Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(21)

He heard the door slide closed and a moment later, a bottle of water appeared in front of him. Accepting it, he watched as Charlie padded barefoot down a step, arranged the robe over her long legs, and sat next to him, a light, pleasant scent lifting off her hair or skin.

Lid off, he guzzled down half the bottle.

She took a dainty sip of her own water bottle, then eyed him. “Studio time not working out?”

One could say that. He shook his head.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Not tonight.” He’d be up until morning, which ensured a rough start to his day. Nothing he could do about it now. His eyes left her face and wandered over her robe, covered in bright yellow and pink daisies. “You like flowers.”

“You noticed.”

He had. He’d never noticed before. But nearly everything he’d seen her in since he got here—dress, pj’s, her beach towel—had flowers on it. “Real ones or just wearing them?”

“Both. But I do not have a green thumb. I finally hired a guy to come out and do my beds this year.” She gestured at the colorful plants decorating the side of her house. “I have to call him, though, because I think the lavender bushes he planted are dying.”

“Yeah?” he asked, having no idea which plant to look at.

She pointed past him to a scraggly brown bushy-looking thing. “It bloomed earlier this year, but now it looks like something from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This is his signature plant. He’s not going to like that I killed it.”

“The hell is a signature plant?” Evan had never been much of a toil-in-the-soil kind of guy. He loved the outdoors: running, swimming, and he was looking forward to boating and trying his hand at waterskiing for the first time in years, but plants? Not his gig.

“He patented a plant.”

“Nerdy.”

“Science-y,” she corrected, elbowing him gently.

“There a difference?” The plant guy sounded like Poindexter, with a pocket protector full of garden spades. “Whatever makes you happy, Ace.”

“So, why couldn’t you sleep?” She dropped a foot to the bottom step. The silky material of her robe slid aside, revealing her leg all the way up to her thigh.

He looked—how could he not?—and took another drink of his water as he tried to decide how much to share.

After a beat, he said, “Rae.”

The air changed between them, her silence saying more than if she’d filled the space with chatter. She was waiting for him to share more, but he didn’t want to share the memory of his late wife’s stillness after her last breath, or the memory of her sheet-covered body being loaded into a silent ambulance.

Turned out he didn’t need to say more.

Charlie’s free hand rested on his forearm and he looked down at her slim, delicate fingers over his inked skin. Her thumb brushed over the hair on his arm, and attraction he couldn’t categorize washed over him. He lifted his chin and met her seeking, hazel eyes.

Charlie.

In his peripheral for years, now front and center.

“Painting didn’t help?” she asked, her tone cautious.

She was right to be cautious. Whatever lingered between them was downright dangerous. He didn’t answer, tearing his eyes from her sympathy-filled, moonlit face and focusing on the reflective surface of the lake instead.

There was a boat in the distance, lights swinging, the distinct sound of laughing and shouting followed by loud splashes. Kids on vacation, he imagined, diving where they weren’t supposed to, drinking where they weren’t supposed to. Like Evan, Donny, and Asher used to do shit they weren’t supposed to.

“Ah, to be young,” she commented.

“Yeah,” he commented back, but the only sensation in his body was her palm warming his arm.

“You miss those days?”

“Sometimes.” Things sure as hell were easier back then. The memory that hit him made him smile. “When we were sixteen, Donny stole a bottle of booze from his dad’s liquor cabinet and we got plowed.”

“Sixteen? Bet it didn’t take much.”

“It didn’t.” They’d all puked, rallied, then headed straight for the library. “That was the night Ash and I decided to leave permanent marks on Evergreen Cove.”

“Donny didn’t go?”

“He was our lookout. And by ‘lookout’ I mean he camped out on a park bench and finished the booze.”

“Oh boy.” Her laughter did a lot to ease his earlier tension. “Not THE night?”

He leaned a shoulder into hers in a playful bump. “The one and only.”

“The rise of the Penis Bandits.”

A laugh, his, took him by surprise. “Ace. Really.”

Her cheeks stained pink as she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I did not mean to say that. I just meant”—she pulled her hand from his arm while he continued to laugh, then put it to her flushed face. “All I meant was that was the start of you breaking hearts and taking names.” Her teeth scraped her bottom lip. “I mean rules. Breaking rules,” she finished quietly.

He studied her for a second, watching as she watched him back. Tension crackled between them. Tension having nothing to do with Rae or the nightmare that woke him. Tension that made him wonder whose heart he’d broken.