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“Come on. Family first. You mentioned your dad because he’d had a knee replacement. Tell me about him. Your mom. Siblings?” I counted off of my fingers.
“Dad had a knee replacement. Mom died when I was five. “
“Shit.” I grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. I don’t remember her. She had a rare form of brain cancer. Dad remarried when I was eighteen and had three more kids with Maureen, so I have three half brothers. Joey, Andrew, and Tyler.”
“Close with them or not so much since you live here and they live in Texas?”
“Close with them but at a different point in life. I became an adult the year Dad started over, basically, with kids.” He rowed farther out onto the lake. “I love my dad. Maureen’s great. I love my brothers.” He shrugged. “Just needed to venture out on my own.”
“Fair.” I nodded.I’d done the same thing.“Favorite guilty pleasure.”
He grinned. “Romance novels.”
“Seriously?” I wasn’t sure if I swayed back or if it was water rolling underneath us.
“Why would I be joking?” His eyes twinkled.
“Because…well…you work on cars, so I thought…” My cheeks heated, and his smile widened; he enjoyed watching me squirm. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”
“One of my friends—Ranger Reynolds, actually—is married to Sydney Ward. She’s a famous romance novelist—”
“I know who Sydney Ward is.” You had to be living under a rock to not know Sydney Ward, especially with the new movie they were making of one of her books.
“Well, I enjoy her books,” he said, his expression more serious now.
Of course, all I could picture was him sitting on the edge of an engine bay, dirty jeans molded to his thighs, dirty shirt clinging to his broad shoulders, and his dirty hands thumbing through a dirty book.
Dirty thoughts.
“Me, too,” I blurted out and quickly changed topics. “So, did you always want to be a mechanic?”
This was great. Why couldn’t all dating be like this? Just jump right into the important details without all the tiptoeing.
“Pretty much. I love cars. Fixing them. Making them faster. I’ve been tinkering with them since I was a teen and never stopped.”
“You like getting your hands dirty,” I teased.
Our eyes connected, the joke instantly losing its luster in favor of…lust.
“Yeah,” his deep voice rumbled.
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, wondering if his mouth was as dirty as his hands.Oh my god, Reese.
Decker was literally doing me the hugest, most ridiculous favor ever known to man, and here I was, fantasizing about him every chance I got.
“Okay, your turn,” I declared, hoping he didn’t notice when my voice cracked as I waved my hands and motioned for him to return to the interrogation. “Do your worst.”
Decker sat back and regarded me, cocking his head to one side and then the other. It was only a couple of seconds that he paused and then asked, his voice subtly smooth, “What is your most annoying personality trait?”
My jaw hung. “Seriously.”
“Most annoying. I want to know.”
I snapped my mouth shut and wrinkled my nose. “I wash the dishes before I put them in the dishwasher.”
He snorted. “Seriously? Okay, I’m going to have to try harder.”
