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He tensed the way he always did when she touched him unexpectedly, bracing his body for the onslaught of sensation.
“Sorry.” She pulled her hand away.
“No.” He turned to her. “You just startled me.”
She made a sound in the back of her throat, reminding him of the guttural sounds she’d made as she came on top of him five years ago. He shook his head.
Get it together, McLeod.
Her blue eyes narrowed as her gaze flickered to the tree and back. “Do you really think you can cut the tree to look like her picture?” She raised a dark brow.
“Are you doubting me now too, woman?” He reached out, poking her side in the sensitive spot that always made her jump.
She slapped at his hand. “Ryan.” She fought against her grin and glared at him with twitching lips. “Stop.”
He grinned back at her. Cassie had a killer smile, her plump lips parting to reveal a slight overbite covering one crooked tooth. That mouth had been the star of several of his favorite naughty dreams.
“Seriously.” She forced her grin away. “Can you make it work?”
He looked back at the tree and over to the men who were trimming limbs with chainsaws. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “But they can.” He inclined his head in their direction.
Cassie rolled her eyes. “I should’ve known you were bluffing.”
“Aren’t you the one who told me ninety percent of parenting is faking it?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
Only there was no maybe. He remembered clearly. She’d been eight months pregnant and he’d been scared shitless. It wasn’t that having kids had never been in the picture for him, they’d just been part of a future, far off picture. One where he and the woman he loved were together.
“Even if I said that,” she continued. “You don’t get to use my own words on me.”
He put a hand over his heart, feigning insult. “I’d never.”
She pinned him with what would be described as an icy glare—if it wasn’t so damn hot. “Right.”
“No bluffing.” He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“You got kicked out of Boy Scouts.” She reminded him, shoving him in the chest.
Laughing, he grabbed her hand, holding it against his pounding heart. The woman knew too much about him. She was the one person in his whole life with whom he’d always been honest. Except when it came to his feelings for her. He didn’t even confess those to himself.
“My girls will have the most triangular tree in history to decorate,” he promised.
Cassie pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. He ground his molars together, focusing on the ache in his jaw instead of the way everything she did with her mouth was sexy as hell.
“Daddy. Mommy.”
He dropped Cassie’s hand, turning to Ellie who’d been playing on a swing set with a group of children whose parents were all waiting to pay for their trees.
“Can we get marshmallows?” She pointed to the cart set up by a small fire pit.
“They think of everything, don’t they?” he muttered, reaching for his wallet.
“I’ve got it.” Cassie pushed his hand away, making his skin tingle where her fingertips brushed against him. “You want something?”
No, I want everything.Only he couldn’t say that, not to Cassie. Instead he settled with, “What do they have?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Looks like s’mores. I’ll get –”
