“Don’t tell me I’m a great person, and I’ll make somebody a great wife/girlfriend/partner one day. Somebody else.” She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I’ve heard that speech a time or two already.”
Paul stared at her, puzzled. “That surprises me. I would think men would jump at the chance to be with you.”
“Thanks for making me feel better.” She gave him a brilliant smile, dazzling him, making it hard to breathe. “I’ve only heard it from the few nice guys I’ve dated. They never like my type.”
“Do you like nice guys?” he blurted out.
She tilted her head to one side, holding his gaze. “Some of them,” she said in a flirtatious voice.
“Why don’t they like you? Is it the tattoos?” He dared to reach a finger out and trace a rose on her arm.
She looked up at him through long lashes. “More like what the tattoos represent. I’m not the kind of girl mothers tend to approve of.” She laughed a little, then shrugged. “Now that I’m a mother myself, of a girl of dating age, I get it. When Hannah told me she liked a boy on the basketball team who’s huge and muscular and looks twenty-five at least, I freaked out.”
“Understandable. I’m sure I’ll be protective of Davey when the time comes.” But now he was studying her tattoos more closely. The rose he’d touched had two smaller roses twisted around it. “What’s that one for?”
“The big rose is my mom. She loved roses. Erica and I do, too, so the small roses are us.”
She’d used the past tense and he remembered what Trey had told him, that their mother had died young. “When did you lose your mom?”
“Three years ago.” She looked down, digging the toe of her sneaker into the sandy soil. “Cancer. It runs in our family,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head like a dog shaking off water. “Here’s my biker tattoo,” she said, pushing up her sleeve to show him a motorcycle topped by two wings.
“Pretty,” he said, and tried not to picture her in the arms of some burly biker.
Maybe she read his mind, because she explained. “By the time the tattoo had healed, I’d figured out the biker was a jerk. But by then it was too late. Already had the tattoo.” She laughed and shook her head. “I made a lot of dumb decisions when I was younger.”
“What’s your latest tattoo?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You mean my latest on a public part of my body?”
Paul sucked in a breath, picturing all the private places she might have a tattoo. And she knew it. He opened his mouth to scold her, or to say something, but she put up a hand. “Sorry. My last tattoo was actually this one.” She held out her elbow, and he saw a horse, running free, tattooed over what looked like a scar.
He touched it, ran his finger along it, and the feel of her skin set a fire that burned its way to his heart. “How’d you get the scar?”
“Riding horses when I didn’t know how. That was when I dated the cowboy.”
His eyes narrowed. How many men had she dated? And what exactly did dating mean to her?
Again, she seemed to read his mind. “It wasn’t serious,” she said. She lifted her hair from her temple and showed him another scar that ran along her hairline. “This was the same accident. I got thrown from a horse. He wasn’t very sympathetic, so I got myself some medical care in the nearest town and got out of there.”
“Jerk.” Paul traced that scar, too. It gave him the chance to touch her soft, shiny hair. He’d been wanting to do that. “Any ill effects from getting tossed onto your head from a horse?”
Her breathing seemed to quicken. “Nothing lasting. I’ve had a couple of fainting spells over the years, but it’s no big deal. Believe me, that’s the least of my health worries.”
“Good.” He let his hand stroke her hair.
She didn’t pull away from his touch. He wasn’t all that experienced with women, but he could tell from the way she met his eyes and looked away, from the rise and fall of her chest, that she was attracted.
This close, he could smell her perfume, warm and spicy and alluring. He could feel the heat of her body, and no doubt she could feel the heat of his, because he was burning up.
He should make a joke, stand up, get them started back toward town. Get them away from this isolated spot where a great blue heron waded, looking for its lunch, where the pines rustled overhead and the waters gently lapped against the shore.
Normally, Paul did what he knew he should do. As a responsible person, a cop and a dad, he had to. But right now, in this moment, he didn’t want to be responsible. He wanted to look into her eyes, and he did.
She looked back at him now, steady and serious, her eyes darkening.
Her gaze flickered to his lips and then back to his eyes. “This is a bad idea for all kinds of reasons,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“You’re right.” He didn’t pull away.
Neither did she, and so he moved closer, his eyes steady on hers, looking past their usual mischievous sparkle to the complicated woman revealed in their depths.
She sucked in a breath, let it out, shakily.
He hadn’t even touched her, not really, and they were both breathing harder. He let his thumb trace her full lower lip.
She caught his hand in hers, but she didn’t push it away; she just held it there, staring at him.
And he was intoxicated. He’d never made any kind of sound like the sound he made as he splayed his fingers through her hair and pulled her close and kissed her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IF SHE’D BEEN ABLE to speak, Amber would have said wow.
Whatever she’d thought kissing Paul would be like, it hadn’t been this: intense, passionate, one hand
