Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(31)

An old, and not fond, memory hit him front and center.


“Why are you awake—gosh dang, baby.” Rae’s voice had faded into a soft note of concern, her eyebrows bowed, her hands clutching her robe tight around her pajamas.

The utility room had been cold, but Evan had turned on the space heater. Maybe it was the hum coming from the unit at his feet, or the headset he pulled from his ears and hooked around his neck that had him detaching from the real world so efficiently.

Her arms crossed, her brows rising in challenge. Shit. He was screwed.

“ This is what you’re doing while I’m breastfeeding our son?”

He felt his own brows lower. Not this again. “Don’t know if you noticed, but I lack the equipment to perform that function.” They’d argued about this before—how she wasn’t the only parent in the house, always stressing the words “our son” as if he’d forgotten Lyon was half his.

“I have an idea.” But it wasn’t a solution she was speaking of, he could tell by her tone. It was a finger-snap away from an all-out turf war. “Why don’t I carry the baby, give birth to the baby”—she was ticking each item off on her fingers to annoy him—“and why don’t you just come out here and play.”

“ Play?” He hated when she referred to his paintings—tonight a few new tattoo designs to add to the board at work—as play. Lyon had already woken them both, and Evan hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. “You think this is play?” He gestured to the paintings of the tattoos, this one a series of dragons. “Knowing my life’s work—”

“Evan Alexander,” she snorted, her tone sounding so much like her mother, he narrowly avoided asking her when Patricia Mosley had entered the building.

“Let me guess.” He threw down the paintbrush and faced her before she condescended further. “Your work is more important than mine.” Another theme of another repetitive argument. They were on a loop.

“You ruin people’s skin, baby,” she said in the same calm tone while his blood began to boil. “If I have a needle in my hand, I’m saving lives.”



“You able to show up tomorrow?”

Evan snapped out of the memory to see Gloria standing over him. “Library, yeah,” he confirmed.

“Two o’clock.” She turned to Charlie. “Awesome turkey burgers by the way.”

Charlie smiled, but it looked forced. “Thanks.”

“Come on, big boy.” Glo hauled Ash out of the chair. When he stood, he wrapped an arm around her and Evan watched as she melted into him like a snow cone on a hot sidewalk.

“To my cabin, wench,” he joked—maybe. “Thanks for having us, Ev. Charlie, a pleasure.” Asher added a hand kiss.

Evan refused to react.

When they’d gone, he turned for the house to look in on his boy.

“I checked on him a few minutes ago,” Charlie said. “Teeth brushed, pajamas on, television set on a twenty-minute timer.” Lyon liked to fall asleep to noise, something she must have picked up on when she’d stayed with them in the past.

He nodded his thanks, feeling a wave of shame for not getting his kid ready for bed.

Picking up on his mood, she shrugged and said, “You were busy.”

Busy ignoring his son. Though that could be Rae’s voice haunting him.

“I’m heading home,” Charlie said. “Thanks for dinner.”

“No.” He grabbed her hand before she walked off his porch. “You’re having a drink with me.”

Her eyes strayed in the direction of her house with a look that was almost longing. “I don’t know…”

“I do. Haven’t had a chance to talk to you all evening, Ace.”

“Evan.”

He took two full steps toward her until he stood so close she had to crane her neck to look up at him. “One drink.”

They had things to talk about. He wasn’t letting her run from him again.





CHAPTER TEN




The wind blowing off the water had turned cold, and since she’d had about enough of sitting out in the dark, cool air in a short, sleeveless sundress, Charlie poured a glass of wine and pointed to the studio.

“Do you mind if we have our drinks in there?”

Evan had cracked open a bottle of beer and chucked the lid into the trash. “Whatever’s clever, Ace.”

She walked into his studio, but once she was in there, the big space felt claustrophobic. And dark. She looked for an overhead switch but didn’t find one. A side lamp clicked on, followed by a reading lamp on the desk where he’d stacked his drawings when she was in here earlier.

“You need better lighting in here if you hope to work at night.” She nodded to the large shadows yawning over his papers.

He pointed to the track lighting on the ceiling running the length of all four walls. “Don’t need light for drinks.”

True, but she might need it for drinks with him. She’d managed to keep her distance from him this evening, avoiding the awkward tension choking this very room earlier. Come to think of it…

“On second thought, why don’t we go out on the deck? You can throw a few logs in your fire pit and—”