Chapter 21
“Please, don’t leave me!” Mikey begged and as much as she wished that she could say that heartfelt plea was for her, she couldn’t.
“Mikey,” she said, sighing heavily as she tried to pull her daughter away, but unfortunately for Reese, she had one hell of a hold on his arm.
“Please!”
Already exhausted and it was barely seven in the morning, she released her hold on Mikey to rub the bridge of her nose, mostly to hide the smile that she knew that Eric wouldn’t appreciate at the moment and said, “It’s just for today.”
“But…” Mikey started to say only to let the word hang there as she looked from the man that she was trying to stop from leaving to the one that was most likely going to wring her neck the moment they left.
“We’ll be back before you know it,” she promised, dropping her hand away so that she could gesture for Mikey to go back inside.
With a stubborn set of her shoulders, Mikey shook her head. “No.”
“You don’t have a choice. The camp lost power last night and it’s still not up so you have to spend the day with Eric,” she said, using her firmest mom voice only to earn an eye roll from the little traitor as she tightened her hold around Reese’s arm.
“Please, don’t make me go,” she begged as she closed her eyes and held on for dear life.
“Since I have absolutely no idea what’s going on,” Reese drawled as he stood there, looking more amused than anything, “would someone care to explain?”
“That mean lady right there,” Mikey said, freeing one arm so that she could point in Kasey’s direction, “is trying to make me spend the day at a soul sucking office.”
“Hey!” Eric gasped in outrage as Kasey sighed, “Mikey,” as she was once again forced to rub the bridge of her nose as she struggled not to laugh.
“I see,” Reese murmured, clearly sharing her struggle.
“My office is not boring!” Eric sputtered in outrage, earning an accusing glare from Mikey.
“No, but your job is!” she snapped back.
“How dare you?” Eric gasped, and god, it would really not help if she started laughing.
Clearing her throat as she fought for control, Kasey said, “It’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” Mikey demanded, releasing her hold on Reese’s arm so that she could gesture wildly as she said, “The last time you made me go they ended up high-fiving each other for twenty minutes straight, because they’d figured out a quicker way to download IRS forms!”
“It wasn’t twenty minutes!” Eric said, but sadly, Kasey had a feeling that it had probably gone on longer than that since she’d experienced the boredom that was Eric’s office a time or two in the past.
“It was!” Mikey shot back. “I timed it!”
Eric gasped in outrage. “I was going to let you use the new pencil sharpener and everything!”
Deciding to ignore the fact that Eric had just proven Mikey’s point, Kasey cleared her throat and tried to push on. “Aunt Sara is going to swing by to take you to lunch. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Mikey said, “No, no it really doesn’t.”
“It sounds like fun to me,” Reese said with a smile, obviously trying to help, but god love him, he’d just made it worse.
“Really?” Mikey asked whirling on him. “Have you ever tried edible twigs?”
“Mikey,” Kasey groaned with a heavy sigh, because she really couldn’t argue this one, not when she was the reason why Sara was dragging Mikey off to try a naturalist restaurant that she’d absolutely refused to go near.
“They actually have edible twigs there. I know, because I Googled it last night when she told me that we were going there,” Mikey said with a look that dared her to try arguing about this one, which she couldn’t and they both knew it.
“Fine. Then I’ll take you out to lunch,” Eric said with exaggerated patience as he once again gestured for Mikey to go back in the house, which only made Mikey more determined.
“Your idea of going out to lunch is to come home and see what mom made!” Mikey pointed out, which was sadly true.
“How is it my fault that she’s ruined lunch for me?” Eric asked, throwing his hands up in a helpless gesture that had her rolling her eyes and looking at Mikey, who was either going to get stuck eating edible twigs today or whatever Eric could find leftover in the break room at work.
She just couldn’t do that to her, which meant that she was going to have to put this off for another day or drag Mikey along with her and…
That actually wasn’t a bad idea, she decided, realizing that having Mikey along would probably be her best bet at surviving spending the entire day with the man that she found herself thinking about a little too much, a little too often, and making her think about things that she’d sworn off years ago. She liked him, more and more with every passing day. The fact that she’d only known him for a week and she was already feeling like this was absolutely terrifying.
Her only consolation was that he wasn’t interested in her and even if he was, he was only here for the summer. She could survive two months with him, she decided even as she admitted that she really liked spending time with him, which meant that she was going to need a buffer with her at all times.
For some reason, she didn’t think that was going to be a problem.
*-*-*-*
He should stop smiling.
He really should, especially since the woman squeezed in tightly against him didn’t seem to appreciate it. Not that he could blame her, not after it became painfully obvious with that sly little grin she’d tried to hide when she’d announced that they were just going to have to bring Mikey with them that she’d thought she’d found a safeguard against whatever it was that was going on between them only to have her plans ruined in a blink of an eye.
If Sara hadn’t filled him in on the woman that was currently glaring at the windshield, he probably would have shrugged off his curiosity, accepted the fact that she wasn’t interested, and moved on, but sadly for her, everything she did or said was now taken as a challenge. Not that he hadn’t been disappointed when he’d realized that his plans to spend the day alone with her had been ruined, but that had quickly changed when Kasey’s plans had backfired.
“Can we stop, Uncle Reese? I’m kind of hungry,” Sebastian, who was the reason why Kasey’s plan had backfired, asked, as he shifted to make more room for Mikey, who was sharing the passenger seat with him.
“I’m thirsty,” Mikey added with a sheepish smile and a shrug as she continued to roll a baseball between her hands.
When Reese shifted to get a little more comfortable, which caused his leg to touch hers, Kasey sat up straight and said, “We should definitely stop!” with a panicked little squeak that he found fucking adorable.
Deciding to take pity on her, he pulled off the highway at the next exit and followed the signs towards a gas station and a couple of promising restaurants. He’d barely managed to pull into the parking lot and throw the truck in park when Kasey started urging the kids to climb out of the truck with a somewhat desperate smile.
Shaking his head and wondering when she was going to learn, he climbed out of the truck, turned around and wrapped his arms around her just as she was about to shift to the other end of the bench so that she could climb out of the truck after the kids. Smiling, he pulled her towards him until she was sitting at the end of the bench and facing him. Noting the beautiful blush crawling up her neck and staining her cheeks, he bit back a groan as he stepped closer until he was standing between her legs and all he wanted to do was to lean in and press his lips against her neck where that beautiful blush started.
“I’m starving!” came the reminder that they weren’t alone.
“We’re coming,” he said, unable to stop himself from brushing his knuckles across her jaw as he took in the way her short hair swooped forward, matching his own, the way her beautiful blue eyes hungrily searched his for an answer that he didn’t have, the way that she worried her beautiful plump bottom lip between her teeth, and he was absolutely…fucking…lost.