Embarrassed wasn’t the right word.
Nor was mortified.
No, Wyatt wasn’t ashamed that he had feelings. Maybe ashamed he’d waited this long to admit them to her, but not that he had feelings.
But things had definitely been awkward all evening.
Hell, all week.
Even with Skye locked away in her room, reading or working or playing with her camera or whatever she was doing, the awkwardness permeated the entire house.
And the driveway.
Which he knew, because he sat in the car with the windows down for an hour, catching up on the news and any pressing emails from his boss while Nicholas slept. After the kid woke up, he fixed a frozen pizza for dinner. The mess in the kitchen said Skye had taken care of making herself a sandwich. Possibly she’d fed half the woodland creatures too, if the number of dishes that had magically appeared on the counters and in the sink was any indication.
And then he got a clue and let Nicholas pick a movie to watch in the living room after dinner.
He missed half the actual movie, because Nicholas liked to shout the dialogue he knew half a second before the character said it. If he could’ve found a way to make his nephew’s face light up the way the movie did, he would’ve changed their plans in a heartbeat.
He should’ve known Nicholas was allergic to bee stings. Or that heights made the boy nauseous. He’d assumed Nicholas was never outside because Amelia and Vince were raising the kid on electronics.
He hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility that the outside was truly dangerous for Nicholas. That he just wasn’t a sporty kid.
He’d done great on the hike. He’d gotten a little out of breath, but he’d pushed through it. And Skye had been fantastic with him. She’d squeezed his biceps and told him he was strong, that he’d grow up to be a real ladies’ man, that he probably got away with anything when he smiled at his mom like that.
While Wyatt had said, “Come on, bud. Keep up.” When what he really would’ve liked was for Skye to tell him he was irresistible and sexy and she was so glad they’d accidentally ended up out here in Hope Falls together.
He winced to himself.
Both because the chances of her appreciating him were about nil, and because he could suddenly see where Nicholas might not have appreciated his encouragement.
After the movie was over, Wyatt asked Nicholas if he wanted to go out for ice cream.
Because he needed to do something simply for fun. With this little boy who accepted him without question, who never pulled back when Wyatt tried to show him how to bait a hook or shoot a pool stick, and who would one day, too soon, take to rolling his eyes at all the little things that Wyatt appreciated most.
“Can Miss Skye come too?” Nicholas asked.
“Come where?” She popped up the stairs, her gaze swiftly passing by Wyatt to land on Nicholas.
“For ice cream,” Nicholas explained.
Her gaze flitted to Wyatt again, and then back to Nicholas. “Oh, no, I don’t need to interrupt boys’ night.”
“You’re welcome to join us,” Wyatt told her.
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth.
Uncertainty wasn’t her color.
He shouldn’t have told her how he felt.
“No, go ahead,” she said. “I have some work to catch up on.”
“Nicholas, do your parents ever work on vacation?” he asked.
“Once Mom threw Dad’s iPhone out the window when we were driving to the zoo. He was really mad, but she was right. She told me so. Vacation is for family time, not work.”
“Kid knows what he’s talking about.”
“You should come, Miss Skye.” Nicholas leapt across the room and tugged on her hand. “You can help me talk Uncle Wyatt into going to see Phoebe Moon and the Sneeze Snatcher.”
“Is it playing here?” she asked.
“I saw the sign yesterday,” Nicholas said.
“Phoebe what again?” Wyatt said.
“Phoebe Moon,” she said. “She’s this orphan girl whose mad scientist uncle steals all the sneezes in the world, and she has to get them back. Total fun.”
He opened his mouth, then clamped it shut.
Fun didn’t sound like the right word, but he was hardly an expert in kid movies.
But sitting next to Skye in a dark theater for two hours sounded like torture.
“You guys should go,” she said. “Tell me all about it when you get back.”
Because she was a chicken?
Or because she was done with him?
She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ears, exposing the pink tint in her cheeks. “I, ah, need to call and catch up with an old friend.”
She was lying.
But he didn’t call her out.
Because it wouldn’t do either of them any good.
* * *
After a long soak in the big whirlpool in the master bedroom—with the door locked and a note taped to it, just in case, even though the boys had left for ice cream—she slipped on another soft Giovanni & Valentino T-shirt and her favorite pajama pants. After a bit, she heard Wyatt and Nicholas come in. A while after that, she heard steps overhead, but no voices. Considering it was after nine, she assumed Nicholas was in bed now.
So she went in search of Wyatt.
Because she was a grown-up.
And she’d needed to talk to someone for a long time, but she’d refused to talk to her parents, her brother, even her closest friends.
He was sitting on the couch thumbing over his phone, legs propped up on the ottoman. He’d drawn the curtains over the bay windows. A single table lamp lit the cavernous open space.
“How was the movie?” she asked.
“Missed the early showing so we just hung out instead,” he said. “Brought home some extra ice cream. It’s in the freezer if you want it.”
“Thanks. You two have fun?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “Love him to pieces, but that kid talks a lot.”
She chuckled. “Most kids do.”
“Memory or experience talking?”
“Both.” She settled onto the other end of the couch and tucked her legs under her. He’d opened himself up to her twice in the last twenty-four hours. If she wanted to get to know the real Wyatt Owens, she owed it to him to do the same.
Besides, she was overdue to talk to a friend about what had happened.
Even if this friend was a relatively new friend, with a chest she’d been fantasizing about way more than she should’ve.
“My ex-fiancé had a twelve-year-old,” she said.
He set his phone aside. “He’s why you won’t go home.”
“When the most popular mayor in history dumps you because his kid hates you, it’s kinda hard to want to stay.”
She was surprised to realize she wasn’t bitter.
Simply sad.
“Why didn’t he like you?” he asked.
“I don’t think he would’ve liked anyone his dad dated.” She pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging herself because she knew touching him instead would derail this conversation.
And she needed to get it out.
Especially if there was something here with Wyatt.
He needed to know she wasn’t always lovable.
“Steven was divorced before he ran for mayor, and his ex-wife was very supportive of his campaign. It seemed like an amicable split, but you know how spin goes when you’re in the public eye.”
He inclined his head. Even though he’d been off in college, and then in the military when Beck and the rest of the guys were touring, she knew he’d been tracked down by a few reporters for comments on their lives too.
Everyone who’d ever known them had, it seemed.
“I met Steven at a fundraiser a few months after he was elected,” she continued. “We dated quietly for a while, and when we went public, his ex-wife wished us well. But I think she always thought they’d get back together, and she didn’t like him moving on. I tried. I tried hard to get along with her. To get along with Matthew too. But I never quite got it right. After we got engaged, Matthew started acting out. He called me names. I caught him going through my purse. Steven got a call from the principal one afternoon, spent three hours at the school, and all he’d tell me was that Matthew was having a hard time adjusting to a few things. I didn’t want to be paranoid, but it was hard not to assume I was those things.”
And there had been guilt.
An entire ocean of guilt, and she’d been drowning in it, because she’d resented a twelve-year-old boy with divorced parents.
What kind of person resented a kid?
Wyatt’s lips were pursed together.
“I tried,” she said softly. “But he picked his son over me. He did what he needed to do, and I don’t fault him for it. I kept wondering what I could’ve done differently, if I’d said something wrong, or done something wrong, or even just looked at him wrong.”
“You didn’t,” he said with that firm authority of his.
“Two sides to every story, and you’ve only heard mine,” she said lightly.
“You miss him?”
“I work too hard to miss anyone.”
“Not working now.” He shifted his hips and sunk deeper into the couch. “You wish he was here?”
“No.”
That earned her a half-smile. “Because you’re mad at him, or because you don’t miss him?”
“Look at you, being all intuitive about people. Wyatt Owens, you have hidden depths.”
A real smile crept up her lips in direct proportion to his not-amused scowl. “I don’t think I miss him,” she said. “I loved him, but I’m not built for that obsessive, can’t-live-without-you, think-about-you-every-minute kind of love.”
“No?”
“Definitely not.”
He gazed at her, those dark blue eyes boring into her as though he were searching her heart’s answer rather than her brain’s answer.
As though he were calling her out on her bullshit.
Because she’d been rather obsessed with him the last three days.
“Huh,” he finally said. “That’s too bad.”
Her pulse ticked up. “What, you’re built for huge, obsessive, fairy tale love?”
He held her gaze a moment longer, and she didn’t have to hear his answer to know.
Because it was all right there in the intensity of his eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the raw, harnessed power radiating from his body.
Wyatt Owens was the type of man who would fall in love heart, body, and soul, and when he fell in love, all of him would fall in love.
Completely.
No reservations.
No hesitation.
And he would put everything, everything, right up to his dying breath, into worshipping the one woman he loved. The only woman he would ever love.
Her breath hitched. Her heart drummed on her rib cage.
How could one man have that much capacity to love another human being?
Was it possible?
Was it real?
“You know what you were doing the first time I saw you?” he said.
She mutely shook her head.
“You were probably seven, holding Cash’s signed Eddie O’Bannon baseball and threatening to chuck it in the creek if he didn’t apologize for breaking your friend’s doll. He had you by four years, eighteen inches, and probably thirty pounds, but you didn’t back down. You stood your ground. You got him to apologize, and then promise to replace the doll, even though he could’ve flattened you.”
She started to smile. The memory was hazy at best—she’d fought Beck and his friends countless times.
“That courage, Skye? You still have it. Go home. Own it. Don’t let him make you less than what you’ve always been.” He swung his legs down and stood. “Picked up butter pecan. Found the caramel sauce in the cabinet, so I put it on the counter for you. Night, Superwoman.”
“Wyatt—”
He paused with his thumbs in his belt loops and looked down on her, one solid mass of a man in the dim light of the evening. Protector and guardian, but also the danger in the room.
Steven hadn’t ever noticed her favorite way to eat ice cream.
And the thought that Wyatt cared enough to notice because she could’ve been his obsession had her skin buzzing and her heart fluttering.
He’d noticed her.
Well over twenty years ago, he’d noticed her.
And he still kept noticing. And caring. And…obsessing?
“Thank you,” she breathed.
He nodded.
“You don’t—you could stay,” she blurted.
“I could.” His voice was husky as the night, swirling through the air around her and igniting her long-neglected femininity. “But then we’d never know, would we?”
“Know what?” She barely recognized the breathy quality in her own voice.
“If you’re right about you.”
And with that, he turned, his powerful legs carrying him out of the room and up the stairs, leaving Skye pondering the mysteries of the intriguing man she’d taken for granted and overlooked her entire life.
And yes, obsessing about him.