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I’d never in my life thought that I’d want to hang out with a sixteen-year-old before, but Wake’s daughter was the exception. She looked like she was doing something active every day. She’d take photos of herself walking Tex. Or paddle boarding in the bay. Yesterday she’d posted a photo of her father and her riding bikes up the sea wall.
Though, that reminded me that Wake definitely hadn’t been with his little girl yesterday like my assuming had previously thought.
“She’s like a little firecracker thrust into a bottle of sunshine, shaken up and released on the world right before she blows.” He laughed, tugging my hair slightly. “Sorry.”
“I like it,” I blurted out before I could think better of it.
He paused in braiding my hair, then said carefully, “The hair pulling? Or the fact that my kid is wild?”
I swallowed hard. “That your kid is wild?”
That had come out as a question, and it was more than obvious that my mind hadn’t been at that exact location when I’d said my earlier words.
“Hmm,” he said as he finished up. “We’ll explore hair pulling later. When I have you back in my bed. I want to get over to my sister’s before it looks too suspicious.”
“Suspicious for us to arrive so late? Or suspicious for the sheriff?” I questioned.
He pulled me up by the hand as he led me outside to his bike.
“Aren’t you going to lock your doors?” I asked curiously.
“Tex is here,” he said. “And despite the heftiness of him, he can protect. Plus, there aren’t many people that are going to break into the home of an ex-con.”
I watched curiously as he straddled his bike.
I know that he hadn’t meant it to come out looking sexual at all. It’d been a function for him.
But now I was staring at him with need throbbing in my center as I said, “You don’t want to walk?”
“Sister. Late. Get on.” He patted his seat.
I licked my lips. “I’m in a skirt.”
His eyes dragged up the length of me, then he grinned wickedly. “I know.”
I rolled my eyes and thought about how best to get on, finally deciding that I would have to hike the skirt up. A lot.
Which I had to do.
In the end, the only thing that was being concealed was my red panties. But only barely.
Every other part of my thigh was exposed to the late afternoon sun and everyone’s gaze that we passed seconds after that as he started his bike up and zoomed through the neighborhood.
I’d latched on to him so fast that he’d laughed, and then held on a little too tight the rest of the way.
My breath hitched when we pulled into the driveway of what had to be his sister’s house to see his little girl standing on the porch looking worried.
That just made me feel like an asshole.
There I was doing things with her father that I shouldn’t be doing, and she was sitting here worried about him because he was late.
She’d already lost her dad for years. I didn’t need to be taking away any more time.
CHAPTER 15
I’m sorry I roasted you. I was trying to flirt.
-Text from Wake to Dutch
WAKE
I got off the bike and stayed where I was while Dutch did the same.
My big body covered hers as she yanked her skirt back down to what she deemed acceptable levels.
I smiled at my kid who was still looking at me nervously.
I lost my smile and narrowed my eyes at her. “Why are you out here looking like that?”
She bit her lip, and then said, “I want you to meet someone, but I don’t want you to kill him.”
“Him?” I asked curiously. “Is this ‘him’ in the house?”
“Not yet,” she said. “He’s on his way. When I heard your bike coming, I texted him to come over.”
My stomach sank.
“Does this ‘him’ have a name?” I inquired.
I heard the truck pull up and looked over my shoulder just in time to see a young man get out of his truck and start heading toward us.
I blinked when I saw him.
This wasn’t a ‘young man’ at all. It was a full on fuckin’ adult.
I narrowed my eyes at him as I felt Dutch’s hand take mine and squeeze.
“He’s fifteen,” Dutch whispered hastily to me. “I shouldn’t be saying this, because it breaks patient confidentiality, but I had him as a patient when his mom died. Swear to God. He’s fifteen. Or maybe sixteen at this point. He is not an adult.”
That didn’t put me at ease in the slightest.
The dude looked twenty-five, and that was all that mattered at that moment in time.
At least, that’s what I was telling myself as I turned my body toward the man. Kid. What the fuck ever.
But Dutch kept herself in front of me, fully blocking my body with hers.
