Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(24)

“Yeah, I saw that. Looks good.” Evan threw Charlie a glance and she gave him a demure smile.

“The three of us have childhood friends in common,” she said.

Evan frowned. How? The sandy-blondish-haired guy in front of him had to be at least five years his junior. “Yeah?”

“Donny Pate was my roommate and drinking buddy.” He shrugged massive shoulders. “I was underage. He was my supplier.”

“Sounds like Donny.” Evan had kept in touch with him over the years. He’d left the Cove a few years back, making his home, and finding his calling, in New York. Evan had flown out to the Hamptons for a party thrown by one of Donovan’s crazy-rich clients. They’d hung out near an outdoor fireplace Donovan had built with his own two hands, while Evan had noted things: one, Donny had morphed into more of a loner, but less of a fighter, and two, in spite of that loner status, he seemed a hell of a lot happier there than when he’d lived in the Cove.

Connor reached in his wallet and extracted his card. “My cell number.”

The card was white with black block lettering and Evan’s first thought was that an aspiring landscaper needed something much more artsy than this snooze fest of a business card.

“Repairs, landscaping, or if you want to sell me a signed book for my nephew”—Connor smiled and though he’d been trying not to, Evan decided he already liked the guy—“gimme a buzz.”

He left Charlie with a few more instructions for her new lavender plant, bent at the waist to high-five Lyon, and ambled out to the driveway before climbing into a huge white Ram truck.

Damn. Nice truck, too. Made Evan’s family-guy SUV look tame.

“He’s super nice,” Charlie said from beside him.

“Seems okay.”

“Can you believe he knew Donny? Used to work with him, Faith, and Sofie at that seafood restaurant on Fifth. Small world right?”

“Very,” he agreed. And getting smaller by the minute.

“Daaaad,” Lyon said, proving his impatience had reached Code Red.

“Meet you at the dock, okay, buddy?” she said to him. “I’ll get my suit.”

With the promise of getting to see Charlie in a bathing suit, the rest of Evan’s day instantly got better.


*


It didn’t fit well, but she’d decided the black one-piece bathing suit and printed sarong looped around her hips were far more appropriate than her hot pink bikini around Evan and his seven-year-old son.

But mostly Evan.

After the night he arrived unexpectedly, and the bizarre yet permeable air of sexual tension between them, she understood that this Evan-living-next-door thing had come with a certain set of challenges. She was sure she’d get used to seeing him shirtless eventually—and get used to him being in her space more often than not. But for now, she seemed to be reverting back to when she crushed on him at fifteen.

Though that night had nothing to do with crushes or when she was fifteen.

There’d been something else there. Something other than sexual tension. A connection, almost. Artist-to-artist, or maybe it was their shared grief for Rae, or the fact that Evan wasn’t sleeping and Charlie cared why he wasn’t sleeping.

That’s why she’d chosen the black bathing suit. Because that connection was as dangerous as the heart flutter. That connection could turn their friendship into something it shouldn’t be. Something she couldn’t allow it to be.

She made her place on a towel on the dock, lathered up with sunscreen, and soaked in the rays. Evan stood in water up to his chest, Lyon paddling a few feet away from him. She considered unlooping the sarong over her legs so her tan wouldn’t be uneven, but opted for safety disguised as modesty.

Last night, after Evan had grazed his hand along her cheek and brushed his knuckles against the inside of her knee, she’d run inside in a panic, shut off all the lights, and hid. Not exactly the most mature of reactions.

Maybe she was fifteen years old.

Upstairs, she peeped out her bedroom window and watched as he swaggered down the beach back to his house. Not able to help herself, she’d stared—admiring the fluid yet masculine way he moved, every intentional footfall, and the sharp lines and curved planes of his body.

She hadn’t been able to help it. She was single bordering on spinsterhood, and he was an incredibly attractive guy. Sue her.

But.

She couldn’t keep objectifying him if they planned on being neighbors for years to come. He was still her friend, still Rae’s husband, and still completely and entirely out of the realm of “available bachelors” for herself.

Despite her inner speech, her eyes traced the lion tattoo on his shoulder now, its mane curling over one chiseled bicep. And when Lyon commanded to be thrown into “deep” water and Evan turned to placate him, she got a view of the roses on his other shoulder: two big blooms, and a swirl shaped like an infinity sign closing in around them. Beautiful artistry. Designed by his own hand, executed by another, but—Evan had told her—under his watchful eye and instruction. They had to be perfect. Because what they represented was too important to be anything less.

And what they represented was family. A lion for his son, and roses for his mom and his aunt. Then there was the sparrow on his forearm for Rae. His body had been etched with ink honoring his favorite people. Which said so much about who he was and how deeply he loved.