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Griffin grinned at the action. The boy had sneaked up on him. He hadn’t meant to get involved with Connor; it had just happened. Those wide eyes and happy smiles had sucked him right in and now the boy had carved a place for himself in Griffin’s heart.
He was going to miss the little guy, he thought, and scowled even more fiercely at his plate.
“Do you think the linoleum I picked out will go with the green walls?”
“Absolutely,” Griffin said, dropping a couple of spoonfuls of whipped cream onto his own bowl of strawberries. The cream-colored flooring Nicole had chosen would have been a good match with the wall paint. But it was linoleum—cheap, but hardly the best choice, and it wouldn’t last more than five years. The warm, cream-and-green-flecked tiles Griffin had approved instead would look better. And last longer.
She still wouldn’t like it, but the deed would be done and unless she wanted to take a hammer to her new tile floor—which he wouldn’t put past her—she’d live with it. More, though she might not admit it, she’d love the changes to her kitchen.
Sometimes, Griffin told himself, you just had to do the right thing whether other people agreed with you or not. And damned if he’d let her shortchange herself because of her damn pride. He was prepared for the battle that would erupt when all of this came out.
He rubbed the back of his neck and listened to Connor’s laughter as he chortled at something only an almost-three-year-old would understand.
“My friend Sandy said I was crazy for not keeping an eye on the remodel, but I told her I trusted you,” Nicole was saying, and Griffin looked at her. In the overhead light, her blond hair looked bright as sunlight. Her blue eyes met his, and there was a question in those depths that he had no intention of answering.
The fact that she trusted him was working to his advantage here. And God, even thinking that made him feel like a bastard. But he was in too deep to change course now.
“Thanks,” he said, swallowing the knot of guilt in his throat along with a mouthful of strawberries. “I appreciate that.”
Outside, darkness crouched at the windows, but inside, the kitchen was warm and...cozy, Griffin thought. As soon as the thought appeared, he had to wonder when the last time he’d been around anything cozy had been. He couldn’t come up with a single example. Not since he was a kid, anyway. Back then, with his parents still alive and all of his brothers at home, there had been the same sort of feeling he had now: that sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself. To being a part of something.
Well, that thought brought him up short. He didn’t belong with Nicole and Connor. This was temporary. A blip in his life. Nothing more. Once it was over, he’d go his way, she’d go hers and they’d never have any of this again.
Funny.
That should have made him feel better.
It didn’t.
“How much longer before the kitchen’s ready?” Nicole asked.
“Not long,” Griffin muttered. It seemed his cousin didn’t give a damn about Griffin’s plans. Lucas wanted this job wrapped up so he and his wife could go visit their cousin Jefferson in Ireland.
So now there were six guys working every day on Nicole’s place and in a matter of days, it would be complete. Added to that, in another week or so, Rafe and Katie would be back in Long Beach. This little interlude, or whatever the hell it was, was almost over.
“Good,” Nicole said. “That’s...good.”
He looked into her eyes and saw the same glimmer of mixed emotions that he was feeling. “Yeah, it is.”
“Want a story!” Connor shouted and Griffin shifted his gaze to him.
Strawberries stained the little boy’s face and clung to the wisps of hair falling across his forehead. Innocence shone in the eyes so much like his mother’s, and Griffin felt that soft slide into affection pick up speed. This was what he’d wanted to avoid. Hell, he had plenty of practice disentangling himself from women. But with a kid, things got messy.
Walking away from Connor’s mother would be hard, but Griffin would be able to do it with a clean conscience, because Nicole understood. How the hell did you make a toddler understand that you weren’t a part of his life anymore? How did you wean yourself away from playing with the boy? From wanting to protect him?
