Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(46)

What was she feeling?

Her entire body buzzed like she’d just finished a really hard workout. Her heart stuttered in her chest. Her mouth was dry.

They’re both yours.

Both of them. Lyon and Evan.

She blinked a few times in quick succession, turning the phrase over and over in her mind.

Both yours.

She wanted them both. She loved Lyon in the way she imagined a mother loved her son. She loved Evan in a different way… sure, as a friend, but now… in a lusty way. A way any woman would recognize as sexual, and never, ever mistake a kiss from him as fishlike or platonic.

What did that mean?

Should she allow herself to have what he was offering? Not that he’d offered a relationship, per se. But he’d certainly promised a few other things: painting involving orgasms, showers involving his lips on every inch of her body, and a tattoo for her. She could accept, if she let go of the guilt, let go of the worry of taking Rae’s family for herself.

Could she fill the role her best friend had filled before her? Would Lyon resent her? Would Evan compare her?

Her mind swam, her thoughts too confusing and too many to sort. This was not a decision she could make under the blazing sun while standing next to a woman Evan had kissed a year ago. There were other, more pressing problems to deal with.

Three seconds later, Lyon added to those problems by one.

“Aunt Charlie!” He bounded over to her, plastic bag in hand, shaking the tiny brown fish inside. “I won! I won, I won, I won!”

“Easy, buddy. Let’s not give him brain damage.” She stilled the bag and looked inside. The fish’s mouth was moving at an alarmingly fast rate, his eyes bugging out, though she supposed, since fish had no eyelids, they always looked like their eyes were bugging out. He was pretty, though she was unsure if he was a “he” at all. Unlike the others waiting to be won, he wasn’t orange, but goldish-brown in color with long, flowing fins.

“I got to pick him,” he said proudly.

“He’s beautiful.”

“That lady said we can get everything for him over there.” He pointed to a strategically placed booth next to the one with the fish game where a vendor was selling everything from bowls and tanks, to filters, food, and decorations.

“Yeah.” She walked with him to the booth. “I bet she did.”


*


“Ah, hell,” Evan said under his breath as he watched Charlie and Lyon—with a fish in a bag—approach a vendor who was happily gesticulating to a million accessories she could buy for the miniature carp he guessed he’d be flushing down the toilet within forty-eight hours.

“The little lady got you a pet.” Ash elbowed him.

“Laugh it up, dickhead.”

Mrs. Anderson cleared her throat from nearby and angled a glare at them. Evan lifted a palm in apology.

“No swearing, Mr. Downey,” Ash said, his impression of Mrs. Anderson as bad as his Forrest Gump.

“Looks like your girlfriend’s talking to mine,” Evan told him. He was sure Ash would jump to argue that Gloria was not his girlfriend. “Girlfriends” made Asher Knight as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Commitment wasn’t his thing, or so it was written in his rock ’n’ roll credo somewhere.

“Oh-ho! Charlie’s your girlfriend?”

Evan speared him with a silent glare.

Ash grinned.

He shook his head as he looked around the park. Almost every kid here carried a signed and personalized-to-them copy of The Adventures of Mad Cow—and girls of all ages who’d accepted the book when Ash, under the reproachful gaze of Mrs. Anderson, refused to sign their tits—which meant he and Ash were almost off the clock. Good thing, too.

“I’m starving. You want a”—Evan squinted at the booth across from them—“deep fried apple fritter hot dog?”

God. What the hell was that?

“Sounds like a dare.”

The booth to their right displayed a menu boasting its claim to fame was something called a “pork rind peanut butter burger.”

“No.” Evan nodded toward the booth. “I think that blue ribbon goes to Jack’s Shack.”

“I say we get both,” Asher said. “So. You get laid?”

Evan felt a grin come on, tried to stop it, and failed miserably.

Better than laid. He and Charlie had painted one another’s bodies while he kissed the breath out of her. She made herself come while he watched, holding her close, and listening to the sounds she made when she did. Listened to the way she said his name, all high and tight because her moment of pleasure was mixed in the paint imprints on their bodies. And he’d taken her there—she’d arrived there because he was guiding her arm and tasting her mouth and encouraging her with his words.

Erotic as hell, and like nothing he’d ever experienced. Tapping into her, and into a moment in the middle of a moment where he’d been so filled with artistic vibes and creation. It’d happened right in the middle of a “zone” and on the canvases of their bodies. The smell of paint in the air would forever have a sensual smell after they’d—

“You son of a bitch. You did get laid.”

Ash shoved his shoulder and Evan snapped out of what Rae would have classified as a midday “zone out,” only he hadn’t been painting, he’d been remembering painting Charlie.