The scent of pancakes hit Skye’s nose as soon as she turned onto the stairs the next morning.
She hadn’t slept a bit.
Because she’d had Wyatt on her brain.
Being wanted was a strong aphrodisiac.
But playing with him, just to see where things might go, wasn’t an option.
He was one of her brother’s best friends.
If she and Wyatt were incompatible, if they dated and had an ugly break-up, she wouldn’t be the one who suffered.
He would.
Because when push came to shove, Beck put family first.
She squeezed her eyes shut and sighed.
“Miss Skye! Come see the pancakes Uncle Wyatt made!”
Nicholas danced at the top of the stairs in sweatpants and an Air Force T-shirt. His brown hair stuck up at adorable angles, and even from one floor below, she could tell he had syrup on his glasses.
“First thing we do is offer the lady coffee, Nicholas,” Wyatt said from somewhere behind the boy.
His voice sent a happy shiver down her arms.
Did her voice do the same for him?
She shuffled upstairs and accepted the warm mug Wyatt offered. She sniffed the liquid life, and a whimper slipped through her lips. “Mmmm.”
His eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled, and for a moment, she wondered if he would smell better than the coffee. “Drink up, Ryder. Nicholas and I are going to kick your ass in a game-athalon.”
“Language,” she said automatically. Then everything else filtered into her brain. “Wait, what?”
“It’s a tournament.” Nicholas hovered at her elbow in the kitchen. “You against me and Uncle Wyatt. If me and Uncle Wyatt win, you have to take me to see Phoebe Moon and the Sneeze Snatcher while Uncle Wyatt stays home and takes a nap.”
“And if I win?”
“Then Uncle Wyatt has to take us both.”
She laughed into her coffee. “So you and I get to go either way, hm?”
“Yep. I was going to just go with you if we won, but Uncle Wyatt thought the stakes weren’t high enough.”
“Or Uncle Wyatt secretly can’t wait to see the movie for himself,” she murmured.
He held out a plate of pancakes for her.
Chocolate chip pancakes.
With the chocolate chips arranged into a smiley face. “Is there a secret potion in there that’ll render me unable to use a pool stick in an hour?” she asked.
His smile went warmer. “Absolutely.”
“Oh, that’s mean.” But even without her coffee kicking in yet, she found herself smiling at him. “Making me choose between my game and chocolate chip pancakes? You probably made Nicholas do push-ups for his, didn’t you?”
“I did eighteen,” Nicholas said proudly. “Watch! I’ll do more.”
He dropped to the ground in the middle of the kitchen, pushed up on his arms, and dipped his waist toward the ground, his arms still straight as sticks.
“Oh, lordy,” she murmured.
“I was joking,” he said softly to her.
Nicholas continued to pump the ground, hips and waist first.
“Pretty sure the joke’s on you,” she replied.
He chuckled, and she went as warm and gooey as the melted chocolate in the pancakes.
No doubt, he’d learned that chuckle trick in the military. Because his laughter—and his voice, and his shoulders, his arms, his ass—had never been sexy before.
But when had she taken the time to pay attention?
She took the poisoned pancakes, and was up on her toes brushing her lips against his scruffy cheek before her better sense kicked in. She dropped back onto her heels and ducked her head. “Ah, I mean, thank you.”
“Sure.”
She nearly tripped over Nicholas when she turned around to make her way to the table.
“See?” he said. “I just did twenty-two.”
“You are unstoppable, Nicholas!”
And oh, the pancakes were delicious. Buttery and fluffy and chocolately, drizzled with caramel sauce.
If Wyatt didn’t want things to go anywhere, he needed to stop giving her all her favorite foods.
A quiet smile crossed his features when his eyes met hers.
Not a big smile, not arrogant, not I know what I’m doing, but a soft, friendly, I like seeing you happy smile.
Her pancake got lodged behind her heart on the way down.
Or maybe that was an unfamiliar swelling caused by simple affection from a man who might’ve irritated her most of her life, but whom she still knew, without a doubt, that she could trust with her life.
And probably her secrets too.
* * *
Wyatt scribbled the score from the last darts game on his notepad, then added up the standings so far. They had one pool game left to play, and yep—the score was practically tied.
If Skye won, he’d be taking all of them to the movies.
She’d have to sit in the middle.
Unless Nicholas wanted to sit in the middle.
He frowned.
What were the odds his nephew would keep him from sitting next to Skye in the dark theater?
“Ah, so you’re losing.” She bumped his hip, her pretty grin lighting the room. “Surrender now, and I won’t have to mop the floor with you.”
“Dream on,” he said. “You’re going down.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Her sassy hip cock said she wouldn’t give up, but he’d seen her pull back her game so Nicholas could keep up too many times this morning for him to believe she’d follow through with her threats.
“I’ll rack. You boys pick your cues.”
He couldn’t understand how anyone—man, woman, or child—couldn’t adore her.
Even when she frustrated the hell out of him, he still wouldn’t have wanted to be with anyone else. That a kid not much older than Nicholas was the reason she didn’t want to go home had been eating at him all night and all morning.
He wanted to fix this.
He wanted to take her home himself. Show her that she still belonged there. That there were plenty of people who still loved her.
Copper Valley wasn’t small.
Sure, their neighborhood was tight, but the city was a booming metropolis. Even if Skye ventured outside of their neighborhood, she’d have tons of friends and acquaintances who still loved her.
“We should go easy on her, Uncle Wyatt,” Nicholas whispered.
Skye put a hand on her hip and gave him a don’t you dare warning glare.
She still didn’t believe he hadn’t been going easy on her in air hockey the other night.
Not that she was wrong.
Because while she was usually a good sport, she also had a stubborn streak. He’d known he couldn’t outright beat her.
But he’d wondered if making her think he wanted her to leave might convince her to stay out of sheer obstinacy.
She was still here, wasn’t she?
He sidled up to the table. “Ladies first.”
“Yeah, ladies first,” Nicholas said.
Her lips pursed, but her eyes softened when she glanced at his nephew.
She would win this game.
But odds were good, she’d be the one going easy on them.
* * *
“Utterly ridiculous,” Wyatt muttered as they left the movie theater a few hours later.
“Oh, come on.” Skye bumped her shoulder to his arm, and it took everything he had to not wrap his arm around her while they walked. “It’s a kids’ movie. Fiction.”
“I don’t care. A general would never be that careless with an orphan girl. Hollywood always gets the military wrong.”
She stopped and tilted her head at him, then burst out laughing.
Nicholas tilted a funny look at her. “Uncle Wyatt knows about the military, Miss Skye.”
“The whole movie was about a girl whose mad scientist uncle steals people’s sneezes, and your issue with it was that a general wouldn’t have been outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old girl?”
“The rest of it was entertaining,” he conceded, “but a general being outsmarted by a teenager is where I draw the line.”
“He didn’t like that airplane cartoon movie where that crop duster could go as fast as a fighter jet either,” Nicholas said gravely.
“Because planes can’t talk?” she suggested.
“Because crop dusters aren’t designed to keep up with military jets,” Wyatt said.
They continued down the wooden sidewalk toward the car. She was still chuckling, and even though it was at his expense, he didn’t mind.
He liked making her laugh.
He liked that she’d talked to him about her problems last night.
He liked that she got more irritated with him every time he pulled away.
Because maybe she was thinking about him now. Maybe she was seeing him.
One thing was certain though.
After a lifetime of thinking she hated him, he’d leave here knowing they were finally friends.
And he’d probably never sleep again.
* * *
Skye had just finished topping a bowl of butter pecan ice cream with a thick layer of caramel sauce when Wyatt wandered into the kitchen.
“Nicholas asleep?” he asked.
She nodded.
When Wyatt had declared it bedtime, Nicholas had asked her to tuck him in for the night.
“Lots of giggling going on up there,” he said.
“He has a good sense of humor. Plus, I’m hilarious.”
“Matter of opinion.”
Three days ago, this conversation would’ve had her rolling her eyes.
But warm amusement had colored both Wyatt’s tone and his eyes. The rest of him was straight-laced as always, and she suddenly wondered what else she’d never noticed about him before.
Or acknowledged.
She slid a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth, and her eyes drifted shut while she contemplated both the man and the ice cream.
“Good?” he asked.
Saying the ice cream was good would be like calling the Sierras around them a few small hills. “Mm-hmm,” she answered reverently. “Thank you.”
“Thank Nicholas. It was his idea.”
She squinted at him with one eye. He pulled a beer out of the fridge, but his focus was on the phone in his hand.
“Pokemon Go, huh?” she said. “I didn’t peg you for the type.”
“Pokey what?”
She stifled a smile. “Never mind.”
“Question from my boss.” He tucked his phone back in his pocket. “Sorry.”
“You brought me enough ice cream to last the whole week. I could forgive nearly anything.”
“Nearly?”
“Such a perfectionist,” she teased lightly. If he weren’t such a perfectionist, she wouldn’t be eating her favorite guilty pleasure right now.
Nor would he be wearing another T-shirt that perfectly displayed his muscled shoulders and chest. And his jeans wouldn’t be sitting so nicely on his trim hips.
And the dishes wouldn’t have magically cleaned themselves the last two nights.
He tipped his beer back and took a drink. His long fingers wrapped around the bottle, the cords in his forearms flexed, and the muscles in his throat moved.
Had she truly never noticed how physically attractive he was? Or had he changed that much since he left Copper Valley?
“You’re stationed in…Oklahoma now?”
“For the next two weeks. Got moving orders to Georgia. Taking some leave before my stuff gets packed up.”
“Ah, back in the South.”
A fond smile tipped his lips up. “Like home, but not.” He crossed to the sink and set his beer down, then flipped on the water. “Speaking of home, I didn’t think you wanted to work for the family business.”
“I didn’t think I did either,” she admitted. “But when I started going out on job interviews my last year of college, I got as many questions about what Beck and the band were doing as I got about my qualifications. Going home made sense.”
“Yeah, my commanders are always after me to get him to come do a show for us wherever I go too,” he said.
“Really?”
He tossed her a grin. “Hell, no. They have no idea I know Beck Ryder, or any of the rest of the guys. That would require claiming them in public.”
She tipped her head back and laughed. “Right? That’s what none of my job interviewers ever got. It’s so weird having people flip out over my brother. And that was before Beck started making a living showing off his skivvies. Do you have any idea what he’d do if I tried to model underwear for a living?”
Wyatt ducked his head over the sink. He fumbled a plate, and a loud clink! echoed in the kitchen.
As though he were thinking about her in her underwear.
She eyed his butt. The worn denim stretched across his rear, highlighting two perfect, firm cheeks.
He would probably look amazing in just his underwear.
Did he wear briefs? Boxers? Boxer-briefs?
Or did he go commando?
Her ice cream lodged in her throat, and she bent over coughing.
He glanced back. His eyes went wide, and he turned to thump her on the back. “You okay?”
His hands were wet, but the heat of his touch practically made the water evaporate on contact. She forced a nod through her coughing fit.
She’d live.
But if she quit coughing, he would probably go back to doing the dishes, pretending they hadn’t been talking about her in her underwear, that she hadn’t been thinking about him in his.
She cleared her throat once more. He snagged a clean glass and filled it with water. “Here.” While she drank, he hovered at her side, a solid mass of protective, dependable, unexpectedly sexy masculinity.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded.
He quirked a smile at her. “That’s what you get for thinking about me in my underwear.”
“How did you—”
She cut herself off, because that teasing grin of his had morphed into a serious, surprised, sexy intensity that made heat erupt low in her belly.
“You were imagining me in my underwear,” he growled.
But this was different from his I am in charge growl.
This was an intrigued, borderline dangerous to her emotional health growl.
“T-turnabout’s fair play,” she whispered. “You saw me naked.”
And he’d been a perfect gentleman about it, and then stripped his shirt off for her. But the raw, charged attraction flashing in the depths of his blue eyes now suggested he hadn’t forgotten seeing her naked, and he didn’t want to.
And now she was thinking of that kiss two nights ago again.
“Don’t play with me, Skye.”
“I—”
She what? She wouldn’t?
She was six months past a two-year relationship with a man she’d intended to marry, and she still wouldn’t go home because of him. And yet here she was, flirting with one of her brother’s best friends, a guy her parents thought of as one of their own.
And he liked her.
He’d been very clear about that.
If she led him on, if she slept with him without any intention of giving him a real shot at a real relationship—
No.
She didn’t play games with people’s feelings. With their hearts.
So what was she doing standing here, thinking about Wyatt’s body, about his underwear, about his touch?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
And when she fled the kitchen, she didn’t even try to take the ice cream.