Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(27)

“Dad! Phone!”

She used the interruption as an excuse to pull away from Evan and give herself some much-needed breathing room.

Lyon stood on the dock, cell phone to his ear, holding a towel around his body with one hand.

Evan hadn’t looked away from her so she pointed to the dock and said, “Your phone.”

“I heard.” He continued staring at her, brow furrowed.

“Dad!”

“Yeah, bud,” he called out. Then he turned back to Charlie and erased the space she’d created, so close, her breasts grazed his bare chest. Then he just… watched her.

She held her breath and listened to her heart pound relentlessly.

His eyes narrowed.

Water lapped around them.

In the distance, a gull cried.

Abruptly, he let her go, forcing her to kick her legs to keep from going under. Swimming for the dock, he cut through the water with powerful strokes. She watched as he hauled himself up the ladder on the side. Watched water rush off his chiseled body and long trunks and run down his legs. Watched as he accepted the phone as sun glistened off the water droplets clinging to his wet body.

Wow.

Just…

Wow.

She moved her arms through the water, her pace intentionally slow, both to give herself time to recuperate from his hands on her body as well as not to horn in on his conversation. Not that he cared. About her recuperation or privacy. Openly, he watched her while squeegeeing the water from his hair. When she reached the ladder, he bent to pick up her towel and, with barely a glance in her direction, he offered it to her when she stepped on the dock.

Pressing the terry cloth against her body, she dried quickly, and then just as quickly tied her sarong back into place. Sunglasses once again hiding her face, she wound her hair into a ponytail and squeezed the water out, leaving a puddle that could’ve accommodated a small family of ducks if it hadn’t run through the slats of the dock.

“Yeah, burgers sound good. Turkey burgers? You shittin’ me?” Evan was saying into the phone. He frowned at her. “You know how to cook a turkey burger?”

He asked this as if burgers made from turkey required some fancy preparation like frog’s legs or foie gras.

“Of course,” she replied with a shrug.

“Charlie’ll take care of that,” he told the caller. Then to her, he said, “Wine or beer?”

“Um… either?”

“She likes wine,” he said to the phone. “I like beer.” A pause and then, “Yep. No problem.” He ended the call and dropped the phone into the beach bag Lyon had hauled onto one narrow shoulder. “Bud, will you plug that into the charger for me?”

“Sure,” he said, lugging the bag up the dock toward the stairs that led to the beach.

“Glo and Ash are coming for dinner.”

“And I’m invited?” she asked, noting he hadn’t asked.

“Ace. Turkey burgers.”

Like that was an answer.

He watched her for a beat, looking unhappy, and she wasn’t sure if he was unhappy because of her not-so-graceful segue into talking about Rae in the lake, or if he was unhappy because she seemed to be pushing him on this whole dinner-with-Glo-and-Asher thing.

She decided to be agreeable. “Turkey burgers.”

With a curt nod, he grabbed his towel from the railing, wrapped it around his waist, and headed up the dock. When he reached Lyon, he took the bag from his son’s shoulder and transferred it to his own.

“What time?” she called after him.

“Five.”

That one word, and a stellar view of his backside, was all the answer she got.

She spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if she shouldn’t show up after all, because she didn’t want to have another conversation that might involve him asking her what her point was about bringing up Rae. But then she’d sort of promised to cook the turkey burgers, so she decided she’d better show.





CHAPTER NINE




The mood,” as Charlie had come to think of it, remained when she arrived at Evan’s place at four instead of five. She wasn’t sure when Gloria and Asher were coming by, nor was she sure if she was supposed to help with dinner prep to be served at five, or if everyone would arrive at five and make dinner together.

Then again, maybe she was being slightly obsessive. Since their odd parting in the water, she’d been slightly obsessive about a lot of things, including the fact that she wasn’t ready to discuss what had happened.

What hadn’t happened…

After dissecting it every which way, there were only tiny, barely discernible pieces left before she’d had to toss the whole mess aside, get dressed in her favorite short, pink-with-white-flowers sundress, and walk to Evan’s house from her own.

Now she was here and worried that if they were alone, she might have to talk about it after all. Maybe she should go.

“Hi, Aunt Charlie.”

Too late.

She turned to find Lyon, eyes on his iPad, back on the sofa, heel propped up on one knee with his other bare foot on the couch’s cushion.

“Hey, honey.”

“Dad’s in the studio,” he said without looking up from his game.

“Okay.” No escape.

She walked to the opposite side of the house, through the laundry room in the direction of the studio, and past a wall of windows facing her place but obstructed by Laney Edwards’s house standing between them. Not that Laney was ever in it. Save for the few weeks in May she and her husband, Hank, came to the Cove, they mostly stayed home in Michigan.