Home Ice by Catherine Gayle Page A

It made me want to crawl back into his lap, and I didn’t want to stop with just a kiss this time. He looked like he knew exactly what I was thinking. In fact, he looked like he would be completely on board with doing exactly that if we weren’t sitting in the middle of an intersection. “I swear, I won’t let on that I know, whatever it is. I won’t ask you to take a screenshot so we can post it all over the Internet. I wouldn’t embarrass you or your girls like that…”
    “She would die if I let you see it. And then she’d murder me.”
    “If she was already dead, she couldn’t do anything to you,” he pointed out, invoking reason—something that had escaped me the second he’d walked into my life.
    “Then her sisters would kill me.”
    He shook his head, clearly fighting back another laugh. “What did she say? You can’t keep it from me.”
    I was reaching for my purse to hide the evidence when he made a grab for my phone. He was lightning fast, snatching it out of my grip before I could rip it away from him.
    “Beefy? That’s…”
    “Awful,” I finished for him.
    “I was thinking more along the lines of hilarious, but we can go with awful if you want.”
    I pressed my eyes closed, sinking down in my seat. “If she finds out you’ve seen this…”
    “Our secret.” He tossed the phone back to me just as the light changed.
    I punched in a quick response for her and hit Send before shoving the phone back in my purse.
    “So what did you tell her about the whole getting kissy-faced on the sofa idea?” he asked, not even attempting to make the question casual. His words were heated. Needy. Somehow, there was still a hint of humor in it but not enough to outweigh the sensual quality it had taken on. The deep tone of his voice rumbled through my body, jump-starting my sex drive like nobody’s business.
    I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. For once in my life, I didn’t mind that I couldn’t. I nibbled on my lower lip. “I told her she needed to worry about herself and her sisters and leave me alone.”
    “You and Beefy, you mean. To leave us alone.”
    In my mind, I turned it to Beefcake again. I let out a nervous laugh and bit my tongue to keep from saying it aloud. “Yes, me and Beefy.”
    He turned onto my street and rolled into the driveway, but he didn’t turn off the engine. He put the car in park and turned in his seat to face me, that same panty-melting smile on his face, and he trailed the tips of his fingers up the back of my hand. Every touch, no matter how seemingly insignificant or barely there, had my body buzzing like an agitated beehive.
    “I’m not going to lie,” he said after a long minute. “I want you to ask me to come in. I like the idea of testing out Zoe’s suggestion. I think she’s onto something, and I think we should explore it. But if you aren’t on board with that or if you think we’d be rushing things, I’ll walk you to your door and then go.”
    “Without even a good-night kiss?”
    He winked. “I would hope you’d allow me that, at the very least, but I’d understand if you didn’t want it.”
    I wasn’t inclined to let things stop with a simple good-night kiss. I mean, how often would a chance like this present itself? I was almost forty, and most of my evenings were claimed by my daughters. They would be for a long time to come, too, even though they were growing up far faster than I would like sometimes. I probably wouldn’t have another kid-free night for at least a couple of months. It had been an eternity since I’d been with a man, and there was no telling how long it might be until the next opportunity presented itself.
    I screwed up my courage and decided to go for it. “I’m not sure I’ll be satisfied with just a kiss.”
    “No?”
    “No. Why don’t you shut off the ignition and come in with me?”
    “Oh, thank God.”

    WE BARELY HAD the front door closed when Paige was practically climbing me, like she was trying to crawl