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“Aw, you let me win.”
“You think so?”
“Didn’t ya?” Cody asked, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners, his sweaty, heat-reddened face beaming up at the tall man.
Chase was wiping the sweat from his face with his T-shirt and his taut muscles rippled in the hot summer sun. His blond hair hung limply over his forehead in dark, wet strands. “How about a drink?” he asked the boy.
“Sure, Mom’s got some lemonade and maybe a couple bottles of Coke.” Cody started sprinting toward the house before he noticed his mother. “Hey . . . when did you get here?”
“Just a couple of minutes ago.” Dani cocked her head in Chase’s direction. “What about him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A while.”
“I’m surprised you let him stay.”
“Why not? You do,” Cody said, before dashing to the house.
Dani was still watching Cody’s vanishing act and wondering what to do about it when Chase approached. He saw the vexed expression clouding her clear eyes. “Don’t worry about him,” Chase suggested, cocking his head in the direction of the house as Cody sprinted up the steps and ran inside. “He’s a good kid.” Sweat was still trickling down his neck.
“But he’s growing up.”
“They all have a habit of doing that.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But sometimes it just seems to come too fast.”
Chase draped a familiar arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know a parent who would disagree with you.”
“How did you convince him to let you stay?”
“That wasn’t so easy,” Chase drawled, offering her a lazy smile. “He wasn’t too keen on me showing up.”
“I’ll bet not.”
“But I told him I was a friend of yours.”
“Oh, great.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t the smartest thing I’d done. But I noticed he was packing around a basketball and I offered to show him how the game was played.”
“And?”
“He didn’t think he needed a teacher.”
Dani laughed. How many times had she seen Cody’s stubborn streak surface?
“But I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I wanted to wait for you. So I offered to play him one-on-one for the privilege of staying.”
“And he agreed?” Dani was surprised.
“Not exactly.”
“Well?”
Chase’s grin broadened. “He wanted to play for a dollar a game.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned.
Chase squeezed her shoulders and wrapped his T-shirt around his neck. “Don’t worry. He didn’t take the shirt off my back. See, I’ve still got it.” He grinned and his eyes sparkled with the afternoon sunlight. “And don’t bother with a lecture, I gather he already had one.”
