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I wasn’t so sure about that. He rocked the hell out of sweat-covered running clothes.
“Yeah, well, who am I to judge? You saw me in my ratty pottery clothes.”
His eyes glinted with sincerity as he said, “I thought you looked beautiful then too.”
I wasn’t sure how, but I somehow managed to keep my knees from buckling.
Taking a step to the side, I pushed the door open wider so he could enter. “Come on in.”
He stepped into the entryway, dwarfing the already small space and making the air thick with his scent. He smelled like pine trees and clean laundry and something with just the slightest hint of spice. It was a scent that would drug any woman.
“It smells amazing in here,” he said, pulling me from the fog he’d created simply by existing. “I don’t know what you cooked, but if it tastes even half as good as it smells, it’s going to be fantastic.”
“Thanks,” I murmured with a blush. “I hope you like Chicken Carbonara.”
His eyes took on a heavy, slightly glazed look. “Is that the pasta dish with the bacon in it?”
I let out a little laugh. “Yep. That’s the one. I’m guessing you like bacon?”
“Not sure there’s a red-blooded man on the planet whodoesn’tlike bacon. Most important food group as far as I’m concerned. Now I’m even happier your pushy friend set this whole thing up.”
My head fell back on a deep belly laugh at his spot-on description of Luna. I opened my eyes once the hilarity had died down to find him staring at me with a look that made it hard to swallow past the cotton filling my throat. His eyes seemed to have gotten a few shades darker in just a handful of seconds. The only way I knew to describe the intensity carved into his chiseled features waspotent. This damn man was potent as hell.
I licked my suddenly dry lips, my brain buzzing frantically for something to say. Fortunately, my little girl was here as a buffer and had the perfect timing.
“Tent!” she shouted, blazing from the living room. “Hi, Tent! Hi! You came to see me!”
The tension that held my body captive, every muscle locked tight just a moment ago, let me out of its iron grip as soon as he looked away from me and to my daughter.
“Sure did. Hey there, Little Bit. How you doing?”
“I’m colowing a pictew! Wanna see?”
She got those dimples from him as he answered, “Of course I want to see. But first, I got you a little surprise.”
I’d been so overwhelmed with looking at him that I hadn’t even noticed the bottle of wine he had in one hand, and the bag of gummy bears in the other. But they weren’t just any gummy bears, Trent had gone through the two bags he’d bought earlier that day and picked out all the green ones.
Oh my damn. And my heart just melted into a puddle of goo.
She sucked in a breath so big I feared her lungs might explode.
“Uh oh,” I whispered, knowing what was coming. “You might want to cover your ears.”
He shot me a quizzical look, asking, “What?” right as Renee let out her patented excited shriek.
“GWEEN GUMMY BEAWS!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, doing a little dance after snatching the bag out of his hand. “Yay! Yay! Yay!”
“Good God,” Trent muttered, his eyes wide with fright as he rubbed at one of his ears. “Think she might have just set off every dog in this town.”
“Yeah, she’s kind of famous for that scream. I’m used to it now, but the first few times she did it, I thought someone was murdering her. Scared a solid decade off my life.”
His chuckle was like velvet over gravel. “I can see that. So that’s her excited, huh?”
“Yep. My baby girl is all about the drama. There’s no middle ground with her. When she’s unhappy about something, she makes it known in a big way, and when she’s happy, she’ll shake the house down around you.” Looking down at her as she pawed through the bag, I asked, “What do you say, doodle bug?”
“Fank you, Tent!Fankyoufankyou!”
“You’re welcome, Little Bit,” he told her before lowering his voice for just me to hear. “Christ, how do you ever say no to that little face? If she were to ask right now, I’d give her all the cash in my walletandcall up my lawyer to have her added to my will.”
