Page 94 of His Wounded Heart

He raises his eyebrow. “Allow me.”

“I will never oppose someone if he can get me ice cream faster. Scoop away.” I hand him the ice cream scoop and take down two bowls.

“How much do you want?” he asks as he starts putting my chocolate chip toffee into one bowl.

“How long will it take Dex to get back to us?” I ask.

He gives me a long look. “Do you have a bigger bowl?”

I get out the smallest stainless steel mixing bowl I have. It’s twice the size of my regular cereal bowl. “Fill ‘er up,” I tell him.

He chuckles and proceeds to put darn near the entire quart of ice cream in the bowl. How am I going to eat all of that? I don’t know, but I’ll try my best.

Simon takes the two bowls and puts them back in the cupboard.

“Hey, what are you doing? Aren’t you going to have any ice cream?”

“Which one is your silverware drawer?” he asks as he puts the ice cream scoop into the sink.

I open the drawer. He pulls out two spoons, one he hands to me, the other he puts right into his quart of rocky road ice cream.

“Have I told you how much I like you?” I ask.

“You’ve intimated it, but you haven’t come right out and said it.”

I set my bowl down on the counter and stretch up on my toes and kiss his cheek. “I like you very much.”

“Enough to trade tastes of ice cream on your couch, and risk cooties?”

I nod. “Yep, I like you that much.”

It’s easy talking to Trenda. She knows what she can and can’t ask about my job, and because of it, I realize just how much I can actually talk about. We both commiserate about having to do paperwork, but she agrees that government paperwork has to be the worst, so she gives me extra bites of her ice cream. I tell her that the best part of my job, the actual juice, came from mentoring. I asked her what she liked and didn’t like in her job.

“I hate having to sell myself. The best thing in the world is when one of my current clients recommends me to one of their friends and they just want to hire me. Then I don’t have to convince them that I’m the right person for the job, they just give me the job. Sending back RFQs is the worst.” She takes another dainty bite of ice cream. She is never going to finish that bowl at the rate she’s going.

“I can see that,” I nod.

“If you like the mentoring so much, why didn’t you have kids?”

She really knows how to hit the nail on the head. “Patsy didn’t want kids, but that’s not what she said before we got married. Before we married, she said she wanted a big family. After we got married, she said she didn’t want to have kids with an absentee husband.”

Trenda frowns. “Didn’t she know about your job? Hadn’t you explained it to her?”

“Hell, Trenda, she and I lived together for a year before we got engaged. She knew what she was in for. She just flat-out lied so she could get a ring on her finger.”

“Simon, I try very hard not to judge people. I mean, God knows I’m not perfect, and I can be a raging bitch, at least in my head, so I really can’t point fingers. But I don’t like your ex-wife very much. As a matter of fact, I think I could go as far as to say, I dislike her.”

“Pull in those claws, Tiger.”

I wipe off the little bit of ice cream on the corner of her mouth and then lick my finger.

Her eyes darken and she shivers. God, she’s so responsive.

I want to ask when Bella’s next sleepover is when my cellphone buzzes, dammit, and I pick it up. It’s Dex Evan’s number, and I smile.

“It looks like we only needed to eat a third of a quart of ice cream,” I tell Trenda.

“That’s your friend? The one like Clint Archer from Drake’s team?”