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Anton blew out an exasperated sigh. “Meaning that he made me eat the damn things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, after he caught me kissing the pastor’s daughter one Sunday.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Was it before or after church?” she whispered.
“Before. Made more sense that way. The repenting and all that, you see. Made it a very convenient arrangement for everyone involved.”
“You did not!” She choked with laughter. She turned to see a wistful look in Anton’s dark eyes as he stared into the fire.
“Oh, but I did.” He shrugged and took another drink from his bottle. “Sally McMathers was her name. And what a summer it was.”
“You rake,” she accused, but her tone was teasing. It was so easy to imagine Anton as an unruly teenager dining on graham crackers for every meal after a round of heavy petting. She grinned and pointed at the cracker he still held. “I don’t expect you’ll be making any s’mores tonight, then?”
Anton tossed his graham cracker into the fire. “I can barely look at the things without getting flashbacks of being horny every waking hour of the day.”
She whistled. “Now there’s a picture.”
“Is it?” he asked, and she almost kicked herself at the interest she heard. He wanted to know exactly what she thought about him being horny.
She took another hasty sip of her drink and cleared her throat. “I, ah, well,” she stammered, cheeks flushing under his attention.
Damn the man, he knew very well what he was doing. There was no way this wasn’t a trap, and she had practically somersaulted into it. This was what she got for having champagne with only s’mores in her stomach. Clearing her throat, she did her best to recover from her misstep.
“I mean, if you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Which is what?”
“You,”she said with a roll of her eyes.
Anton chuckled and raised his bottle to his lips. “Which you are.”
She blanched and whirled around to face him. “Excuse me?”
He said nothing at her outburst, but gave a little tut and shook his head.
“What?” She crossed her arms and stared him down. “What are you looking so smug about over there, hmm?”
“I see the way you look at me,” he said matter-of-factly. “The way you sound on the phone with me.” It was the tone of a man used to being looked at. Used to getting attention from women. This wasn’t her nice Anton.
This was somewhere between the jackass she’d met and her Anton, and Grace had zero clue if she liked him yet. She did know that he had her number though, because she did look at him way too much, and shehadsounded a certain way on the phone with him. But still, you didn’t call a woman out like that. She raised her chin and leveled a glare at him. He wasn’t the only one who could use shock tactics and get away with it.
“Yeah, well, you look at me too,” she shot back.
“I do.”
“And you wanna talk about the phone? You’re all super breathy on the phone. Like a phone se-” She froze, the words drying up on her tongue. “What do you mean, you do?” she asked.
“I mean, you’re right. I do look at you. You’re beautiful.”
Her eyes widened and she gulped. “Oh.”
Anton rocked back on his heels. “Oh,” he parroted back with a cheeky grin.
“Is that why you’re being nice to me?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“What?” He gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I mean, your apology…I just thought...” She waved a hand, her voice trailing off, the look of disbelief on his face telling her that she’d erred in her assumption.
“I apologized to you because you deserved it. It was only right, as I was in the wrong. I’m not-Grace, I’m not being nice to you because I’m attracted to you.”
