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But no! He couldn’t possibly be serious about her. She was pregnant, for goodness’ sake! He knew it! She’d be as big as a balloon soon, especially with how she kept eating.
For now, her figure was intact, and maybe that was the problem—it made him forget. Her baggy T-shirt with a wide collar that kept slipping down was so big that the hem swung past her jean shorts. Sky had given her a change of clothes, claiming that Cadence looked far too cute to paint with her first outfit. Porter agreed with Sky, raising his brows appreciatively at Cadence and making her blush.
Was he just being nice? His gaze told her differently, and so did his hands. He took every excuse to run his fingers over her as he brushed past her in the cramped cabin.
Cadence’s skin burned at his touch. She tried to shake it off. She knotted up the baggy shirt after he’d teased her one too many times that she was about to trip over it. That only caught his attention more. Maybe because it made her look a little like Daisy Duke.
Honestly, she was just grateful to wear something that she didn’t have to keep tugging on. Emily was far too short to keep borrowing her clothes. Cadence needed to go on a shopping spree to get a new wardrobe, except she couldn’t keep using her friend’s Visa if she couldn’t get ahold of Emily.
Cadence needed to get her cards sent to her new address, but when she’d inquired, she found out that her bank had a policy about needing to go there in person to make the change. Their closest branch was in Charleston and likely she’d need a driver’s license… which was in her missing purse.
She sighed. That meant she needed to get paid in cash soon. Perhaps it was a blessing that Lily had refused her offer to do her garden for free. As much as Cadence hated the thought of accepting the money, she was getting desperate, not that she’d done anything to deserve the help. Cadence had finished a few sketches of what she’d like to do to the rose garden, only to quickly discard them.
Lily had said that she wanted something that wouldn’t die, offhand maybe, but what if Cadence could fulfill that wish? But she was stumped. What if Lily’s son had some ideas?
“Excuse me.” Porter took her around the waist, holding on to her hips to ease her out of the way, a completely unnecessary move as he met her eyes. She realized that she was holding her breath. “How do you keep getting in my way?” he said with laughing eyes.
“Hmm.” She couldn’t help it then. Cadence brushed a streak of red paint against his shoulder. “Nowthat’sgetting in your way.”
She noticed the muscular curve of his bicep flex as the red paint dripped down his arm. That cute dimple of his just got a whole lot deeper. “That was low.”
She didn’t even feel contrite. No, the wounded expression he feigned had her giggling, instead. “Whoops,” she said. “I can’t help where I move my arm sometimes.”
“Me neither,” he said. His brush slid over her collarbone.
She gasped, feeling the paint drip down her collar. “Porter!”
He was trying not to laugh. His lips trembled over his amusement so that he could barely get any words out. “What?”
“This is… my finest shirt.”
“It sure is.”
Dude, the man was blind, because even if she’d been teasing, she could definitely see that he meant every word that he said. No wonder the women fell all over him—he made them feel like a million bucks.
Forget that, no, he just made her feel human. Cadence had told him that she shouldn’teverhave fun again, and he was making her eat her words, like he thought that it was no big deal that her life was changing and that she would never be the same. He still saw her as… a woman.
Weird. She felt so light and carefree around him. He was here for her when Lacy wasn’t. Was he the kind of guy who stayed? There was no way of knowing, though stranger still, Cadence was willing to chance the broken heart to find out.
Her fingers tightened over the paintbrush, and stepping over the plastic drip sheet spread against the ground, Cadence painted his strong jaw with another dash of red. “Oh, oops.”
His fingers smudged against the paint as he reached up. He brought them back to stare at his skin as if he was actually bleeding. A giddy foreboding niggled at the back of her mind, warning her that anything would go now. She’d declared war. “Told you it was tight quarters,” Porter said. He lunged at her with his brush.
She shrieked out and twisted around, but he had her around the waist. She felt the wet brush tickle against her neck. Cadence arched back. “Porter!” She knew that trying to get one over on him would prove her undoing. Her need for revenge had thrown all her inhibitions out the door. She wriggled out of his arms. Her back landed against their freshly painted wall.
He winced for her, but that didn’t stop him from pinning her against all that wet stickiness. “You’re dripping in red, Angel. Have you been in a war?”
She laughed, realizing it came out as a squeal when she felt the paint find her back where she’d knotted up that baggy T-shirt. She’d get him for that one. “I’m not the only one covered in paint.”
“Yes, you really are,” he said. “You barely touched me.”
Knowing that trying to beat him would prove her undoing, her brush caught him in the stomach this time. Dang. It was like painting a board. How many sit ups did this guy do in a day? Or did he just lift cattle for his daily workouts?
Porter’s arms went around her to stop her. She smashed up against all that paint that she’d splattered over him. “Sorry, I can’t help this either,” he said. His fingers slid up her arms—they were wet with paint. He found her wrists to disarm her.
A part of her had known where this would go, but now her nervous chatter tried to drive away the attraction that she felt. It was too late—the magnetic pull between them charged through her every sense. “That’s my paintbrush,” she said. “Get your own.”
“I am.” His hands slipped through hers, leaving his fingerprints all over her. If this was a crime scene, then they’d definitely catch the culprit—though that culprit might be her.
