Page 22 of Playing With Forever

Evan pushed off his elbows, walked back around the corner of the island, pulled the stool I was sitting on farther away from the counter, and stepped closer. My knees automatically opened to make room for him. He took advantage of my silent offer while lifting his hand and using his knuckles to tilt my chin back. This time when his mouth touched mine and I opened, his tongue barely touched mine before he pulled back.

“Love your mouth, baby, but I wouldn’t love it if I was so wrapped up in losing myself to it that Lindy walked in, getting an eyeful of her old man kissing a beautiful woman.”

And I loved he got just as lost as I did when we kissed.

“I dig you’re here getting to know Lindy while making dinner with us, but I want time without my kid around. You busy tomorrow night?”

Tomorrow night.

More than I loved him getting lost in our kisses, I loved that he wasn’t wasting time asking me out.

“No. I’m free.”

Something sparked in his eyes, and I had a feeling he loved, I wasn’t playing that stupid game some women played, pretending they were busy in an effort to make a man wait for their time. Which essentially was wasting time playing hard to get. Not that a man shouldn’t work for a woman’s time and attention, it was just that it should go both ways.

“Dinner tomorrow,” he declared. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

I didn’t get off work until five-thirty, and I had a twenty-minute drive home.

“Make it six-thirty and you have yourself a date.”

“Six-thirty,” he immediately amended and leaned forward, sealing our date with a too-fast chaste kiss.

Evan stepped back, looked at the empty glass of iced tea sitting next to Lindy’s laptop, and asked, “Would you like to switch to wine?”

I wasn’t a big drinker. The older I got, the slower I was to recover after a night out, which meant I limited my alcohol even more.

“I’ll stick with iced tea.”

I didn’t understand Evan’s deep exhale at my denial. Nor did I get a chance to question it before the front door opened and an excited ball of energy blew through the house.

“I got chocolate chips and ice cream!”

Evan’s lips curved up into a smile.

Oh, yes, indeed, he went from extremely good-looking to downright beautiful when his daughter was around.

I was coming off the stool, preparing to help Lindy make dessert, but I froze when her gaze bounced back and forth between her father and me. She must’ve seen what she was looking for because she ended her assessment with a broad smile.

My heart pinched for the little girl who grew up without a mother, but it broke for the young woman who craved all that she missed out on.

If things ended badly with Evan, I knew it would cut deeply. But I could survive a thousand cuts and all the pain it would cause if it meant giving Lindy a fraction of what she needed, including sticking around for as long as she wanted me to.

CHAPTER SIX

Last night when I got back inside after walking Josie to her car, Lindy had disappeared out to her studio. I debated taking a walk across the yard and talking to my daughter about the game she was playing, which became more and more obvious as the night wore on.

At one point, Lindy was laying it on so thick that she made me sound like I could walk on water while simultaneously curing world hunger.

But I decided to wait, and now she was at the island with a bowl of cereal, and it wasn’t the right time to have a discussion that could lead to something deeper than her simply trying to set me and Josie up when I had to get to work. And tonight I had a date, my first one in thirteen years—or twenty-eight if I wanted to go back to the last first date I’d gone on.

What the fuck am I doing?

“Morning, Dad,” Lindy mumbled.

“Morning. Did you sleep or paint?”

Her startled eyes lifted to check me out. I understood her mumbling and her reaction to my question. She’d come inside before I left for work, which happened but rarely, to check the temperature of my anger. She knew, I knew, she’d pulled a fast one last night asking Josie to stay, and she thought I was mad at her.