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I shake my head. Too weird.
“Excuse me?” she asks, not looking in my direction. I see it as her way of giving me time to correct my mistake.
“I mean,” I grumble, swiping my hand over the top of my head. “You look like you’re headed out for the night.”
“Do I havea curfew, Da—”
“Don’t,” I growl, sort of loving the way her cheek twitches with mirth when she finally looks in my direction.
I bet she can read me like an open book which is only bad because her thoughts are always such a mystery to me. Hell, most of the time, we’re avoiding each other. I never thought such an innocent kiss as the one back in Detroit had the power to put such a level of separation between two people.
Maybe I should’ve started with a kiss the minute I hired her. Then maybe it wouldn’t have the lasting affect it’s had.
“You look nice,” I tell her, trying to divert her attention from the possessive way I growled at her.
“This old thing?” she says, grabbing the side and pulling it from her body.
I swear her legs are the smoothest things I’ve ever seen, and the crooked smile on her lips isn’t fooling me. But hell, it’s my fault that I can’t help where my mind races to, no matter if it seems that’s what she wanted in the first place.
It’s the same damn dress she was wearing for the meeting at The Brew and Chew. Even the sheriff dropped his eyes to her ass after he opened the door for her and let her enter first. I about came out of my seat, thinking it was disrespectful, but I got lost in the way she glared at me, something akin to hatred in her eyes before she tried to leave.
My fingers ache to run up the back of her calf and disappear under the hemline of that pretty, floral print dress.
“I’m going to meet Adalynn for a drink to celebrate the new freeze dryer she had delivered earlier in the week.”
Even if we had more than one bar in town, I know exactly where Adalynn would be at about eight o’clock tonight. That would be sitting at the pub table in the corner, sipping a diet soda and waiting for Cash to make his rounds. If he wasn’t on shift, then she’d be at her home or his house watching a movie marathon of sorts on opposite ends of the same sofa with tension you could cut the only thing between them.
“Cash is on shift tonight, huh?”
She’s quick to smile, but then she hides it.
“It’s a celebration,” she reiterates. “And I’m going to use that time to beg for freeze-dried Skittles while sipping on a daiquiri.”
“Walker doesn’t make frozen drinks,” I say offhandedly.
“Then I’ll drink shots,” she argues.
A horn blares outside, and a sense of relief hits me that she won’t be driving. It’s not very often that Adalynn indulges in a drink. As the owner of Fondante’s Inferno, the local bakery, she has to be up early to get ready for the breakfast crowd that’s obsessed with her cupcakes. It doesn’t leave much room for hangovers and next-day regret.
“Maybe I’ll see you there,” I say as she opens the front door.
It’s not unusual that she didn’t announce her plans to me. Those aren’t the types of conversations we’ve had over the last two weeks that she’s worked for me. We discuss the boys, and on occasion, she requests I grab things from the store so she doesn’t have to load up the boys and get them in and out in the heat. They say it doesn’t bother them, but they’re crankier just like everyone else later in the afternoon with this heat wave we’ve been having.
Madison lifts her arm over her head and gives me a little wave before disappearing outside and closing the door behind her.
Agitation settles inside of me. Even though I know I have no right to that kind of emotion, it doesn’t stop it from seeping inside of me.
“We’re ready, Daddy!” Cale says, carefully coming down the stairs, his little suitcase bouncing with each step it hits as he pulls it behind him.
“Me too!” Cole says, seeing his brother is blocking this side of the staircase so he runs to the other side and beats his brother to the landing.
“Where are your clothes?” I ask Cole.
He scrunches his nose at me. “We wear the same size, remember?”
He points his finger back and forth between himself and his twin.
“But you can’t wear the same thing at the same time,” I remind him, one of the more common phrases I find myself saying around these two. “Last time you went to Papaw’s, you didn’t have clothes.”
