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“Yes.”
He already has his mouth open to argue. He stops. “Well, that was easy. Too easy.”
“She kicked me out. She defended me to the police, but after they left, she told me to come stay with you.”
His brows rise. “Please tell me you aren’t upset about that. It’s the one decent thing she’s done.”
“True, but...” I turn to the car, its hood still raised. “Show me what you were doing when I came in.”
“Distracting myself and trying not to wreck an engine in the process.”
“Explain what needs to be done.” I turn to face him. “Distract me.”
He hesitates, giving me a sidelong look that has me choking on a laugh. “The car, Lowe. Distract me with the car.”
“Of course. What else would I be thinking?”
He looks so genuinely confused that my cheeks heat, and I quickly say, “Construction projects. If you have any of those, though, I’m happy—”
“That’s not what you were thinking, CeCe.”
Now my cheeks flame hot, and he steps closer, fingers tickling down my arm. “Whatever were you thinking?” he murmurs, and he’s close enough that I can feel the heat of him. I look up to see his head tilted, my gaze following the line of his jaw to his lips.
I glance quickly down at his arm instead, watching his fingers glide up my forearm, the rough callus of them scraping ever so gently and sending shivers through me. My gaze moves to his fingers, darkened by ingrained grease, the square nails scrubbed to a buffed shine.
I pull my gaze away again, shivering, and when I look up, he’s right there, his face over mine. His lips stop two inches away, and he runs his fingertips along my jaw instead, thumb caressing my chin before he eases back, and I’m left feeling bereft, as if the sun has moved on.
“I don’t think I ever thanked you for letting me kiss you,” he says, one corner of his mouth twitching.
I blink, collecting myself. “What?”
“When we were kids,” he says. “You let me kiss you.”
I laugh softly. “Pretty sure I didn’t let you.”
His eyes round, and I wince.
“I mean I didn’t need convincing,” I say.
He relaxes and closes half the gap between us. “That’s not quite how I remember it.”
“No?”
“No.” Another step, close enough that his shirt brushes mine, and he rests one hand on my hip. “As I recall, you did need some convincing.”
“Only because your proposal was terribly disappointing.”
“Disappointing?” His other hand goes to my hip.
“It was the way you asked.” I lift one hand over his shoulder, as casually as I can, resisting the urge to twist a stray lock of hair around my finger. “You said you’d never kissed a girl, and you asked if I’d ever kissed a boy. I said I hadn’t. You said we should kiss, then, to see what it’s like.”
“Uh-huh.”
“A girl doesn’t want to be kissed as a scientific experiment. She wants to be kissed because someone wants to kiss her.”
He chuckles. “We were ten.”
“Doesn’t matter. I might not have been old enough to want a boyfriend, but I was old enough to have an ego.”
