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Badly.
“Food is ready!”
The girls rushed over first, piling their plates with more food than I’d ever seen any of them eat at once. It was either a sign of their hunger or how excited they were to have a mid-week barbecue.
“Sure smells good Uncle Trey, and nothing smells burnt this time.”
“Thanks, Keri.”
Valona stepped beside me with a chuckle. “Nothing humbles you quite like kids,” she whispered.
“Humble? Is that what the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach is called?”
She laughed and nodded. “Yep.” Valona clapped me on the back. “You’ll get used to it. Eventually.”
“Eventually can’t come soon enough,” I whispered back with a grin.
“Uncle Trey can we eat picnic style on the grass?”
I nodded. “Sure, grab one of the blankets from the laundry room.”
In true Keri fashion, she dashed off like her butt was on fire and came back seconds later, smiling as she and her friends sat down for an early evening picnic.
“I’m not eating in the grass,” Valona stage whispered. “I might not be able to get back up.”
“An old joke. Funny.”
Val looked appropriately shamed as she dropped down on the blue and white chair with a sigh. “They’re a habit I guess.”
“It’s a bad habit, Val.”
She nodded and focused on her plate of food, primly cutting her steak into small, ladylike strips. “I didn’t write the text messages,” she admitted without looking at me. “Pippa did, but I think the pre-date is a good idea.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “I don’t want that first date weirdness in front of the girls. They’ll pick up on all kinds of shifts in our mood, and I’d like them to just have a nice night of dancing. And I don’t want to get your hopes up.”
Her words made me grin. “You certainly are good at managing my expectations. You don’t give me anything for free, Val. I like that about you.”
“You like that I have ten foot walls that make it impossible to get close to me?”
I shrugged at her words. “I like that you’re discerning with who you give your time and attention to.”
“You really are an optimist,” she groaned as if it was a bad thing.
“I just want to spend some time with you Valona. I’d like to know you as more than a mom and a photographer.”
“And that’s all?”
I laughed because, was the woman crazy? I could have lied to her, told her what she wanted to hear, but that wasn’t my style. “I wouldn’t mind more of those kisses, for starters. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered what was under all that flowing fabric and vibrant colors.”
Heat flared in her green eyes and her jaw clenched. She’d had the same thoughts, in that moment I was sure of it. Then fear filled her eyes. “What if I’m not more than a mom and a photographer?”
How this gorgeous woman could be so impossibly insecure baffled me, but that was an easy enough hurdle to clear. “If you really think that, then I’ll have the privilege of showing you, Valona, that you are so much more than that.”
“That confident in your skills?”
“Maybe,” I answered honestly. “Or maybe I’m just confident about the glimpses I’ve seen of the other parts of you.”
“You’re trouble, Trey Fine. Nothing but trouble.”
“Yes. But I’m the right kind of trouble.”
Chapter 15
Valona
“You didn’t need to pay for a sitter, Trey.” It was a nice gesture considering Rodney had always left the details of our date nights up to me, from choosing the restaurant to hiring a sitter. “But thank you.”
Trey shrugged off the praise, something I noticed he did often, and that only made him more endearing. “The girls spend every free moment together anyway, and this just seemed easier than hiring one together. Are you even allowed to do that?” He flashed a charming grin that turned my insides to mush.
I laughed at his babbling because it meant he was just as nervous as I was. “Pretty sure it’s not against the law, but I’ll check with my lawyer and get back to you.”
He let out a small huff of laughter before the amusement faded from his eyes, replaced by heat. A hot, dark and searing kind of heat that I felt all the way down to my toes, currently squeezed into the sexiest pair of heels I had ever worn.
“Wow Val, you look breathtaking.”
Breathtaking. That was a word a girl didn’t hear often, especially from a man more than a decade her junior. “Thanks.” The word came out on a breathless sigh and my lips spread into a deeply satisfied grin. “You look,” I let my gaze sweep up and down his lean body for a long moment, because when he was trying to be gorgeous, Trey was five-alarm fire hot. “Beautiful.”
A loud laugh exploded out of him and echoed around the walls of my front porch. “Beautiful? Not what I was expecting, but I’ll take it. Thank you, Val. Ready?”
