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We glanced at each other then at Finn, and both of us backed away, leaving his dinosaur head slumped down over his forehead.
We were a mess. Ever since last Friday, when Liam had come home from that cocktail party he’d attended at school then snuck into my room while I was sleeping.
At first when I’d woken up, I’d worried that something had happened, until I’d quickly realized everything was fine since he’d been trying to creep back out after placing my blanket on top of me. Then I’d been overcome with the warmth of his tenderness and my own blaze of desire.
I’d fallen asleep reading an article he’d written in some academic journal. I didn’t understand a lick of it and was actually quite bored, but I’d wanted to read his words. Even if I fell asleep before I finished it.
I was both thrilled to know he cared enough to cover me up and desperate to know if he could tell I was fighting this attraction to him.
When he’d actually accepted my invitation to sit on my bed, I’d found out we had a lot more in common than I’d realized. I’d always assumed we couldn’t ever find a level playing field. He was too smart, too much older, too good for me. But after last week, it was hard to draw those lines anymore. It didn’t matter that he was more than a decade older than me, that I’d never gone to college, or that I was his son’s nanny.
This pulsing energy between us wasn’t going away. In fact, it was growing. Every single day. In the lazy smiles he offered over breakfast, the way he placed his hand on my back when he passed me in the house as if to let me know he was there, and how he always told me to be careful and to text him throughout the day. It had started with updates about Finn, but now Liam texted to see what I was up to while Finn was at preschool or to find out if he needed to stop at the grocery store on the way home or if my headache had gone away yesterday.
He cared about me. And even though I suspected that was simply the kind of man Liam O’Neil was, caring and gentle, it did nothing to allay my yearning for more.
His lingering stare now? Definitely wasn’t helping.
Even in his ridiculous costume.
“The guys should be here soon,” Liam said as he fixed Finn’s costume, and I was grateful for the change of subject.
“Hold on. Wait, wait,” I said, retrieving the bag of goodies I’d squirreled away. “Look what I got.”
When Liam had informed me he’d invited his friends and their kids over to all go trick-or-treating together, I’d said I’d get some special treats for them. They could all come back and have a little party for the kids, and even though Liam had tried to talk me out of it, told me I didn’t need to go through all the effort, I could tell he was happy. These were his best friends, and while I’d only met them for a few minutes at Walt’s, I knew they meant a lot to Liam. And if they meant a lot to Liam, they meant a lot to me too.
“Kennedy,” Liam said with a delicious smile that started in one corner of his mouth and slowly crawled to the other. “You’re too much.”
I grinned up at him, bouncing on my toes. “I thought you’d get a laugh out of them.”
Liam held the four stainless-steel tumblers in his hands with the custom-printed dad jokes on each. “Why didn’t the vampire bite Taylor Swift? ’Cause she’s got bad blood.”
I giggled. “Good, right?”
“Yeah. Terrible but good.”
The way he stared down at me with amusement shining in his eyes, like I was the cleverest girl in the world, made butterflies spring free from their cocoons inside my chest.
He read the next one. “Why did the ghost go to the bar? For the boos.”
“I thought that could be Nate’s.”
“He’s not coming,” Liam said, setting the tumblers down on the counter while Finn lay on the floor, kicking his feet in the air.
“Oh, why not?”
He shrugged. “Needs to work at the bar. Big night there.”
“I just figured he’d tag along. He seems the type to enjoy trick-or-treat.”
“For sure, he is, but he doesn’t have kids, and who wants to hang out with a bunch of single dads and their children?”
I raised my hand, pretending to be shy about it, winning a chuckle in response.
“If he weren’t going to be at the bar tonight, he would definitely be here. I think?—”
“Knock! Knock!”
Liam and I both peeked out of the kitchen and down toward the front door, where we could see multiple pairs of feet walking through the living room. Finn growled and took off in their direction.
