Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(20)

He snapped the graphite pencil in his hand into two pieces and threw it across the room. It plinked off the walls and rolled across the wooden floors. Too tame a reaction for what he was feeling. He paced across the room to the wide windows, feeling like a caged animal. Rather than seeing the nighttime lakeside landscape, he focused on his wavy, angry reflection in the glass.

After his run, he’d paid Lorraine to stay another two hours so he could come in here and get some work done undisturbed. He’d pulled out the tattered napkin with Ash’s pathetic sketch and attempted to get Swine Flew down. By midnight, Lyon was in bed, Lorraine’s curfew past due, and Evan had drawn three pages of sketches he couldn’t use.

He’d gone to bed shortly after only to wake from another nightmare-slash-memory, his head filled with thoughts of Rae, his big bed making a mockery of the idea of restful sleep. An hour ago, he trekked in here, his skin crawling, needing to let loose, let go.

Forget.

Needing the hit that paint on canvas promised. Needing the release of freeing himself from space and time and the life partner he’d never again see on this earth.

Shutting off the studio lights, he snatched the video baby monitor Landon had sent him as a housewarming gift, glad he had a way to watch his boy when he was in the bowels of the studio being tortured by repressed demons. A look at the screen showed Lyon asleep, limbs splayed, mouth open.

Evan needed to move. Walk off the building pressure, get a whiff of air not piped through the AC vents. He would bet the fancy monitor worked away from the house, as well.

Say… two doors down from the house.

Charlie.

Suddenly, he needed to see her. The painting hadn’t cleansed him, hadn’t exorcised this twitchy energy radiating across his back and twanging down both arms. If nothing else, the walk would do him good.

Monitor deep in one pocket of his cargo shorts, he locked his door behind him. Humid air hit him in the face, blowing the longer strands against his forehead. He sucked in a deep breath, listened to frogs and bugs chirping in the night, then broke into a jog for the destination of Charlie’s wide, white, and welcome back porch.

When he arrived, he felt less desperate, a tad less crazy. The house was dark, no sign of her staying up late to work. Just as well.

At least one of them was getting some sleep.

Hand on the pillar by the steps, he stared blankly at the swing on the porch, his fingers drumming, his mind a zillion miles away. After a minute, he turned back toward his house, figuring he’d save Charlie the trial of dealing with his shit, when he heard her speak.

“Evan?”

She sounded slightly groggy, and damn adorable, and he turned to find her looking the same. Her mass of honey-blond waves hung out of the small screenless window upstairs, her huge eyes heavy.

He tilted his head to take her in, then put a hand over his heart. “Juliet.”

A sleepy smile pulled her lips, and the tension choking him loosened its stranglehold. In a raspy chuckle, she asked, “What are you doing?”

Great question. What was he doing? Freaking out? Walking off frustration? And now that he’d laid eyes on Charlie, he considered a chunk of that frustration was sexual.

“Coming to see you,” he answered honestly.

Her smile faded. “Something wrong?”

Nothing she needed to know about.

“Nope. Couldn’t sleep. Figured you’d be up.”

“Well, I’m up.” Once again her full lips parted into a smile and something curled around in his chest and tugged.

She closed her window and he glanced at the monitor again. Lyon hadn’t moved. Not surprising. Where he’d suffered sleepless nights a year ago, now his kid was a rock. Evan had been relieved for the end of that phase.

The kitchen light snapped on and he stood on the other side of her sliding glass door watching as she entered the room. Short shorts edged in lace coasted along her ample thighs, a matching, tiny sleeveless top bared her delicate shoulders and stretched across her incredible tits. He refocused his gaze to her face when she pulled a long, thin, silky robe over those bare shoulders and closed it, hiding the pale pink pj’s—and the promise of what lay beneath them—from view.

“Don’t be a horndog,” he warned himself as the door slid aside. What neither of them needed was for him to bury this… this bizarre need in her—have some sort of displaced lust at three in the morning ruin the easy friendship they had going.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he returned, his voice rocky.

“Wine?”

“Gonna take the same plea as I did with the hummus, Ace.”

“Want to come in?” She bit her bottom lip and he watched as her white teeth scraped the plump flesh.

Yes.

“You gonna keep that robe on?”

Her brows curved in confusion. “Yes.”

“Then, no.” So much for not being a horndog. Man, he needed some sleep.

“Um…”

Before she could respond to that, he said, “Come outside.”

“Okay. Give me a second.”

Turning, she darted into the kitchen and moved for the fridge. He watched her fluid movements for a beat longer than he should have, then lowered himself to the top porch step and faced the silent, dark lake. The quiet was new. On East Level, the semi-busy street provided plenty of background noise to sleep by, and a few gray hairs when Lyon had become a wandering toddler.