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“What?”Cass asked, also eyeing the peanuts like they’d done her a personal wrong.
“Boiled peanuts, Miss Picky,” Harrison teased.He took a couple from the cup in Bea’s hand.“They’re delicious.”
“He’s not wrong,” Bea said.
Cass still looked riddled with doubt, and Harrison went to get back in the truck.When Cass climbed up next to him, she had a single boiled peanut in her hand.She met his eyes and lifted her perfectly sculpted eyebrows.
“Just try it,” he said, his hormones firing on all cylinders.“You might like it.”
She peeled one-half of the nut out of the softened shell and put it in her mouth.He knew the moment she tasted it—and liked it—as her eyes brightened again.“Oh, I like that.It’s salty.”She took the rest of the peanut out and ate it.“Mm, yeah.I like those.”
“We need more boiled peanuts back here,” Harrison said, and Bea turned around and offered Cass the cup.She smiled at Cass and then Harrison, her eyes narrowing slightly.
He wasn’t sure what he’d done, but Bea’s bright eyes had a way of slicing through a man who already felt like he was perched on the edge of a knife.
The trip continued, and Cass laughed quietly once, then twice, before Harrison looked over to her.She passed him her phone, and while surprise darted through him, he took it.“My daughter,” she said.“The free-spirited one.”
He looked at the phone at a girl in her early twenties.She had the same dark hair and eyes as Cass, with plenty of life flowing from her expression.She wore hiking clothes—shorts and a tank top both in bright colors that clashed.That wasn’t anything like Cass, at least from what Harrison knew and had assumed, and the girl wore a lightweight jacket tied around her waist.
She beamed at the camera with one finger pointed up, and Harrison had to look hard to see the mountain goats there.
“Jane,” Cass said.“She’s holding up the mountain goats.See them?”
“Just now,” he said.He grinned and handed her back the device.“She looks like she’s having fun.”
Cass sighed as her smile softened.She studied the picture for a moment longer.“Yeah,” she said.“She does.”She tucked her device under her leg and picked up another boiled peanut.Her last one.“She has her father’s adventurous spirit.”
“You’re not like that?”Harrison cast a glance toward the front seat, but Bea had pulled out a pillow at some point and propped it against the window.She leaned into it, eyes closed and unmoving.
“A little, I guess,” Cass said.She shrugged her shoulders the tiniest bit.“I mean, I suppose I just put in an offer on a house that’s a little bit out of my price range, and about a thousand miles away from anything and anyone I know.”
Harrison let her words sink in for a moment.Then he said, “Feels adventurous to me.”
She brushed her hair back out of her face.“Bea is on the island.”
“That she is.”
“I won’t be totally alone.”She looked at him then, pure electricity flowing from her.“Right?”
“You know three of us on the island,” he said.Before he could think about what he was doing, he reached past their sodas and slid his hand into hers.“You’ll be fine.”The buzzing shock from the touch of her skin told him what he’d done, and he quickly pulled away.Fire burned in his veins, and he gave her another smile and looked out his window.
Everything around him blazed, from the sight beyond the glass to the floorboards under his feet to the breath in his lungs.Had he just made a critical error?Cass hadn’t pulled away, gasped, or done anything to indicate she didn’t welcome the touch.
Still, he shouldn’t have done it.
“Tell me about your ex-wife,” she said.
Harrison swung his attention back to her.“Really?”
“Yeah,” she said.“Then I won’t feel weird that I like to talk about West.”
Harrison watched her for a moment, trying to decide if her cheeks were more or less flushed than they’d been a few moments ago.“It’s different,” he finally said.He couldn’t tell if she was blushing or not.Perhaps she was just so naturally beautiful that she carried that pinkish hue in her face all the time.“You loved West.Love him.You didn’t…uh, losing a loved one to death is far different than a divorce.”
Cass nodded slightly.“You’re right.I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said.“But I don’t want to talk about Claudia.”He had the strangest inclination to take her hand again.Instead, he fisted his fingers and covered them with his left hand.“But I don’t mind if you talk about West.You know, if you want to.”
Cass flashed a smile in his direction and said, “Thanks, Harrison.”She didn’t immediately launch into a story about her husband, and the backseat fell into silence again.
Harrison didn’t mind, because his fingers kept burning.He told himself he better be satisfied with the pace Cass set, because she would definitely be the one to decide if he could hold her hand, go to dinner with her, or kiss her.
Honestly, he was a little surprised he wanted to do those things with her.He’d been protecting himself for a while now, but as Grant pulled up to a house in a quaint suburban neighborhood, Harrison found himself ready to get out there again, dating-wise.
He also really needed to get out of this truck before he did something he couldn’t take back.
