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Jer shook his head. “They don’t throw—”
Her brows went up. “That bartender in the restaurant?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said quickly. “She just wanted some advice on her—”
Now her lips joined the party, tipping up at the edges. “Iknowyou’re not going to tell me she wanted advice on her golf game now, are you?”
“She just—”
“Needed help with her backswing?” Laughter bubbled up, dancing across her lips, drawing his focus there. Fuck, but she had the most kissable mouth. “Or was it backseatthat she called it?” A smirk. “Probably because she was desperate to get there with you—”
“T,” he warned.
“Or how about the waitress who slipped you her number?”
“She just—”
“Or I know!” She was laughing outright now, barely able to get the words out, and even though it was at his expense, her amusement settled deep inside him. He liked her. A lot. So freaking much that he didn’t care she was laughing at him, so long as she waslaughing.Of course, through that laughter she gave another so-called example. “Remember the jogger who pretended to twist her ankle? Oh! And the—”
“T.”
“And—”
“Teresa.”
She blinked, stopped laughing, stopped talking about women he couldn’t give one fuck about. And how could he? HelovedTeresa. Had been pathetically in love with her for too fucking long. Everyone knew it.
Except her.
She looked up at him. “What?”
He shifted his hand on her nape, sliding it so that he was cupping her cheek. “You ever wonder why I never took any of them up on their offers?”
Silence.
Long. Long enough for him to hear the crickets, the crinkling of the leaves as the wind blew through the trees.
“What?” she asked again, though this time it was a whisper.
“You,” he said instead of repeatinghisquestion. “You’re the reason I never accepted any of them.”
Wide, wide eyes. Another whisper. “What?”
“I like you, Teresa,” he said, and since he was alreadyinthis, already laying it out, he just gave her the rest of it, gave herallof it—or well,almostall of it because he wasn’t about declaring his undying love, not when she was looking at him with that much shock in her pretty eyes. “I like you a lot.”
She sputtered. “I-I…butyou—”
“You’ve been dating someone, baby,” he murmured. “And I don’t—I’m not the kind of guy who’d get in between or jeopardize your relationship or who—”
Her lips pressed flat, released, plumping up, tempting him. “Who what?”
“I’m not the kind of man who fucks around with someone else’s woman,” he said baldly.
She sucked in a breath, released it slowly. “But I’m not someone else’s woman.”
“No.”
Not anymore.
