a bite of donut. “And some bagels. They said that they were the best in three states. People drive here from New York for them, which is saying something seeing as New York has their own bagels that are to die for.”
She cursed and reached into the bag with one hand while fisting a donut in the other.
Slone sighed along with Banner, and the two of them reached into the boxes and pulled out their own donuts.
Banner pulled out a gallon of milk and some cups and brought them to the table.
I took a seat between the two girls and we dove in, and I was proud to say ten minutes later that I had both of them absolutely loving bagels.
“Okay, this is a slight miracle,” Titus said as he bit into his own breakfast sandwich.
It was made with a bagel, too.
And I had to say, it was really yummy and I was glad that he was eating it, even if he was breaking his diet to do it.
“What’s a miracle, Daddy?” Annabelle asked.
Titus sighed, then defined what a miracle was, and why he’d used it in his sentence.
I could hear him talking low to his daughter, but my gaze went across the table and stayed there.
Slone had finished his fourth donut and he was slowly rubbing his belly as if he’d had enough and was full. Every time he moved his arm, his muscles bunched and flexed. Bulging biceps, strong shoulders, large traps.
Being the introverted person that I was, I tended to be a people watcher.
Sure, I’d talk if I was comfortable enough, but people watching was the thing that I did when I was trying to decide if I wanted to talk in the first place.
Needless to say, I’d seen quite a few men in my time. Tall and short. Big and small. Fit and unfit.
The list went on.
To be completely truthful, I’d seen men in better shape—appearance wise anyway—than Slone.
But there was just something about the single dad, from the very beginning, that drew my eye.
And right then, he had a flake of glazed donut on his chest that I wanted to lick off.
And, to make matters worse, as if he was listening to my inner thoughts, he looked down and spotted the fleck of glaze.
He licked his finger, pressed it to his chest to pick the fleck up, and then brought it to his mouth when he had it on his finger.
That’s when he looked up—when he put his finger in his mouth.
I hastily looked away, picking up my own donut that I’d never finished, and ate it even though I wanted to do anything but.
“You look like you’re miserable,” I heard him say.
Instead of looking at Slone, I answered my plate. “When we were little, our father made us clean our plates.” I set the donut down and glared at it. “If we ended up not being able to finish something, he punished us for it. Like this half a donut would definitely make me have to go outside and do a hundred pull-ups and a hundred push-ups.”
The donut slid off my plate, one large hand doing the taking.
I turned to watch him shove the entire thing in his mouth before a grin flashed at me.
