Beautiful Mistake(34)

Finally, it seemed the girls had mellowed out a bit. Lizzy was actually yawning.

“You tired, Lizzy?” Caine asked.

She yawned again in response.

He stood and lifted the sleepy girl into his arms. “Come on. How about you lie down, and I’ll put the TV on for you?”

“Can I sleep in your bed?”

“Sure. Come on.” Lizzy leaned from Caine’s arms, reaching out to me. “Can you come put me to sleep, too, Rachel?”

I looked to Caine, and he shrugged. “Sure, let’s make it a party.”

Of course he was being sarcastic, but the girls didn’t catch it and were excited anyway. The four of us walked down the hall to his bedroom.

An unexpected blush rose on my cheeks as we entered the room. Caine’s bed was huge, definitely a king size. The four-post, carved-mahogany frame made it look even larger. It was also extremely high off the ground. The masculine feel of it really seemed to fit him. I could easily imagine him sleeping naked in it. Face down. With that tight ass I wanted to bite so badly peeking out from underneath a sheet.

I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped in the doorway of the room, lost in my thoughts as I stared at the bed, until Caine spoke.

“You can come in. I won’t bite.”

Bite. That did it. That’s all it took for the light blush on my face to heat to what I’m sure was a lovely shade of crimson. Caine took one look at me and a wicked grin beamed from his handsome face. He set Lizzy down, helped Alley up onto the bed, and walked back to the door, where I was still standing, twisting my watch back and forth on my wrist.

His hot breath tickled my neck as he whispered, “I know what you’re thinking.”

My entire body tingled from only his breath touching my skin. I could only imagine what would happen if his hands were on me. Oh, God. Now I’m thinking of him, in that bed, with his hands on me. I swallowed and took a deep breath, only to find Caine’s scent still lingering as he walked back to the bed. Why couldn’t he at least smell bad?

He fiddled with the TV in his bedroom, connecting wires to a DVR.

“I take it you don’t watch movies in bed very often?”

“Pretty much the only time this thing turns on is when these two are here.”

Conversation about TV and little girls was good—I was starting to feel calmer.

“I can’t fall asleep without watching TV for a while,” I told him. “I guess you’re one of those people who falls asleep the second your head hits the pillow?”

Caine finished hooking up the wires, and the screen illuminated with the preview of some Disney movie.

Again, he walked back to me. “I didn’t say that. There are other things to do before you fall asleep at night that I prefer over television.”

I must’ve looked like a deer in the headlights, because Caine chuckled. “Relax, I’m just screwing with you. You looked uncomfortable, so I thought I’d help you out and make it worse.”

“I’m going to go clean up the tea mess.” I waved to the girls from the door and backed out of the room.

Five minutes later, Caine returned to the living room. I’d just finished washing the tea set and was drying the little dishes before packing them back into the girls’ backpack.

“They’re really sweet girls,” I said.

“Luckily they take after their uncle and not their mom.”

I laughed. “Yeah, right.”

Caine took the dishtowel from my hand. “What, you don’t think I’m sweet?”

“That’s definitely not a word I’d use to describe you.”

“Oh yeah?” He dried a tiny saucer and handed it to me to pack up. “And what word would you use?”

“I don’t know. Enigma, maybe?”

Caine thought about it for a moment. “Not sure I can argue with that one.”

After we finished packing up the tea set, we heard a phone buzzing.

“Is that mine or yours?” I asked.

“Mine’s in my pocket. Must be yours.”

I walked to the couch and dug for my cell in my purse, but it stopped making noise before I got to it. Reading Davis’s name on the screen, I sighed audibly.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

Caine waited for more.

“It was Davis. He texted me earlier, and I forgot to text him back.”

He nodded. “You make a decision on that?”

“No.”

“Want my help?”

My brows lifted. “You’re going to help me decide if I should give my ex another shot?”

“Sure. Why not? Tell me about him.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What’s he do? How old is he? Ever married? The basics.”

“Okay. Well, he’s twenty-nine, divorced, and a regional sales manager for a nuclear medicine durable equipment company.”

Caine deadpanned, “Sounds like a dick. You shouldn’t give it another shot.”

“What? Why?”

He held up three fingers on one hand and began to tick them off as he spoke. “Three reasons: One, he’s twenty-nine and divorced. Something’s wrong there. Bad track record. Two, salesman. That right there is a red flag. He sells crap for a living. It’s only a matter of time before he’s selling you a line of crap, too. And three, name’s Davis.” He shrugged. “It’s a stupid name.”