“Yeah, yeah.” She bounced on the chair. “They for sure talked about his plans, but I didn’t pay much attention at the time.”
“Then that’s a good start.” He wiped his hands on a clutch of napkins and pushed up from the couch. “Let’s do that right now.”
Emily retrieved her phone while he set up his laptop on the coffee table, next to their plates.
“We can do the download via the Wi-Fi. Our tech guy in the department showed me how to do a bunch of stuff like this.” He tapped the table. “Bring up the videos and put your phone here.”
She accessed her video files for the dates before Brett left the apartment and read off the file names to Nash, who entered the information into his laptop.
“Voilà.” He waved his hand over his laptop. “Now we have entertainment while we eat.”
Emily munched on a piece of pizza while hunched over Nash’s computer, her gaze following the figures on his display as they moved in and out of Jaycee’s living room.
“Whoa, who’s that?” Nash leveled a finger at another woman in the frame.
“That’s Jaycee’s roommate. Jaycee tried to tell the cartel guys that Wyatt was the roommate’s.”
“They obviously didn’t believe her.” Nash shook his head. “Did these two fight all the time like this?”
“Pretty much.” Emily felt a smile twist her lips despite herself when Jaycee came into the frame from the back carrying Wyatt. “There’s our boy.”
“I’m going to turn up the sound, but they probably won’t say anything important with the roommate there. We can take turns keeping an eye on it.”
“You know what’s weird?” Emily held her hands over her plate and brushed the crumbs from her fingers. “If they did have this blackmail plan for Lanier, I never heard it.”
Nash lifted a shoulder. “Doesn’t seem like they talk about much at all—mostly snipe at each other.”
“Jaycee had bad taste in men...except for one.” Emily crumpled her napkin and tossed it onto her paper plate with her crusts. “You.”
Nash finished off his beer and clinked the bottle onto the coffee table. “I’m no prize. I work too much, I prefer superficial relationships and there’s that rodeo fetish.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to warn me off.” Emily scooted to the edge of the chair. “And why do you prefer superficial relationships?”
“Because of this.” He swept his arm to the side. “This property, this business. My family has a lot of money, and women seem attracted to that.”
“How can you be so sure it’s the money and not the man?” She assessed the handsome face in front of her, the pure masculinity emanating from the lanky frame that housed a sinewy strength. Was he fishing for compliments?
“Let’s just say I had a couple of bad experiences that made me wary.”
“You weren’t too wary to hire a nanny on the spot in the supermarket parking lot.” She swirled the remaining sips of her beer in the bottle.
“There was something about that freckled face I trusted.” He hunched forward, elbows on his knees, a light smoldering in his blue eyes. “And I wasn’t wrong.”
“Ha!” She slammed her bottle next to his. “You couldn’t have been more wrong. I was a nanny under false pretenses, and I almost absconded with Wyatt.”
“For what you thought were the right reasons. You turned on a dime when I explained things to you.” He had inched closer across the table.
“So did you.” She wound a lock of her hair around her finger. “For a distrustful sort, you accepted my story pretty quickly, even inviting me to your side.”
“Like I said—” he reached across the coffee table and cupped her face with one rough hand “—something about that freckled face I trusted.”
Emily parted her lips. Her breath came out in short spurts. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Neither can I.” He pulled her close and slanted his mouth across hers, right over their paper plates, greasy napkins and pizza crusts.
The spicy pepperoni on his lips mingled with hers, and she braced a knee on the edge of the table to dive deeper into his kiss.
He rose to his feet, hitching an arm around her waist to take her with him. Their bodies created an arch over the table, and when she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, she took them off balance.
Nash steadied them and broke their connection. Then he took one long step over the coffee table and took her in his arms properly...or very improperly with the way his hands wandered down to her derriere, cupping and lifting her to fit their hips together.
She sighed against his mouth, and he murmured, “Do you want this?”
This time she broke their kiss to gaze into his eyes, the smolder more like a blue flame now. “There’s nothing more I want right now, except...”
He placed a finger against her throbbing lips. “We both want Wyatt back, but I need to know you want me, too.”
Did she want him without Wyatt? Would she see him again if he refused custody?
Falling against his chest, she entwined her arms around his neck. “I do want you, Nash Dillon. I wanted you the minute I saw you fumbling with that baby in the parking lot.”
He pressed his mouth against hers again, and this time it seemed as if a barrier had been lifted between them.
The kiss scorched her lips, branding her somewhere deep inside, taking possession of her soul. If she had doubts before that she could separate the man from the baby, Nash’s kiss torched those doubts and turned them to ash.
He turned around with her in his arms and sank to the chair she’d just vacated, pulling her against him.
She bent her knees and wedged her legs on either side of his hips as she straddled him. She plucked at the hem of his T-shirt and yanked it up and over his head.
Running her hands along the hard ridge of muscle on his
