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This was Lance’s turn to blink, obviously not expecting this response. “Be safer than I am standing right here,” he growled.
Growled.
And then he crossed the room, grabbed me by the back of the neck.
Kissed me.
Then he left.
Chapter Twenty
Lance was right.
He was gone all night.
Duke slept on the sofa.
He was still there when Nathan and I got up in the morning.
Lance was there too.
But we couldn’t exactly have any kind of interaction with a five-year-old boy and a thirty-year-old badass sitting at the breakfast table with us.
Lance was dropping Nathan off at school. Duke was trailing me to work.
That had been decided at some point before I woke up.
That pissed me right off.
Of course, I didn’t say anything, just glared at Lance and did my level best to go out of my way to be super sweet to Duke.
It was safe to say that Lance did not like that.
At all.
I should have felt a sick satisfaction at this, for the emotional wringer he’d put me through since last night, since the moment I met him.
I didn’t.
The only satisfaction I’d feel was with Lance’s lips on mine and his cock inside me.
That was for certain.
And I was definitely sick.
Lance was at the house when I got home from work.
Mowing the lawn.
Shirtless.
I almost walked into the front door gawking at him.
It was embarrassing.
So I hid in the small room at the back of the house, doing laundry, folding and washing until the mower turned off, the front door opened and closed and the shower turned on. Then I had to lock myself in my bedroom so I didn’t barge into the bathroom and assault a naked and wet Lance.
Why did Nathan choose to play little kid’s football? Why did it exist? And why did Marie insist on taking him back to her place after practice, so I could have ‘a break?’
This was not a break.
This was torture.
I waited until the shower turned off and enough time had passed for Lance to be dressed and decent and then I walked into the living room.
He looked up from his phone the second I entered.
“We need to talk,” Lance said, voice tight.
I nodded. “You bet your tight ass we do.”
Lance leaned back ever so slightly blinking slowly once. This was his version of surprise. It was subtle but I promised myself that I’d tried my hardest to make him look this way as often as possible.
Granted, I just made that promise at this very moment, but whatever.
I took the small pause and worked it to my advantage. “You disappeared for a week,” I snapped, though it was kind of late to make accusations like this, I was sick of all of this dancing around.
“After that kiss.” My entire body did an internal shudder. “Then, last night, you kissed me again, and just left.”
Something happened with Lance with the mention of the kiss. His entire body tightened, as did his expression. He was closing off, his shields going up, he was using all his badass weapons to tell me to back off without saying a word.
The skin at the back of my neck prickled, almost all of my survival instincts telling me to take heed of the nonverbal warning.
“The kiss was a mistake,” he all but growled when it became apparent he wasn’t scaring me away with his usual badass weapons.
I jutted up my chin in defiance to the cold words, maybe to hide a little of the hurt that came from them. “No, it wasn’t,” I gritted out.
“You’re too young.”
I laughed. He was grasping at straws now, which boded well for me. And the fact he was still standing here. Lance was not a man who stayed somewhere he didn’t want to be to preserve someone’s feelings. This was a man who protected me, my son, who protected people’s lives on a daily basis, but he didn’t protect people’s feelings.
Not even mine.
“You find me a woman who is forced to be a single mother, at any age, you make her bring up a kid, try to make sure they’re fed, clothed and housed. Also trying to make sure they are the same. This life with Nathan has given me so many things. But one thing it’s taken is any youth. No mother is young.” My words were a challenge. A dare, for him to try to argue with me.
I knew he was older. It was kind of obvious, not just with the years, the lifetime behind his eyes. But the small wrinkles at the edges of his eyes that were not from smiling. The small sprinkling of salt at the edges of his pepper hair.
I would’ve guessed mid-thirties.
He at least had a good ten years on me. But it didn’t matter. Because I was right. I didn’t feel young. I felt ancient. And no way would a man my age be able to handle all the baggage I came with.
